‘Bugs’

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. She shows extensively in the Pacific Northwest. Past shows have included Seattle University, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the Pacific Science Center. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections.

Bugs

Roma gazed out the window at an owl sleeping in the eucalyptus across the quad. Movement re-focused her eyes on the ersatz stage, a steel blue flecked, glossy linoleum half-encircled by desks. Across from her, two male students rolled their eyes, occasionally flicking taps at one another's thighs. Professor Swander, called Murph for some uniterated reason, stood before the chalkboard backdrop. In a collared shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, his straight, gray hair under a black Breton cap, he was a wizard cloaked as Everyman, and everyone knew it, well nearly everyone. 

Before class the first session, not two weeks ago, the regulars initiated new students to the practice of arranging the "stage" and its audience of desks. Roma gleaned that Murph's classes had long waiting lists. She marveled that, as a freshman, she had gotten in. 

"Alright, now we're all going to sing 'Sentimental Journey."

Opening a vinyl-sided cube, Murph unsleeved a black, ten-inch disk and placed it on the turntable. He swung the needle-arm to the disk's edge. Crackles and scratches overlaid an alto voice. The two thigh-flickers went on with their separate amusement. 

"Roma," Kevin hissed. "What's the answer to number 2?"

"B," Roma spoke from one side of her lips without turning her head. Immediately, she felt that she was betraying Mr. Scaglia, a roundish man who always wore a suit and tie. He seemed like a nice man and a good teacher.

She had met tall, blond Kevin at parties before. Now that they had this class together, they were sort of friends.

Mr. Scaglia, started collecting quizzes, As if he had noticed nothing, he addressed Roma. "Miss Collins, what's GDP and why is it important?"

Roma answered.

He scrutinized Kevin. "Mr. Highwater, what are some of the economic indicators used to measure GDP?"

"I hate thish fuckin' class." Kevin stood abruptly, entangling his feet in the cords to the overhead projector. He saved himself by splaying his hands on Roma's desk.

Mr. Scaglia approached. Cold sweat breeched Roma's skin, fearing that she would be asked to take sides.

"Come with me young man," he said even-toned, as if stating tax brackets.

The teacher reached for Kevin who swatted violently, contacting only air. Mr. Scaglia waited. Before the outstretched hand could touch his shoulder, Kevin recoiled nearly toppling into a row of desks. He relented and, allowed Mr. Scaglia to steady him out the door.

The flicking eye-rollers opposite her awakened Roma's embarrassment for Kevin. Her sympathy transferred to Murph.

Arms over shoulders, the class swayed to the music. Roma thanked her lucky stars ending up between Murph's graduate reader, and Andrew, a serious student. Andrew artlessly raised the right, then the left leg in his knee-length shorts. His hand's pressure increased on her arm at each left step, distancing her from the two flickers at the end now kicking each other's shoes.

After class Roma cycled around campus to the Goleta Beach. She locked her bike to a tree in the grass verge between parking lot and sand. Doffing her shoes, she delved her toes in the warm, massaging grist. 

She had adopted the habit of studying at the beach living on Rhodes, a street on a hillside above Pacific Coast Highway. Short and quiet, few knew it existed. Neighbors there would not have tolerated big crazy, but her family's little crazy stayed inside the apartment. Atop the garage, the compact living room strained with TV, her younger brother's music on the stereo, or his raucous friends wrestling. The eight by ten kitchen scarcely dampened the waves cataracting down the doorless, steep wooden stairs to her room. Whenever Roma needed to study, she headed to a tranquil spot on the sand.

She was on the beach less than an hour having already read Mac Beth three times. In sophomore English, she surprised herself by liking Mac Beth. She surprised her counselor, opting for Shakespeare junior year with the college-bound students. In the years of junior college struggling to undo her disappointing high school career, she read it again.

The Goleta bike path followed the slough. No streets or traffic intersected. To her right, hills blocked the ocean view. To her left citrus groves displayed ripe, orange and yellow fruit. Sloping, green changed to a flat tract of one-story houses. Roma turned.

The house on Rhoads Avenue differed in every way but name from the apartment on Rhodes Street: the latter tall and narrow on a hill, the former flat on flat land. The Rhodes apartment was on the second floor except for her large, dank room. It had clearly been a patio, now enclosed, evidenced by the concrete floor and green corrugated fiberglass roof. Her new room on Rhoads was a small dry-walled box. Rhodes carried sounds of her brother and of her mother chatting with Judy, the flight attendant in the studio apartment aside Roma's room. Rhoads reverberated quiet in the sparsely furnished house.

Entering the back door, Roma saw Carol's pear shaped back at the sink.

"Hi, Carol." Roma set her books on a stool. "Doin' anything exciting tonight?" It was a gratuitous question. Carol, a doctoral student, was about as exciting as her mousy hair.

"George and I are going to see The Fisher King." Carol dried her hands with a towel.

"Let me know if it's any good."

Carol left. The house was empty.  

Roma sat in the living room to read. Every passing car distracted her. She looked for something on TV. Its two channels had a sit-com of young adults playing adolescents and a nighttime soap with big hair. She went to the kitchen phone, picked up the receiver, and depressed the one, the two, the one . . .

"Excuse me, ladies," Mrs. Dufort distracted Roma from her distraction. 

She had been fighting against the undercurrent in her legs and chest to think about Graham Green. Mark Forrest, six foot four, lanky, cut, a little geeky behind his wire-rimmed glasses, had sat next to her. They'd been talking before class about the priest character as if he knew her.

"Amanda, Myra," Mrs. Dufort addressed two girls in the doorway. Flannel pajama bottoms and slippers showed below their jackets. "You'll need to go to the office and get a tardy slip. Don't come back until you're dressed appropriately for class."

Myra and Mandy laughed making their noisy way up the hall.

"Hello." Myra answered the phone.

"Hey, what are you girls doing?" Roma knew Mandy would be there, too.

"Hola, chica!" Myra recognized Roma's voice. "Nothin'. Are you here?"

"No."

"You should come down. There's a party at Twenty-Eighth and Hermosa."

"No, by the time I get there, I won't be able to park, and you guys'll get bored and leave."

"The fair's this weekend," Myra reminded Roma. "Come down tomorrow and meet us there."

"Okay." Roma brightened at the thought of going home and something to do.

The next morning Roma climbed the exterior stairs to the Rhodes apartment. Her brother Sam actually set down his cereal bowl and turned from the TV. 

"Hey." He smiled.

"Hi," Roma replied. "Mom home?"

"No, she's at the store."

Cartoon sound effects followed Roma through the kitchen and descended the open stairs. Already her room was changed. In the middle a card table stood with shoeboxes and scrapbook albums. Sam's bike leaned inside the sliding glass door. A pile of her mom's clothes neatly draped the bed.

Myra laughed aloud, hunched, her thumbs hooked through Taz's belt loops as she followed him through the kitchen. Eyes like slits, Roma, Matt and Amanda traipsed behind. Taz opened the door into the garage, a trapezoid of light diving its concrete floor. An added interior wall lined the width of the garage with egg-crate batting. Mandy shut the kitchen door behind her. In the sudden, pure darkness, they all broke out laughing.

Taz illuminated a turntable with a miniscule light. Giggling, Myra and Amanda pushed Matt upright and off of them on a pink chenille covered couch where they had landed. Roma sat down on its arm. Taz carefully cleaned the black, revolving vinyl. He strapped a bass guitar over his shoulder, its solid body blocking most of his. Dark hair hid his face while he tuned the strings. The instrument blocked Taz's slight body. He adjusted an amp and set the stylus. Deep notes resonated through Roma, but her shiver came from Taz's playing.

In Manhattan Beach, the first three blocks perpendicular to shore are narrow alleys alternating with "walk-streets". Walk-streets are not really "streets" but triple wide, concrete walks faced by house fronts. Parking is a nightmare at best. A weekend, during the fair, it was nearly impossible. Roma turned the car up a steep, alley and paralleled partly obstructing a garage door.

She followed a narrow ingress between two houses. At the front door she pressed the "bell". A shorthaired blond woman her mother's age smiled through the kitchen window. The door opened.

"Hi, Roma." Beth raised her hand in a small wave hello. "I haven't seen you for a long time. " She opened both palms upward, "What brings you by?"

Roma deliberately faced so that Beth could surely see her lips. Please, flat fingers circled her heart, might she leave her car behind the garage. Roma's fists gripped the invisible steering wheel. She balled her hands one behind the other, thumbs atop index as if readying for successive thumb wars. Beth agreed as long as the car on the right could still get out adding that Roma might see Taz at the fair.

In the middle of the walk-street, Roma gazed west. She couldn't see the sand only three cement hillocks dense with houses. She could see the water. The waves were big. The houses that she surveyed were unrecognizable. Some had added cedar-shake siding, others rooftop decks. A very few remained single story. The cinderblock and stucco two-story opposite, where her family once lived, was now clad in cheap wooden siding with a gaudy, octagonal, stained-glass window. The fence around the front yard had been removed.

Her upstretched hand clasped the large one not quite dragging her up the hill. She couldn't keep pace with those big feet without socks in topsiders. Each measured step of the hairy, muscular legs had to be made up with her five small steps. About halfway, he would let go taking two or three giant marches toward the summit. Then he'd turn around looking to the ocean then down at her. Pushing and pushing her little legs, it seemed to Roma like she was face to face with the sidewalk. Finally she would reach him, hugging one of his sandy limbs. He'd scoop her up in his arms then onto his shoulders setting her down at almost the top to open the gate for her.

The hillcrest verged between two worlds: the beach side concrete and tight-packed houses, and the park side beyond which the houses had street-fronts and yards with trees. Booths and canopies edged the left field. Along the railroad track, unused by trains since before her mom was born, a man led a small elephant, on its back a small girl in pig tails.

Roma descended the stairs into the park. She meandered through a maze of nylon awnings offering fruit flavored ices, measuring pitch speed, or painting children's faces. She watched people climb a net ladder only to have it invert at varying distances from the top. 

At the "Beer Garden", a roped section at the corner of the park, Amanda and Myra sat at a table shaded by oaks. Roma presented ID to a guy, not much older than she. On the elephant a boy of five-ish searched nervously for his mother. Spotting her, he smiled. Roma heard a voluble, familiar voice.

Miss Crane, who did indeed resemble a crane, her long neck on her skinny frame, wrote an equation on the chalkboard.

" Larry," she asked, "what should we do now?"

The boy next to Roma, his dangling feet swinging over the linoleum, responded, "Do what's in the parentheses."

Miss Crane drew chalk across the green plane, Roma watched Amanda whispering to Myra.

To a girl in the next group, "Yvonne," Miss Crane posed and turned to the board, "where do we place the decimal point?"

Timing it expertly, Myra whispered to Taz. The class, expecting Yvonne's answer, heard Taz, loud and clear.

"At der Wienerschnitzel?"

Myra, Mandy, Taz and his friends Doug and Ben sat in an oblate of chairs. Taz pulled his chair back to widen the oval. He was half a foot taller than when Roma had last seen him. His jaw had lengthened so that he looked more like his father and less like a dark version of Beth. He grabbed a vacant chair for Roma and set it between him and his two friends.

"What are you doing these days?" 

“I'm going to UCSB. I'm just home for the weekend. How 'bout you?"

"I'm moving in with a friend downtown." The sides of his eyes crinkled. Black pupils in sea-glass green reflected the shadows. "He's been getting me a little studio work. He's a keyboardist." 

"That's great," she said and meant it. Simultaneously she imagined an oppressive apartment with no outdoors. 

They spoke about their brothers, his working in an office downtown and going to law school, hers . . . They spoke about people from junior high and high school. Midafternoon sun approached the ridge. The shade shifted behind the table. A dry, offshore wind blew in. 

Doug announced, "We're goin' home, maybe go in the water."

Taz stood looking toward Mandy and Myra, "You wanna come with?" 

Mandy and Myra locked eyes. Mandy shook her head. "No," she answered for both of them.

Taz lowered his gaze to Roma.

She and Taz walked down to The Strand. On the left, they passed a few three-story houses. Each had a short, definitive border separating small, hard-scaped yards from skaters, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Opposite, past a three-foot cinderblock barrier, the sand stretched 200 feet to the ocean. People and colorful towels dotted it for miles. Taz opened a solid gate in a low, brick wall fronting an aging, two-story. The afternoon glare on the concrete made it difficult to see, but within the wall's shadow, Roma saw a bounce. She stopped for a second. 

Taz said, "Oh, that's Bugs."

Roma cooed bending to pet the small, gray bunny. Bugs hopped lazily away, staying close to the wall and its strip of shade.

Exiting a sliding-glass door, grabbing their surfboards, Doug and Ben said, "Hey."

Entering, Taz explained that this was the guys' apartment but that he stayed here more often than not. The only window in the dark room was the sliding door. There was a couch, coffee table, and a TV on a crate. To one side was a bar counter, behind it, a sink, hotplate, toaster oven, and fridge.

Once in swimming gear, Taz and Roma dodged cyclists and skaters to the deep, scorching sand. In painful joy, they trotted to the water's edge.

Roma watched the waves roll in, clear, even, big.  She watched their smooth faces breaking feet higher than her head. Taz strode in, his trunks hanging tenuously below the ripple of dark ribs under his new lean muscles. The small of his back pulled like the tide. He dove in then turned to her grinning, hair dripping black.

She went under the water unexpectedly warm, and came up next to him. A breaking wave pushed them yards toward the shore before their feet could purchase. It felt strange yet natural for him to abruptly turn and kiss her. Holding hands, they rushed into the next draw and plunged.

Bobbing over swells, diving between breakers, they waited to frantically swim toward shore and place themselves just where the ocean's force would propel them on the surface. Landing sometimes on their feet, sometimes scraping to a halt on the sandy bottom, they ran back in splashing. 

The evening sun still heated beach though it didn't burn their feet until they had almost reached The Strand and the arid offshore wind had encased them in a salty crust. Bugs was hopping and stopping in the now extended shadow of the patio wall.

In the shower Taz and Roma rinsed the salt from their skin and the sand from their hair. Their slick, supple bodies touched. Warm water and tender excitement washed over Roma. When they emerged, the apartment was dark.

"Shit." Taz uttered. "Those guys left without us."

Roma gave a perplexed look.

"We were supposed to go to a party at Pickfair to meet a producer, but Ben has the invitation."

Taz wrinkled his brow and paced for a minute. Relenting, his face relaxed into a smile. "How about The Lighthouse?"

Ten dollars? Myra's dad was a doctor. She didn't blink, but ten dollars was a lot to Roma. Every weekend Roma biked to the harbor to wash boat decks for spending money. Now she handed a ten to a bouncer. A sign declared "Two Drink Minimum." Her stomach tightened. She only had four more dollars, and she wasn't old enough to drink. What if they carded her?

The dim, windowless club, made darker by black pews on a square U of black risers, smelled of stale beer. Mandy sat on a pew next to Matt. Taz stood, barely matching Myra's slight stature, to kiss her on the lips. They sat. Roma, on the end, wondered why she'd come. 

A man in black jeans and a "Lighthouse" t-shirt asked what they'd like. When her grapefruit juice arrived and she realized that the cover included the two drinks, Roma breathed deeply. The house lights lowered. Moody, gelled spotlights hit the small stage and the brick wall behind it.

At one in the morning, the streetlamps lit wide, fading circles on The Strand. The offshore breeze warmed the air. A lone skateboarder passed opposite. Another couple walked ahead in the distance. Taz swung Roma's hand to the metronome surf.

"My parents don't listen to music." Taz spoke loudly in the quiet night. 

Roma had never thought of that. 

"I was three or four. I don't know why I was at my Uncle Walter's. I guess he was babysitting." Tacit. Four arm swings. Taz continued. "He turned on the stereo." Swing. "I remember feeling the bass and drum through the floor and then through me. I knew . . ." Swing.

Dawn grayed framed by the sliding glass door. Roma listened to the sharp, even crash of waves. Taz lie unmoving between her and the couch back, stomach against her spine, arm over her. She tried not to stir. 

The steely sky was starting to blue when Ben came through.

"Morning," he offered.

"Morning," Roma replied.

Not the rushing water from the faucet nor the clanking cups and utensils on the counter disturbed Taz. Roma delicately detached herself. Taz shifted. 

"Hey," he squint-blinked to the world at large then focusing smiled at Roma.

By coffee time, Doug had joined them. They exited through the slider mugs in hand. Slate water-walls pounded, visible broad as the beach was. The waves reached so far ashore that it felt dangerous wandering onto the sand.

They retreated, balancing barefoot on the dividing wall. 

"Look!" Taz shouted pointing beyond swells.

He overbalanced and dropped onto the beach. Doug, Ben, and Roma, bodies fixed, synchronously turned their heads. Rubber-gray silhouettes arched in a green face of sea. Roma remembered water rushing her to land, salt baking on her skin. She loved the ocean, but they belonged there. She jumped onto the sand next to Taz. 

Roma towel-dusted her gritty feet. Inside, she put on yesterday's clothes.

"I gotta go." She gathered bits and pieces into her backpack. 

Taz pecked her on the lips. They stepped outside where Doug bent, searching the corners of the patio.

"What're you doing?" Taz asked.

"Bugs is gone," Doug pronounced. He glanced up at them mouth open. He bounded over the wall to search The Strand. Taz investigated the side area. Doug shook his head saying, "I've already looked there."

From a neighboring yard, Ben walked into view and shrugged palms upraised. Taz perused another yard. Ben started the opposite direction from Doug. Taz hunkered to peer under the neighbors' deck.

Backpack hoisted over her left shoulder, Roma passed the two big houses and turned the corner to the walk-street. Her legs pushed her up the hill, face to face with the sidewalk.

Carla Del Conte has been published in The Easy Reader. She has a bachelor's in comparative literature and a master's in French. She has taught in California public schools from junior high to junior college.