I slip back out the door and slide down against the side of the hut to sit in the sand. A few yards out toward the water, two girls in string bikinis are walking by with surfboards hoisted up on their shoulders. Their tight bodies are thin and rock-hard, and their skin is tanned to a perfect, glowing bronze. Their long, salty-ocean hair blows in the breeze, and it occurs to me that Baywatch may not be just a cable-television myth.
I myself did not wear a string bikini for the occasion. I wore a navy blue sports tankini that covers as much skin as possible and my neon-green scuba shoes, along with a greasy coating of hair sunscreen and three layers of waterproof mascara. This day is not about parading bod. It’s about releasing the evil sprite from my soul and finding inner freedom and harmony with the universe. Those chicks piss me off, though. Don’t they have jobs? Who has all day to strut around the beach, surfing and tanning like the July page on a Budweiser calendar?
“Hey, Goldilocks. Lookin’ for your grandma’s house?”
I look up to see Danny and all his blond hunky dreaminess, once again standing above me in the sunshine.
“I saw you poke your head in the shop.”
“Oh, hi. How are you?” I reach up to shake his hand. “Do you remember me? I’m Lindsey Miller. I met you about a week ago down on the sand.”
“How could I forget?” He smiles. “A beautiful city girl, washed up like a Gypsy mermaid on my shore…”
“Did I tell you that?”
“Did you tell me what?”
“That I live in the city? In New York?”
“No, but I can tell that you—”
“Oh, no,” I moan. “Don’t say it.”
“Don’t say what?”
“That you can tell I’m not from around here.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I’m not sure. But I try to avoid it at all costs.”
He smiles again, then reaches both arms down toward me.
“Come on, city girl.”
“Stop saying that,” I grumble. “I live here too. At least sometimes.”
“See? I knew you were a Gypsy.” He pulls me to my feet. “Come inside and see my hut.”
The customers are gone, and it’s only us inside the Surf Shack. James Taylor has been ousted and replaced by Sam Cooke, whom I love. For a split second, I’m hoping Danny will grab me and twirl me around in a slow waltz. But instead he offers me a guava juice, then walks me through the shop, showing me the different boards, making me touch them and feel their curves. I can tell how much he loves this, and for a moment I feel envious.
“Everything they say about surfing is true,” he tells me.
“Like what?” I ask. “That when a shark chomps your arm off, at least the pain is quick?”
He puts his finger to my lips to shush me and shakes his head. “No. About feeling peace and exhilaration all at once. It’s the best feeling in the world. That’s why I opened this shop. So I can help others feel it too.
“That’s your life’s ambition?”
“What else is there?”
I nod, wondering if I could actually feel what he’s talking about. I’m about to ask him when I notice that he’s shutting the windows and turning off the lights. “Are you leaving?”
“Why, did you want to buy something?”
“Um… I was actually wondering if maybe I could have that surfing lesson you were talking about.”
He smiles again, his sea-blue eyes looking me up and down. “What made you change your mind?”
I shrug casually. “Well, I had a free afternoon, and it seems to be a pretty trendy thing to do around here.”
“Trendy?” Something very slight in his tone tells me that this was the wrong answer. Like I’ve just insulted his religion or something. So I keep stammering away.
“It looks fun to me. Is that a good enough reason? I’m sure I’ll be the laughingstock of Venice Beach, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to have a fun afternoon, does it?”
Danny walks up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders. I can feel his breath on the back of my neck and I suddenly feel a little woozy. “You don’t need a reason. I was just curious,” he says softly. “I’d love to take you surfing.”
He breaks away and goes back to the surfboards. “But I have to run these boards up to Malibu right now. It won’t take too long. You could come back in an hour, or… you could come along?”
Drive to Malibu with a complete stranger. What if he drives me straight into the woods and chops me up for shark bait? No wonder I feel a little light-headed. This is my adult “be alert” sensor telling me it’s a bad idea to put myself in a car with someone whom I’ve known only ten minutes, but who still feels comfortable whispering, “I’d love to take you surfing,” into the back of my neck like he’s just made love to me in the warm sand.
“Yeah, why not?” Oh, hell. It’s just a drive up the coast. And I will find the very next opportunity to announce full and proud that I have a boyfriend, so he doesn’t think he’s going to trade a free surfing lesson for a free lesson in what it’s like to do the sand mambo with a city girl from New York.
“Here’s my buggy.” Danny points to an old, beat-up Jeep with the top off, which he loads up with surfboards and wet suits. It’s no BMW, but I suppose it suits his personality. “Hop in.”
I don’t think I’ve ever ridden in a Jeep before, particularly not with the top down, and particularly not up the spectacular Pacific Coast Highway. The whole road stretches up aside the ocean with the sun gleaming off the mountains in the background. It’s a pretty windy day, and I love the feeling of the warm air on my face, blowing through my hair.
“What’s so funny?” Danny shouts over the wind.
“Huh?” I shout back.
“You’re smiling at something over there – what is it?”
“I am?” I didn’t realize I was smiling. Maybe the wind is just blowing back my lips into what looks like a smile. Or maybe…
“Hey, you wanna stop for some lunch?”
“Okay!” I yell. Lunch sounds fantastic. I didn’t eat before coming down here, because I didn’t want to look bloated in my tankini. But now I’m starving.
Danny pulls off the road into a small beachside snack stand called Malibu Sam’s. He reaches for his wallet, then helps me out of the Jeep.
“It’s no Spago, but I’m a poor beach bum, and they have terrific fish tacos here. Sound good?”
I’ve never had a fish taco, but it sounds as indigenous to the California experience as a dirty-water dog does to lower Manhattan. And I’m all about the experience.
“Great. I’m going to jump into the ladies’ room.”
While Danny buys the fish tacos, I slip into the tiny bathroom behind the stand. In the foggy little mirror, I can see that the spectacular Pacific Coast Highway has turned my hair into a frightening replica of Dee Snider on the cover of Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry album. I try to calm it down with water, then agonize about whether or not to pee. The front of the snack stand is about two feet away from the bathroom, and nothing is less appetizing than hearing a beautiful Gypsy mermaid flush a well-pump toilet. I decide to hold it.
When I come out, I see Danny sitting at a small table, facing the ocean with a tray of food and little cups of sauces. He looks up at me and grins.
“This is an avocado mayo, and this is a honey-cilantro sauce. This one is a mango salsa. You should try them all—they’re great.”
He’s right, and the fish tacos are absolutely delicious. As I wash the food down with cool water, I watch how the sun sparkles off the sea. I can feel tiny salt crystals in the air settling on my arms. I find myself relishing this feeling of having no stress or care in the world.
“Why so quiet?” Danny asks.
“I’m just thinking about how different it is here than in New York.”
“You said you live both places. Why? What do you do?”
“I work in advertising,” I answer, carefully avoiding anything to do wit
h the word “trend,” after his reaction back at the shack.
“That sounds fun.”
“It has its moments.”
“Do you like it?”
Such a simple question, but suddenly my mind is slammed with dizzy thoughts of airplanes, Liz and Jen, standing on the street corners harassing people, sitting in the apartment overcome by dread and fear, the rush of excitement in New York, Victor Ragsdale, and everything I’ve experienced in the past couple of weeks. And suddenly I feel the hot tears welling up in my eyes. Thankful I have my sunglasses on, I take a deep breath and answer honestly.
“I don’t know.”
But my voice has betrayed me, and after a moment Danny reaches over and pulls down my sunglasses. He sees my tears and watches me curiously, without saying a word. Then he slides my sunglasses back up over my eyes and walks me back to the Jeep.
As we climb in, I stop for a second. “Danny? I wanted to thank you for the nice afternoon.”
“Don’t thank me yet, pretty girl.” He grins. “Remember, peace and exhilaration. The afternoon hasn’t even started.”
• • •
“The thing to always remember is not to lie too far up or back on your board. Don’t let the tip plunge down or come up more than a few inches.”
Danny and I are in the water, paddling our surfboards out to the “lineup,” the spot where you wait for the waves to break. It’s been easy so far – all I’ve had to do is lie on the board and paddle my arms. Actually, the hardest part about this surfing thing is trying to squeeze your body into the wet suit like a sausage into its casing. Expert surfers (like the string-bikini babes) don’t seem to need them, but I don’t mind at all because the wet suit is very slimming, once you get it on.
“Lindsey,” Danny calls out, having drifted a few feet away. “If you feel yourself losing balance, just open your legs a little.”
I giggle, thinking “story of Jen’s life,” but then quickly banish all such thoughts from my mind. I am out here, a tiny speck in a vast ocean, but I feel young and free and alive. At the moment nothing matters beyond the vicious waves, and me, Lindsey Miller, conquering them.
“We’re going to try the pop-up, but only to the crouching position.”
We had practiced the “pop-up” back on the sand, the move where you pop up from lying to standing right after the wave breaks and starts to carry you in. I did pretty well, considering my novice status (and the fact that we were on dry land), and I’m a bit disappointed that Danny is limiting the move only to crouching.
“Okay, here it comes,” he calls out. “If you miss it, don’t worry. You’ll probably have to try a couple before you get a feel for the timing.”
He’s right. When the wave actually hits me, I’m not prepared for its force. It’s much more powerful than I imagined, and leaves me not gliding gracefully toward shore like a seasoned surfer, but gagging and coughing up salt water like I’m having a seizure.
Danny paddles over to me and pats me hard on the back. “Don’t worry. It’s a rite of passage.” He’s laughing, but he’s the only one. “Now you know what to expect.”
After about forty-five minutes, I begin to get more comfortable. I’ve made it up to the crouching position three times already, and Danny seems very proud of me. He also seems to think that I’m getting exhausted and may want to call it a day. But I desperately want to surf, for real, at least one time before I quit. It’s just something I have to do.
Danny paddles over to me. “The sun’s going to set in about a half hour. We should be getting in.”
“Oh, just one or two more – please?”
“It’s getting hard to assess the size of the waves now. They look smaller than they are.” He reaches out across the water to smooth my hair down, and I let him because it feels comforting. “Besides, something tells me you’ll be back for another lesson.” He looks into my eyes when he says this, and I feel a nervous rumble in my stomach. I was planning on dropping the word “boyfriend,” but I haven’t had a good chance.
Then I feel the nervous rumble again, and I suddenly remember that right before people have a colonoscopy, the doctor makes them drink a gallon of saltwater-based solution to “clean them out” for the procedure. Which, with almost three hours of plunging into the ocean and enormous waves colliding head-on with my face, I have probably consumed at least the equivalent of. But the rumbling is minor, indicating to me that I have just enough time for one more wave, the trip back into shore, disrobing of the wet suit, making up a random excuse to go to my car, then dashing to find a public bathroom nowhere near the Surf Shack. Perfect.
“One more.” I give my biggest, sweetest smile to Danny, hoping that there is no seaweed caught in my teeth. “Please? One more.”
Danny sighs. He can’t resist the smile. “Okay. One more. But be careful. Trust me, the position of the sun makes the wave look smaller than it is.”
He smoothes my hair one more time and tweaks my nose. Then he turns and paddles off to my right.
In the distance, I can see the wave starting to take form. It really doesn’t look so big. I’m thinking that this is it – my last chance to gather my courage and exceed above all expectations. I grasp the side of the board tightly, excitement rising up in my throat. I can feel the velocity and weight of the water, and in a split second I make up my mind. I’m going all the way.
“Lindsey!” I can hear Danny yelling, but I can’t see him.
The wave engulfs me and I push myself up to crouching, then begin to wobble toward standing.
“Lindsey, stop!”
Then in a flash so fast I can barely remember it, I feel two things at once: One, this wave is a LOT bigger and stronger than it looked. And two, the timing of my nervous rumble was a little off, because I suddenly have a MASSIVE cramp in my stomach that takes full attention away from conquering the Pacific.
Oh, my God. The water is swirling around me, stinging my eyes, and I can’t see a thing. I try to reach down for my board but my arms can barely move through the strength of the wave. I’m gulping down more water and choking, and I can hear the faint echo of Danny calling my name through the tornado that is crushing my head. And then:
THWOMP!!!
• • •
I think my eyes are open, but I can’t tell. Everything is a bright white blur. I feel woozy, like the world outside and even my thoughts are nothing but fog. Somewhere in the distance I hear a faint beeping. I stare into the white light, and after a moment my eyes begin to focus.
“She’s awake,” I hear a voice whisper, and then the white light is broken by two oblong shapes right in front of my face that I slowly come to realize are heads.
“Lindsey, can you see us? Can you hear us?”
“Where am I?” I mumble.
“Lindsey, you’re at the hospital. Some guy brought you in here. You were knocked out by a surfboard.”
I recognize that voice, and try hard to figure out who it is. After several more moments my eyes adjust to the head shapes, and a slow feeling of cloudy horror begins to creep over my body. The faces belong to Liz and Jen, who are standing over me, staring at me in confusion.
And even in my fog-induced haze, I know enough to close my eyes and go right back where I came from.
Chapter 15
There’s a possibility that waking up to the confused faces of Liz and Jen was all a dream (nightmare, rather), or a foggy, painkiller-induced delusion. Because the next time I wake up, I’m still in the hospital, but the only face I see is that of a smiling nurse.
“Well, hello, dear. That was a heck of a nap you took.” She smoothes back my hair and sticks a thermometer in my mouth.
“How long have I been here?” I mumble, trying not to crunch the thermometer.
“Not too long. Since yesterday early evening. It’s about eleven in the morning now, so about sixteen hours. You had a mild concussion and a mighty big bump on your head, so we gave you some codeine and you slept like a baby.”
She
pulls out the thermometer and seems happy with the results.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Groggy.”
“Well, that’s normal. But after we check your vitals, if you seem all right, we can probably let you go home.”
She walks out of the room and it occurs to me that I don’t have a ride. My car is still at the beach. Did Danny bring me in here? Is he still here? I hope not. Where is he? I am so embarrassed.
Then it occurs to me that I’m supposed to be on a plane to New York right now, and I will have to once again explain to Jen why I’m not there. But I remember waking up and seeing her and Liz standing over me – was it real? It seemed real. Or maybe it didn’t. I can’t tell for sure.
Then suddenly all of these dilemmas are midgeted into a state of absolute non-importance as it occurs to me that right before I wiped out on the surfboard, I had felt an unmistakable rumble in my stomach that can denote only the worst of all imaginable bathroom emergencies. I shudder at the possibility of this happening in front of Danny Wynn. Particularly as I would have been unconscious at the time, and would have needed him to carry me to safety. I groan, not caring about the bump on my head, or even if I still have a head. The thought of it is so bad that I can almost bury it into the deep denial recesses of my memory. Almost.
The nurse walks back in. “Okay, dear. Let’s take your blood pressure.”
She pulls out my arm and begins to wrap it inside the blood pressure thing.
“Um… can I ask you a question?” I approach her timidly.
“Of course. What is it?”
“When I came in here, was I… well… totally… clean?”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“I mean, was there anything… on my clothes, or… on me?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just… you know… anything?”
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