shoreline rocks at the south end of Bondi Beach. Pressure builds in my throat while sixty-seven-degree ocean waves charge against the pool’s outer face and rain down on me, bristling across the water’s surface in rhythmic sheets. Swimmers on their daily routines ply the lanes next to me. I follow the black lane lines and part a school of minnows tossed in from the ocean, the balls of my feet scraping against the sandpapery bottom. Soon the pool’s back wall comes into focus, and my ears pick up a muddy underwater voice saying, You got it—! When I reach the end, I drop the weight and dart to the surface, sucking a breath that almost swallows the sky. I grab the pool’s edge and pop up my goggles, resting them on my forehead, my eyes adjusting to the cold blue atmosphere and the prickly sun above.
“Relax next time,” Bomb says, staring down at me from the deep end, a swath of white zinc on his nose. “Don’t fight it. You’re spending too much energy.”
“Next time?” I huff, barely getting the words out.
It occurs to me: Maybe it would have been a good idea to read Nixon’s breathing techniques book on the plane ride over. This type of training is a killer, but it’s exactly what I need to build my lung capacity for hold-downs and fast returns to the lineup in competition.
“One more,” Bomb says. “Put Kimberly’s name on it.” I’m so exhausted from seven attempts at short intervals that I’d opt for twenty-four nonstop hours in Sisyphus, but when Bomb mentions Kimberly’s name, venom races through my veins.
Here’s the thing about Kimberly Masters: she emits a crazy intensity, an electric force that blows onto the beach and sends up sparks when it touches water. I’ll admit that I’m amazed at her talent, the way she can surf even the worst of waves, her nine world titles, her gold medal, and her millions of dollars in sponsorships—but her relentless drive is also enough to make you roll your eyes when she plays surf diva to an adoring press.
It’s not my first time Down Under. After I had graduated from college, I surfed contests at Bells and Snapper Rocks during the Qualifying Series tour, but somehow this trip feels eerie and foreign, and I think I know why. The minute I stepped off the plane, I felt Kimberly’s looming presence, just as I do now, gazing out at a panorama of low-lying hills and buildings smiling around the beach.
I fail my next attempt, making it only thirty meters before I see sparkles behind my eyes and break the surface for air.
“We’re good,” Bomb calls out. “You’ll have eight clear before we leave.”
Bomb scans the beach and removes his sunglasses to wipe off the salt spray. The Southern Hemisphere seems to enhance color, and Bomb’s grass-green windbreaker and orange-flowered board shorts appear supersaturated under the dazzling sun.
“Johno said it should reopen later today,” Bomb says, surveying the beach.
Johno is the driver assigned to us, a thirtyish, come-what-may Aussie with a loose beard and lazy blue eyes. I have to admit that when he first introduced himself, the way he shook his shaggy blond hair from those eyes, his six-foot frame filling out a tight black tee, his sturdy mechanic’s hand reaching out for a shake, and those forearms—did I mention that he had these smooth, beautifully tanned forearms—set off a little ting, and suddenly we were hand in hand on fantasy island. Johno comes from racecar driver lineage and does shuttle work to pay the bills. He explained that yesterday, before we arrived, a promising young surfer—a boy only seventeen—was attacked by a great white seventy-five yards offshore. The shark took his leg clean off after a wipeout as he tried to get back on his board. When the lifeguards got him to shore, the wound was too large for the tourniquet, and in less than two minutes, he bled out. And that’s how it’s been lately around the beaches of New South Wales, I’m told: sharkier than ever. Thank you, climate change. I’ve been up close and personal with these animals, experimenting with bite-force meters from the stern of a research vessel with my fellow marine biology students off the coast of San Francisco. Their power will stop your heart.
Bomb wipes his sunglasses with a microcloth, then angles them in the sun to ensure they’re clean. Seeing him standing there, unfazed by the attack, reminds me of the time he told me—with surprising comes-with-the-job indifference—how he rescued a surfer at Pismo Beach who was lying on his board; how the shark had surged from nowhere, risen up, chomped down on his back, and let go. Bomb said there was so much blood oozing from the frays in the guy’s wet suit that the water became as opaque as red enamel. The surfer held on to the back of Bomb’s board as he paddled in, and though it took 183 stitches to close a radial bite the size of a basketball hoop, he was back on the waves three months later, his razor-smile surfboard mounted to his living room wall as a souvenir.
I don’t care if the beach reopens; if the waves are hollow, fast, or heaven-sent. Though I’m not generally wary of sharks, and most surfers are in shark denial, anyway—I’m in the middle of my period and a bit spooked at the moment. Whether that beast is long gone, sharks can detect blood hundreds of yards away, so there’s no way I’m stepping into the ocean.
A set of waves comes in that’s surf-magazine perfect.
“Pretty as a pint of cold Guinness,” Bomb says, with a sarcastic note. “Just like home.”
He looks down at me. “I’m out there, even if you’re not.”
“You know how I get when Mr. Mulligan comes calling.”
“You sure?” Bomb asks.
He reads my face: no go.
Johno says between the deadly snakes, crocs, venomous spiders, stonefish, blue-ringed octopus, man-eating sharks, and merciless 125-degree Outback heat, there are more things in Oz that can kill you or mess you up in an essential way than anywhere else on earth. There’s a certain national pride when he says this, especially when he caps it with, “Welcome to Australia.”
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