One night during junior year of high school, my classmates Sam, Jessica, and I drive to Coronado, where we eat dinner, share ice cream, and walk the beach at night like the best of them. We weren’t particularly close, in fact we hung out only a few more times that year and never again. But memory tends to surprise us with its cherry-picked moments, of car rides and insults and faces and smells that stay fresh, that outlive the rest.
*
We walk through the Hotel del Coronado toward the beach, tracing the walls with our fingertips as if to mark a trail. We slow our steps to study the framed photos of Marilyn Monroe posing in front of the very same hotel; Some Like It Hot was filmed here, which I saw shortly after with the very same Jessica. Jessica was the first person I met who went out of her way to say ‘films’ rather than ‘movies,’ a self-conscious habit that had its intended impact as I was easily impressed.
*
We push open the exit doors and light from the hallway rushes ahead then retreats. By the time the doors click shut our shoes are off and we’re running through dark toward water. I remember shouting to be heard, so there must have been wind. Jessica was a senior, so hardly older though at the time I considered it to be much older, so when she suggests that each of us share our favorite word, Sam and I go along as if obeying an older sibling. At the water’s edge we come up with yes, summer, and serendipity.
*
"Serendipity" and "there must be a God" and "it’s a sign" slip out of my mouth interchangeably, a way to acknowledge those moments that feel perfectly planned and executed, like someone had me in mind. Even the most trivial instance of serendipity inspires a thrill because it suggests the possibility that things might not be so hopelessly random after all.
*
I’m away from the city for weeks and within a few hours of my return, I’m on a walk through Golden Gate Park. I pass de Young and see the doors propped open, so I slip in and discover it’s the one free day of the month, 15 minutes before closing. Only a few of us remain and we wander noiselessly, hushed by the grandeur of art with no spectators. For the first time — how did I miss it before? — I spend time with Pierre-Edouard Baranowski by Amedeo Modigliani, a portrait of a boy with blue-green eyes. It was painted in 1918, just like his Portrait of a Young Woman, which I had recently seen at the New Orleans Museum of Art. A century later and here I am meeting them for the first time. I think, it’s a sign. Then I remember yes, summer, and serendipity.
