“That’s where my group is,” I told Cal when he returned.
“Are they lucky with the slots?”
“Not particularly. I think the only reason they like casinos is because they’re addicted to the noise.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “They get off on all that digital racket? Yow. Makes my head pound.”
“Not them. It reminds them of texting.”
Herring gulls soared overhead as we climbed the stairs to the promenade, their screeches quickly drowned out by the primitive roar of sea greeting shore. For a long moment I stood at the rail, stunned into
silence, for there was almost too much to comprehend. A white stone beach nestled between chalk-white cliffs. Hang gliders sailing over the channel like predatory birds. A great gaping hole punched clear through the western cliff, creating an elegant natural arch. Children dashing into the surf armed with pails and shovels. A steepled church perched high atop the eastern cliff. Rental boats piggybacked atop each other above the high tide line like a string of turtle shells. White-capped rollers rumbling onto the beach with a deep-throated boom that vibrated through my feet into my gut. Beach stones shifting in the tide. Spinning. Floating. Clacking.
“Wow,” was all I could think to say. And although the sight was awe inspiring, it wasn’t at all familiar.
“I know this place,” Cal marveled. “Dad has a painting of that arch hanging up in his den. The arch. The beach. A little fleet of boats heading out to sea. Well, I’ll be damned. I never realized it was an actual place. But … here it is.”
“Is the painting an original?”
“Beats me. I think he picked it up at an estate sale years ago. Rob said something about information plaques.” He ranged a long look down the promenade and swept his hand toward the cliff. “Shall we?”
As we strolled, I noticed more intimate details. Layers of horizontal striations that shot through the cliff face like the sugar filling in vanilla wafers. Jagged peaks and angles. Caves eating their way through the soft limestone base. Moss-green algae carpeting the exposed rocks beneath the cliff. A lush swath of grass atop the cliff. Well-worn footpaths crisscrossing the plunging slope. A few adventurous hikers milling around the very lip of the precipice. A set of impossibly steep stairs rising from the promenade to provide access to the hiking trails above.
“Here we go.” Cal planted himself in front of a plaque that was attached to the rail. “I’ll be damned again. This is Dad’s picture.”
The plaque was a weatherproofed reproduction entitled, Étretat, la porte d’Aval, bateaux sortant du port, and the artist was— “Claude Monet,” I read aloud. “Eighteen-eighty-five.”
“Hunh. So Monet didn’t spend all his time fixated on his lily pond. He traveled to the seacoast to paint ocean scenes. Who knew? You have any idea what the title says?”
“Well, la porte means door, and bateaux is boats, so my best guess would be something like, the door of d’Aval, boats leaving from the port. The arch must be called the door of d’Aval, but where’s the ele-phant that Rob was talking about?”
I spun in a slow circle, thinking I’d missed something obvious. Cal snickered as he tapped my shoulder. “We’re both blind. Stand here and look at the arch from this angle.”
And there it was—the chiseled crooks and curves of the arch morphing into the illusory vision of an elephant dipping its trunk into the sea.
That’s when I heard a scream, accompanied by the sight of a body tumbling off the cliff in a horrifying freefall to the rocks below.
nine