Great! I ducked behind the rock and began thinking rapidly.Great! I ducked behind the rock and began thinking rapidly. She hasn't seen me yet. Good. So I'll stuff the binoculars and the dope in the knapsack, get out my towel, and make like I've been here all along. It took just a few harried seconds to accomplish this and then I figured it was safe to take a nonchalant peek over the rock again. Right back to cardiac-land! She was only about twenty feet away and this time she definitely saw me. No way to duck out of this one! Without thinking I reacted to the moment by raising my eyebrows as if I was as surprised as she was. God help me but it worked! She did the same and then smiled and said "well then, where did you come from?". I recognized her accent immediately as Australian and somehow came up with a coherent response. "Up there." I said, pointing to the cliff above. She laughed, a bright, sparkling chortle and quipped "Well at least you didn't crawl out of the ocean". "Not hardly" I smiled back. It was then I noticed that her blanket was laid out not ten feet from mine, on the other side of the rock. How could I have missed it before? I also noticed that there were actually two blankets, not one. Great. A boyfriend I suppose. Probably out wrestling sharks at the moment. Probably a Neo-Nazi geeknoid weight-lifter. Great. We'll have to be cautious about this for the moment. "You're Australian, right?" I asked. "Yeah, right. I guess I haven't lost the accent yet, eh?" she said. "Well no but ... don't! I love the sound of an Aussie twang. You shouldn't lose it. How long have you been in the States anyway?" "Just a few weeks. I started at UCSD winter quarter." She paused and looked down as if suddenly unsure of herself. Then she looked up with her head tilted to one side and asked "So you really don't think my accent sounds a little . |