Tim Cousins came home to the sprawling house in the mountains north of Los Angeles late at night. The winding road to the remote canyon was desolate and quiet. When he made this drive Tim often thought of Los Angeles with its thriving millions no more than 10 miles away. It always amazed him that a simple drive up a twisting road would transport him into another world.
He inherited the ramshackle house years ago from a distant uncle he had never known. There was a small trust fund to take care of the expenses and taxes and the single stipulation - he could never sell the house. As a successful construction project manager with a thriving firm in the basin below that was fine with Tim, the old house was the perfect retreat.
Here in the mountains the neighbors came and went. Over the years Los Angeles had found the remote canyon and successive waves of postmodern settlers had laid down roots. Some were successful - the Parker family half mile further up the road was thriving. The Davis widow across the canyon seemed to have flowered in this remote and harsh terrain.
Others were less successful. The house immediately below Tim's place had traded hands half a dozen times in as many years. The ideal of living in the remote canyons above Los Angeles often slammed into the reality. For many people the remoteness, the isolation, and the lack of services beyond basic electricity and water were too much to bear.
Tim gave the downstairs neighbors a couple of more months. He was some sort of music producer, given to expensive suits and a flashy car. She was, apparently, his ingénue. Tim smiled as he thought of her. He had met them shortly after they moved in. He had stopped by to introduce himself and they had been pleasant enough.
The producer was filled with that restless energy that drives the truly ambitious and his conversation had been disingenuous and distracted. She had been, frankly, drunk and bored out of her mind. She had flirted with him as a matter of form because that was what was expected of her in the world she inhabited.
Since then he had occasionally seen them from his back patio and exchanged waves and shouted hellos but that was about it. Tonight, as he drove past their house, it appeared dark and unoccupied. One of the telltale signs of their return to Los Angeles had been the increasing frequency of absence. Tim didn't mind. One of the things he loved about the canyon was the quiet. His working day was long and chaotic; sometimes he just spent the night in the city below, sometimes for days on end. When he was here he surrendered to the simplicity and silence.
He swung his car into the garage, turned it off and then simply abandoned it. It was the custom, here in the mountains, to leave your keys in the ignition. There were two reasons for it. First, if there was an emergency and the neighbor needed the car they were welcome to it. Second, in the unlikely event that crime crept up from the city below, it would be better for them to simply take the car than to come into the house in search of the keys.
Tim strode into the empty and dark kitchen, paused long enough to grab a beer from the humming refrigerator, and then slid the accordion glass doors wide open and went out onto the patio. He drug one of the wooden chairs to the railing at the edge overlooking the wild canyon and sat down. At times like this the simplicity of life was an almost unbearable pleasure. Tim sat there, in silence, savoring the moment.
In the still and quiet evening the sound of a sliding door from the downstairs house was fairly loud. A moment later a light came on in the pool area. It was the ingénue. She was wearing a black string bikini top and a pair of stylishly ragged blue jeans. She was barefoot and her curly black hair was damp and tousled. She had a brown beer bottle in one hand and she was obviously looking for something.
Tim watched as she turned over one cushion after another. Whatever her talent was or was not she possessed a sensual beauty that revealed itself in her movements, an inherent femininity and an unconscious grace. She was also, obviously, slightly tipsy. In the clear night air Tim could hear her cursing softly as whatever she was searching for eluded her.
It was somewhere in her search that she happened to look up and notice Tim sitting there. She smiled and waved at him. Tim smiled back and lifted his beer in her return.
"Oh thank God!" She exclaimed, "Please tell me you are not drinking beer with a twist off top!"
Tim laughed, "Not likely."
"Stay right there." she commanded. "I'll be up in a moment." She vanished into the house.
Tim took another sip of beer and waited patiently. Several minutes passed and he heard the scrape of her sandals as she came around the side of the house and onto the patio carrying a six pack of beer in both hands.
A moment later she was sitting next to him and he was handing her a freshly opened beer. She took a long drink and pointed with her bottle at the opener fastened to the rail with a piece of cord and a staple.
"We'll count that as a fucking brilliant idea."
