After the conversation, I walked on the beach alone. I continued down the sand, past the houses with their enormous windows. We had been here long enough to know something of the people who lived nearby. Of the man who had starred many years ago in a television show of some repute, and whose wife had committed suicide on the beach. Of the aging actress—she lived in the blue A-frame with the cantilever windows—who’d had her lips enlarged in order to play the role of a famous magazine editor. Of the director who’d made it rich by creating aliens that resembled little children on steroids. I walked down Carbon Beach to the ocean, turned my back on the houses, and let the waves run up against my feet. I felt the wet sand between my toes. A couple approached. I could tell they weren’t Malibuites by the careful way they straddled the tide line along the narrow strip of public access, in the damp sand between the beach and the waves. They glanced at me shyly—as if wondering who I might be.

I watched the tide come in. It came in raggedly, uneven along the beach; but farther down, near the point, it had already begun to obliterate that space where the public could walk, swooping up toward the rocks, under the pillars, beneath the houses where the stars lived.

I hurried back along the ribbon of dry sand prohibited to the public. The couple, caught in the water, scrambled up the rocks in their wet shoes—headed for the highway beyond.

––––––––

Ferragamo got back in touch sooner than I expected, with news that the various parties would be amenable, as he put it, to such solutions as had been suggested. There were technicalities with regard to the transfer of property, he explained, and because of these it was preferred—in fact, all but imperative—that I be present at the signing of the various declarations back in Italy. There were other ways to proceed, but none simple, and all involved a substantial delay.