THE GREEN DOT

The sea was unnaturally calm and not a cloud on the western horizon. Golden time. In a few minutes the sun would dip into the ocean with a wink of a goodbye followed by a final green flash.
Katie Jones stood alone, her bare feet dug in the sand at Crown Point, a strand of beach at the end of Jewell Street. Crown Point was just one of many approaches to Mission Bay Park, a massive recreation area with twenty seven miles of Pacific shoreline and nineteen sandy beaches in San Diego. Day’s end was near, but jet skis, open-water kayakers, skiers and an armada of windsurfers darted around the bay like pesky flies on water.
There were birds here, too. Migrants and residents. Over at the eastern mud flats, ruddy turnstone, willet, and black-bellied plovers nested. A goofball with a tuft of blue punker hair seemed to have one of its luckless feet stuck too deep in goop to pull itself out.
I know the feeling. Katie shook her shoulder-cropped blonde mane. Love isn't dead; it's just hibernating.