333 Miles

Thirty Years. Halfway to Nowhere. All the Way
to Vegas.

Craig Birk

333 Mile Publishing

San Francisco, CA

Copyright 2010 by 333 Mile Publishing

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved

Published by 333 Mile Publishing, San
Francisco, California

This book is fiction. Not all information
should be considered accurate. Creative liberties have been taken
with data, names, places and information.

Author's note: All
characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or
older.

All characters and events are purely
fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is
coincidental and accidental. All celebrity references are fictional
and unendorsed.

LCCN: 2010922166

ISBN:
978-0-615-32307-7

Cover Art by: Jessica Whiteside

www.jessicawhiteside.com

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my parents for providing the
love, support, and environment to create a life full of
opportunity.

Thank you to my gorgeous wife for helping me
to slowly see the real meaning of beauty.

Thank you to my friends for all the good
times. We have been blessed.

Thank you to the three guys who employed me
for a long time. I grew up there in many ways, and it was a lot of
fun.

Chapter One

Another Friday

Friday, October 13
^th
, 2006 - 1:22
p.m.

“
Turn around bitch I got a use for
you

Besides, you ain’t got nothin’ better to
do…

And I’m bored”

–
It’s So Easy,
Guns N’ Roses

On a wooden park bench, commanding a
panoramic view spanning the blue vastness of the Pacific Ocean and
the shoreline up to Torrey Pines, stood a healthy four-year-old
seagull. The gull had no name. He did have a long, solid, yellow
beak with a curved orange stripe toward the end. Despite his
general vigor, like many of his fellow Americans, the seagull was
visibly overweight.

The gull slowly stretched his neck toward the
sky, then shook his head profusely and opened his yellow beak
widely four times in rapid succession, but no noise was emitted. He
was not enjoying the ocean view. Instead, he was intently focused
on a nearby Mexican-American family sitting atop a large diagonally
patterned red and yellow blanket. The family, consisting of a
mother, a father, a nine-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, had
just finished a hearty lunch of burgers and fries. The parents,
both of whom were significantly more overweight than the seagull,
had already consumed the entirety of their food. The small girl,
however, had apparently lost interest in the second half of her bag
of fries. Herein lay the seagull’s primary object of desire.

The bird relied on human interaction for much
of his food and had developed very useful stereotypes. Most
importantly, the younger, smaller humans were much more likely to
mount an attack. But these advances were nearly always harmless and
could be ignored or easily evaded. Signs of a physical assault by
the larger ones, while rare, should be taken very seriously. He
also developed a knack for knowing which humans would stay in one
place for a long time and which would change locations more
frequently, thereby providing greater access to unattended food. As
the gull expected, within minutes, this family had shifted several
feet away from the blanket and began kicking a ball back and forth
to one another. Lighter-skinned humans usually chose to entertain
themselves by passing objects about using their arms, while the
darker ones preferred to use their legs. Because of this, the
lighter ones tended to be more accurate and dangerous when they
threw rocks at the bird, a most annoying and seemingly pointless
activity, but an unfortunately common one. All female humans,
although they engaged in the throwing of rocks just as often as the
males, were essentially harmless. The much darker people, who were
quite rare at Ellen Browning Scripps Park in La Jolla, did not
usually partake in the passing of objects games and tended to
represent a low threat level.

Unlike humans, seagulls do not waste the
obvious opportunities life presents. The seagull first used his
legs to jump of the bench, and then flapped his wings in three
short bursts, achieving an altitude of five feet. From there, he
descended quickly, covering the remaining fifteen feet to the red
and yellow target in just a few seconds. The gull landed
immediately next to the half-eaten bag of fries, grabbed it with
his healthy beak and flew back to his bench, careful to ensure the
bag remained upright so none of the fries were spilled.

Just beyond the park, below a small cliff,
light waves peacefully blanketed a rocky beach, infusing a
soundtrack only the ocean is capable of. The air in the park was
warm and sweet, with just enough humidity to create a soft,
pleasant sense of tangibility. A faint smell of cut grass joined
forces amicably with the aroma of seawater. In the middle of a
brilliant blue sky, whose shade grew slightly lighter further out
toward the horizon, the sun was well positioned to overlook every
detail. A few miles up the coast, two medium-sized, puffy white
clouds imperceptibly made their way inland. The sense of peace was
palpable. It was a very average San Diego afternoon.

Regardless, the seagull did not have the
luxury of enjoying a leisurely meal, and he gulped down the
remaining fries vengefully. Once finished, undisturbed by humans or
other birds, he allowed himself a moment to relax. He again
stretched his neck towards the sky, and then settled into a resting
position to survey the scene. Thirty seconds later, content with
all aspects of life, the seagull again jumped off the bench and
took flight. His path led him over the ocean and he looked
downwards as he passed over the small cliffs which divided the park
and the sea. He lifted his head back up and continued flapping his
wings to gain altitude for the next thirty seconds, continuously
venturing farther from shore. Once satisfied with his height, the
bird banked sharply to the right and began a swooping turn back
toward land. At an altitude of forty-five feet, he crossed back
over the northeast end of the park and seconds later passed over
the Grande Colonial hotel. With no particular destination in mind,
the seagull veered to the right again, now peering down at a newly
opened restaurant on the site of the old La Jolla Hard Rock Cafe.
While doing so, he noticed a slightly uncomfortable feeling in his
stomach that was no doubt caused by the greasy fries.

The seagull veered left in a southern
direction over Girard Avenue and then made a right over Pearl
Street. With minimal effort but significant relief, he paused
between flapping his wings and ejected a large quantity of
excrement. Like a fighter plane on a bombing run, the gull banked
hard back to the right immediately after releasing his payload and
headed back to the park to look for more food.

The poop began its descent toward land at a
sixty-five degree angle relative to the earth but quickly flattened
into a straight downward trajectory. Twenty feet from impact, the
poop broke into two pieces, with the smaller piece drifting
slightly to the left in the breeze.

At 1:28:13 p.m., Alex Reine was purposefully
walking down La Jolla Boulevard. Despite being the fourth most
profitable “Financial Advisor” at Pantheon Capital’s San Diego
branch at only thirty years of age, Alex still did not have a
parking spot in the company garage. Parking spots were the final
remaining benefit awarded on the basis of seniority rather than
profitability. Thus, Alex had to leave the building and walk four
blocks to a paid parking lot if he needed something out of his car,
usually change to buy Diet Coke from the vending machine. While
annoyed about the $180 a month the spot cost him, he liked having
an excuse to get outside and take a short walk a few times a
day.

Alex wore a grey Joseph Abboud suit with
barely noticeable thin blue lines forming a wide checker pattern.
It perfectly matched the brown Fratelli Rossetti shoes he bought in
Milan last summer, which were currently his favorite pair even
though he usually preferred black shoes. Tucked in the back of his
violet Thomas Pink tie was an Apple iPod nano. When Alex first saw
that they made a tie designed to hold an iPod, he exclaimed to the
girl he was with at the time that it was “gay” and wondered, “What
are things coming to?” Since then, however, he had come around on
the idea and he now owned three ties with the multi-functional
design.

It’s So Easy
, by Guns N’ Roses played
on the earbuds connected to the iPod at a volume loud enough to
enjoy but low enough not to block Alex totally from the outside
environment. Observing the world from behind a pair of vintage
Wayfarer sunglasses, he quietly sang along:

“
It’s so easy, easy

When everybody’s tryin to

Please me baby

Yeah, it’s so easy, easy,

When everybody’s tryin to please me

So eaaaasy . . .

But nothing seems to please me”

A minute later, just as
It’s So Easy
transitioned into
Nightrain,
Alex arrived at the corner of
La Jolla Boulevard and Pearl. On the northeast corner lay the one
true fast food chain restaurant in downtown La Jolla – Jack in the
Box. He paused for a second on the sidewalk, running his hands
through his short, slightly wavy, dark-blondish hair which he once
proclaimed to be “like Mark McGrath’s.” He received so much
ridicule for this comment that he never mentioned it again, even
though he continued to believe it was a valid comparison.

Alex put a lot of effort into maintaining his
looks and was fully aware of the many benefits they afforded him.
This was equally true with girls, clients and co-workers. Alex
stood barely over six feet tall. However, due to a magnetic
personality, frequent use of an engaging fake laugh/smile, and an
ability to fully integrate his hands and body into his speech, most
people remembered him as taller. Alex was equally as comfortable
lunching at the yacht club with retired multi-millionaires as he
was playing one-dollar liars dice in a dive bar with the surfer
crowd in Pacific Beach. People usually liked Alex largely because
he liked himself.

He worked out at least five times a week and
was careful what he ate. These efforts, while successful overall,
were forced to compete with a robust alcohol intake and frequent
Jack in the Box visits. Alex considered if he could justify one
now. He remembered he had a salad for dinner the night before and
completed a three-mile run before work.

As he deliberated, a small piece of bird poo
landed harmlessly in the bushes next to him. Two tenths of a second
later, a larger piece landed directly on the left Fratelli
Rossetti, covering the brown leather with white and yellowish
goo.

Some cultures consider it a good omen to be
hit by bird shit, but Alex was unaware of this and would not have
agreed in any case. He generally considered himself to be a lucky
person and was vexed at his misfortune. “Cock Goblin!” he
pronounced loud enough to hear himself over the iPod. Anger
overcame surprise and misfortune, but by the time Alex located his
assailant, the seagull had began an aggressive descent to the right
and was already far out of range of any potential revenge.

The sequence of events left Alex little
choice but to enter the Jack in the Box in order to clean his shoe.
It would be silly not to enjoy lunch there as well. He reached
under his tie with the intention of stopping the iPod, but changed
his mind at the last moment and instead turned up the volume and
fast forwarded in order to listen to the first thirty seconds of
My Michelle
.

The interior of the Jack in the Box was
nearly perfectly square-shaped. The registers were thirty-five feet
from the front entrance. Just about everything in the restaurant
was red, white, black or yellow. Alex noticed the same was true of
In-n-Out, McDonalds (only with more yellow of course), Carl’s Jr.
(again with more yellow) and Burger King. He wondered if there was
something about this color scheme that encouraged burger eating. At
one of the half-booth/half-tables on his right, a
twenty-three-year-old, slightly overweight, blonde girl was
struggling to get her two kids to consume their food items without
wiping the condiments all over their Old Navy clothes. There were
no other occupied tables, which was strange because it was still
within the range of normal lunch hours.

When Alex emerged from the bathroom minutes
later, his shoes looking almost newly polished, two registers were
open. An obese lady (crazy, gigantic fat actually), wearing some
kind of huge denim skirt with a black shirt, and who may have been
about thirty-five years of age, was ordering at the one on the
right.