He goes to that spot just above Malibu and dives in just when the sun rises and navigates underwater worlds, swims away from seals, and searches coral reefs. He has hair down to the middle of his back, kissed by sun and salt, and his arms are covered with ink jobs from artists up North. His forearms are rocks and his hands scratchy like the sand. He knows no work and plays his life like a rare record. He feeds off the sea and brings its bounty to me.
He carries them in our studio apartment, still in the bag...a green-netted hanging-by-a-drawstring kind of bag with half-dead sea life inside. He guts and fillets them and passes them over. Work your magic, he says. Your food is like God. I make curries and Cioppino stew, fish tacos and ceviche, bringing bowls and platters in bed, and we eat and nap, eat and nap. Our stomachs full and our bodies hot.
Those were our days. Slow and naked. Full of food and lust. Cold beers in bed. Milkshakes under the sheets. Miso soup with the windows wide open while the street kids tagged parking meters. We stay in that room and fill our souls with nourishment that comes somewhere in between the hunt for love and lust.
Someday years later, I imagine we'll eat at a granite table in a three bedroom home that I have found for us. We'll be dressed and thinking of where else we need to be. I'll reach over and pass the baby some yogurt and he'll butter toast for the older one. His hair is short. My stomach is bloated. We still spend time in bed eating popcorn and baby carrots, but then there will be eight feet, forty toes and four hearts tangled in the sheets. We will sniff their playground-scented hair, full of sweat and air and its newness will remind us of days hunting in the sea. It will remind me of that taste, the one of limes and white fish over a bowl of sticky jasmine rice at that studio apartment on 1841 Riverside Drive.
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