I was a young 25-year old nurse, still hurting from a recent breakup. No one would be interested in me, and I had what I thought was pretty good proof: my fiance had broken up with me because I would hold him back from meeting his life goals. So I was young, attractive, footloose and demoralized.
Trying to help me get over my wounded feelings, my charge nurse invited me to help her paint her new home on the day I was to have gotten married. I went, just to keep from moping. I didn't know that they had invited Sol, a single dentist friend of her new husband. Little did I know that he was awfully handsome and that he was on the make. Only a few strokes of my paint roller and we were laughing, talking, and eyeing one another. He certainly took my breath away. He wore white coveralls without a shirt, and he was tan and had a great body.
The afternoon went by very quickly and ended with an invitation to dinner. Sol said he'd come to pick me up at 6:00, and wouldn't I like to go down to the beach to eat? I was thrilled. I looked down out of my window at 6:05 just to see him walking up the driveway, pulling his shirt on over his bronze chest. I almost fell out the window.
We went off to Newport Beach where we had a sumptious supper overlooking the ocean. Sol turned out to be quite devout--speaking about his Christian experience in detail, hoping to go off on a mission to a remote part of the world, and quoting scriptures to make his point. In my naive, heartbroken state, he looked pretty good. Especially after my fiance had not been able to live according to his stated convictions. I was smitten.
Sol asked me if I wanted to walk on the beach after dinner. What could be more romantic? Since I thought love happened like it did in the movies--30 minutes or less, and in one evening--this guy seemed like Prince Charming. We strolled down onto the beach and sat in the sand to watch the sun go down. It was chilly and he snuggled against me while he asked me about my life and smiled broadly at me in that man-of-the-world way that such older-and-wiser men did. He acted just a little bit oddly, because as I was talking, I noticed that he started to seem a bit distracted. He stopped listening and looking at me as we sat there. He was looking around over his shoulder at the houses on the edge of the beach. Squirming and looking in all directions. It had gotten dark and chilly. He still was wearing a shirt that was open at the throat--a little more undone than when we started out onto the beach.
I fell quiet as Sol stared off into space. He made a few summary comments and I suggested that we start home. It would take a good hour to get back. We slipped off the lifeguard platform where we'd been sitting, and started walking down the beach toward the car. As we walked, I was responding to a question he asked, and suddenly realized that he wasn't walking with me. Turning around, I saw Sol crouched down on the sand lighting a match to something.
"What are you doing?" I mouthed, just as he rushed toward me yelling, "Run!"
His eyes were twinkling but there was real urgency in his shout. I turned and fled just as the sky lit up behind us with a series of firecracker explosions. Big ones. Brightly colored, very visible, very illegal firecrackers. I fled, yelling back at Sol, "We could get in big trouble for this. Cut it out!" I am very conventional and conservative when it comes to observing the law and conventional rules about behavior. It seems narcissistic and disrespectful to do things like jay walk or drive 80 miles per hour in a 60 mph zone. So what he was doing, and in a state with such high fire risks, was both inconsiderate and foolhardy.
Instead of paying attention to my terror, Sol stooped to light another volley of firecrackers. Feeling like I was on the lam, I raced off the beach and up to his parked car just as the firecrackers went off--a whole string of brightly colored arching explosions, whistling through the air before it shook the ground with noise. Sol was nowhere to be seen and I was standing in the street next to an empty car, in an unknown area of a big town, after dark. It didn't occur to me that I could have gone inside and called a taxi. It seemed like my my only option was to lean against the car and look toward the ocean. Somewhere in the distance a siren could be heard coming our way. Great. Now I would be arrested for this kook whose behavior implicated me.
I had no idea what was going through this miscreant's mind, but I had had enough. For all his religious talk, he was a nut, and I knew that God wanted the fruits of the Spirit, not religious nuts. After what seemed like an eternity, Sol suddenly appeared and jumped into the car.
"Let's get home!"
Off we went, back to town. He had no explanation about why he had done that, and he wouldn't talk about it even. It was as if it had never happened. But he did tell me that he thought I was lovely, and couldn't he come up to my place for tea when we got back to town?
He got his tea that night, but nothing else. The gall of someone who thought he could act so irresponsibly and still expect me to want him.
Sol called a couple weeks later and told me how much he'd like to see me again. But not feeling up to being put in a dangerous position again, and acutely disappointed that he didn't seem to have his head screwed on straight, never returned his calls.
Another missed bullet.
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