Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series)

Coronado
Dreaming

The Silver
Strand

A Novel

By:

G.B.
Brulte

“Coronado Dreaming is a smart, fun read. It’s the easiest, most pleasurable physics lesson I’ve ever had… with a So-Cal love story thrown in for good measure.”

Stan
Bertheaud

Screenwriter and Producer

Copyright © 2011 by G.B.
Brulte
. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the author.

ISBN-13: 978-1463781170

ISBN-10: 1463781172

Cover Photo by John
Bahu

sandiegoscenics.com

To Mom and George. Thanks for always being there.

To my brothers, step-brothers, step-sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins and in-laws. Thanks for being my family.

To my high school English teacher, Mrs. Bray, who/whom really understands the importance of words. Here is my homework, 35 years late.*

Also, thanks to my proofreaders/editors: Dean, Rick, Stan, Stan and Kim.

*sorry about making up some of my own grammar and punctuation rules… so glad you introduced me to
e.e
.
cummings
:)

She was beautiful.

Sitting there at the table, with a menu in her hand. I could imagine the DNA in each and every one of her cells cranking out transcripts… transcripts that would be translated into proteins that all knew just exactly where to go, and exactly what to do, in order to construct such a magnificent creature.

She was truly stunning.

I almost wanted to weep because human perfection is both rare and transient. I knew she would age and wither and rust, but, that day, she was beautiful. That day, she was a goddess.

If only I could stop time, I would have stopped it for her. I might have sat for an eternity simply contemplating that countenance. It was as if the universe had created matter, energy and a myriad of elusive forces just so such loveliness would be produced. After 15 billion years of endeavor, the universe could finally rest… mission accomplished.

Good job : )

I was attracted to her, but sex wasn’t really much of the equation. I’m sure it was a component, for I did feel something of a stir in my nether regions. However, I think that was more from a rush of blood that made it to every part of my body and soul, reproductive organs included. Moths are attracted to flame… she was a supernova. I had no choice but to wing my way into the brilliance. No choice at all. If I had burned… well, I suppose that would have been a righteous end to my existence.

I got up from my chair and made my way over to her table.

“Could I have your autograph?”

She looked up from her menu and smoke grey eyes dissolved the natural world around me. Her head tilted to one side, and the hint of a smile graced her lips.

“I’m not a celebrity.”

“I know. I just wanted to watch you write… it doesn’t even have to be your name.” I handed her an old Jiffy Lube card, flipped over to the blank side, and a pen.

Her beautiful head then tilted the other way, but the fragment of a smile remained.

“As a matter of a fact, it could even be numbers,” I said. “It might be better if it was numbers… six random ones, like
The Lotto
.”

“Six numbers?”

“Or five, or seven… it doesn’t matter.”

She seemed to contemplate for a moment. Then, “What will you do with them?”

“I… don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

At that point, she did smile… and, of course, her teeth were perfect.

“You’re a bit strange, aren’t you?” she responded. The upward curvature on her lips lingered… that was a good thing.

“I was fairly normal… up until a minute ago.”

“What happened?”

I shook my head. “I honestly have no idea.”

It was ‘
now or never
’. I braced myself. “Could I buy you lunch?” I held my breath and felt a deep hammering within my chest. After an interminable pause, there finally came an answer.

“No… I don’t think so.”

It had been going so well. She could see I was crestfallen. I nodded twice, and slowly, turned to leave.

“You forgot your numbers.”

I turned back. She was scribbling them down… underneath something else she had written there. When finished, the goddess then handed the pen and the card back to me. Still, the smile. I looked in my hand. On the rectangle were seven digits and a name:

Melody

555-0127

A phone number…
oh, my God
… I put the card in my pocket.

“I’m Greg… I’ll… I’ll just let you get back to, umm…” I stammered.

The supernova seated there grew even brighter. “I said you couldn’t buy me lunch… I didn’t say you couldn’t eat with me.”

That was how it started.

My life, that is. I was born 2.4 decades earlier, but my life didn’t fully begin until that day. I still remember the lunch. I had fish tacos… an Ahi and a Wahoo. She had a Greek salad and bread-sticks. We both had iced-tea. The
San Diego
sky was blue, as usual, and the only earthquakes that particular afternoon were inside of me.

Amazingly, we hit it off. She was a Master’s student in Ecology, with an undergraduate in, of all things, Philosophy… brains
and
beauty.

I, on the other hand, was pretty much a professional drop out. I had switched majors 4 times, was on my ‘summer break’, and, at the time, employed only twenty hours a week.

I did have a little money. One night I was dead drunk and put my entire student loan check on a penny stock using an SDSU library computer. I don’t really remember doing it. A few days later, after discovering there was no money in my ATM, I ran into the nearest branch office of my bank, got a print out of my Checking, and saw there was a debit to Charles Schwab for 5,500 dollars. I had opened that account with a Benjamin Franklin from my brother (a birthday present), and the cash had been sitting there for 2 years in a money market fund. That fund was supposed to have 107 dollars and 26 cents in it, according to my last statement.

I stumbled to the only payphone around, looked through the yellow pages, and called the brokerage.

My account was worth $27,286.24.
                                                                        

I put in an immediate sell order.

I bought a sailboat, even though I knew nothing about sailing… I just thought it would be cool to live on one. It’s a 32 footer, and, at the time that I met Melody, the vessel had never been outside of its slip since I’d owned it. The marina is on
Coronado
Island
, which is a fantastic piece of real estate just across the bay from
San Diego
,
California
, and I can’t think of a better place to just sit on the water. The weather here is probably the best in the country, and visitors tend to flock to this idyllic locale from places both near and far.

Between dock fees, sporadic tuition and what I had paid for the boat, there was about 7 thousand dollars left in my Charles Schwab account on that fateful day at the restaurant. Almost all of the money was in penny stocks… I spent an inordinate amount of time reading IHUB message boards while hoping for another big pay out.
 

At best, I had been breaking even.

To supplement my day trading, I had taken a part-time job mowing greens at the Coronado Municipal Golf Course. I could walk to work in the mornings since it was adjacent to the marina, and although it didn’t pay much, I really loved the job. I had done the same type of work in my hometown (back in
Alabama
when I was a teenager), and there I was, doing it again. At least the second go ‘round I had a sailboat… however, what good is a boat without a girl?

Preferably, one in a bikini.

I didn’t really think of her in that way. She was much too good for ordinary lust. Besides, we had just met. As our little lunch went on, though, I fell deeper and deeper in… love? Is that the word for the feeling you get when you meet someone, and you know, without a doubt, that you’ll do whatever is required of you just to breathe the same air into your lungs that had moments before been exhaled from theirs? The feeling that you would start cutting off your own body parts if they were shackled to an immovable object keeping you from them?

Is that the word?

We went for a walk down by the bay. We watched seagulls careen off the wind and surf the atmosphere. Sunlight glinted on the water as if thousands of diamonds were floating in the ripples, and, as we stood there, a dolphin surfaced through the brilliance only twenty yards out… I took that as a good sign. On the way back to our cars, we actually held hands. I was in heaven.