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to break up the
murder-suicide plot you had going. Mr. Boopers is trying to show
you that your services are still needed--that even a quarter pound
pooch is worth staying alive for--but you can’t serve Mr. Boopers
until you learn to stop punishing yourself.”
    “ Wow,” Beckie said.
    “ Yeh,” Scotia said. “It’s pretty
incredible, isn’t it?”
    “ No,” Beckie said. “I wasn’t talking
about what you just said. I said Wow because I just saw something
in the water. Look down! I just saw a huge fish come up to the
surface and go back down.”
    “ Oh man, you’re right,” Scotia said.
“There it is!”
    “ It’s a shark!” Beckie said. “It’s
right below us!”
    “ Dr. Black!” Scotia yelled. “Betty!
Come quick! There’s a Great White in the water!”
    “ It’s got something in it’s mouth!”
gasped Beckie.
    “ A seal!” Black said. “It’s eating a
seal!”
    The group assembled on the rail and marveled
at the sight of the feeding shark, a creature unconcerned with
proper table etiquette, or climbing ladders of fear, and one not
needing permission of any sort to behave in whatever way it chose,
a creature whose life was spent effortlessly cruising through a
kind of liquid eternity, and who contained within its taut
muscularity all the energy and resilience of a god, imparting to
their collective souls a sense of awe, and a reverence, if such it
could be called, for the massive fish which had chosen that precise
instant to display itself to them as if to send them the message
that life wasn’t all wrapped up, that there still remained within
the envelope some room for mystery, and power.
    The excitement of the four women--transmuted
to Mr. Boopers through the large straw bag--caused his hairless
head to appear and, upon looking down and seeing the impressive
poundage and cool fury of the feeding predator in the water,
further inspired him to unleash a series of short, sharp barks of
which his willingness to do so--to face the necessary but
unpleasant task of chasing the evil thing away from his new
master--demonstrated clearly to everybody present his considerable
loyalty and courage, the size of which was certainly greater than
the sum of his parts. With an impressive surge, as if acknowledging
Mr. Boopers wishes, the big fish submerged beneath the rolling,
foam-backed waves.
    “ Oh man,” Betty said. “I was going
wading in a few minutes--I always wade up to my knees whenever we
come here. I’m going back inside for a drink.”
    “ Dr. Black,” Beckie said. “I’m going to
join WE--I’m going to become a Woman Empowered.”
     
    Chapter
6
     
    On the drive back into Santa Monica from
Paradise Cove, Beckie stared at nothing for a long time. She’d
popped a Tofranil before leaving the Sandcastle and that, plus the
small amount of scotch she’d consumed, had helped push back the
grief to a place just beyond the fringes of feeling--for the
moment. But as she approached the short, curving ramp by which she
would ascend from the ocean’s edge to the security of the bluff and
Palisades Park, the pain, uninvited as it was, closed back in and
the first fear she’d been wrestling with--that of sleeping alone
for the first time--began to encircle her guts with strands of what
felt like electrified barbed wire. She could draw only one
conclusion--going home alone wasn’t going to cut it.
    It didn’t take her long to find a parking
space behind Chillers and make her way into the crowded bar, the
place in full swing with younger people in tight jeans and combat
boots who held good jobs in daylight hours serving their city as
civil engineers and environmental planners, many of them on loan
from the vast, corn-fed universities of the Midwest, places where
nothing ever happened and nothing ever would, places to which they
would return upon completion of their internship in this, the
largest city in the nation, a city which encouraged them to open
more than a few top buttons before they swam