The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

The beach was crowded. It was a rare eighty-five-degree day in San Francisco, and the sand showed it. There was barely an open spot to lay a towel.

“Baker 2.0 is this way,” Brian said, pointing toward the looming orange struts of the Golden Gate.

“I don’t know if we really need to go all the way,” Jenn began.

Kirstin rolled her eyes. “You need to live a little, girl. Twenty years from now, you probably won’t be able to take that skin to a nude beach, but right now you have nothing to hide.”

Jenn laughed. “I have a lot to hide.”

Nick spoke up. “Come on, you guys. If Jenn’s uncomfortable going all the way down Baker, we can find a spot here. It’s crowded but there’s space.”

Brian took Kirstin’s hand and pulled. “We’re going,” he taunted.

Nick looked at Jenn. “What do you want to do? I’m cool if you want to stay here.”

Jenn wanted to stay on the clothed beach. Hell, she wanted to be back in the apartment on the couch under a blanket. Her head still felt like mush. Maybe it was because Nick was there, but she was not going to let Kirstin show her up. Not today. Not now. “Let’s just go,” she said.

As it turned out, the girls had less of a problem than the guys, at least in terms of people ogling them. As they walked, towels slowly began to take up less of the beach, and suddenly they found themselves walking among men lying belly up and cock free. There were some women, most of whom were frolicking thigh-deep in the surf, but within a few yards it was clear there were more male nudists than female. And Jenn noticed an awful lot of the guys had towels very close to one another.

“Welcome to Gayville,” she laughed. “I hope you two are up for it.”

The foursome tossed their towels down near the water, and Kirstin wasted very little time in pulling off her borrowed T-shirt. Her borrowed shorts followed. She grinned, putting a hand on one bare hip and grinning.

“Let’s hit the waves!”

Jenn couldn’t help but be envious of her friend’s jutting breasts and taut belly. Then Kirstin was running toward the ocean.

“Fuck it,” Jenn said, in disbelief though she was actually doing it. She pulled off her shirt, almost shaking from nervousness, but also felt raw and excited and free for the first time in who knew how long. She had no job, no family, no life at the moment. What did she have to lose?

As she kicked off shorts she’d borrowed from Nick, she looked up at the two men and said, “Well, are you guys pussies or what?”

It was totally unlike her, but it felt good. Then she was following Kirstin, naked as the day she was born and feeling amazingly, wonderfully free.

For a few moments, it was the most exhilarating experience of her life. Then the cold surf splashed her thighs and she questioned the entire exercise. Damn, that was cold! Numbing, skin-deadening cold.

“Fuck, this is freezing,” Kirstin complained.

“Uh, yeah,” Jenn answered.

Behind them, the two guys dropped their shorts and ran to the water with the obvious intent to submerge before being seen. Jenn watched Nick dashing to the surf, and she saw what she hadn’t the night before. And she liked it.

It warmed her just a little bit. It was even better when Nick actually ran through the waist-high saltwater to join her.

“Hi,” he said, clearly a little embarrassed. He cautiously slipped an arm around her shoulder.

“Hey,” she answered, smiling at him to let him know it was all right. She had never stood naked in public next to another naked person but she found that strangely she was okay with it. “Thanks,” she added.

“For what?” He looked surprised.

“For showing me this. I love it.”

Rampant male nudity aside, the view from Baker Beach was amazing. The orange-red struts of the Golden Gate loomed seemingly meters away, and the bay stretched out before them in a blue wash of possibility.

“It’s beautiful,” she pronounced.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

She grinned and put her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she said again, and leaned up to kiss him.

He held her close to him and pulled them low in the water so that only their heads jutted above the surface. But she felt him below the waves, and the press of his body made her smile.

After the beach, the boys took them to Fisherman’s Wharf for a late lunch. “You can’t be a tourist in San Francisco without stopping at the wharf,” Brian said. He acted very comfortable playing tour guide.

Nick, on the other hand, generally hung back. But this time, he laughed. “Generally tourists don’t start at the nude beach!”

“We’re not tourists,” Kirstin pouted. “We live near here now.”

“Okay, then we’ll just drive by really fast and make fun of it,” Brian said.

“I could go for some crab cakes,” Jennica protested. “Do you think they’d have them at the wharf?”

Brian laughed. “The wharf is crab mecca. Fried, breaded, cold, boiled, fancy restaurant, walk-up vendor off the sidewalk—I think we can find you some crab.”

They walked along the strip near the water where jugglers and street performers staked out spaces. “I’ve never seen a guy tap-dance to hip-hop,” Kirstin noted, as they passed an old guy in purple baggy pants and a green button-down shirt dancing up a storm.

“There’s a guy here who hides behind palm fronds and then jumps out at you and says ‘Boo’—and expects a tip for it,” Nick said. “They call him the Bush Man.”

“Nice!”

“Hot crab, cold beer,” called out an older Asian man in a white but well-stained apron. They were walking past a strip of outdoor food vendors, all of which featured crabmeat. Most bordered sit-down restaurants, but the stands were crowded with people buying crabmeat by the cup or fish and chips by the paper plate.

“Let’s just eat out here,” Kirstin suggested, and in minutes they were all licking slippery fingers.

Jenn picked up a morsel and bit through the deep-fried shell into the diced crabmeat within. She could barely finish chewing before she had to exclaim, “Wow. Now that is a crab cake!”

“See, I said you would like it here,” Kirstin said.

“I think I know something else you might like,” Nick offered, pointing at a large corrugated shed just beyond the seaside restaurants. A red banner hung from the metal face that read MUSEE MECHANIQUE.

“What is it?” Jennica asked.

Nick put his arm around her and began walking. “It’s a museum of old arcade machines. You know, kind of like Coney Island stuff. And it’s free admission. Definitely worth a look since we’re here.”

Inside was like stepping back a century. The room was filled with old wooden-framed machines to “Stretch a Penny” and “Tell your Fortune.” Many were simply machines that had monkeys and dolls moving through various settings, like circus or farm. You could put a quarter or two in to bring any of them to animated life.

Nick shot at moving tin squirrel squares with a BB gun. Clearly he’d spent some time in an arcade; he nailed virtually every target. Meanwhile Brian toyed with a machine that displayed a short animated dance sequence using a revolving wheel of pictures of a woman reflected in a mirror. Kirstin moved ahead and found a quarter machine that promised to “Show the Forbidden. Adults Only.”

She laughed and called, “C’mon, Brian, let’s see what’s so naughty.”

He produced a quarter, and they took turns at the viewfinder. A series of 3-D sepia photos of 1920s-era women showed bounteous breasts through see-through silks.

Jenn picked a tall, thin machine called The Executioner and put in a quarter. The lights went on in a model building, and then the front door opened to reveal a man doll hung from the neck by a rope. The trapdoor opened below him, and the tiny body fell through and disappeared.

“Eww,” she said just as the door closed again.

Someone started up an old player piano, and the hall was filled for a minute with classic ragtime. Jenn kept expecting to look up and find everything had turned to sepia tones, because it was just like they’d fallen into an old-time movie.

“Hey, Jenn—let’s do your fortune!” Kirstin called. She stood before the kind of boardwalk device that Tom Hanks had run afoul of in the movie Big. The old wooden machine that had a mannequin figure inside. LET GRANDMA TELL YOUR FORTUNE the sign above it said.

“These things are crap,” Nick laughed.

Jenn stared at the ivory jowls of the wooden figure behind the glass. “I think they’re kind of creepy.”

“My treat,” Kirstin said, holding up a quarter. “Put your hands on the wood, like it says, so she can feel you.”

Jenn put her hands on the worn spots in the wood and stared up at the red-painted lips of the fortune-teller. The lights flashed behind the glass, and whirring machinery rattled the wood. Then, from the right-hand side of the machine, a slip of paper dropped into a wooden holder. She reached down and unfurled it.

“‘There is happiness afoot but darkness on the horizon. Beware the night and embrace the light.’ Well, that’s uplifting,” she said, showing the other three what she’d read.

They peered over her shoulder, and Nick announced, “I believe there’s a misprint. ‘Light’ should be ‘Nick.’”

Jenn smiled and reached out to hug him. “Okay, so I guess if you’re wrong and it really meant ‘light,’ I’m screwed?”

Nick winked. “Either way,” he said.

The foursome left the museum and walked back along the wharf to stare at the myriad white sails dotting the waves. The island of Alcatraz broke the horizon. Nick ultimately was the one to say, “I hate to end things, but do you all want to get on the road and out of the city before it starts getting too dark?”

Jenn’s face dropped but she nodded. “Probably a good idea. We’ve had a great day, though.” It had ended too soon.

Kirstin shrugged and kissed Brian without warning. “I had a blast,” she announced. Her voice was even higher than usual.

“We’d love to get together with you girls again,” Nick offered.

“Hell, we’d even drive up if you wanted,” Brian said.

The girls were excited to hear that. By the time they’d walked back to their parked cars, they had made a date to cook dinner for the boys the next weekend up at the house in River’s End. They traded cell phone numbers; then both couples were kissing, oblivious of the other.

“Can’t wait to see you again,” Jenn whispered when Nick’s lips briefly left hers.

He grinned and said, “Ditto,” before their mouths met again.

It took a while before they were back on the road.