I supposed to meet the Swedes at the hostel in Venice. That's where they said it would be. She did all the talking and it makes it hard for me to hear her voice. Stina knew what to say to make a guy like me listen.

"We have to meet our guy tomorrow." Her blond hair was cut short, bobbed almost; Stina was busy cutting deals while the two guys behind her rolled cigarettes.

"Then what?"

"Then we'll talk." Stina stood and shook my hand. I felt like I had just bought a used car.

I saw goodbye and left. The boardwalk was slow and languid yellow now, the afternoon having burned off some of the gray. People walked by in pairs and groups talking in tongues I had never heard. I had probably heard them all but didn't understand. That was another thing that the Swedes had on me. They would talk in Swedish and I would be lost except for an occasional word like Ja. Of course they would be nodding their heads too when they said it.

Walking the boardwalk that afternoon, I wondered where in the hell I was going to get five thousand dollars. Its' hard to get a load without a credit card and the world was too damn modern now. They can find you anywhere. And then Stina found me.

"Chaw-lie!" she called. "Chaw-lie!"

I turned and saw her jogging towards me through the small groups of tourists. Her hair bounced like a golden trampoline and as she came my way I wished right then that she had nothing to do with this deal. She was her own project, one that I had plenty of time for.

"What's up?"

"What?" she asked. She was slightly out of breath and her while English was good, she didn't have all the phrases down.

"What is going on?"

"I want to talk to you," she said and smiled.

We walked slowly north along the boardwalk, acting interested in trinkets and art and massages people were selling. I wanted to buy something for her, like we were a couple and had come together from somewhere very far. Maybe someday we will, I thought and then kicked myself. That's how the deal will get blown, Charlie, pay attention.

"The price is fair, yes?" she asked once we were sitting at the café. The sun was in her eyes and they were the bluest and yellowest things I'd ever seen. She seemed to always have a look of interest on her face, as if she had to pay attention to everything I said or did. I really liked that look. For a moment, I forgot we weren't on a date at all. We were negotiating.

"It is too much."

"Are you sure? People have paid it before."

"I am not 'people'," I assured her and drank from my glass of ber. It was Coors light and went down smoothly with the sun.

"What do you think is fair?" Stina tilted her head to the side to get her eyes out of the sun and to seduce me, I guessed. She already had me and she knew it. But Stina wasn't stupid. She also knew she didn't have my money yet.

"Three thousand." I watched her closely.

She thought for a moment and then stood. "No," she said. "I lose money then."

I grabbed her hand. "Stina, sit, we are negotiating."

"What?"

"We are still working on a deal. That was called a counter offer."

Stina, sitting again now shook her head and replied, "No, that is bad offer. Please, how you say, don't insult me? This is about money."

"You're right and five thousand is too much."

"I know, that is why I came after you."

"I thought it was because you liked me."

Stina smiled. "I do, Chaw-lie, I do." Her hand floated over and touched mine. It was an expert move and it worked well. "I remember that night," she said.

I looked around to se who was listening. No one was. "So do I." Oh boy, do I. Stina, you made me feel like the first man on earth, I thought but didn't say it. I would've had to pay six after that.

"And the way you touched me," she was saying to her beer, "it made me feel like a woman." She drank. "I like that feeling."

"Me too," I said dreamily.

"You do?" she questioned. She laughed and almost spit up some of her beer. Finally someone looked over. We were two people having a conversation. Everybody was having a conversation but we were having one and it was making me loose concentration. "Five does not seem too bad now, does it?" she asked, but it was her leg under the table that was doing the talking.

"Why don't you get us two more beers?" I suggested, picking up my glass and showing Stina my empty. Before she could respond, I said, "Because I'm planning on paying four thousand American dollars next week and it's the least you can do."

Her face soaked in four thousand dollars and then she asked, "What are you drinking?" She smiled like she had the other nigh, when it had been just the two of us, two businessman working out a deal over Cal Tjader and margaritas and fajitas I had cooked for us. She had been impressed and I had gotten her drunk. A number hadn't even been established yet; it was only talk then and we both tried to give each other a night to help sway the deal. The way her nose had wrinkled and she squirmed and her tanned skin had been sweaty and golden. I had let her smoke a cigarette in my bed that night but I didn't tell her I hated it. It's about sacrifices and what's worth it and what's not. I had worked hard to get her that mood and if this beautiful tanned Swede wanted a cigarette who was I to tell her no. We had the funniest conversations that night, giggling and curling up in laughter at the thought of Mickey Mouse going out on a date with the pig from Charlotte's Web. She told me about taking ferries to Denmark for cheap drinks and flying to the most northern part of Sweden to a town called Riksgraasen to go snowboarding. All this while she was naked and smooth and her eyes were glossed over with the late night lighting. She was beatiful that night and I think I fell in love with her. Stina must have known it too because that night, sometime in the middle of my tired and drunken sleep she had awakened me in the purple light. We shared a moment that morning and it was like I never needed anything again. That was before we started talking numbers and it was a new ball game now.

"Here you are," Stina said, handing me another glass of beer. "Four thousand, eh? I'll have to talk to my people first."

"No you won't," I said confidently. "You've already decided and that's why we're still talking. It's not about business anymore, it's about pleasure." I sat back, awaiting her response.

And she laughed. "Silly American, always confident at the wrong time. She looked past me and deep into the blinding sun. It was hanging low over the long wide beach and the vendors. "But we'll do it for four sousand."

"Good."

"Now we cheers." Stina held up her glass.

"Cheers," I said.

"No," and she waved me off. "In Sweden we say skaal."

"Scald?"

"No, skaal."

"All right. Skaal," and we drank. "Now it is about pleasure."

"I can't tonight," Stina said as if it were only a meeting she could not attend.

"Are you sure? I'd hate to think you were missing something."

Stina stood, came to my side of the table and kissed my cheek. I smelled her good from there. "I know what I am missing," she said and began to walk away. "Maybe after the deal," she said from a few feet away and this time some people looked.

She's crazy, I thought. Or is it me? I switched chairs so I could sit in Stina's seat. What did she see? It was bright, but in a late afternoon sort of way. The sun went straight in to my eyes and I squinted pleasantly and even closed my eyes without knowing. This is the place to be, this is how to be. You can still do this here, something insdie told me. Not anymore. I scanned the slowly moving procession of junk buyers and star seekers. I can no longer exist here, I told myself. I'm an American with no home. Everything I want is here and that's why I have to leave, to see if it still here, or maybe what I want is everywhere.

I finished Stina's beer, and stood and stretched. It was perfect, that's why I had to leave. I was among the junk buyers again. The massage people were near closing up shop for the day and I could see it in their eyes. It was the look of "You! This is the last chance, you want a massage or not." I smiled and passed them all.

Out by the blinding sun, and by the flatest ocean a sound peeled away and above the boardwalk life. It was a drum circle and I was walking towards it. As I got closer, the sun was no longer in front of me so I could see. There were about twenty drummers with a surrounding layer or two of watchers and admirers. The sound was living and it consumed me. The basic down beat was there , the beat even most novice player could find was loud and beating. It beat on me; I got closer and closer until I was no longer a straggler. I was part of the energy. I scanned the circle and looked at the drummer's faces. There were older men with graying beards, playing with their heads back unleashing their age through their hands into old and oily skins that had more energy than an electric car. Next to them were a few women, one that played a red conga drum on a stand and two women close to her. They danced wildly and naturally, letting the beat and flourishes of sounds that take them to where they were out of control. The younger men, dirty and scraggly, I could see were in rapture by the movements of the dancing women. It can capture any man's attention. To some it is sexual, watching her hips in the dark colored paraffin move like a well-greased and seemingly separate part of her body. It looked like she was using in an invisible hoola hoop. And her face, it had a smile that wasn't real or forced, it was her expression of where the music and dancing put her; and she stamped on the beach floor, as if it were her last dance.

Next to the young men, right in front of me were a couple of Mexicans, one who had a tom drum and a mallet. He was pounding the bass beat and was wearing a black Mickey Mouse shirt. He was sandy and torn from drum circles up and down the West Coast. His partner had long black bushy hair and his eyes were old and red, and his face burnt brown. He had a pair of bongos, adding flair and spice to the sound.

I hadn't noticed but I was bouncing in my knees, absorbing the beat and I initially suppressed any urge to chant. It was me and I released many of my feelings into the music, high and gone and going. The music continued, or rather was a cycle and rolled and bounced and clicked and bassed. Heads from the outer layers bobbed, watching in amazement the unleashing energy. Some of them were tourists, but they fit it in better than Americans did in Europe. I could see the farther of the small tourist group had on a beige fishing cap; he had probably heard about the sunburn from coworkers. He looked happy; he was getting culture and what made it better is that it was spontaneous. The drummers were here for the beat; they needed it. It was their television, it was for them the time they didn't think. There were no class lines or cultural differences. This was possibly the oldest music form and except for all of our clothes, it could have been any year. This sound and feeling and dancing could be any time, any place and that is why we were all here. The sound of the drum drew from everywhere. Some wanted to play, and others wanted to watch but it is all right; we all feed off each other and the energy grows and becomes more than the sum of all our parts.

It was getting warmer in a way. The sun sat on the flat blue ocean and it make the water look black. The boardwalk behind was so far from this. I threw arms in the air and found myself moving past the two Mexicans and into the circle. I was moving or dancing and the beat was ferocious, constant and transporting. It felt like church, though it was like no congregation I'd ever seen. The few people who had been in the middle dancing came closer to me in small, sand-squishing movements. We weren't dancing together. We were keeping the energy tight. It bounced and screamed; the drums were louder and people watched me, not as a zoo animal but as inspiration. We were One, like fingers of the same hand. I was a finger, free to whatever movement I could but held to the earth by the bond of our energy and gravity.

Minutes went. I was getting sweaty and flashes of the brown, red, black and earthen colored paraffin flashed around, shaking and glaring at me in an animalistic way. I looked back at her; we cam closer. The drums roared around us like we were in a sunsetting fire. I was burning and closer she came. Her eyes were shiny, and reached into me. She was sucking out of me precisely the things I had to give. I opened up and danced and gave what she wanted. We touched a few times, and it seemed like it was the first time I'd ever felt a woman. Her brown skin and crazed hair and sex eyes were there. They were everywhere, I couldn't seen anything but the sand moved. That's how I knew I still conscious. The sand made it difficult to move and that's what made it worth it.

At one point, I was spinning, raising my hands like a gospel preacher to my congregation and I saw the father tourist. I spun again and saw him. He was sitting in the sand on the first layer, his family close behind hm, his son kneeling beside him, his young and ready daughter moving her hips. She was ready. Spinning again I saw the father. He was playing an extra drum and at first he was timid but his sound was there, it was part of the whole. He was not the centerpiece, none of us were. We all succumbed to a greater power and it came in full force.

It wasn't until we were let with the dying residue of the sinking sun that I started to come to. I had sweat all the way through my shirt and stood in the circle, breathing. The music had stopped as any improvisation does from time to time. People leaned back or stepped away and we all looked at each other awkwardly. We had all shared something as intimate as love itself and I felt great. The paraffin girl came over and hugged me.

"You dance great!" her wild eyes said. "Will you come back tomorrow? I'll be here." She touched my arm and then walked back towards the girl with the red conga drum.

I walked to the boardwalk and it was a different scene. Street lamps were on, and less people were selling things. More people were drinking and eating, if that was possible and I needed another beer.

It was refreshing and cold and I drank the first one in three gulps. At the bar, there was a seat open and I took it. A baseball was on above the bar but it was just noise to me. I looked up and down the bar, not for anything but to take in the scene. It was mostly beach bums with enough money to get drunk everyday. Who say a job isn't worth it, I thought and laughed to myself. I was fully human again. It had taken about a half hour to come down from the high the music gave me. It was free and great and new everytime. Damn, I've been doing the wrong things, I thought, wasting my life like an American. I ordered another beer and wondered what was important to me. Those are things I should be doing, everything else is just a distraction. Don't be afraid of the silence, it will let you hear. Charlie, what are you doing to yourself? Everything that I knew would happen, everything I thought would happen. That's why I need to change, I thought and looked up to se what it was everyone found so interesting about baseball.

A new crowd was around, people who had showered and wore nicer clothes. The beach-worn faces were there, under the dark colored shirts and clean-looking smiles. Suddenly I was out of place again and I thought of Stina. She and her two Swede men were going to get me out of here and I couldn’t wait. There were so many other places to exist; happiness, I was told, was everywhere. It all depended on the person. I looked around the eating and drinking crowd. I couldn't be happy here anymore. The scene changed too quickly, and too drastically, as if L.A. were a constant fashion show. But it was just the clothes. It was the attitudes and beliefs. The personality of Los Angeles was like a maitre'd at an exclusive club. If it knew you, then you could have a chance there. That's not true, I thought. You can exist on a smaller scale here, spreading anonymity wherever you go. That wasn't enough for me. I needed something new, where people saw me and wondered about me, and who I was, and what I knew, and the things I had done. In America it seemd, they either were indifferent or nosy. It'll be different somewhere else, I promised myself and paid for the last beer before leaving baseball and the indifferent clean people for the lit darkness of a waiting boardwalk. It's so constant, I thought, it will always be here. "It's an institution," I said aloud, admiring the empty beach side boardwalk.

"What do you know about institutions?" a voice from the darkness asked me.

It was a homeless man, with the ruptured brown face from a boiling sun and the dental neglect to prove it. He sat awkwardly in the doorway of a closed shop. "As much as you buddy," I assured him. The night was free right then, the ending unknown, and for a brief minute I was the Charlie who could look at himself in the mirror if he had to. That was worth far more than four thousand dollars, I thought.

"I spent four yearshin one wonsh, in Fwagstaff, Arizonie." He nodded his head in a way of corroborating his story.

I enjoyed the accent he had from poor teeth. He was different, he stood out and was unique but apparently it was in the wrong direction. I knelt down by him.

"Yes," he said to my movements. "I 'as depressed, and didn't have 'nuff shoshal shupport shyshems."

"What?" I snorted good-naturedly.

This time he concentrated. "Shosal shupport shystems. Ya know, like family and love and shtuff like that."

"Oh. Well, did you?"

"How can I? I 'as locked up in a plashe for four yearsh. They don’t' try and help you. They shtudy you, like a goddamn animal." He began wheezing for a moment, which was followed by a cough. The body jiggled and broke and moved in strange ways until he gathered himself.

"When did you come here?"

"Three munch ago," he said proudly. "Look at me," he said, referring to his home of a dark doorway, "Ihave more than I ever need now. I have the freedom to be who I want, and I am." When he said 'freedom', it had given me chills. It reminded me of my cousin who had gotten two years in prison for GTA. When he got out, we got a beer and he talked about his regained freedom. He spoke like he was a British colony that was grown up now and was ready to be rid of the influence of an overseer.

"You are free," I admitted.

""Where are you going?" he asked when I stood up, wiping the dirt from my knee.

"Home, I guess."

"You have no home," he said.

"Don't be too sure."

"I can shee it in your eyesh. I ushed to have no home, I know what ish like. Nowhere makes you happy, you shmile because you don't know what elsh to do."

"You certainly are wise for a homeless guy." I began to walk away.

"Don't do it!" he called to me amidst his loud, echoing cough. "Don't do it!"

I turned the corner and it was a new place again. But it wasn't. There was Stina's hostel. And why were three people with this kind of power and influence and capabilities staying in a hostel? I was tempted to walk inside to see her but the other two Swedes would be there, and they were menacing in a silent way. Any man who found it more important to roll a cigarette instead of looking into the eyes of a man who says he will give you five thousand dollars had my respect.

My bus was coming up the street on Main and I ran over to it. I felt like walking but then I remembered I was in Venice, not Santa Monica. They were two different worlds, I thought as I rode north on the bouncing bus. They wer different yet they were adjacent. For a moment I knew there were many places for me, if there can be two places next to each other that have such different atmospheres. Maybe San Francisco, I wondered, maybe San Diego. Being a California native, the thought of living in a town like Minot, North Dakota did not excited me greatly. In fact, I abhorred even the sound of it. I decided to look at a world map when I got home and find out where Stina was from.

The next morning was cloudy, or overcast and cool. I had to check the calendar to make sure it was still September. Sitting on the patio I drank a cup of black coffee with sugar. I needed cream but my refrigerator was devoid of perishable. I never ate at home and I drank a lot of black coffee out of laziness and a poor memory.

It was nice on the patio, having the morning to myself. I tried to remember the last time I spent a morning on my patio. It was usually in front of the television, zoning out but this particular morning it was nice to look at the sleeping apartments, or hear two over-dressed women walk down an alley speaking in a foreign tongue. But it didn't make what they were saying any less important. In fact, that mornign I wanted to know even more. I need to exist worldly. I thought of that girl's paraffin that I had danced with. I wanted to be an Earthen, not an American. People came from all over the world to be here and I had the desire to swim up that stream and go somewhere else, to be an American that said, "I came from where you want to be so I can be here with you."

I took a sip of the coffee. It had cooled in the early morning on the patio and I went inside to fill it up. The phone rang on my way back out to the peacefulness I was absorbing.

"Chaw-lie," her voice said. She sounded so close.

"Stina."

"Yes," she said. "I am happy you know my voice."

I refrained from telling her I would always know her voice.

"You can meet the Englishman today."

"Who is that?"

"He is the man, the contact, the man who makes it happen."

She seemed so awfully impressed with this man's credentials. I hoped she hadn't seen too many of his credentials.

"Where?"

"At the end of the Santa Monica pier. At noon, all right?"

"This is just a meeting, right?"

"No, Chaw-lie, you don't need the money," she said, reading my mind.

"Are you going to be there?"

"Do you want me there?"

I don't trust you, but I want you there, I thought. "Sure, that would be fine."

"All right, I will be there," Stina said.

"But leave the two Swedes at home, all right?"

"All right, Chaw-lie, good bye." I could hear her smiling on her end of the phone.

She wasn't there as I stood waiting at the end of the pier. There was however, a man who stood out like a shark among guppies. It was the Englishman and his funny-looking Sherlock Holmes hat gave him away. He was watching the Mexicans fishing.

"Are you a friend of Stina's?" I asked him before he knew I was there.

"Why yes, I am," he replied and seemed a most pleasant guy. He had an easy smile and a reddening face I could tell was not used to Southern California weather. He was probably burned an hour after stepping off the plane.

"Should we go somewhere and talk?"

"I believe we are already there," he said, and the wrinkles on his cheek bunched together when he smiled. "Our English is as good as secret code down here." He glanced over to the men with the long poles in their hands, staring off into the infinity of an ocean. Young boys played with the bait in buckets and a man to the left jerked his pole but it was probably just to untangle it.

"Where is Stina?"

"She's gone, I'm afraid."

"What?" I asked.

The Englishman's tone was one of casual sympathy. "Yes, she's left just a little while ago."

"Where?"

"Well, that's the interesting part. She said that you'd know where she went." He looked at me; his eyes were raw from the breeze and we were both squinting. "Charlie," he said, and I hadn't realized he would know my name.

"What?"
"We didn't meet to discuss Stina, did we?"
Didn't we, I wondered. She was gone? She was supposed to be here with me and we were to be together. We never talked about that, though, those were just my thoughts, but Stina must have known.

"Charlie."

I turned and began walking away.

I heard him call my name again but it sounded unfamiliar from him.

He called my name again, louder this time. "I'm the only one that can help you," he said.

"We'll see about that," I muttered to no one in particular.

"Nope, they've checked out, sir, earlier this morning," the friendly Australian at the hostel said.

"Any forwarding address?"

"No sir, I'm sorry."

And that was it, she was gone, I was still here, and I was back to square one. Drinking was my only companion.

"Ya ever been to Sweden?" I asked the bartender. It was between lunch and dinner and the place was empty.

"No, what's it like?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I said. It was the most truthful thing I'd ever said.

The bartender continued wiping the counter. "I hear they got some good-looking broads there. In fact," he said, looking up to remember the full thought, "I got a Playboy and there's a Swedish girl in it and man is she hot. Made me want to go to Sweden after that."

I ordered another beer. It was cold and water droplets dripped from the bottom when I picked it up.

"You thinking of going there?" he asked me.

"Maybe," I said, "maybe. We'll have to see how I like America first."

"Oh, you're not from here," he surmised. "Where are you from, you barely have an accent."

I stood and paid for the drink.

"Where are you from?" he asked again.

"Mars," I replied, walking out of the bar into the bright American sunshine.

"Where is that?"