Dan’s cell phone rang. It was the call from his mother.
– Yes, mom… I’ll call you back soon. Busy now. – Dan answered his mom’s phone call and addressed to me and Slava at once. – I’m sorry, guys, but it’s time to go. My mom is worrying so much about her car. She wonders if everything is OK with the car and if I drive safely enough not to ruin it. She also demands to return the car as she suddenly needs it for some reason.
– Okay then, let’s go! – I smiled.
We left the restaurant and ended up in a heavy smoky street instead of the same, bright and sunny one, just three hours before. We went to the parking garage and sat down into my mother-in-law’s car that she politely allowed her son to use for the wedding.
Dan’s cell phone rang again. He apologized for being interrupted, stopped the car and left it.
– Immediately come back home, can you hear me, asshole? Come back until you get into an accident. Where the hell are you, Dan? I want my fucking car now!
The car windows were opened, and I could hear very irritated and categorically insistent demands from angry Miriam – my husband’s mother. She wasn’t shy in choosing expressions when she spoke to her son over the phone.
– OK, mom. Please, do not worry. I’m coming back. Your car is safe, – Dan answered quietly.
At the moment Miriam called, she had no idea about our marriage. She didn’t know that her son had gotten married just a few hours before in Beverly Hills.
Dan didn’t tell her a word about this, but a few days before the ceremony Dan tried to explain to me.
– Vika, my sick mother is a real witch, and it would be better for everyone to keep a secret about our forthcoming marriage at least for a while. But do not worry, she will give me her car for the wedding, and we’ll spend the wedding day as we have already planned with you, okay?
– You know better. – I shrugged my shoulders.
Dan finished the phone conversation with his mother and sat down into her comfortable luxurious golden Pontiac. That car Miriam got as a present from her husband Tommy, Dan’s father, for the 50th anniversary of their marriage.
– My mother is an unpredictable awful mischievous lady. My deceased father warned me about her weird behavior many times, – my husband commented on.
– Really? It’s not good.
– Don’t worry please. We‘ll go to the ocean. It’s our special day! – Dan looked at me and Slava. – As I’ve promised to you, guys. The Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica!
He started the car. In half-an-hour or so we arrived.
Dan was a very good guide. He knew the city. His grandparents had their house in Santa Monica not far away from the ocean, and in his childhood Dan spent a lot of time with them there. He showed us the dearest to him places and told some stories.
– This is the well-known pier, and that is my favorite carousel with the horses.
We came up to the carousel pavilion and entered.
– Forty-four hand-crafted ponies for little children. Amazing, isn’t it? And now everything is exactly the same as it was in my so remote childhood. It was always a big problem for my mom to lead me off from the carousel’s ponies. My eyes were completely full of tears, despair and disappointment… It was because the short entertainment always ended so soon. I was roaring, screaming and crying. My hysterics could continue for hours. I had no any wish to go back home, since I was afraid of my father.
Dan sighed and in a second several little boys in the carousel were crying. They sobbed so hard, and their moms couldn’t sooth them.
– Hmm, – Dan shook his head. – It’s I in my childhood!
We looked at each other.
I put my warm palms on my ears, and we hurried up to the exit. The beach was absolutely deserted. The abnormal lull, intense quietness of the Pacific… It strokes and alerted. We took some pictures and paid attention at the huge amount of dark standstill clouds above the ocean.
Suddenly the strong wind sprang up. The tallest coastal palms bent down so close to the ground that it seemed they were not the trees, but huge elastic grass what in a minute or so would cover and dam all the roads; so we were in a hurry to go back to the car.
But it was too late to reach it safely: A sand whirlwind started, and we couldn’t move.
– Tornado, – I heard Dan’s voice. – Don’t stop, move, guys, quickly! Go!
Somehow we hung on to each other and with closed eyes and mouths (it was impossible to open them) groped our way through to the car. It seemed to me it took us for ages to reach it that moment.
– O-la-la-la, – I heard myself…
I couldn’t pronounce a word when realized at last that we all were safe, sitting in the comfortable car with the doors and windows closed.
– Well, – Dan said.
– Well, – Slava repeated.
– Hell! – I exclaimed, and three of us burst out laughing.
It was nervous and relaxed healthy laugh of big relief at the same time.
I looked through the windshield.
The sun was brightly shining in the blue sky. There was no thunderstorm cloud above the ocean, it was breezing. The weather was fine.
– Let’s go? – Daniel asked. – Let’s go home, guys. And we raced back home, listening to a popular country music station.
Late in the evening Dan downloaded all the pictures of the wedding day into his computer and almost all of them were cream of the crop.
– Excellent pictures. Such a remarkable day! A very special, extraordinary day, Vika. Thank you, my darling. And where are your sun-glasses?
It turned out that somehow and somewhere I left or lost my sun-glasses, and one of my high-heel wedding shoes was broken.
– I’m not upset with that at all Dan, what a great loss! – I joked. – We brought home some ocean sand instead! I can still feel it not only in my hair but on my teeth too, and you?
Dan shook his jeans and the golden sand from the Pacific Ocean poured from his pockets out to the floor.
– And now it’s time to check my clothes and take a shower, isn’t it? – I smiled.
The phone rang.
