The Surf Guru

by Doug Dorst

  The Sunbeam receptionist sits behind an old wooden desk that looks like it was scavenged from a school. Around the edges of the blotter, Jo can see memorials of crushes hacked into the wood: KD + CS. WT AND AB FOREVER.

  “I’m here to take the test,” Jo says. “Bud’s expecting me.”

  “Oh,” the receptionist says, looking up. “You’re back.” She calls Bud on the intercom, then looks at Jo and says, “Have a seat. There’s coffee if you want it.”

  Jo fills a paper cup with coffee, black, and sits in a green vinyl chair pocked with cigarette burns. She picks up a newsmagazine from a box on the floor and tries to read an article, but her vision blurs around the edges and she finds herself locking onto one or two words at a time, not absorbing them but not able to move on. She leafs through, looking at the pictures, and stops on a two-page spread in tropical colors. On the left is a toucan sitting in a tree, its beak open so that it seems to be smiling; on the right is a Happy Couple in bright bathing suits frolicking on a deserted beach. In neon red letters across the bottom it says, Lose yourself in Belize. Which, honestly, sounds like a pretty good idea. But as she stares at the man and woman in the magazine she starts to feel that there’s something important she has forgotten to do, something else she’s fucked up. She can’t figure out what it is, but that thought is there, bubbling around in the tar pit of her brain. What?

  There’s a touch on her shoulder and she jumps, dumping her coffee into the box of magazines. She looks up and sees a lanky man with a red goatee and a baseball cap that says YOU PISS ME OFF in block letters. He smells like Right Guard and cigarettes.

  “I’m Jim,” he says. “Bud’s busy, so I’m going to give you the test.”

  “Sorry about the coffee,” she says. Her tongue feels wrong. Swollen.

  “Brenda will clean it up.”

  “Clean it up yourself, Jim,” Brenda says from behind the desk.

  Jim looks at Jo. He has greedy eyes, she thinks. “You ready?” he asks, and she nods.

  He leads her out the back door, onto the paved lot they use for the driving course. As they walk toward the tractor-trailer, he says to her, “We don’t get many girls wanting to drive. Not many good-looking ones, anyway.”

  She says nothing.

  “Be nice to have a pretty face around here,” he goes on.

  “Brenda looks like a horse. You got a boyfriend?” He moves closer to her, their arms almost rubbing, his smoke-and-deodorant cloud closing in on her.

  She knows how to play this game, she learned a long time ago, but she’s tired and a little nauseous now and she can’t quite focus her eyes, and, you know what, she’s really, really sick of big, stupid men who have to have everything their way. Fuck that and fuck them. “Yeah, I have a boyfriend,” she says. “He just got out of jail. Assault with a deadly weapon.”

  Jim whistles through his teeth, looks around to see if anyone’s watching, leans in closer. “You’re tough,” he says. “I like that. Gotta be tough for this job.”

  “Good,” she says, and she keeps walking.

  “Bud said you’ve taken the test before.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Twice.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stop in front of the rig. It looks impossibly long and unwieldy. She understands in theory how you’re supposed to control the thing when you’re backing it up, but she can’t get her brain to make the right decisions when she’s up there. Not without time to think, breathe, talk herself through it at her own pace. “A pretty girl like you could get certified in about five minutes,” Jim says. He nods up at the cab, huge and red and painted with a tomato haloed by the sun.

  She could do it—just say yes, get him off, get the job, and run. Let’s face it, she’s not at her best right now, all floaty and exhausted and numb—really, she’s so out of it that she’d hardly even notice he was there—and to fail again is to fail for good, and then what? She doesn’t want to do anything else. The thoughts spin and buzz around until she realizes she expects herself to say yes to him, and that’s when the calm blooms inside her head and drapes warmth all over her, and she decides she can beat this test, she can drive that goddamn rig as well as anyone, she could take the thing in reverse down Lombard Street if she wanted to. “Cut the shit, Jim,” she says. “Let’s just do the test.”

  “Have it your way,” he says, pulling away, his eyes narrowing. He takes off his cap, smooths his thinning, greasy hair. “Start with the inspection. Go.”

  Deep breath. She knows the drill, knows it cold. Check the hoses, check the oil, check the coolant. Check the belts and the clutch, the signals and the horn. Driveshaft, air brakes, tires and rims. There’s a rhythm to it, a groove, feel the patterns and forget your nerves. Shock absorbers, slack adjusters, torque arms, mounts. Mounting bolts, locking jaws, kingpin, and so on. It’s a breeze. She climbs into the cab and the engine growls all around her and she feels more powerful, more in control, than she can ever remember.

  “All right,” Jim says from the passenger seat. “Now back out of here and follow the yellow lines through the cones. And I want you to pretend that every single one of those cones is a member of my family.”

  It’s reverse time but that’s cool, she still has the rhythm, still has the groove, and when she grips the shift she hears that Feat song in her head: If you give me weed, whites, and wine, and you show me a sign, I’ll be willin’ to be movin’. I’m willing, she thinks, I’m willing and I’m moving. She drops it into reverse and starts back, smoothly, smoothly, no problem. She checks her mirrors, she’s drifting a little, no problem, turn into the drift, get the trailer righted, turn back, no problem. She’s on a roll, she’s rolling, she can do this in her sleep, and a month from now she’ll be waking up in her rig just off Highway 58 in Tehachapi with Lowell George singing to her as she watches the sun rise over the fields of windmills.

  “Congratulations,” Jim says. “You just flattened my fucking grandmother.”

  She winds her way up the Los Altos hills, the Fiesta’s engine slipping almost every time she hits the gas. Sometimes, instead of backing off so that the gears can catch, she stomps the pedal harder, making the engine scream. She wants to hear the noise.

  The pint bottle of Jack that she bought in Gilroy is in the passenger seat, half-empty. All she wants to do is get back to the pool, to Shane and his tennis ball, to the floating chair, where she’ll be able to sit alone and drink and enjoy the warmth of the sun and the fruits of the Crenshaws’ medicine cabinet. She’ll call Wayne and promise something vague, buy herself some time.

  Jo turns into the driveway. Spencer’s car is gone, but now there are two others: in the open garage, the Crenshaws’ convertible; in the driveway, Wayne’s pristine white ’72 Comet. Before her foot touches the brake she remembers that the house is a mess, that the Crenshaws, who have always trusted her, always given her a place to stay, have come home to dead plants, a pool full of beer cans, tire tracks across the lawn. And now Wayne is there. He could be sitting in the living room, sobbing. He could be holding them hostage with a kitchen knife. Hard to know with him anymore. One thing she does know: they’re waiting for her.

  She also knows that the gas pedal, the true patron saint of lost causes, is the one thing that’ll get her out of this, but she feels drawn to the house—feet on the driveway, on the flagstone path, on the front steps—feels like she’s marching toward something she’s meant to confront. The only question rolling through her mind as she stares blearily at the wood grain of the door is whether she should ring the bell or just walk right in.

  The four of them are sitting around the table by the pool. Mrs. Crenshaw is sipping iced coffee and Kahlua from the astronaut mug—That’s mine! Jo has the urge to tell her—and gazing off at the summer-brown hills in the distance. Jo and Mr. Crenshaw have vodka gimlets that the older man insisted on mixing. Wayne is holding a bottle of mineral water loosely by the neck. Birds are chirping. Shane is racing around in the yard, chasing squirrels, snappin
g at bugs like nothing at all is amiss.

  “I’m a reasonable man,” Mr. Crenshaw says. “I don’t expect the house to be perfect if we come home early. But this?” He raises his palm up. He could be referring to the entire universe. “This is too much. It raises serious questions.” He rattles the ice in the glass to free the last few drops of his drink. He pours himself another from the cocktail shaker, which is sweating.

  Jo nods. She glances quickly at Wayne. His head looks too large for his frame now that he has no hair. Four red-spotted bandages decorate his scalp, covering the nicks. He sits tall in his seat, composed, looking waxen in the bright sun. “It looks like there was a party here last night,” Wayne says, in a flat, uninflected voice she hardly recognizes.

  “It does, Wayne,” Mrs. Crenshaw says.

  “A regular Cinco de Mayo,” Mr. Crenshaw says.

  This feels wrong to her, like it’s happening on a sound-stage, everything and everyone too quiet, too detached. Confusing and creepy. Or is she just too wasted to understand everyone’s angle?

  “It’s rude to bring strangers into other people’s homes,” Wayne says, tapping his glass on the table—gently, but it makes her nervous anyway. He’s never had a good sense of his own strength. She wonders if he found Spencer here. If he hurt him. But those aren’t the kinds of things you just ask out of the blue.

  “I’m sensing a pattern of irresponsible behavior,” Mr. Crenshaw says.

  Wayne turns to the other man. “Me, too,” he agrees. “Jo isn’t focusing on her responsibilities these days at all.”

  Wayne is up to something, she thinks. Or he’s on new and weirder meds. Maybe both. Even the Crenshaws seem strange, precariously calm. “I’m sorry,” Jo says. “I let some things get away from me.”

  “Would you like to talk about it, Jo?” Mrs. Crenshaw asks.

  “We could help, if you’d let us,” Mr. Crenshaw says.

  “I took a workshop on enneatypes,” Mrs. Crenshaw offers.

  “You’re definitely a Six.” She puts down the mug and drops her hand, limp and sweaty, on Jo’s bare arm. “I’m a Three,” she adds.

  “Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Jo says quietly.

  “Your friend Wayne has been very worried about you,” Mr. Crenshaw says. “And, from the sound of it, for good reason. It sounds like you might need some help. Guidance. Therapy. Something.”

  Jo doesn’t know what Wayne told them, but it had to have been a lie. And they’re trusting him over her? She’s not the one who ended up in the fucking emergency room getting her stomach pumped. But she feels too tired and sunken to mount a defense. She stands up on shaky legs. “This is too weird,” she says. “I’m leaving.”

  “See?” Mrs. Crenshaw says. “That’s classic Six.”

  “Suit yourself, Jo,” Mr. Crenshaw says. “But if that’s your attitude, we have to sever ties. We have to let you go.”

  “What?” Jo asks. “Let me go where?” She steals a glance at Wayne. She thinks she sees a ghost of a smile appearing at one corner of his mouth.

  “You’re burning bridges here, Jo,” Wayne says.

  “We’re not saying you’re a bad person,” Mrs. Crenshaw says.

  “No,” Mr. Crenshaw says, swirling his drink. “But you don’t seem willing to give us the respect we think we deserve.”

  “That’s not healthy for us,” Mrs. Crenshaw says.

  “We’ve done a lot for you,” Mr. Crenshaw says.

  “We’ve known you a long time.”

  “Well, we thought we knew you.”

  “Relationships are important, Jo,” Wayne says. “You don’t just go around burning bridges.”

  “Exactly, Wayne,” Mr. Crenshaw says. He drains his glass, spits an ice cube into the bushes. “We’ve said our piece,” he says. “I’m sorry it has to end this way. I’m guessing now that you two have things to talk about. Which we’d prefer you did elsewhere.” He pulls out his checkbook, clicks his pen, and fills out a check while humming tunelessly to himself. He thumps a period after his signature, then tears the check out and slides it across the table to Jo. “Happy trails,” he says.

  Mrs. Crenshaw watches Jo closely as she gathers up her belongings, then stands in the foyer and holds the front door open for her. Wayne is in the driveway, leaning on the Comet and smoking a cigarette. Can you please walk out there with me? she wants to ask. I can’t trust him right now. But the front door closes behind her, and she knows that the Crenshaws will be just as happy without her, a Happy Couple with a house and a dog and a pool and numbered personalities and a daughter who’ll soon be able to write any prescription they want.

  Wayne flicks his butt into the grass and stares at her. Jo, her face burning, specks of light dancing in her field of vision, says, “Are you trying to scare me? If you are, can we get it over with?”

  “Don’t be silly,” he says. “I love you.” He pats his chest, his legs, as if to say, Look, no weapons.

  Shane prances up to them and drops a tennis ball at Wayne’s feet. Wayne winds up and kicks it into a dense patch of pachysandra. The dog runs after it and paws gently through the green, unconcerned as ever.

  “I’m hitting the road next week,” she tells him. “You know, driving. Hauling tomatoes.” The lie comes easily. She tries not to look surprised that he buys it.

  “I want you to do some thinking while you’re out there,” he says, nodding slowly. “While you’re out there alone.”

  She looks into Wayne’s eyes, which are almost all pupil, only a razor-thin ring of blue wreathing the black, and she knows she is staring into the eyes of a dead man. If he’s not dead yet, he will be soon. “I don’t need to think,” she says. “I’ve made up my mind.” She climbs into the driver’s seat of the Fiesta.

  “You’ll be back,” he says through the open window, leaning close to her.

  A drop of sweat falls from his naked head, and suddenly she feels sorry for him. “Please don’t get your hopes up,” she says. “I couldn’t live with that.” She turns the key and the engine coughs to life.

  “I’ll be here,” Wayne says, smiling, rocking back on his heels.

  Only then does Jo notice she has parked right behind Wayne’s car, too close, the bumpers almost kissing. She leans her head on the steering wheel. “You have to move your car,” she says without looking up. “I can’t back out.”

  Three days later, Jo gets the Fiesta back from the shop and drives out to San Gregorio Beach for the afternoon, where she sits alone watching people and dogs and gulls and fishing boats. When the fog settles in, she drives the twisting roads back toward Spencer’s apartment. Before dinner, they share beers and Percodans on the cramped cement deck overlooking the complex’s pool. They don’t talk much.

  The salmon ends up a little burned and the mashed potatoes are out of a box, but that’s all right—Jo doubts she’ll be able to taste much, since the pills have made her mouth numb. Spencer opens a window and tries to wave the smoke out of the apartment, then drops himself into the other chair at the table. He brushes bits of food off the stolen JavaPlenty apron he’s wearing. “So what happens now?” he asks her.

  “The Fiesta’s fixed,” she says. “It’s time to get on the road.”

  “Why Belize?”

  “It sounds like a happy place. Like feliz. Happy.”

  “Can you really get all the way down there? There are roads?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  He adjusts his glasses and studies her face, and for the first time in a long, long time, she can’t tell what he’s seeing in her. The smoke alarm goes off, but Spencer waves a dish-towel under it and it falls silent again. “Do you want company?” he asks.

  “I don’t think so, no,” she says. She stares at the dinner he has cooked for them. “Thanks, though. Really.”

  “If you need money—”

  “I’m good, Spencer. Really. I’ve got what I need.”

  Long after midnight, under the galaxy of glow-in-the-dark decals on Spencer
’s bedroom ceiling, she realizes she does want company. Just not his. Or Wayne’s, or anyone else’s she knows. She turns onto her side and watches him sleep, snoring lightly, with his good ear on the pillow. She’ll be able to leave without waking him.

  It’s three a.m. and the sprinklers are still on. Their steady beating washes away the clink of the flowerpot as Jo removes the key from under it. The side door opens noiselessly. Inside, she punches a keypad (the code, in phone letters, spells out SHANE) and a winking red light turns cool green. In one hand she has a stick of beef jerky, in the other, a small piece of duct tape to stop the jingle of his tags. She walks toe-to-heel toward the laundry room, her rubber soles quiet on the hardwood. The dog is in his bed, curled up like a fawn. “Hey, baby,” she whispers, petting him softly. “Hey, baby. Hey, Shane.”

  The rest of the plan? They’ll drive. As fast as they can. Like two astronauts trying to reach escape velocity.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe thanks to a great many people and institutions for their support over the years, especially my teachers and workshop comrades at Stanford and Iowa; the National Endowment for the Arts; St. Edward’s University; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; Jay Mandel, Jake Sugarman, Lauren Heller Whitney, and Alicia Gordon at WME; and Sean McDonald, Emily Bell, Matthew Venzon, Liz Hohenadel, and Leslie Schwartz at Riverhead. A thousand gracias to the editors who saw fit to give good homes to these stories, especially Eli Horowitz, Dave Eggers, Howard Junker, Charles Baxter, Don Lee, Bill U’Ren, Michael Koch, Ed Schwarzschild, Kaui Hemmings, Stephen Elliott, and Dave Daley. I’d also like to thank Ben Yalom, Mark Poirier, and Ann Williams for their assistance as first readers; Bill Fagelson and Jennie Burger; Gail Quist; Paul Neimann; Robin O’Keefe; Tom Bailey; Tor Gronborg; Jeff Mengoli; Elizabeth Falkner of Citizen Cake in San Francisco; and Alejandro Escovedo for writing the beautiful song that inspired “La Fiesta de San Humberto el Menor.” Special thanks to Bob Patterson and Tom Parker, who were willing to risk their academic respectability by standing in for Quilcock’s Norwegian nemeses, and to the late botanists who kindly, if unwittingly, lent their images for use in “Splitters”; Charles Wright, Peter MacOwan, Lucien Underwood, Christen C. Raunkiaer, Nicolaj Monteverde, John Medley Wood, James Britten, Eduard Fischer, Frederick Vernon Coville, Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks, Harry Bolus, E. H. Wilson, Ada Hayden, Aaron Aaronsohn, and Nikolai Vavilov.