“Don’t make fun, Joni.”

“Am I wrong?”

“No.”

She dipped a fry into the tiny ketchup cup on the drivein tray next to her (she was behind the wheel-her car, after all).

“I still say you’re lucky,” she said. “Everybody thinks it’s glamorous out here. It’s not. It’s all spread out and you live in your own little world and you never go anywhere or get anywhere.”

“You get around.” I meant that in the Beach Boys sense — like, she had a car-and not that she was fast in any other way.

“I get around now.” She meant the car, too. “But until I was old enough to move out and make something of myself, I lived in a smaller world than you ever did, back in Idaho.”

“Ohio.”

“Wherever.” She nibbled another red-tipped fry. “We shopped and ate and went to movies all in about a sixblock radius. Never went anywhere else. That includes school. I teased you about being a typical tourist, Jack, didn’t I?”

Jack was my name then. First name. You won’t get a last one out of me-not a real one. And Quarry isn’t it.

“Yeah,” I said, “you ribbed me pretty good.”

“Well, guess what-I never went to Disneyland before. I never saw a movie on Grauman’s big screen. I never ate cotton candy or rode the carousel at Santa Monica. Not till…” Funny pause. “…till you came along.”

Now, years later, I know why she paused. I’ll fill you in, when the time comes.

Another night, possibly that same week, she drove us to a stretch of beach where, at uneven intervals, yelloworange fires glowed and sparked against the deep blue of the night and deeper blue of the ocean. These were bonfires with kids gathered around and the scene of much partying-beer, dope, sex. All the stuff that you figured happened in those Beach Party movies after the cameras stopped rolling.

We found a nice bed of sand between some big rocks and laid out a blanket. We’d been there before, three or four times; our place, our spot. Neither one of us was into dope but we had a six-pack of Coors. It was one of those warm California nights Leslie Gore sang about, even the wind off the lazy waves was warm. No humidity, though. California was another planet, too…