“Wow!” Mary said. “This is beautiful. What islands are those?”

“The closest one is Santa Cruz. The one beyond that is Santa Rosa.”

“How far away are they?”

“Sixty or seventy miles.”

“Awesome!”

“Look back this way,” I said, turning to the south. “That’s Catalina. The island beyond it is San Clemente.”

“Cool! I love Catalina. Saul and I used to go there for the weekend.”

“Who is Saul?”

“He’s the man I was with for a couple of years, until he died last year. Let’s not talk about him.”

“All right.”

The wheel jerked forward as the carnie brought another car to the loading platform.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Mary said, her voice quiet and close to me in the infinite space of the heavens. “It was a cool idea.”

Her eyes were liquid and sleepy. I leaned over and kissed her, feeling her soft lips for the first time. She rewarded me for my good idea by kissing me back. She kept her mouth closed, but she put her hand on the back of my head. When I put my hand on her breast, feeling her hard nipple press against the center of my palm, she pulled away.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Why not?” I begged.

“I’m going through a lot of changes right now,” she said sincerely. “I feel like my body is the only thing I have control over, and that’s important to me. I don’t want to do it with every guy that comes along. Baba has been after me since I moved in to do tantra with him, but I feel stronger when I say no.”

“You mean you aren’t sleeping with him?” I said, and I guess my voice gave me away.

“Does it matter that much to you?” she said softly.

“Yes.”

“You’re awful sensitive for a criminal.” Her eyes were sparkling. “I think it’s sweet.”

She put her lips to mine and her cherry-flavored tongue went briefly but generously into my mouth. After a blissful moment, I pulled away.

“Was he bothering you today?”

“I don’t know. He walked in on me while I was taking a shower, but he said he didn’t mean to.”

“He meant to,” I said, and the wheel lurched, lowering us toward earth.

“You don’t know that. He’s good guy in a lot of ways. He’s taught me tons about Vedanta, and he lets me stay there rent-free. He does a lot of good in the community.” She paused and matter-of-factly put a barrier between us: “I may end up doing tantra with him. I haven’t decided yet. He has a way of looking at me that makes me feel really amazing. Maybe I could find God that way, you know?”

“Come on, Mary. You know the guy is off the reservation.”

“I’m still making up my mind,” she said firmly. “I have to make my own decision about him. If he pushes me too hard, I’ll leave. But in the meantime, as long as I am staying with him, I owe him some loyalty. Who knows? Maybe all this stuff that seems bad is just a test of faith.”

She was groping for integrity and a worldview of her own, separate from that of the men who desired her. At the same time she may have been rationalizing a little bit, because the ashram was a good deal for her and she wanted to keep staying there.

The wheel jerked into motion once more, bellying out and dropping us back down to the loading platform.

“I just don’t want him to do to you what he has done to those other girls,” I said.

“He won’t,” she said. “Let’s not argue about it. We’re having a fun day at the beach. Let’s just enjoy ourselves.” She reached over and took my hand as we walked back along the pier toward the shore. But her hand felt cool and impersonal, more casual than intimate.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

As we walked south on the crowded boardwalk, it seemed to me that we were drifting apart. The bulky guru had wormed his way between us. What Mary had said about her preference for older men was a gift to me, but it also made her easy prey for Baba, a father figure who praised sex and made a good case for its spiritual potential, in contrast to her biological father, who had viewed her stirring sexuality as a threat.

Baba had a huge advantage over me because Mary lived with him and was an eager student of Vedanta, which he was a true master of in some respects, while I had to concentrate on stealing the necklace that he believed was his. Whether that led to a direct confrontation or not, I wouldn’t be hanging around the ashram after I got the diamonds and so wouldn’t have the chance to try and win Mary over. It seemed like our kiss in the big blue California sky might be the high point of our relationship. We had touched and tasted each other but nothing would come of it.

Then I got lucky.

Two of the hip-hoppers we’d seen earlier were walking toward us. The big one was black, about my height but thirty pounds heavier. The smaller one was a wiry white guy who had been acting as the group’s mouthpiece, rounding up the crowd and badgering people for money. As they approached, he threw his hands out to his sides and shifted his head back and forth like a Balinese dancer, ogling Mary.

“Goddamn, girl! You’re too fine for the wintertime. Where’d you get those pink pants? Why don’t me an’ you do the dirty dance?” He hopped back and forth, grinning.

His clowning brought a lewd smile to the face of his friend.

“Fuck off,” I said harshly, before Mary could respond.

The grins dropped off both their faces.

“You talking to me, bitch?” the mouthpiece said.

“I must be,” I said, giving Mary a hard shove toward the sand to get her clear. “You’re the only loudmouth piece of shit I see.”

The little guy did an impressive back flip and landed in a crouch, cocked and ready for action. The big guy took a step toward me.

“Whud you wanna do?”

I paused as if reconsidering and raised my hands to shoulder level, palms toward them.

“I’m not going to do anything,” I said. “You guys look too tough. Let’s let this cop handle it.”

As I said that, I extended my left hand, pointing off to the side and behind them. At the same time, I shifted my hips so that my weight rested heavily on my flexed right leg and my right hand hung down to the level of my knee.

Both sets of eyes followed my left hand as it pointed, and both heads swiveled to look for the cop. As the big guy’s head turned away from me, I brought my right fist up from way down low in a good old-fashioned roundhouse, pivoting my hips and hitting him in the temple as hard as I have ever hit anyone.

He dropped like a sack of cement.

When the white guy turned back toward me, responding to the thunk of my fist on his friend’s skull, I was following through, swinging my right leg forward and planting it, toes toward him, holding my left fist low behind me and my right forearm upright in front of me, guarding my solar plexus and my face.

As the little guy charged me, I snapped a back fist in his face to throw him off balance and pivoted again, opposite, stepping forward with my left foot and swinging my left fist in a second roundhouse that was a country cousin of the first one.

He was quick and ducked to one side so that I only hit him a glancing blow, but it still knocked him down. When he bounced back up, he jumped sideways like a jackrabbit, put two dirty fingers in his mouth, and gave a piercing whistle. Immediately an answering whistle came from the crowd to the south and the other three acrobats came running.

Two were black, one Asian. All three were muscular and, after they saw their boy down, mad as hell. For a bad moment I thought I might get my ass stomped in front of the girl. But we were next to the weight pens, and two big lifters who had witnessed the altercation ran over and took flanking positions on either side of me.

“Beat feet, niggers,” the biggest one said. His naked pecs were the size of dinner plates, his biceps like thighs. The hip-hop boys didn’t want any part of him. They helped their friend up and retreated.