Malibu Lizards

Mick lay on his stomach among the empty beer cans and driftwood and delicately peeled his sunburnt nose. Morosely he regarded a lizard, stupid with the sun, wavering on a bleached stick of wood in front of his nose. Almost without interest he reached out and grabbed it.

"Tonight, lizard . . . tonight you shall be sacrificed to Kahuna," he said listlessly. "Kahuna, god of the sun and sand and surf, will have you. Aha, lizzy . . .what say you to that?"

But the lizard only squirmed slightly and wouldn't respond, oblivious to life and death. Mickey dug out a handful of sand in front of his nose, dropped the lizard in it and stared at its twitching neck and back.

"Zap, lizard ... zap! zap! You're sterile!" he said, flicking his fingers at the blinking reptile face and covering up his oblivious body in a handful of warm sand.

Mick glanced up the small incline leading from the highway to the beach and saw a thick, blond kid with very long hair that always reminded him of Prince Valiant. He smiled slightly, since he was getting tired of being alone on the beach on such a sunny morning and no one to surf with.

Mick yelled as the thick, blond kid came toward him.

"Wally! Wally Walrus, you missed it! Not ten minutes ago the surf was five-hundred feet high, 'n some guy was handing out free kegs of beer and there were ten dapper little honeys who were so hot to trot they couldn't wait . . . not ten minutes ago. Ohhh did you really miss it. Ha!"

Wally Walrus laughed easily through his nose — a nothing laugh, and squinted as he looked across the waveless cove and the womanless beach in front of him.

"Yeah . . . I musta missed it," he said. "God, today makes a solid week of no surf and no lovin'. Nothing but bitchin' weather and Malibu lizards. I'm going insane for something to do." His blond walrus-like head exaggerated a long sigh.

"Wally...how about a trip South?" Mick suggested spiritlessly, knowing that anything involving such energy would be quickly squelched.

"We could make the fights at Tijuana. Carlos Arruza's fighting tomorrow with bulls for La Laguna." He paused as he saw a dubious frown form on Wally's face. "I'll go half on gas, babe."

Wally was still frowning, thinking of the long drive to the border, of the wranglings with the border officials, of the swarming pushers on Modero Street near the bullring, of the bargaining for bullfight tickets with hand-waving, screaming Mexicans; of keeping on the watch for pickpockets and petty thieves...

"Noooo, nay, Mick," Wally said with a kind of resigned finality. "Too much effort. Better to do nothing than fight Tijuana on a Sunday."

"Arruza cut both ears last week at Mexico City." Mick was imploring now, tired of no surf, no women, lizards and sand and sun.

Forgetting the prospective hassles, Wally thought of the bulls and of a fight he had seen two years ago in Juarez. The torero was a black-faced, bowlegged little Indian boy with a face like a donkey and eyes so deep-set it looked as though he had none. He remembered how restless the crowds had been with the kid's opening passes, the way he twisted and corkscrewed with the cape and his forced naturales; being so careful. And he remembered, too, the way the bull had caught him in the leg after he turned his back to him. He remembered the tourists and the students from S.C. with their wine sacs, fainting in the box seats as the kid was turned on the horn with the horn about fifteen inches in him and out of sight, the bull tossing his head and the boy not leaving the horn when he tossed, until the bull lowered his head and the boy slid off the horn onto his muleta cape and the Mexican crowds still shouting, jeering, demanding . . .

"All right," Wally said passively. "Let's make it. And if they draw poor bulls, I shall personally make you eat one thousand Malibu lizards."

"Ohhhh-le, Walrus," Mick hooted excitedly, suddenly realizing he had convinced him into going. "I'll throw my board in the gray bomb and we shall be off to T.J. Yeah . . . yea! I'm jazzed!" Mickey hopped over some rusted beer cans and the remnants of an old beach fire and grabbed his surfboard. He ran up the hill to the highway and half threw it in his old gray Chevy convertible, still screaming excitedly. Wally Walrus halfheartedly watched a lizard run from under a six-pack carton to a tar-spotted piece of driftwood and wondered why in the hell he had let Mick talk him into going to Tijuana.

Reprinted from the college literary magazine, THE SPECTRUM, University of California at Santa Barbara