Halloween Walk

Justin and I wander the San Fran streets—Golden Gate Park to the Sutro Bath ruins to China Beach to Haight Street. I am Brigitte Bardot, hair and all. Justin is a hipster.

At the Sutro Bath ruins—tan-rock cells crumbling under flowered hills, glistening in the breaking waves—a bride poses for pictures. She looks, in the clear dawn, like a blue ballerina, a dancing child. She looks in-costume.

Waves crash against the ruins—spray the bride and the cameraman and the bouquets, baby blue and lavender. The bride does not flinch. The bouquets match the sky.

“Hi,” I say to Justin. I wave him over—he’d been looking at the ocean. He jogs. I point.

“She looks twelve.”

“She’s wet,” I say.

We wander along the cliff-path over the water, and down to China Beach. In the sky and water and fog, the Golden Gate Bridge floats, red. Close. I imagine we are in Japan. Justin says something.

“What?”

“A nude beach. It’s around here.”

“Here?”

“It’s hidden along here. Maybe we’ll see it.”

“It’s too cold,” I say. But I’m carrying my jacket and ocean air feels humid. “It—”

“Maybe we’ll find it some other day.”

We walk along the rocky beach. The tide climbs, pressing us against the cliffs. We find a cove crossed with rotting wooden planks—an ugly couple is posing before a professional photographer—and, beyond the cove, an old cement bathroom on the rocks, leaning against a cliff. It’s covered with graffiti, faded and peeling. It’s beautiful.

The mist sinks.

I take my heels off, leave them in the rocks. Thirty minutes and they’ll be floating—sinking to the floor of?—the Pacific. We pull ourselves onto the cliff over the graffiti-bath. We climb.

Loose rock breaks in my grip. I release it and watch it fall fifteen feet, hit a smooth rock, bounce into the restless water.

The sky dims—the sun has slipped somewhere, is rising in Australia and Taiwan for tomorrow. I climb onto a ledge—Justin reaches a hand down and pulls me up—and I look down at the shadowed sand for my shoes. I think they’re gone. The shoreline’s gone.

Waves break against the cliff and, in the blue-grey light, Justin points me the trail.