appear on the swell charts weekly—where I’ll soon begin my final training for Olympic gold. I run for the surf, board under my arm, sand beneath my feet, and breathe the fishy air that’s permanently seeped into my lungs. My nose is white with zinc, and the first cool beat of ocean rides up from my toes and ignites my spine. What I leave onshore are the unsettling thoughts of a father who can no longer find his way and the profound realization that if he dies by his own hand or goes certifiably crazy, it’ll be me and me alone, face-to-face with a cold, unforgiving world.
My board slaps the water, and now I’m flat on my stomach, arms paddling at my sides, head up, eyes ahead, absorbing the sea spray and drawing oxygen with each stroke. The brine of passing waves hits my lips on my way to the lineup seventy-five yards out. I sit on my board, fifteen feet of murky blue beneath me, and squint out to the Pacific’s soft orange horizon, waiting for a wave. A sea lion breaks the surface and barks a few feet away, startling me before it rolls and slips under, its dark fins cutting a wake as it disappears into the deep. No sharks today.
All around me water rises and falls, peaking this way and that, random disorder—just like my life at this moment, I think—nothing solid beneath me until the randomness gathers upon itself for a muscly five-footer that’s heading my way. I swing the board’s nose to shore and paddle hard, hearing a roar, feeling the elevator ride that takes me higher. I push off the board’s rails and rise to my feet, eyeing the section ahead of me, gaining speed, executing solid rail turns and an air reverse before the wave crumbles and dies.
Four hours later, hidden behind the flowered towel wrapped around my waist, I wriggle into a pair of worn jeans and take a break in the beach parking lot before another surf session and an hour of weight training to cap off the afternoon. This is the time when the strand is dense with locals and whizzing beach bikes, families out for a Sunday stroll, and the lame surf kooks racing to the shoreline to grope the last of the morning’s waves. My short board pokes nose first from the Charger’s open trunk, safe in the shade, while the SoCal sun warms my fair skin: a sun that can char me whole if I don’t take my baby-safe SPF 80 sunscreen pill. Jax says surfing is like boxing—the only way to master it is to trade shots in the ring or, in my case, the water, which is the plight of every competitive surfer: no waves, no workout. But today, thanks to an unexpected south swell, my readout says I claimed twenty-two waves (six of them perfect), more than I’ve had in a week, and what I need every day if I expect to take gold.
Pacquiao rolls into the lot in his blotchy, sun-faded blue Honda, searching for a spot among the cars that are now taking up every available parking space. He waves to me through the cracked windshield, smiling with big teeth, his near-blind cataract-opaque eye hiding behind wraparound sunglasses. If it weren’t for the fact that he retrofitted his car with self-drive (a questionable cost-benefit move for a car at 170,000 miles), he wouldn’t be able to drive legally at all. I point for him to pull up and block the Charger, which he does. The Honda spits when it dies. Pac claims to be a third cousin of the famous eight-division boxer Manny Pacquiao, but without the formidable skills of the champion. There’s a snappy energy in the way he moves, though he’s in his late forties, small—maybe five foot five—all sinew, and tan as aged hickory, with a head made for a hard hat (though I’m not aware he ever worked construction). He’s been a loyal friend to my father for years.
Pac doesn’t know the sport of kings, but he’s learned enough from Jax to know that you can dehydrate while surfing, even when you’re drenched in a gazillion tons of seawater. He reaches across his seat, gets out, and offers me a frosty kiwi-lime BOP energy drink packed with electrolytes and B vitamins; everything I need to rehydrate fast. I thank him, and he’s so selfless that my gratitude makes him almost feel guilty. This is the thoughtfulness I’ve come to know for as long as he’s been around, years before Mom died, and Jax retired from naval command.
“You saw the holes in the wall?” I ask, sipping the drink.
“I saw them,” Pac says, shuffling to the back of his car. He springs the trunk and fumbles inside. A few seconds later, he’s standing in front of me holding up a black Ringside boxing duffel by its nylon straps, the bag sagging heavily in a big deep U.
“For you, happy girl,” he says, tossing the bag into the Charger’s trunk.
“You’re a president and a king,” I say. “Thanks.”
I never really understood their friendship. Jax, with his arcane love of modern jazz and fondness for listening to the BBC World News beamed down from satellite radio; and Pac, in his humble simplicity where a big night out is a nosebleed seat at a Padres game. Their interests seem to meet somewhere in the middle: the Del Mar racetrack betting window and the chintzy bets they put on losing thoroughbreds that are made up for with cheap beers—that, and their steadfast contempt for the tech-rich twenty-eight-year-olds who buy yacht supplies from them at their low-paying, dead-end job.
Alerted by the smell of burning oil, Pac pops his car hood, sets the steel hood rod, and surveys the Honda’s motor.
“Promise me you’ll eagle-eye him when I’m gone,” I plead. “I can monitor his meds remotely if he keeps that stupid bio-band on, but the day-to-day . . .”
Pac twists the oil cap and cocks his head at me from under the hood.
“Don’t worry,” he says, laughing, “I’ll use my good eye.”
That comment has me worried even more.
“Sorry, but you know what I mean,” he says.
“Just keep him busy.”
Busy is a good thing, and it brings to mind the Friday-night games of seven-card stud that Jax holds at the house with Pac and a few rotating swabbies in Jax’s address book. It’s one night he can be watched, but from what I hear, last week’s game was bit of a dustup.
“Did that thing with Chester ever get settled?”
Chester is Pac’s three-hundred-pound Hawaiian friend who plays the ukulele and can knock off Georgia O’Keeffe–style oil paintings that fool even art experts. He tried to settle his fifty-dollar losing bet with a painting of blue morning glories.
“Your father told Chester if he wanted flowers, he’d go to a florist. Chester was offended because he trades paintings all the time. Your father says he’s not welcome until he pays up.”
I roll my eyes at the nonsense grown men can bring upon themselves when they’re drunk and womanless.
“Just keep him from killing himself, OK?”
“We work,” Pac says, slamming the car hood. “We play.”
“Playing doesn’t include getting stupid drunk,” I remind him. “Dr. Ruttonjee’s orders.”
Pac smiles as if I’m stating the obvious. “Yes, yes,” he says, “I know.”
“Oh, I found some cheap flights to the carrier event. Tell him that. It’ll give him something to look forward to.”
“I’ll put my eagle eye on him,” Pac says, pointing to his good eye. “I promise.”
We hug and he’s off, the Honda rattling to the lot’s exit. I want to put my trust in Pac, let go and focus on the competition ahead, but as he feeds into beach traffic and disappears, I’m bracing for the kind of soul-leveling trouble that’s bound to wreck my life.
10
The
