f all mornings to wake to the skull-thumping thud of car doors slamming and the eyelid-piercing squeal of tires peeling out, this is by no means the one.
Hugely hung over from last night's bar-hopping romp, Delia the lightweight grimaces at the intrusive noises, opens one crusty eye and props herself up just enough to peer out her cottage window.
           Through a cloud of dust, she sees an unmarked delivery van waiting for the gates to swing open before gunning it onto the road beyond.
           Good God, she thinks - but thinks it very, very quietly, out of respect for her throbbing frontal lobe. A delivery van? Exactly how much crank, crack or crystal are her landlords churning out up there?!
           She manages to fall back asleep, but her dreams are plagued by visions of snow-addled Beachwood customers ransacking her cottage in search of cash, and of Jackson accidentally sifting dope over his French toast, thinking it's powdered sugar.
           But when her clock radio clicks on, blasting the All American Rejects at what today seems an excessive volume, she hurls herself out of bed and encounters an even worse nightmare: her reflection.
           Delia's face is hooch-puffy, her eyes are cupped by purple swags and her hair - well, she would prefer not to discuss her hair.
           She can't go to work looking and feeling like Janis Joplin the morning after. What if Dusty comes in, or someone asks her again to explain the artist's motivation behind that senseless, solid-orange triptych on the gallery's south wall? Forget it. She calls Evan.
           "Hey," she grunts.
           "Ouch," her boss giggles. "I hope you don't expect to greet my customers with that voice, or the face I imagine comes with it."
           "Actually ... "
           "Don't give it another thought," he says. "I've been encouraging you to take a personal day for months, and you're taking it today, no argument. I have to go in anyway, so I'll play Delia today. Remind me again how we turn on the computer?"
           After a nap, shower and half a Big Pig sandwich from yesterday's lunch at Cantwell's Market, Delia pulls on a sundress and heads to Butterfly Beach for some think time.
           Perched on the wall at the edge of the sand, she hugs her knees to her chin and fights back the urge to sob. Perhaps it's the stunning beauty of the sunlight gleaming across the sea's capricious surface that chokes her up. Perhaps it's the lonely, fish-out-of-water feeling she's had since moving to this enticing but unwelcoming burg five months ago.
           More likely, it's the juxtaposition of the two.
           As much as she cherishes the area's natural and architectural beauty, small-town character and sophisticated culture, there are still so many things that feel strange and inhospitable.
           Why does the sun refuse to set over local beaches, she wonders, and why name three streets within the same square mile Carrillo, Cabrillo and Castillo, unless you were deliberately trying to confound newcomers?
           This just isn't home to Delia, and she fears no amount of hard work or schmoozing will make it so. Is this where she wants to be in the event of a bioterrorism attack, holed up in her isolated cottage with duct tape and plastic sheeting over the windows and nothing but reruns of "Seinfeld" on her cable-less television?
           She thinks not.
           There are ugly secrets lurking behind the bougainvillea brambles here, and hostile judgment shrouded in the overcast skies.
           There are people who would love to see her fail, give up and move away just so their friends and family members can have her job, rental unit, parking place.
           So maybe she should give them what they want. If she goes straight to the train station, boards the trusty Pacific Surfliner to Fullerton and never looks back, what will she really be leaving behind? A grunt job as a glorified secretary in a second-tier exhibit space? A room with a view of a drug czar's cushy crib? A weekly shot at notoriety on the Tiburon Tavern's glamorous karaoke stage?
           With a deep breath of ocean air and a tsunami of relief, she makes up her mind. She's going to blow this supposed seaside utopia and start over again somewhere else, someplace unpretentious where she can prove herself valuable, afford HBO and eat red meat in public with no shame.
           As she climbs on her scooter, she can think of only one thing more exciting than freeing herself from the burden of fitting in among Santa Barbara's wealthy, accomplished, beautiful people.
           And that's finally telling the Beachwoods off.

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