by Jack Lopez
“Where you guys from?” one of the old men asked Amber after staring at her for ten hours.
“Nowhere, everywhere,” I said, but he didn’t hear me because he wasn’t paying any attention to me.
They were from San Francisco and on vacation, I think they said through shouted snippets that I caught. Two couples and the woman, newly divorced. That was why they were here. The older guys gawked at Amber, and when they did it for too long, I howled the long coyote howl — ahohh, ow, ow, ow. Horn dogs all of them. Old guys, drunks in the bar, would come up and shout conversation to Amber.
Maybe that was why she began to cling to me, first holding my hand, and then draping her arm over my shoulder. Jamie, by then, was all over that woman, even making out with her. I had never seen such a thing, such a public display by him.
The border, I supposed. And we were all sort of drunk, so much so that Amber and I even began kissing. I couldn’t believe it! I was making out with Amber. In a bar. Our inhibitions had been sufficiently lowered by alcohol and geography and events, I supposed, for the old social order was down. Gone. The very thing they warned us about in those propaganda films about the evils of alcohol and drugs. I could make out in public with Amber, something I’d always aspired to. Her lips were chapped but soft because of lip gloss, and her taste was sweet, somehow, in spite of the beer we’d drunk, and her soft creamy hair fell over my shoulder as we kissed. Yeah! I’d known her my whole life it seemed, and here we were drinking and making out in a bar in Mexico. Double yeah!
And time passed through a gauzy veil of shouted conversations coupled with the din of sluggish drunken movement. Jamie was hooked up with the woman, and I mostly thought of Amber instead of talking even though she was right next to me, was leaning on me, since it was too hard to talk, and, besides, Amber wasn’t a talker in the best of times. But she’d yelled at me before. And had hit me, had hit me with one of her Hello Kitty backpacks. Right in the head.
I remembered when Jamie and I had been all over Red Vines for a time. We noticed that after eating some, when you spat, whatever you hit would be red. We thought that detail was pretty cool. What do you expect from fourth graders?
So we’d order Red Vines from Claire Watkins or my mother, load up on them, and spit on anything that moved or didn’t move.
I don’t even remember how it happened, but I accidentally spat Red Vine juice on Amber’s white tennis shoes. Amber was in sixth grade and quick. That Hello Kitty backpack must have had twenty pounds of gear in it, the Strawberry Shortcake bag chock-full of makeup and lipstick and other girl paraphernalia, and she tagged me on the side of the head before my spit had even hit her shoe. I was stunned but tried to get away. She ran me down like a cowboy bulldogging a steer, rubbing my face in the their backyard grass.
As I now looked at her hair right in my eyes, I could smell it (ocean), and was almost mad thinking about how she had rubbed my face in the grass. I leaned forward, licking her ear in between all the piercings dangling like tiny Christmas ornaments, moving my way up to an ear cuff, where I chomped down. She had rubbed my face in the grass.
“Ow!” Amber shouted. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Sorry, sorry.”
She gave me a hard look and then went back to watching the woman with Jamie.
How could I get mad at her when I thought about how messed up the whole thing was after Mr. Watkins’s accident? She was always strong, and willing to use her strength, as she’d done when she rubbed my face in the grass. I thought about how far she’d come after Mr. Watkins’s death when she’d befriended the tough girls, girls who got in trouble at school smoking and drinking and fighting even. She was kicked off the cheering squad, but hadn’t seemed to care.
But none of that shit was her true nature, and when the rowdy girls found out she was just posing, they turned on her, sort of. They stopped hanging with her, they stopped including her in their shoplifting sprees, stopped coming to get her to sneak out and drink on school nights.
Amber leaned forward, squinting at Jamie and the woman. I finished my beer, banishing Amber’s transgressions against me, and looked at him too.
He frowned at Amber and me as he came toward us. Once close enough, he leaned down and said, “I’m outta here.”
“No, you don’t!” Amber said.
I was dumbfounded, but he was leaving, walking right out of the bar with that woman! What with all the drinking and with being drunk on Amber, I was mostly unaware of the implications of Jamie’s departure, though I do remember the reflection off his sunglasses as he looked back at us before he walked out the door.
“That’s just great!” Amber yelled through all the other shouts emanating from Club City Light.
“Moo!” I bellowed after Jamie. He flipped me the finger.
The two remaining couples simply stared at Amber and me. I stared back at the old men, howling a few times.
I didn’t like the fact that we were separating. But I was glad for Jamie — that woman was good-looking. She oozed sexuality while prancing out of the bar with him.
With nothing to say to the people from San Francisco, and my periodic howling, Amber pulled me out of Club City Light.
Hand in hand and somewhat drunk, we began walking for the car. The streets were far less crowded, and it must have been after midnight, and Half-man on Skateboard was there, behind us, the wheels making a tiny echo in the damp street.
“That guy’s creepy,” Amber said, becoming aware of his presence.
I said nothing.
I’m not sure how we found the car, or how long it took us, but it must have been pretty late by then. I quickly opened the passenger-side door, letting Amber in. I then stood in the dirt street, just off the broken curb, waiting for Half-man on Skateboard. His passage was slowed, though not by much, over the hard-packed dirt. A thin beach overcast now dusted all the cars and every object around, giving the world a dull sheen. The man rolled up to Amber’s window and stopped. This seemed to amuse her on some level, for she began laughing.
I wasn’t amused; I was outside with the guy. His upper body was like the lower body of a regular person. His arms were like short legs, like Shetland pony legs, and his chest was made of iron. His face glistened with sweat. But he was oddly clean and well-groomed, as far as I could tell. Sort of like a minotaur, though without the bull’s body.
He looked through the window at Amber for a time, and then turned his gaze upon me. His eyes were dark and piercing and his whole body seemed to vibrate with an otherworldliness. He said: “Beware your friend.”
And then skated off into the night, swallowed up by the overcast like a heavenly apparition.
“What did he say?” Amber asked when I got in the car.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she said. She leaned against me.
We looked into each other’s eyes and began kissing. When we came up for air I said, “What about Jamie?”
“Those people are staying at the El Conquistador. Can you find it?”
“You bet.” The town wasn’t that big. We could always get a tourist map, should it come to that.
“He can just wait there. We can get him in the morning.” She leaned against my shoulder and promptly fell asleep.
I sat there thinking what an odd night. I’d wanted to be with Amber forever, and here she was actually with me, and, still, everything was so strange, and the front of my face felt as if it weren’t even there. I remembered looking at ancient Aztecan art and thinking, How could they create that stuff? It was so otherworldly, their art. That was what I felt sitting in my mother’s car in the early hours of the misty Tijuana morning, water droplets on the windshield, obscuring my vision. It was as if we’d been transported to some other planet, an alternative world in which we still inhabited our earthly bodies, but those were the only remnants of the world we’d come from. Amber was with me. We were free of all previous social constraints for the moment, which made me
excited until I thought of my parents, and then the excitement was replaced by dread. But I could feel Amber nestled into me, could feel her soft curves and her breath hot on my neck, and I was prepared to suffer the consequences for this moment.
Starting the car and slowly pulling forward, I drove to a beach south of town with Amber cooing in her drunken state, and we slept together in the back of the SUV, holding each other, and I think that she too had always desired me. She must have.
CHAPTER 6
Just below San Rafael, where the trailer park and houses were, below where my aunt had a trailer, was the surf spot called Puntas. The mesa simply stopped, and the cliff gave way to a miniature bay. Round rocks covered the beach, and they also formed a reef outside, the waves lining up in near-perfect peaks, both a right- and a left-breaking wave. Puntas was best with a healthy swell and a receding tide.
You can’t see the waves breaking from the highway, but you can see the effects of the swell. Relentless lines moving toward the coast. Marching in a cosmic rhythm that God only knows, and that we were trying to tap into. Since there was a swell on this day, and it wasn’t too late, we made for more surfing. Why not? We could go to my aunt’s trailer after. I could drop off Jamie there, and if Amber and I drove fast, we could be back home before it was too late.
Driving off the paved highway and onto the dirt road that wound its way over the small mesa, a dust cloud followed our car as we made our way to the surf spot. There was a flat area to park and camp, and then a gully, and then a path down the cliff’s face. We parked, stretched, and made our way to the mesa’s edge. Except for the light wind that blew, Puntas was seemingly perfect. Tide dropping. Shoulder-to-head-high waves. Greg J. wasn’t down here; we were getting the good waves, the hurricane swells!
“Yeah!” Jamie said. “Oh, my head.”
“Moo,” I whispered. My head hurt too. When we’d picked him up at El Conquistador, he looked sort of young and forlorn, waiting right at the entrance. Looking nothing like the player of the night before, he still wore his sunglasses, and he looked a little tough, but he also looked fifteen standing there on the Tijuana street in the early morning light. When he got in the car he smelled like vomit; it was kind of pathetic. Amber had said nothing. I too gave him some time before I tried to tease him about that woman. To his credit he wouldn’t respond, wouldn’t take the bait, had said nothing about his night. Probably because she had chosen him, not the other way around. Or she was an old lady or something. Who knew?
Amber hadn’t mentioned last night either, but we were all dry-mouthed and grungy and weren’t talking that much. Maybe she was embarrassed in front of Jamie, I don’t know. Maybe she was apprehensive about surfing unknown waters. I know I was scared shitless the first time I’d surfed here.
“The rocks are rounded, and there’s a channel to paddle out in. I’ve never seen a shark here.” Last summer I surfed here every day for a week while my family stayed at my aunt’s trailer. Jamie was with me, and the waves had been small but fun. Another time, I’d camped down here with some older guys. Actually at San Rafael, but we’d ended up surfing here because San Rafael was a one-man wave, and it easily became too crowded. I knew this place, knew it better than Jamie.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, already changing right in front of us, using a towel.
“Moo,” I said.
“Fuck off, Juan.”
The Pacific Ocean in Mexico is the same one you encounter in California. But it feels differently because it’s in another country. Maybe that was why Amber was hesitant, I don’t know. But she was suddenly modest, an irony, because we’d held each other, and I hadn’t slept for her closeness and my desire that had raged all night. Still, we’d not done it, though we’d explored each other’s bodies with a luxurious sense of time, relishing the new sensations as if they’d last forever, as I knew they would.
I came out of my reverie, walked to the opposite side of the car from where Amber was, and began changing out of my pants. The waves were calling, there wasn’t another soul at this very good surf spot, and it appeared that Amber now wanted some privacy.
“It’s an easy paddle out, there’s a channel,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, suddenly unapproachable. I tried to watch her change but she gave me the knife-stare, so I took off down the path to the water.
Getting out into the lineup was slow going. The tide was out and the stones covering the inside were round and slick with a green moss. When it became deep enough to float my board I began paddling. You couldn’t paddle very fast because you’d hit rocks and slip off your board in the light tidal surge inside. Even after it became deeper, every so often you could push off rocks with your hands, but nothing mattered — the sun was hot, and I was in Mexico with Jamie and Amber!
When it was deep enough I dunked myself in the cool refreshing ocean, drenching my aching head. I looked back and saw Amber maneuvering the cliffside. Once in the water she paddled too fast and hit a rock, slithering off her board. Not hurt or anything, she scrambled back on with a new awareness.
Out in the break we huddled together. From the mesa the waves had looked shoulder-high. Yet out here in the lineup, they were overhead. Puntas is so much fun because you can take the drop fading left, hit the bottom and crank a huge turn, and then climb up the face of the wave just ahead of the whitewater, and then bank off the lip with a snapback, and take the drop again. At low tide, as it was now, the lip of the wave throws out just a bit, just enough to make it fun, and with the added size, there was a little something at stake, though the waves were surprisingly gentle for how big they were getting. A perfect wave for Amber to ride. And the reason I loved it so much: its forgiving nature.
“This wave’s cool, Amber,” I said. “It’s easy to make and the water’s not that shallow.”
“You can go either way,” Jamie said.
“I’m fine, you guys,” she said.
“I know,” I said, taking off on the first set wave, bottom turning so that my right hand dragged in the water, and then was covered by the wave — tubed! sort of—without getting in the whitewater. The wave was well overhead, and I could hear both Jamie and Amber yelling encouragement as I nailed a huge cutback once outside the hollow part. With a peak wave the process of getting covered lasts for a very short time. That first wave was probably the best wave I’d ever ridden in my life — an omen, I just knew.
I watched Jamie and Amber take off on the same wave as I paddled back out. Jamie cranked an outrageous bottom turn and then flew up to the lip, where he snapped back and took the drop again. Amber just sort of angled her board right, made it past the first breaking whitewater of the peak, and then did a nice cutback followed by a smooth bottom turn, heading into the lineup in shallower water. She kicked out close to where I paddled and kept gliding on her board toward me. Then she dove forward, her body crossing right in front of me, first her head and then her rear and then her calves right before my eyes as she passed over and into the water. I dove forward, catching her from behind, and when we surfaced, we embraced, wetsuit to wetsuit in the warm sunny waves. Jamie yelled something, but he was too far away to hear, though I had an idea.
“Is Jamie going to get all weird on us?” I said.
“What’s to get weird about?” Amber said. “We’re not doing anything wrong.” She kissed me, untangled our leashes, and got on her board and paddled back out into the lineup.
I followed her, thinking no, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t supposed to be in school right now or anything, and Nestor was probably going to give me a reward or something when we got back. Ah, give it up, I thought, as the excitement of Amber and the energy of the waves took over my consciousness.
On another ride I was tubed in the walled-up shorebreak. I raised my arms in triumph, but neither Amber or Jamie had seen the wave — Jamie was paddling far beyond what had been the takeoff point for a particularly large set that was approaching, and Amber was getting back on her b
oard in the trough between the breaking waves and where the shorebreak formed.
I’d never seen Puntas close out — get so big that the wave loses its shape — but the wave Jamie caught was as near to closing out without doing so as it could be. He took the huge drop, the face of the wave almost twice as tall as he was, and carved a fluid bottom turn heading left, his only mistake. It appeared that the water was deeper in the south end of the bay, the wave’s lip holding up much longer for a rider who would have gone right. Once Jamie trimmed his board on the wave of the day, you could see that it really was no longer a peak. The left, the way Jamie rode, was a huge uneven wall of water with no way for him to make the wave. It engulfed him with no mercy, spitting his board in the air. Jamie surfaced, hollered, and got back on his board
“I’m going in,” I yelled to Amber.
She agreed, and caught a shorebreak wave in. I caught a wave in too. Soon we were both back in shallow water, doing the careful dance through the mossy rocks to get in without breaking an ankle.
It had been afternoon by the time we’d arrived, and the wind had picked up into a steady breeze, which made the relatively unprotected waves bumpy. This fact, along with a rising tide, made for mushy waves, ones that were no longer fun. We dried off in the sun, and for the first time I thought about our next move.
“All right,” I said.
Jamie looked at me.
“Where to now?” Amber said.
“My aunt’s trailer.”
“Do you have a key?” she said, pulling on her new pants.
“It’s not hard to get in.” Once when my father forgot our key, he’d jimmied a window and I had crawled in, then opened the door. I could do it again, though it might be dicey if the owners of the trailer park were around. As we loaded our things for the short ride back up the coast, I said, “It’ll work out.”
