Excerpt from Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Then, one day, Ray emerged from the thrashing oblivion of the Pacific at Point Dume, and there was a chicken-thin, gappy-toothed girl sitting in the sand beside a suitcase and a hatbox, crying off all her eye makeup.

Seawatery, gulping air and clutching his board to him, Ray approached her. What was the first thing he said? Luz could not now remember, but it would have been sparkling. She did recall his hands, gone pink with cold, and his pale aqua prophet's eyes, and herself saying in response, "I haven't seen anyone surfing in years. I forgot about surfing."

His hope naked, Ray asked, "You surf?"

She smiled thinly and shook her head. "Can't swim."

"Serious? Where you from?"

"Here."

"And you can't swim?"

"Never learned."

They sat quiet for a time, side by side in the sand, hypnotized by the beckoning waves.

"Where are you from?" she said, wanting to hear this wildman's voice again.

"Indiana."

"Hoosier."

"That's right." He grinned. He had an incredibly good-looking mouth.

"Why'd you come here?"

"I was in the military."

"Were you deployed?"

He nodded.

"What did you do?"

He shrugged and snapped a seaweed polyp between his fingers. "You've heard that dissertation."

He said his name and she said hers and then they sat again in quiet. At their backs, gone coral and shimmering in the sun's slant, was a de-sal plant classified as defunct but that in truth had never been funct. They'd heard that dissertation, too.

Luz asked, "You going to evac there, Indiana?"

"Nah."

"Where, then?"

"Nowhere."

"Nowhere?"

"Nowhere."

He told her about the sea and his needing it and then, when she suggested Washington State, he said California had restored him, that he would not abandon her. And eventually he told her too about the younger sister born without a brain, only a brainstem—so much like brainstump—that she was supposed to die after a couple of weeks, but she was twenty-one now and a machine still breathed for her, which made Luz think iron lung even though that was not quite right. The wrong mote of dust could kill her, said Ray. One fucking mote. And because of this his mother was always cleaning, cleaning feverishly, cleaning day and night, cleaning with special chemicals the government sent. She didn't want Ray around. "It's too much for her," he said. "Anyway they're screening pretty heavy in Washington now, and the only skills I have I never want to use again."

"You've got charm," she said. "Charisma."

"I think they're maxed out on charisma."

"You can surf."

"You know, I put that on my application."

"What happened with it?"

"An orca ate it, actually."

People always claimed they were staying, but Ray was the first person Luz believed. "So what are you going to do?" she asked.

"Some people I know have a place. Even if they didn't, Hoosiers aren't quitters. California people are quitters. No offense. It's just you've got restlessness in your blood."

"I don't," she said, but he went on.

"Your people came here looking for something better. Gold, fame, citrus. Mirage. They were feckless, yeah? Schemers. That's why no one wants them now. Mojavs."

He was kidding, but still the word stung, here and where it hung on the signage of factories in Houston and Des Moines, hand-painted on the gates of apartment complexes in Knoxville and Beaumont, in crooked plastic letters on the marquees of Indianapolis elementary schools: MOJAVS NOT WELCOME. NO WORK FOR MOJAVS. MOJAVS KEEP OUT. A chant ringing out from the moist nation's playgrounds: The roses are wilted / the orange trees are dead / them Mojavs got lice / all over they head.