Guantanamero Bay was party central for the group of Irvine grad students I ran with. The large living room at the Bay was made for dancing. I’d hosted a couple of blowouts at my place, but Cajon Street’s front room was about half the size of the Bay’s. Plus I hated cleaning up the spilled beer and wine and chips and salsa and unidentified other goop the morning after. The air inside reeked of cigarette smoke for the next few days, despite open windows and doors.
Wherever the party was, however, we had developed the habit of rocking out until the cops arrived. The Laguna police at the door — always in pairs — invariably explained that whereas their peace could not by law be disturbed, a noise complaint had been duly registered by a neighbour and we had to shut down the music immediately. They never failed to warn that they would not take kindly to having to return a second time on the same complaint. The cops, whether big or average-size, invariably looked like what they probably were — ex-Marines. Their close-cropped hair, large sidearms, and weighty equipment belts clashed fundamentally with the shoulder badges of Laguna’s finest: an artist’s palette. The city regarded itself as an art colony and wanted even its law-enforcement division to reflect this image.
By the time the police showed, one of our group, Alan, a grad student in psychology, would be drunk and belligerent toward anybody he thought was an affront to his dignity. A vital task of the party host was thus to simultaneously mollify the cops and attempt to rein in Alan. Alan was not a large guy, coming up to maybe the middle of the cops’ chests. He wasn’t the Alan Ladd type, either, with his incipient potbelly and a scraggly goatee. But if not headed off, he’d be out on the doorstep prepared to hassle the representatives of law and order about our right to enjoy ourselves and inquiring what kind of person would want to make a living going around bothering people who were simply having fun. The police seemed to regard him as a yappy terrier, and no threat. The risk was that he’d say exactly the wrong thing to a cop having a bad night and provoke some incident that would endanger everybody. Due to the various chemicals being inhaled, swallowed, and snorted at the gathering, the last thing you’d want would be for the police to decide that the situation called for them to enter the premises.
A corollary problem involving Alan was that, if the scene at the door featuring him, the host, and the police went on long enough, certain other party-goers swacked on some legal or illegal substance would stagger forward to see if they could resolve the situation. The worst offender was Myron, one of the English grad students and a pal of Alan’s. A couple of times Myron had insisted on “mediating,” as he put it, between Alan and a cop. In Myron’s alcohol-sodden condition, such intervention simply multiplied the chances of incensing the authorities. Edward was much better than I was at deflecting or muzzling the likes of Alan or Myron while assuring the police that the neighbours’ peace would be promptly restored.
Tense moments at the front door or not, the rear of Guantanamero Bay boasted a large, open covered porch overlooking the cove, a wonderful place to cool out when you were drenched in sweat from a spell of dancing. A path led sharply down below the porch to the sand, a perfect arrangement for slipping off into the moonlight for a while with somebody you intended to get close to. Not that I’d ever done that: mostly I danced with whoever was sitting this one out, except the time I brought Janey to a party. But forgoing use of the beach in this manner didn’t stop me from appreciating the porch as a spot to reduce your body temperature after rocking through several cuts on a Stones album or, a couple of hours into the party, stomping through the full six minutes and thirty seconds of The Doors’ “Light My Fire.”
On a night with a full moon, the view from the porch was itself worth taking a breather to witness. Rows of huge cumulous clouds were often borne in from the Pacific, their puffy surfaces luminous in the moonlight. The eerie airborne structures resembled enormous white galleons arriving from another planet.
Besides Edward, the other steady inhabitant of Guantanamero Bay was Willow, an art major at Irvine. She and Edward were housemates, rather than boyfriend-girlfriend. Beach houses were more expensive to rent than the cottages I and the other students obtained in Laguna or back up the highway on the Balboa Peninsula or Balboa Island, or apartments in Costa Mesa. Edward required additional residents like Willow to defray costs. She was everyone’s image of a surfer girl: thin, fit, long blond hair, and out on the water with her board every chance she got. Whether she was in her bikini around the house, or in her wetsuit climbing down the path to Shaw’s Cove beach, she was heart-stopping lovely. Her breasts weren’t particularly large, but she was perfectly proportioned and moved with such grace she could have been a delicate onshore wind. She was always pleasant to talk to, interested in what was happening with you. Edward said she could be moody to live with, but I never knew when he was being contrary or when he was accurate.
As with Janey, Willow was a delight merely to stare at. When she swayed across the living room in the afternoon South Coast light, with the sound of the surf rising from the beach through an open window while birds twittered from the oleanders and fan palms, the air scented with pungent eucalyptus and perhaps a sandalwood incense stick burning in the room, this feast for the senses brought to mind the opening guitar chords of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Coconut Grove.” The song’s tune and lyrics proceeded as languorously but inexorably as Willow’s locomotion, or as combers curling onto sand:
Don’t bar the door. There’s no one comin’.
The ocean’s roar will dull the drummin’
Of any city thoughts or city ways.
The ocean’s breezes cool my mind,
The salty days are hers and mine
Just to do with what we want to.
Tonight we’ll find a dune that’s ours
And softly she will speak the stars
Until sun-up.
It’s all from havin’ some one knowin’
Just which way your head is blowin’,
Who’s always warm like in the morning
In Coconut Grove.
Willow had a boyfriend, Phil, who lived up in Venice. They’d visit back and forth. I’d met Phil a couple of times at Guantanamero Bay: he was a surfer, too, and seemed a nice guy, though I had never ascertained if he was interested in anything much beyond the location of the best reef or shore break, or what had occurred the last time he shot the pier at Huntington. He was tanned almost mahogany, and even his muscles had muscles. Phil was a ringer for the “after” panel in Charles Atlas’s “before” and “after” bodybuilding advertising — the photo slightly retouched with blond hair slicked back wet from a day’s surfing, a Hawaiian shirt like Edward’s, and a trim moustache. I never saw Phil at our parties.
Willow, too, was usually absent from those events. Edward said she didn’t care for parties much and decamped to Venice when we had one scheduled for the Bay. As always, I didn’t necessarily believe Edward: maybe she simply didn’t like our parties. I was never clear how she and Edward had ended up sharing a place. Had he met her through his art classes, if indeed he really was studying fine arts? Or did he know her from Hawaii? Once she had spoken about her parents living on the big island, so maybe that was somehow the connection with Edward, if indeed he really had operated a gallery in Hawaii. Being in art, she also knew Meg, Remi’s girlfriend, so there could have been a link there.
Not that it mattered; Willow was part of the ambience of the Bay, as were a couple of male housemates. The latter were acquaintances of Edward’s, although never Irvine students. During the past year, these individuals had shared the rent for a few months, then disappeared. Later you encountered their replacements drinking beer on the porch and were introduced. When you inquired after
