Inside “Cloud of Terns”

Excerpt from "Cloud of Terns"

Chapter 3

The Eyes of Privilege

Renata liked Sausalito more than Berkeley. Her apartment building on Rose Street was fashionably integrated, and the neighborhood was as lovely as a middle-class suburb could be, but easy escapes took lots of energy. The bay was a few miles west, and a gigantic freeway blocked psychic access. The hills were the same distance east and filled with dark houses crowded onto winding streets that were both picturesque and boring to her island eyes. There was Tilden Park for hiking, of course, and some sun-baked trails above it that were OK, but no endless beaches or lush green jungles. She had tried to heal on those beaches and her other island haunts, though, and she was here because none of it had worked for her. Still, the claustrophobia of her surroundings mirrored the constriction that seemed to grip her insides all the time.

Nothing helped that internal claustrophobia except the campus. There, the redwoods and meandering streams formed an exotic background for the gloriously exciting buildings that filled her with awe, each devoted to a different kind of scholarship, each with a history of brilliant accomplishments. The Berkeley students were smart, so much smarter than at Queen Anne. Despite everything, she still definitely believed that a campus, especially one like this, could change her life. College was why she had left home in the first place, and now, in the face of despair, it was still a spark that gave her hope and a legitimate reason to return to the States for a second chance. The other reason was now focused on Sausalito.

Of course, it was strange that Sausalito, with its familiar charms, would house someone who dealt in revenge, the process that threatened to consume her. But it probably would have offered comfort and hope even before she met with Wiley.

She decided to spend some time trying to relax in the congenial town rather than hurrying home to her apartment for an afternoon of brooding and despair. So she left her car at the pier and wandered. There was a path that led close to the water, past the Napa Street pier and grassy fields of Dunphy Park, and onto the wooden boardwalk along the elegant marina. The people who walked there hardly looked up, solitary boat people just like the Seychellois who inhabited the marinas in Victoria. She walked past the ferry terminal at Gabrielson Park and sat on a bench with a few German tourists admiring the spectacular view of San Francisco. It was nice to be just another tourist, and here no one tried to hit on her or sell her trinkets and tours the way they did at home. Americans, even the occasional African-Americans, kept their distance. There was no island jive, no one needing to hustle her. With the typical American sense of superiority, locals assumed she would come to them if she wanted something.

She continued to walk along the water, admiring the placid bay, the city skyscrapers, and the faint outlines of hills — Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Presidio Heights — so carefully named by her cab driver when she had first crossed the Bay Bridge on the way to Berkeley from the airport three months earlier. Then, she had hoped she could successfully hide in the Bay Area, with its multiplicity of cultural and ethnic worlds, a place where no one knew her. It had lived up to all of its promise, but she felt no more comfortable than before, not even with twice-weekly therapy — good therapy, she thought. Revenge, Inc.could change that or destroy her.