Mysterious Blonde

I don't know.  Was it just me?

I was out walking down by the waterfront one day, and the waves were rockin' and rollin', kicking and screaming,  causing a real mess.  PG residents and visiting drivers swerved around, excited that something big was happening.  They crowded in on the shore road, causing near misses with other cars, runners, guardrails and dogs.  When a big wave - a really giant, sinister, big bruiser of a wave - would begin to rumble in, cars slowed and swerved, the drivers' eyes peering way off to the right, riveted, seeing something exciting for a change.  It was like the waves were big magnets and the cars were being pulled to them by their front grills.

I paused to watch the waves smash up against a retaining wall and listen to the foomping thud of impact.  Towering geysers of spray shot high in the air, reaching for seagulls and the moon, settling back with a littering splash.  It was like an asylum of insane chaotic beasts roaring and snorting.  Which is why cars were careening around the street and why the parking area right there was blocked off, like it was a crime scene. 

As I stood there with my cheap point-and-shoot camera - glad I'd at least remembered it - I noticed a pretty blonde woman who was getting buffeted by the wind.  She was holding a camera on a tripod, a large Nikon digital SLR with a pretty good-sized lens.  Expensive setup, in other words.  She was carrying it here and there, holding the rig by two of the tripod legs, one in each hand, at shoulder height, the way a person holds a little kid away from them who has just pooped their pants.   She looked up at the sky, to the left and back, out across the bay, and down the embankment below her feet.  I was curious and watched her.  She got nearer, staggering and shuffling, wrestling with the strap, squinting at it.  She looked so unfamiliar with the whole idea of photographing anything at all, but here she was near pounding winter surf.

I was too near her not to say anything after I'd been studying her, so I said hello and how was the picture taking going.  It clearly was going nowhere.

"Oh, I suck at this!" she said, laughing without smiling. 

Yeah, I know, I thought. 

In the universe I inhabit, you learn skills on beginner equipment and earn the right to use finer pieces once you've mastered the skills and developed an appreciation for the art form in which you are immersing yourself.  It seemed unjust, perverse, just plain wrong, a camera like that going to waste on her. I growled to myself about overprivileged rich people who don't deserve what they have, that they don't appreciate or deserve things they have because they haven't been vetted in some way, haven't clawed their way to a pinnacle of accomplishment, that they bypass GO and collect kudos based solely on the fact that they can afford something and not because they have actual talent or skill.  I grumped about not being able to afford a zillion-dollar fancy camera, that if I could, I sure would be taking a hell of a lot better pictures than she was probably getting, aiming at the sun and the dirt and not focusing, and didn't she know how to use the damn thing at all?  I went off; yes I did.  But, then I calmed down and took another look. Maybe it wasn't her fault. 

I watched her out of the corner of my eye.  She looked distracted, unhappy and awkward. I glanced around, thinking, and that little voice inside spoke up.

Maybe there was a car idling nearby, some gangster with shifty eyes, up to no good, who had shoved her out into the bluster to get rid of her while he arranged a murder on his cell phone.  "Here, take this, baby, and look busy.  Don't come back unless I give you the signal."

I don't know.  She was pretty, she was blonde and she didn't know diddly about that nice camera.  It didn't add up.
Or maybe she was a decoy, diverting attention from a break-in or a drug deal going down.  Yeah, that was it.  Maybe I'd need to duck flying bullets, report a crime scene, run for my life.  Jeez, maybe the camera was really a gun.  She might be a spy.  Or a double agent.  The surfers were probably smuggling dope on their surfboards, and she was trying to catch them, but the equipment was more than she'd bargained for.  She was in over her head.  Shots would ring out, the body would fall over the embankment, tumbling like a ragdoll to the rocks below, and she'd lie there in the cold surf, arms akimbo. 

The cops would have to be summoned, witnesses interviewed, the crime scene dusted for, well, something, anything.  Just dust the whole place, men, don't miss anything.  Be sure to photograph the body.  Then, meet me at the bakery.  No, that part doesn't seem likely.  Nah, not in the Groove.  The PG police never get to sit and write crime reports and munch on doughnuts.  They're banished from the world of doughnuts entirely.  Hell, none of the bakeries in the whole city even make doughnuts, for God's sake.  That's how quiet it is here.    

So, Mrs. Nikon Super Camera just staggered back and forth on the rock-strewn parking lot, scaring the gulls, pushing buttons randomly, hoping Johnny would give her the signal to get back in the car and stop wrecking her expensive hairdo.  I walked on my way, whistling tunelessly, hand twitching on my little camera, ready to whirl back around and snap photos if and when the gig or job or something went down.

Oh, yeah, we are all ready for mayhem.  Yessir, we are.  Unfortunately, the nearest we seem to get to it is the ocean tearing it up out there.  But, there's something fishy about that, you know?