Ben resumed walking. They were passing through the last of the cypress trees and emerging once again into the sunlight. The path had joined the makeshift road leading back toward the park entrance. They walked a few yards and then Ben stopped. He lifted his arm in front of Hudson’s chest, stopping him. “Look,” he said softly, and pointed.

Twenty feet away, in the shadows of the scrub pine, two deer stood in the grass. Their ears twitched idly as they turned their heads from side to side. Hudson watched them, holding his breath, afraid that any noise might startle them and send them running. It was such a perfect picture that he wanted it to go on forever.

The quiet was interrupted by the sound of a car coming toward them. Ben and Hudson stepped off the road to let it pass, and when Hudson looked back, the deer were gone. The place where they’d been looked untouched, as if they’d simply vanished or never existed at all.

“Another romance—poof,” Ben said, snapping his fingers as a magician might.

“But they were there,” said Hudson. “And we saw them. That doesn’t just disappear.”

“But what did we really see?” Ben asked him. “Let me guess, you saw nature in all of its perfect glory. The sun on the trees. The deer in the grass. It was beautiful, right?”

“Right,” said Hudson. “Didn’t you think so?”

“It was beautiful,” Ben agreed. “But the reality is that we were looking at two animals whose fur is more than likely crawling with fleas, who harbor half a dozen parasites in their digestive tracts, and who breed so much that they’re straining the ecosystem.”

“If you’re trying to turn me into a cynic, it won’t work,” said Hudson. “I’m incurable.”

“Then there’s no hope for you,” Ben informed him with mock gravity.

They had taken a fork in the road and now were walking toward the water rather than away from it. The grass gave way to gravel, and then to the sand and asphalt of the parking area where they’d left Ben’s Volvo. Ben walked to the car, opened the door, and removed two plastic grocery bags, which he carried to one of the two picnic tables situated on the lot’s outer edge by the cinder block bathrooms. Hudson sat down opposite him as Ben handed him one of the bags, the lunches they’d picked up at a Safeway in town before making the trip to Pt. Lobos.

Ben unwrapped his sandwich and twisted the top from a bottle of water. “Can I ask you something?” he said as Hudson tore open a bag of chips and put one in his mouth. Hudson nodded in response to Ben’s question, crunching the chip between his teeth.

“If you’re such a hopeless romantic, how come you don’t have a partner. Boyfriend. Whatever.”