North to Nowhere

I was sitting in a bar on Cannery Row that was just next to the plaza with the bronze bust of John Steinbeck who’d made the place famous. The band was very bad. They were trying to make up for a lack of talent by playing very loudly. It was very similar to how the man next to me was covering up his stupidity by talking in a loud confidant voice. The bar was supposed to be hip and cool but it just stunk horribly of cheap covers and facades. Everyone was trying to cover something up. The soldiers from the nearby military language school were dressed like everyone else and trying not to seem too soldierly. The under-aged girls from the local high school were trying to look more mature so they could get alcohol. The old middle aged people were dancing wildly trying not to look too out of the times. The bartenders and waitresses were all trying to look very sophisticated and not like they’d grown up in the provincial surroundings that they had grown up in. The bar was named something funny. I can’t remember the name exactly, but it had something to do with flies in the name. There really wasn’t enough alcohol in the place to cover up the cracks and imperfections in everyone’s facades. The old people still looked aged, the soldiers still looked military, the man next to me still sounded dumb, the servers still looked provincial, the band still sounded horrible and the girls still looked under-aged. Everyone was dressing for a certain look and everyone was falling short of even their own expectations.
         
“You know Steinbeck is most famous for Grapes of Wrath but I think his better book was Of Mice and Men.” The man next to me spoke even louder than was necessary. You did have to speak loudly to be heard over the live music, but he was speaking loudly enough to convince everyone at the bar of how intelligent he was.
         
I had to agree with the man but I wasn’t going to out loud, it would only encourage him.
         
“You got a date here?” He asked me after a while. He was getting into his older ages, but he was still in his early forties, and not yet ready to degrade himself out on the dance floor with the rest of the middle-aged people.
         
“No, I’m only staying here overnight, on my way north.”
         
“Where are you going?”
         
“Portland, Oregon.”
         
“Oh, great seafood.” The man said loudly. Of course they had great seafood, you take any north-west state and any one of their coastal cities and they’ll have damned good sea food. Any Pacific city north or south of LA has great seafood. For some reason though, I’ve yet to hear of any good seafood restaurant in LA.
         
“As good as around here?” I asked.
         
“Yes.” He said but didn’t elaborate because he didn’t really know that for certain. He was only trying to sound worldly and wise.
         
“I don’t like seafood.” I told him, shrimp being the only seafood I would eat.
         
“Oh well, you’re probably better off for it. You know in nine out of ten cases of food poisoning, it’s seafood that’s the cause. I read that somewhere.” He nodded to me.
         
Are you sure it wasn’t nowhere that you read it, pal? Are you sure you didn’t pull that lovely article right out of your ass? Oh, you’re so clever and witty and funny when you keep your mouth shut, I told myself but only nodded in return to him. I try not to be a publicly offensive person, but privately I’m very offensive.
         
“Where you coming from?”
         
“San Diego.”
         
“No kidding?”
         
I said it didn’t I you dumb bastard.
         
“San Diego? No kidding?” He asked again because I hadn’t responded.
         
“No kidding.”
         
“Wow, that’s like a nine or ten hours drive. You been at it all day?”
         
“Sure, all day, it only took me eight hours though.”
         
“Well, yes I was exaggerating a little I suppose with the ten hour guesstimate.”
         
Were you now? Guesstimate, what an astounding word you’ve created, you smug bastard. Guess and estimate together. Who the hell ever told you that that word sounded intelligent? Someone lied to you about it anyways.
         
“I guesstimate that I’ve got about another eight or nine hours to look forward to tomorrow.” I said slowly and seriously so that he wouldn’t perceive my own little joke against him as a joke at all. Guesstimate! I can’t believe people even use that damn word. It’s like saying gianormous, it just sounds dumb.
         
“I would think so too, approximately at least.” He said.
         
Yes, approximately was implied by the or. Eight or nine hours is by no means an exact measurement. But you just had to sound superior, didn’t you?
         
“What’s in Portland?” He asked.
         
“Family.” It’s such an easy explanation even if it’s rarely true.
         
“Oh going back to the progenitors?” He smiled because he was a sophisticated witty intelligent funny old bastard.
         
Fascinating. Anyone who finds anyone else interesting because they say progenitor instead of parent should be shot. He was material for a shrink to work on until the end of time, so full of insecurities.
         
“No my parents live in San Diego. My cousins are up in Portland.”
         
“Why didn’t you fly, with gas prices these days, plus the hotel it surely must be cheaper to fly than to drive.”
         
“I’ve never driven the Pacific coast. I thought it would be worth it.”
         
“Oh it is! Monterey alone is worth it.”
         
I ought to slap you, I thought regarding my drink instead of the aging man so he might see my look of distaste as directed towards the coke and not him. They only let me have a coke because I had “lost” my ID.
         
“I disagree.”
         
“Well I can see how you might. I really don’t like it much either, but some things about it are worth it. It really is much more aesthetically pleasing than otherwise.”
         
I left the bar but didn’t feel like going back to the hotel so I walked into a restaurant on the pier that went out into the ocean with a pounding in my ears left over from the perfectly awful band. I could still hear them playing all the pretentiously folksy rock songs from the late-sixties and seventies with added little treats like flutes and stand-up basses that only made the songs more crappy. I think you could hear the band all up and down Cannery Row. When I left to go to the restaurant John Steinbeck’s bronze bust was wearing a San Francisco Giant’s baseball cap that some kid had put on him.
         
The restaurant was very nice, all the waiters wore tuxedos and all the people eating there wore fleece lined corduroy coats and flannel shirts, so they looked semi-rugged yet well dressed. I doubted if a single one of them actually lived nearby. They had a big painted portrait of John Steinbeck hanging next to the bar when you came in. It was a seafood restaurant with trophy fish hanging on the wall and the smell of dead sea creatures coming out from the kitchen.
         
“Would you like a table or would you like to sit at the bar.” The man who met me at the entrance wore an immaculate tuxedo and English was his second language. It obviously hadn’t been his second language for very long because he spoke with a heavy Chinese accent. He was in his forties and probably had only come over recently because of the big economic boom in China that allowed their people to make just enough money to move elsewhere or stay and exploit American markets in their own land.
         
“I want a table.”
         
“Out on our heated balcony or inside?”
         
I found that the balcony was just the pier along the side of the restaurant, but it was still fine because it was warm and you could hear the waves crashing in just below your feet and smell the salt water. In a very deep nonchalant voice I ordered a Mexican beer and he didn’t ask to see any ID. I ordered a shrimp cocktail because everything on the menu was seafood and I didn’t eat seafood except for shrimp and sometimes lobster or crab.
         
Pretty soon I could hear kids underneath the pier. I looked at my watch and it was ten o’ clock. The kids had to be at least teenagers to be out on the beach at ten at night. The beach that the pier went over was very short before there was a man-made cement wall going out into the sea that cut the sandy beach off at either end. On the end I was looking at the beach ended with a parking lot for the shops around Cannery Row, I couldn’t see the other end just right then but I figured it was much the same. I could hear mostly the girls, they were shrieking gleefully each time a wave rolled in, drenching them in freezing spray. The guys down there would laugh throatily after the girls shrieked, it was a pattern that came with each wave. The shriek then the laughing. They sounded like they were having a hell of a time. I listened to the ocean amusing the local kids down under the pier and by my third beer I was starting to wish I could go down there with them.
         
“Another beer?” He asked taking the third glass away.
         
“Rum and coke. And how about another jumbo shrimp cocktail, and with a lemon this time.” I asked him feeling just the warm buzz of three small beers, I wasn’t even a little drunk yet.
         
“Those kids shouldn’t be out this late.” This very conservative looking woman seated at the table next to mine said to her husband who was sitting right across from her wearing a brown sturdy looking tweed jacket. It looked nice but hardy, like something the doctor in a frontier town would wear, rugged but very refined. The jacket was brand new and he was a very bookish conservative looking man, smaller than his wife and not accustomed to any form of roughing it.
         
“I’m more upset about their constant screaming, how can a man eat with them screaming like that?” He had a very high pinched nasal accent, he was from somewhere north-eastern, but not quite New England or New York. He was starting to gulp down his wine in large quantities between mouthfuls of lobster.
         
Both him and his wife were pissing me off, nearly everyone except my waiter and those kids underneath the pier had pissed me off that night. But I won’t count the waiter because it was kind of his job to not piss me off, his tip depended on it. But those kids down there were even making me feel a little better after everyone had annoyed me that night, so I really didn’t give a damn if they were keeping this jerk next to me from enjoying his dinner. They just sounded like they were truly having fun, without pretending to be something else.
         
“No! It’s freezing!” A girl was protesting under the pier. There was a short scream and a loud splash followed by an angry shriek that was drowned out by a crashing wave that told of what had just happened. But a boy’s laughter nullified the girl’s complaints. All the other kids were laughing too.
         
“We’re all just so happy freezing and drenched we couldn’t stand to see you standing up there so nice and dry.” A boy was explaining now in a calmer quieter tone that I had to strain to hear.
         
“That’s horrible, they must have just tossed the poor girl in.” The woman at the table next to me told her husband quietly. “Can’t we call the police or something?”
         
“They’re not committing any crime but we could. The police would show up and ask some questions and maybe scare them off.” Her husband suggested.
         
“Do it then.” She said cracking open a lobster’s claw.
         
“Damn it, how do you work this?” He asked lifting up a small silver colored cellular phone that had been sitting on the table next to him. He dropped it suddenly with an exclamation.
         
“What is it?” His wife asked looking strangely at the cell phone that was buzzing and moving around on the table.
         
“It’s vibrating.” Her husband said.
         
“They can do that?” His wife asked.
         
“Sure, I guess, well it’s doing it isn’t it?”
         
“What does it mean?”
         
“It means I’ve got a call coming in.”
         
“Well pick it up, pick it up. It could be Allison.”
         
“Yes, well okay.” He said carefully picking up the cell phone but looking at it as a foreign object he didn’t recognize. He opened it up, pressed a button after some searching on the number pad and then cautiously put it to his ear.
         
“Um, Hello? Oh yes? Well I thought so. Good, I’m glad. Oh, your mother just thought you’d love it. Oh yes, very nice, very nice. It was an absolutely wonderful idea. Well yes I’ll tell her, hold on one minute.” He said all in very rapid succession on the phone holding it very slightly away from his ear. He pulled the phone away from his ear completely and looked for the part of the cell phone that would pick up his voice but not recognizing it he just put his hand over the whole bottom portion of the phone, awkwardly, to muffle any sounds of the conversation he was going to have with his wife from getting on the line, he was a very private kind of guy. As he sat there with his phone held away and muffled awkwardly his waiter came and refilled his wine glass to the brim with a dark red wine.
         
“It’s Allison, she’s in Rome with what’s his face.” He told his wife as soon as the waiter had stepped away.
         
“Oh, Robert! Gerald. Gerald’s his name.”
         
“Yes well Gerry old boy is quite the charmer.”
         
“Yes?”
         
“Yes, they went to the ruins, the restaurants, the river, the historic roads and to all those other r-words to visit in Rome. Damn charming.”
         
“Oh, Robert! You’re soused.”
         
“Am not, she wants you to know that they got the flowers and the champagne and loved them. She says it’s just great, tomorrow they’ll be off to Florence.”
         
“Well our little daughter’s a world traveler then, isn’t she?”
         
“I told her we’re having a great time.”
         
“Good.”
         
He put the phone back to his ear and said hello again. I really wondered if he was drunk like his wife had said. I didn’t like either of them very much but since I couldn’t hear the kids below the pier after they started talking loudly on the phone they were my only entertainment. I particularly didn’t like that his wife had said soused, who uses that word anymore? Soused! The rum and coke was going pretty fast, before I even realized I’d taken a sip I looked down and saw that I’d drunken half of it already.
         
“Yup, right in Cannery Row, like the book you know. Steinbeck’s old stomping ground.” Her husband was saying into the phone now. “I am not! I just told you mother that very same thing, I’ve never been drunk in my life! And three and a half glasses of wine will not get a man my size drunk. You’re damn right I’m not drunk.” He said very loudly, too loud for my taste because his voice was covering up the sound of voices below the pier.
         
I don’t know how big he thought he was but from my point of view and the size of the glasses of wine they poured here three and a half was enough to get him drunk.
         
“Let me talk to Allison, dear.” His wife said.
         
“No, damn it.” He said not even bothering to take his mouth away from the phone. “No your mother, she’s being rather bitchy. I am not! Never in my life! Oh lobster. It’s delicious. I’m so glad we decided to do this. You know with all you kids off we felt like we ought to go somewhere too. Mexico turned into San Diego, San Diego turned into Los Angeles and Los Angeles turned into Santa Barbara and then it turned into all of California and now I’m thinking why stop there. Maybe we’ll just drive straight up to Alaska! You know, why not? We’ll go as far north as San Francisco for sure, but why not drive right to Anchorage? Yes, through Canada. Why, I am not! Not even a little. Listen, don’t talk to your father like that. Never in my life, my dear. Well I don’t plan on just sitting back on all that money, dear. We’ll leave some for you and your brother, but we need to spend a little before we die. What? Of course it’s not a bad way to talk, everyone dies. I’ll die, you’ll die, everyone dies, what’s wrong with saying that?”
         
“Dear you’re talking a little loud.” His wife warned.
         
I wished the dumb little bastard from some place like Michigan would just shut up because I was afraid he wouldn’t stop talking until the kids underneath the pier were gone.
         
“Am I? Well then I’ll quiet down a little.” He said without quieting down any. “No I was talking to your mother, she’s being rather bitchy. Did I already say that? Well, then maybe I am a little bit drunk. No! I was kidding, I’ve never been drunk in my life. Allison dear, listen don’t let him pull any of this damned Roman romance on you okay. Just because you’re in Rome doesn’t mean you have to be a whore. What? I didn’t mean that, no, no, no little one. I didn’t mean that at all, I just mean the Italians, the Romans in particular, think that all they have to do is light a damn candle and pour a glass of wine and you should do whatever they ask. No, it wasn’t me it’s the damn cellular phone. I hate it, you can’t have a proper conversation on it without pressing some of the buttons on it with your face. Of course other people have that problem too! If you ask me technology is just going to keep on advancing until we’re all vegetables! We’ll be shut inside little cubicles of rooms with wires shooting out of everywhere and we’ll just live in that room and all the food and stuff will be delivered by robots and we’ll live entirely out there in you know…damn it what is it called…oh yes! Cyber space, we’ll just live in cyber space. We’ll be vegetables with robots taking care of our physical bodies and we’ll live entirely in cyber space. I am not talking crazy!”
         
“Yes you are honey, how about giving me the phone now?” His wife asked very gently.
         
“Be quiet will you. No not you honey, you’re mother is still being bitchy. Did you know it was in about 1890, not sure of the year exactly so don’t quote me, when the secretary of the patent office declared that the patent office should be closed because everything that was ever going to be invented already had been invented. Imagine that, in 1890 no more inventions! He may have been wrong but my god he had the right idea. I hate all this modern stuff. What? Why? What time is it over there? My god! You’re kidding! I’m terribly sorry. Well I won’t keep you a second longer. Goodbye sweety.” He pulled the phone away from his face and after searching for a particular button on the phone for a couple of seconds he found it and pressed it.
         
“You know I wanted to talk to her.” His wife said reproachfully still keeping her eyes on her food.
         
“Yes, well do you have any idea of what time it over there?” He asked her very importantly.
         
“No, what time is it?”
         
“I can’t honestly remember anymore, but it is an important time, I’ll tell you that. They either were getting ready for bed or getting up from bed or going to lunch or going to the river or something like that, I don’t know but it isn’t a good time to be talking to them, and that’s all that matters.”
         
The man was evidently very drunk after he finished his fourth glass of wine and started on his fifth. He was a small man and probably didn’t drink very much. I was waiting for him to start vomiting.
         
I could still hear the kids playing in the water down below and the couple eating next to me had forgotten about them at least momentarily. So I could enjoy the kids’ voices for a while without the couple next to me complaining about something. This didn’t last long though.
         
“You don’t honestly plan on going to Anchorage.” She said more as a command than a question before squeezing the metal pinchers that would crack the lobster’s claw for an intense moment. The claw cracked with such ferocity that it made her jump a little in her seat.
         
“Well why not?”
         
“All they’ve got up in Alaska is snow, we’ve got snow at home.”
         
“Don’t they have those Eskimos up in Alaska. I’ve never seen an Eskimo.”
         
“They’re called Aleutians.” She was one of these very inconsiderate women who thought using the politically correct term for everything made her a very understanding and unprejudiced person. Just because you call a black person an African-American instead of a nigger but you still lock all the doors when you pass one in a car at night doesn’t mean you’re unprejudiced. She was the type that would lock the car door if she passed near a black pedestrian at night but then say how horrible all this racial profiling was. She was a hypocrite of the worst class.
         
“I don’t give a damn if they’re called swinging dicks I think they’d be worth seeing.” He grinned very pleased with himself.
         
“Oh you’re being very crude tonight, Robert.”
         
“Steinbeck was crude it must be his crudeness in the air.”
         
“Oh, you’ve never read Steinbeck, he wasn’t even crude.” She said putting down her lobster giving up on it.
         
“True. True. True. I guess San Francisco is far north enough. Maybe we’ll just quit there. We’ve always quit just short of something new, haven’t we dear?”
         
“I don’t know what you’re hinting at but I don’t like it.”
         
I suddenly realized just how old fashioned they talked. Not just their accents but the words they used, they sounded like how my grandparents used to when they would fight in public. They were probably raised to speak just like that.
         
“I mean we’ve always gone just far enough to call it a trip and then we stop. We always go right to the edge look over and say, well this is far enough.”
         
“You went right over the edge tonight with your wine.” She said quickly waving for the waiter who was standing at the end of the fenced in portion of the pier where the tables were. He saw and he came over very quickly. He was one of the best waiters I’d ever seen.
         
“We’d like the check please.”
         
“Certainly ma’am.” He said with a bow, most waiters don’t bow. I liked him, maybe all waiters in China bow, maybe he learned how to be a waiter in China but he could have learned in Paris and I wouldn’t have been surprised.
         
“Those damned kids are still down there.” His wife said annoyed.
         
“Of course they are. If I was with them so would I. I’ll let you in on a little secret, I don’t hate those kids, I would only have called the cops on them to shut you up, I’d rather go down there with them and stay all night than have you talking. I’d stay there all night and then the next morning I’d drive up to Anchorage, Alaska. I’d see some Eskimos too.” Her husband said looking disappointedly into his now empty wine glass.
         
Drunks are very fun to watch as long as they don’t see you, I was finding out.
           
A girl screamed in wild pleasure that sounded almost obscene. The wife grimaced and the husband grinned. “I hope they’re having the time of their lives. It sounds like they’re having the time of their lives.” He said.
         
“It sounds like they’re going nowhere in life. It sounds like they’re going to get knocked-up and go nowhere in life. That’s what it sound like to me, Robert, it sounds like they’re going nowhere.” His wife said losing her composure for the first time all evening.
         
“I wish I was going with them.” Robert said wistfully looking down at the ravaged table of empty glasses and scattered broken lobster shells.
         
They didn’t say anything more to one another. The check came, Robert paid the bill and left a twenty dollar bill on the table getting up to move away from the table. The wife took the twenty and replaced it with a ten and handed it back to her husband without a word. And then she set a firm, straight and even pace towards the door leading into the restaurant from the “balcony”, with an attitude that told her husband he would follow her lead exactly if he knew what was good for him. The husband set the twenty back on the table next to the ten and looked up at me and winked. He stumbled into my table while trying to get out. I helped him straighten himself out and pointed him towards the door. I liked him much better when he was too drunk to be “sensible” than when he was perfectly fine in his nice American way, like he’d been earlier in the evening.
         
I started on my second rum and coke and finished the shrimp cocktail when he came running back stumbling into tables and nearly knocking over his happy waiter as he came back through the narrow path through the tables on the pier. He’d left his cell phone. He picked it up regarding it strangely.
         
“1890.” He muttered to himself softly shaking his head and tossed the cell phone over the railing and into the ocean. He left calmly without acknowledging me, he’d probably already forgotten about me, but he patted the grateful waiter on the shoulder on his way out.
         
The kids were still laughing and playing in the waves and I finished my second rum and coke a little drunk after the three previous beers. I really started to feel the urge to jump off of the pier and into the waves to join them. They weren’t too old, they were probably sixteen or around there, they sounded about that age, and I was only twenty, I wasn’t too far off from them. I didn’t even want to keep on going to Portland really, I wanted to stay in Monterey with those kids and be a kid again. Go to school and the parties and go to the beach on a cold night and play in the waves under the nice seafood restaurant pissing off all the sober middle-aged people eating there. I wanted to be just like them. The third rum and coke I ordered only reinforced this urge.
         
The waiter watched me carefully after the sixth drink I ordered. He didn’t want me getting too drunk. Who could blame him? He would be the one that would have to drag me out into the street if I passed out. He would be the one who would have to deal with the unpleasantness of drunkenness if anyone would have to. So I sipped the sixth drink slowly and decided I would leave after I finished it.
         
“Look! Is that a UFO?” A girl under the pier asked. I pricked up my ears and began to listen very carefully not wanting to miss a word of their conversation. I wanted to become part of the conversation myself and this was as close as I could get.
         
“No it’s a sattelite.” Another girl answered, I could hear the shivering in her voice. I thought maybe this was the girl who’d been thrown into the water.
         
“It moves so beautifully.” The first girl said again. They might have brought some beer along with them because they were starting to sound a little drunk.
         
“It’s just a satalite.” The second girl replied.
         
“It’s a lover’s moon.” A boy said. “That’s what it’s called, a lover’s moon.”
         
“Why?”
         
“I don’t know, that’s just what it’s called. A satalite passing at night, it’s a lover’s moon.”
         
“I like it.” The first girl said.
         
“It’s just a satalite, there’s nothing romantic about a satalite.” The second girl said. Their voices were distinctive enough to identify each one.
         
“Sure there is.” The first girl said.
         
“I’m going to have to agree with Jennifer on this one.” A second boy said.
         
“Thank you.” The second girl said, whose name must have been Jennifer.
         
“Yeah, it’s just metal, plastic and electronics.” The first boy said.
         
“I still think it’s romantic.” The first girl said.
         
Then they were quiet for so long I thought they’d left. The ocean crashed and there was no delighted scream or happy laughter. Just pensive silence that I took for their absence. I finished my sixth drink and stood up motioning for the bill. I had lost my only two forms of entertainment and all that was left to do was go back to my hotel room and watch the second-rate entertainment on television, I didn’t really want to though.
         
“Your bill sir?” The man asked very courteously.
         
“Yes.” I said and he handed me the small black folder with the name of the restaurant in gold writing on it. I was too drunk to read the name. It was all ready for me and I realized they’d been waiting for me for some time, the entire restaurant was closed and they were just waiting for me to leave so that they could leave too.
         
“Could you call me a cab so I can get back to my hotel?” I asked him knowing I slurred my speech.
         
“Of course sir.” He said rushing off to call my cab. I left a very large tip because honestly I’d never had a better waiter in my life, no exaggeration. I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant because it was great but all I remember was it was around the corner from the lame bar that had something in it’s name about flies and it was right next to the bronze bust of Steinbeck on Cannery Row, it was right on the pier. Try to find it if you’re ever on Cannery Row. I carried the bill with me as I carefully staggered my way through the pathway in between the tables and into the darkened empty restaurant. I walked towards the front where my waiter was just hanging up the phone by the bar.
         
“Sir, your cab will be here in less than five minutes. You can wait here until then if you wish. You can have another drink I suppose, on the house.” My waiter said bowing as I approached him trying to look less drunk than I was.
         
“No, I want you to get home. I’ll wait outside for my cab.” I gave him the small black folder with the bill and tip in it. Then I went out into the night that was colder than I remembered it being despite the alcohol. I threw up the collar on my jacket and sat down next to the bust of Steinbeck, he was still wearing the Giant’s baseball cap.
         
“I’ll bet you were a Giants fan anyways, old boy.” I told the bust. “Everyone loved baseball when you wrote, didn’t they? And you were from around here, of course you’d like the Giants.” I told the cold metal statue and then waved to the waiter as he locked the front door of the restaurant and stepped out into the street to walk home. He didn’t see me or otherwise he would have waved back, I’m sure.
         
I felt drunk and helplessly hopeless. I put my arm around the small shoulders of Steinbeck’s bust and told him how he was one of my favorite writers while I waited for my cab. Cannery Row was completely empty except for a few other drunks wandering around. A cab went by but didn’t stop so I figured it wasn’t mine. The street was kind of dead and I was disappointed in Cannery Row. But it had been worth it while it was alive earlier in the night. It must have been past midnight already but I wasn’t going to except that as an excuse from such a famous place. It should have been packed by my standards, but who gives a damn about a place in an old book anymore anyways?
         
Just then a hand reached in and grabbed the hat off of old John Steinbeck’s head. I jumped a little on the bench I was sitting on and looked up to find a handsome Native American boy looking right at me with a puzzled look. He was drenched and was wearing some skater clothes, with logos from a famous skateboard company. He looked very trendy in an average American teenager kind of way. I grinned at him and his puzzled look turned friendly with a smile. Then I saw three people behind him, another kid who must have been his brother, he looked so similar, and two girls, all soaked and covered in sand.
         
“You have a little too much to drink?” He asked me slipping the hat onto his head. He was a local kid and probably would never leave Monterey and he was probably accustomed to all these literature types coming in to visit famous Cannery Row. I felt bad for him, being such a normal American kid growing up in such a famous American place. I don’t know why I did but I did feel bad for him.
         
“More than a little.” I told him and his small smile broke into a wide grin and the three nice looking people behind him grinned too, they were in their mid to late teens. They were very young and happy looking.
         
“You a Steinbeck fan or a Giants fan?” He asked having seen me with my arm around the statue.
         
“Both actually.”
         
“So am I.” He said smiling and turned to move away from me, the repulsive drunk, and go home.
         
“Hey, where are you going?” I shouted a little too loudly for the deserted street before he turned away.
         
“Nowhere.” He said with a shrug of his shoulders.
         
“I wish I could go there too.” I told him and then they left and I was left alone to wait for my taxi.
         
Everyone is always putting nowhere down but a lot of people who go there seem to be happy, sometimes I hope that’s where I end up and other times I’m terrified of ending up there.
         
The taxi came and I got in and we went back to my hotel. I paid the taxi driver and the man at the front desk had to help me to my room. I settled down and slept dreaming of the lover’s moons, the sad old man, the facades and Cannery Row. The only thing missing from my dreams was the nowhere that had seemed to be the pivotal point of the evening.
         
The next morning I woke up very early to drive north. In the morning I turned away from California and the land turned into Oregon. I was driving towards nowhere and I hoped it would be better there than it had been at all the other places. In the early morning sun California turned into nowhere and I couldn’t have been happier.