Body Double, by Tom Dinard

I was a New Yorker on the California coast in a fried fish shack across from an actor with nine Coronas and a lonely smile etched into his beard.

The zit-pocked movie buff of our 500-mile, month-long bicycle teen tour outed the leading man before cowering back to the line to order a chili burger.

Three thousand miles and three weeks from home with nothing but rubber tires and steel rims to carry me forward, I pulled up the empty chair at the actor’s table and sat, facing him, ready for the next adventure.

He cackled when he heard me say his name and cracked open another beer, squeezing the lime so hard that it popped out of his hand and fell to the floor. He picked it up, never abandoning the studied glare at my frazzled face.

“I most certainly am. And who are you?”

***

Weeks before, we had lit out from Kennedy Airport with bikes in boxes, parent-packed panniers full of clothes and a map to take us through a foreign land of blonde girls, trees that could only be real in dreams, and the constant breeze from the other sea. The one we’d never seen.

San Francisco, Daly City, Montara, Pescadero, Capitola, Monterey, Big Sur, San Simeon, Oceano, Lompoc, Carpinteria, Oxnard and now Neptune’s Net, Ventura County Line.

Many miles. A few flat tires. Countless plays of the “Hello, I Must Be Going,” “American Beauty” and “The Unforgettable Fire” in the boombox bungeed to the rear luggage carrier of my Schwinn Le Tour Luxe.

We were as boundless and mighty as the Pacific itself as we cascaded south from the Point Mugu campsite, hungry for dinner and the beckoning sun of Los Angeles.

And there he was. Our silver screen. The 31-year-old scene-stealer in what The New York Times heralded as “the best film yet made about the Sixties,” plus his latest tour de force, still in theaters: a Hitchcock paean replete with sexual rituals, murder, and mystery, leaving some critics stunned, others shunned, and art-house cultists clamoring for more.

The actor alternated between long slugs of beer and tipsy hand-combs through a thicket of unkempt red hair. He wielded a scepter of manic joy as he sucked down steamed clams.

He asked for and received a fervent update of our spinning discovery: the lighthouses, the strawberry fields, the artichokes, the tough climbs, the ecstatic downhills. Yosemite, “Weird Science” and the Los Padres campfire that almost became a forest fire. Two hits by Mike Davis, including the game-winning double, in a 5-4, 10-inning A’s win over the Angels at the Oakland Coliseum.

He pounded the table. He clapped his hands. He patted my shoulder. He looked like he might start to cry.

Then he gazed pensively across Highway 1 and into the waves, where the surfers gathered, stoked for the day’s last set. His blue eyes rose and fixed on the horizon.

***

“You’re free!” he practically screamed, looking back at me, laughing again and wondering if I understood.

“What a thing, to be free! That’s the stuff! Remember this adventure! Remember it for the rest of your lives! You’re so lucky to be here, so lucky to be alive, right here, in this very moment!

“I wish I was in your shoes!”

As far as we could tell, this ten-speed liberation was our right. Jubilant June textbook fires had made sure of that, and now this man of many faces was talking about his own chafing from the seat.

He pointed. He cackled some more. He sometimes walked up hills, he said. The sun was falling toward the ocean without a cord.

Ten minutes later he stuffed the last of the wheels into his Porsche. Four of us folded into the leather bucket seats as he popped the clutch, gunned out of the gravel parking lot and headed north.

We flew up the coast. Eighty. Ninety.

“Listen to this song, man! This is California, man!”

Alive and shiny, with “The Boys Of Summer” blasting away through the spokes. The bridge came, with the birds soaring and the electric guitar finding its place right alongside them near the clouds.

“This is California, man!”

We thanked him and he thanked us. His tires spit desert dust as he sped off into the gloaming, back toward the city sprawl.

Edging out from sandy cliffs over painted asphalt and into the roiling cobalt, the point glistened.

***

Wheels kept rolling, but this time, we were important. We had a real star to point us home.

Down past Pepperdine, I unearthed the sacred number he had slipped me and that I had kept in the special pocket of my handlebar bag for this moment — as if I really needed it to correctly punch in digits I had been reciting in perfect time with the rhythm of my pumping knees.

He had promised a Studio City weekend for this privileged peloton of twelve, a big yard perfect for tents, a barbecue cookout, hardwood floors if it got too cold, and maybe a Hollywood surprise. I dialed and his machine picked up:

“Americans LOVE to use the telephone!”

His voice yelled over and over, the refrain bouncing off the canyon, maybe even scaring the mountain lions until stopping at the beep.

I hung up, tried again when we passed Topanga, and got the machine again. And again.

It was over. No suburban blanket of green. No heated pool. No A-list memories for a lifetime.

***

We never talked about him again, and we reached San Diego and flew back home just in time for junior year.

Two years later, while getting high in my buddy’s attic and watching the third sequel of a slasher flick, he showed up in a pivotal role. I didn’t even have the energy to tell my friends why I knew who he was, what had led to our meeting on the other edge of the continent, or why his career and life might have gone straight to DVD.

I could only think back to that conversation, that sunset and that car ride, and hope that someday he, too, could strap on a helmet, fill up his water bottle, and pedal off to that day’s destination.