by Jenn Bennett
Whatever it is, I decide not to pursue this any further. Another evasion tactic I’ve learned: Change the subject as many times as you need in order to avoid uncomfortable conversation.
“I see you have a sister who surfs.”
“Yeah,” he says, and he looks happy that I changed the subject too. “Lana’s killing it. She’s got crazy potential. People say she’ll be way bigger than my pops—maybe even bigger than my granddad.”
I wonder if this is a point of contention between them, if it hurts his boy pride. But he’s digging his phone out from his pocket to show me photos. A girl on a board inside the tunnel of a giant, curling wave. I can’t really make out much about her face, only that she’s wearing a yellow-and-black wet suit like a second skin and looking like she’s about to be swallowed by the ocean. Porter shows me others, some closer, some in which she looks impossibly upside down in the middle of the wave. The last one he shows me is the two of them together on the beach, both of them with curly hair drying in the sun, wet suits peeled down to their waists, brown skin gleaming. He’s behind her, arms around her shoulders, and they’re both grinning.
And right now, sitting across from me, there’s nothing but pride on his face. He doesn’t even try to hide it. His eyes are practically sparkling.
“She’s pretty,” I say.
“Looks like my mom. It’s our Hapa genes.” He glances up at me and explains, “Half Hawaiian. My grandparents were Polynesian and Chinese. My dad met my mom when he was my age, surfing the Pipeline on the North Shore. Here.” He pulls up another photo of his mother. She’s gorgeous. And she’s standing on the boardwalk near my favorite churro cart, in front of a familiar shop: Penny Boards. Well. Guess that answers that; it was his family’s shop, after all. Note to self: Pick another churro cart, already!
Feeling strangely shy, I glance at his face and then quickly look away.
“Is it weird having a younger sister who’s going pro?” I ask, more out of nervousness than anything else.
Porter shrugs. “Not really. She’ll be heading out on the Women’s Championship Tour for the first time next year. It’s kind of a big deal. She gets to travel all over the world.”
“What about school?”
“My dad’s going with her. He’ll homeschool her during the tour. I’ll stay and help my mom run the shop.” Porter must see the look of doubt on my face because he blinks a few times and shakes his head. “Yeah, it’s not ideal, but Lana doesn’t want to wait until she’s eighteen. Anything could happen, and she’s on top of her game now. On the tour, she gets a small salary and a chance to win prize money. But the big thing is the exposure, because the real money is in the product endorsements. That’s pretty much what we used to live off of until Dad lost his arm.”
Sounds a little pageant mom–y, making the kid perform on stage for money, but I keep this opinion to myself. “You guys don’t own the shop?” I say, nodding toward his phone.
“Sure, but what people don’t understand is that the shop barely breaks even. The overhead is ridiculous; rent keeps going up. And now that my dad isn’t surfing anymore . . . well, no one wants a one-armed man pimping hats.”
Yikes. This conversation is heading into awkward waters. I turn away to find the sea monster’s big eye judging me—You had to be on your phone, looking this up at work, didn’t you? Couldn’t wait until you got home?—so I turn back toward the table and pick at my half-eaten cookie.
“I knew one out of three had to be right.”
“Mmm?” I swallow cookie while trying to look cool and nearly choke.
“You like sugar cookies. I didn’t know which one. I was just hoping you weren’t vegan or gluten-free or something.”
I shake my head.
He breaks off a piece of my cookie and eats it, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t know where his hands have been. We aren’t friends. And just because his dad’s missing an arm, doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven him for being a grade-A assbag.
“You aren’t going to ask me?” he says. “Or do you already know?”
“Know what?”
“How my dad lost his arm?”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t already know. Are you going to tell me?” Or should I just wait until you leave and look it up? That works for me, thanks, see you later, hasta luego.
“Three years ago, I was fifteen, a year younger than Lana. I went down to Sweetheart Point to watch my dad surf for this charity thing. It wasn’t a competition or anything. Mostly older surfers, a few big names. Out of nowhere . . .” He pauses for a second, lost in thought, eyes glazed. Then he blinks it away. “I see this big shape cut through the water, a few yards away. At first, I didn’t know what it was. It heads straight for my dad and knocks him right off his board. Then I saw the white collar around its neck and the mouth open. Great white.”
My mouth falls open. I shut it. “Shark?”
“A small male. They say it’s like getting struck by lightning, but damned if it didn’t happen. And let me just tell you—it wasn’t like Jaws. Hundreds of people around me on the beach and no one screamed or ran. They all just stood there staring while this thousand-pound monster was dragging my dad through the water, and he was still leashed to his board by the ankle.”
“Oh, my dear God,” I murmur, stuffing half of the second cookie in my mouth. “Whaa haaappened next?” I say around a mouthful of sugar.
Porter takes the rest of the cookie, biting off a corner and chewing while shaking his head, still looking a little dazed. “It was like a dream. I didn’t think. I just raced into the water. I didn’t even know if my dad was still alive or whether I would be if I bumped into the shark. I swam as hard as I could. I found the board first and followed the leash to the body.”
He pauses, swallowing. “I tasted blood in the water before I got to him.”
“Jesus.”
“The arm was already gone,” Porter says quietly. “Skin flapping. Muscles hanging. It was a mess. And I was so scared I was going to make it worse, carrying him back to shore. He was heavy and unconscious, and nobody was coming to help. And then the shark doubled back and tried to get my arm too. I managed to hit him and scare him off. Took sixty-nine stiches to sew me back together.”
He unfolds his left arm until it’s extended in front of me, and rucks up the short sleeve of his security guard uniform. There, above the bright red surf watch, are his zigzagging pink scars, bared for my perusal. Looking at them feels pornographic. Like I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing, and any moment, someone will catch me . . . but at the same time, I can’t make myself look away. All this golden skin, all these eggshell-glossy scars, a railroad track, crisscrossing miles of sculpted lean muscle. It’s horrifying . . . and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Seeing the scars reminds me of something else about myself. Something I can’t tell him. But it tugs on a dark memory inside me that I don’t want to think about, and a fluttering of unstable emotions threatens to break the surface.
I breathe deep to push those feelings back down, and when I do, there’s that scent again, Porter’s scent, the wax and the clean coconut. Not the suntan-lotion fake kind. What is this stuff? It’s driving me nuts. I don’t know if it’s the lure of this wonderful smell, or his story about the shark, or my urge to contain my own unwanted memories, but before I know what I’m doing, my fingertips are reaching out to trace the jagged edge of one of the scars by his elbow.
His skin is warm. The scar is raised, a tough, unyielding line. I follow it around his elbow, into the soft, sensitive hollow where his arm bends.
All the golden hairs on his forearm are standing up.
He sucks in a quick breath. I don’t think he meant to, but I heard it. And it’s then that I know I crossed some kind of line. I snatch my hand back and try to think of something to say, to erase what I just did, but it just comes out as a garbled grunt. And that makes things even weirder between us.
“Break,” I finally ma
nage. “Gotta get back.”
I’m so embarrassed, I stumble over my chair as I leave. The ensuing metallic grate of metal on slate echoes through the café, causing several museum guests to look up from their afternoon coffee. Who’s artful now, Rydell? That never happens to me. I’m not clumsy. Ever, ever, ever. He’s messing with my game. I can’t even look at him anymore, because my face is on fire.
What is happening to me? I swear, every time I have any interaction whatsoever with Porter Roth, something always goes screwy. He’s an electrical outlet, and I’m the stupid toddler, always trying to poke around and stick my finger inside.
Someone needs to slap a big DANGER! sign on that boy’s back before I electrocute myself.
LUMIÈRE FILM FANATICS COMMUNITY
PRIVATE MESSAGES>ALEX>NEW!
@mink: Have you ever had a serious girlfriend?
@alex: Yes. I think. Sort of. What do you qualify as serious?
@mink: Hey, you’re the one who said yes. I was just curious. How long and why did you break up?
@alex: Three months and the short story is she said I didn’t want to have fun anymore.
@mink: Ouch. The long story?
@alex: Her idea of fun included hooking up with my best friend when I was out of town.
@mink: I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.
@alex: Don’t be. I’d checked out. It wasn’t all her fault. If you don’t pay attention to things, they wander off. I learned my lesson. I’m vigilant now.
@mink: Vigilant with who?
@alex: I think you mean with WHOM.
@mink: :P
@alex: No one in particular. I’m just saying, I’m not the same person I used to be. I confessed; now your turn. Anyone you’ve been vigilant about in the past?
@mink: A couple of guys for a couple of weeks, nothing major. Now I pretty much look out for myself. It’s a full-time job. You’d be surprised.
@alex: One day you might need some help.
“You see how picky I am about my shoes, and they only go on my feet.”
—Alicia Silverstone, Clueless (1995)
8
* * *
I don’t work with Porter for the next few shifts. Grace, either, which bums me out. The museum sticks me with some older lady, Michelle, who’s in her twenties and has problems counting her cash fast enough. She’s slowing down the line and it’s driving me crazy. Crazy enough to march up to Mr. Cavadini’s office, peer around the corner . . . and then just change my mind and clock out for the day instead of saying anything.
That’s how I roll.
One morning, instead of roaming the boardwalk, Sherlocking my way from shop to shop, stuffing my face with churros, I spend it pummeling Dad in two rounds of miniature golf. He took a half day off from work to hang with me, which was pretty nice. He gave me the choice of either the golf or paddleboarding—and no way in heaven or hell was I dipping my toe in the ocean after hearing Porter’s tale of terror on the high seas. Nuh-uh. I told Dad the whole story, and he was a little freaked himself. He said he’d seen Porter’s dad outside the surf shop and knew the family were surfers, but just assumed the missing-arm incident had happened a long time ago. He had no idea how it went down, or that Porter had rescued him.
See. Only ten days in town, and I was already filling Dad in on choice gossip he hadn’t heard, living here for an entire year. The man needs me, clearly.
My reward for spanking Dad’s behind in putt-putt is that I get to pick our lunch location. Since we grabbed a light breakfast before our golf excursion, I call a breakfast do-over at the Pancake Shack. It’s got a 1950s Americana diner vibe inside, and we grab stools at the counter, where a waitress in a pink uniform brings us glasses of iced tea while we wait for our pancake orders. My dreams have finally come true! Only, they haven’t, because the Pancake Shack doesn’t exactly live up to my expectations, not even their “world-famous” almond pancakes, which I give one thumb down.
When I voice my lukewarm grade, Dad sticks a fork in my order and samples a corner. “Tastes like Christmas.”
“Like those almond cookies grandma used to make.”
“The gross, crumbly ones,” he agrees. “You should have ordered a Dutch Baby. Taste mine. It’s terrific.”
His is way better, but it’s no churro.
“Still haven’t found him, huh?” he asks, and I know he’s talking about Alex. I told him the basic deal, that I’m gun-shy about confessing to Alex that I’ve moved out here, and that I’m trying to find him on my own. Dad and I are a lot alike in many (unfortunate) ways. He gets it. Mom wouldn’t. Mom would have freaked her pants off if she knew Alex even existed in the first place, so there’s that. But Mom didn’t really pay much attention to anything going on in my life back in DC, so it wasn’t like I went to any trouble to hide him. And now that I’m here, I notice that she still isn’t all that concerned, as I have yet to receive any communication from her since the initial Did Bailey arrive okay? phone calls. Whatever. I try not to think about her lack of concern too much.
From my purse, I retrieve a tourist map of the boardwalk. It’s just a cartoony one I picked up for free one morning. I’m using a marker to X out the shops that I’ve either surveyed or that don’t fall into the parameters that Alex has unwittingly provided me—can’t see the ocean from the window, not a shop with a counter, et cetera. “This is what’s left to cover,” I tell Dad, pointing the sections of the map I haven’t hit yet.
Dad grins and chuckles, shaking his head. I try to snatch the map away, but he holds it against the diner counter, moving aside the cast-iron skillet that holds his half-eaten Dutch Baby. “No, no. Let me see this marvelous thing. You’re thorough and precise, a chip off the ol’ block.”
“Ugh,” I complain. “Weirdo.”
“What? This is quality CPA blood running in your veins, right here,” he says proudly, thumping the map like a dork. “Wait, how do you know he just wasn’t working in one of these places on the day you went by? Or unloading a truck out in the alley?”
“I don’t, but I figure I’ll hit every shop twice.” I show him my homemade legend on the corner of the map. Dots for even-day visits, squares for odd. Male symbol for a boy my age working there—but ruled out as a possibility for Alex upon initial assessment. Triangles for churro cart locations. And wavy lines for all three stray boardwalk cats I’ve found so far, including Señor Don Gato.
He puts his arm around my shoulder and kisses the side of my head. “With superior deductive skills like this, how could you not find him? And if he’s not worth the hunt, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I knew I liked you.”
“You kind of have to,” he says with a grin.
I grin back.
Someone walks over to the counter, and Dad leans forward to look past me. His face goes all funny. He clears his throat. “Good morning, Sergeant Mendoza.”
Waiting for a waitress to take her order is a tall, curvy Latina cop in a navy uniform. Wavy hair, brown woven through with strands of gray, is pulled tight into a thick ponytail at the base of her neck. A pair of dark purple sunglasses sits on her face. I recognize those: She’s the cop who flashed her lights at Davy and Porter at the crosswalk, the first day I got into town.
“Morning, Pete,” she says in a husky voice. One corner of her mouth curls at the corner. Just slightly. Then her face turns unreadable. I think she’s peering down at me, but it’s hard to tell, especially with the sunglasses on. “Dutch Baby?” she says.
“You know it,” my dad answers, and laughs in an odd way.
I look between them. My dad clears his throat again. “Wanda, this is my daughter, Bailey. Bailey, this is Sergeant Wanda Mendoza of the Coronado Cove Police Department.”
Like I couldn’t figure that out. She smiles and sticks out her arm to offer me a firm handshake. Wow. Knuckle-cracking firm. I’m awake now. And I’m not sure, but I think she might be uncomfortable. Do cops get nervous? I didn’t think that was possible.
>
“Heard a great deal about you, Bailey.” She has? Who the heck is this and why hasn’t Dad mentioned her? Are they friends?
“I do the sergeant’s taxes,” Dad explains, but it sounds like a lie, and both of them are looking in different places—him at the counter and her at the ceiling. When her head tilts back down, she taps her fingernails on the counter. I glance at the gun holstered to her hip. I don’t like guns; they make me uncomfortable, so I guess we’re even.
“I like your brows,” she finally says. “Glamorous.”
I’m caught off guard for a second. Then I’m pleased. “I do them myself,” I tell her. Finally someone who appreciates the importance of a good arch. Plucking is painful.
“Impressive,” she confirms. “So, how’re you liking California?”
“It’s a different planet.” I realize that might not sound positive, so I add, “I like the redwoods and the churros.”
That makes her smile. Almost. She lifts her chin toward my dad. “Have you taken her to the posole truck?”
“Not yet,” he says. “She’s never had posole. Have you?” he asks, giving me a questioning look.
“No clue what you’re talking about.”
She blows out a breath and shakes her head like Dad has let down his entire country. “I’ve got a messed-up schedule right now, but sometime in the next couple of weeks, we should take her.”
We? Take her? They are a we?
“It will knock your socks off,” Dad assures me while the cop places a to-go order with the waitress. He stands and fumbles with his wallet. “That reminds me . . . Bailey, give me a second. I need to talk to the sergeant about something.” He hands me a wad of cash to pay for our check and then he walks with the cop down the counter, where they lean a little closer, but don’t seem to be talking about anything all that important. That’s when it all comes into focus.
Jeezy creezy. My dad’s dating a cop.
