by Tim Scott
Maybe.
Nothing about her made much sense, and I still had very little idea who she was exactly, but I regretted not asking her about that date again—October 18. Why had she reacted so strangely when I threw that at her inside Argonaut Logistics? What had happened on that day? It seemed to touch a nerve inside me as well, but the memory, if there was one, lay hidden—and it felt like sitting in an exam trying to reach back for information you hadn’t really been paying that much attention to in the first place.
I took a breath and told myself I had to let all this stuff go for a while. The waves were calling and I needed to stop wheeling these events around in my head or I would go crazy. So I threw on a rash vest and took hold of my beat-up old wet suit. I stuffed one foot, then the other, into the legs, tugged them through, then folded it up over my shoulders, wriggled into the arms, and pulled up the back zip with a haul on the long strap.
Mat passed me his new longboard with a smile and grabbed his old faithful, which was thick with combed wax and scuffed with dinks, which all had a lengthy story of a wave or a rock behind them that he could go on about until you stopped him.
Which, frankly, you normally had to do.
We attempted a run, which ended up as a sort of half trot to the water’s edge, and it felt like someone had ratcheted up the tension in my leg muscles so tightly, all I could manage was this achingly heavy cardboard-stiff plod.
Finally, we stuttered into a walk, then stood for a moment, double-checking the shape of the waves as we watched some of the sets come through, and wrapped on our ankle leashes. How often had we done this together? I wondered. Hundreds of times. Thousands even. It was a cool moment. There was always a freshness at this time, a prickle of anticipation and a feeling that all the things you thought were problems were nothing but brittle illusions that the paddle out would wash away, together with any lingering feelings you should be somewhere else.
Surfing was a miraculous rebirth, a baptism of saltwater, and the power of it never ceased to surprise me. As we stood drinking in the moment, it occurred to me the only other thing that came close was climbing. I didn’t climb mountains because they were there, as people were fond of quoting. I climbed because if you went up into that otherworldly environment, then returned unharmed, you felt reborn.
In winter, the effect was magnified by the cranky, irascible weather that scooted about the peaks, snapping like an angry sheepdog. It’s as though weather gets confident in the mountains and loses its shyness. In cities, we forget weather can be like that because it seems almost anonymous, slinking about the streets with only the homeless for company. In the hills, though, the weather will take you on and try and kill you. I remember chewing all this over with Jack on a warm, windless evening on the beach, by a cracking fire of driftwood. Eli’s brother, Jack.
I let his memory and some of our times surfing together course through me; his crazy smile, his deep-set eyes and laid-back, have-a-go attitude. His wild kickbacks. Maybe it was slipping into a past I should have let go a while back. Maybe it was sentimental, but to hell with that. The kid had died and we had loved him, and he had left a hole that still shouted. A gap that we filled clumsily, like we were still surprised that it was ours to fill.
And he left me something else too. An uneasy, flailing feeling about the day he had died.
We waded into the chill of the water, pushed the boards onto the foam, and paddled away. I let my uneasiness slide. This was heaven; the gentle lap-lap of the water on the noses of the boards, the chop of small peaks as they jostled inanely about us, the sun reflecting off the water in blinding, random shards. We met the first wave in a crazy snap of froth that ran a chill down the backs of our wet suits as we duck-dived and emerged on the other side like clumsy seals, only to be smacked by another charge of seething white water.
And another. The waves seemed a good four or maybe five feet. We kept paddling on through the slicks of foam, and after a while rode over a pregnant hump of swell, which meant we were out beyond where the waves were breaking. I let the board drift, then pushed myself up, my legs dangling in the sea and the nose of the longboard rising out of the water like some phallic symbol. There was a peacefulness out here. It was a place where time didn’t happen so much, where you could sit and let the waves go, or turn and catch the next one in. We lazily scanned the horizon, keeping an eye out for the next sets; but in truth, we were in no hurry and allowed the lines of swell to ride under the boards as if, as someone had once told me when I was a child, the long tail of a dragon was snaking through, lifting and dropping us, as the humps slipped beneath us. I turned and watched the waves boulder up as they passed us, then strained their necks like leashed dogs before they crashed, stretching for the shore with white fingers of foam.
“I can definitely see you getting the Nobel Prize for Unhelpful Grief this year,” said Mat, as the wind kicked up a halter of spray, making a tiny rainbow that instantly fell and died.
“Well, that’s always been my main aim in life, obviously. Along with winning a Harvard Exhibition to study the history of the table-tennis paddle. My head feels like a phone book where someone has altered all the numbers, but just ever so slightly—so although they look familiar, I don’t quite know the difference. D’you have any sort of feelings like that? You said you woke with a hangover a few days ago and didn’t drink the night before…”
“Yeah. Doesn’t exactly compare with some Riders wanting you to assassinate God, though.”
“But I think it’s all connected somehow. All of it. Remember that date Teb found when he was tracing Argonaut Logistics?”
“No.”
“Well, it was the eighteenth of October. I threw that at Caroline, and she looked really huffy about it.”
“Well, she’s a limpet encyclopedia saleswoman who was assigned to you; that’s enough to make the Pope huffy. I say we surf now.”
“Yeah, we’ll surf, Mat. It’s just that it feels like I have all these loose wires flapping around in my head and they keep connecting to each other and giving me shocks that set my fillings on edge, and I can’t seem to tie them down. The Riders had this really weird idea. Really weird.”
“I say leave it now, Jonny, yeah? Let’s just surf. Let it go for a bit, and we’ll come at it fresh.”
“Yeah, but, Mat, there’s this tiny, tiny bizarre chance that they have something of mine. The file they gave me looks a lot like my handwriting. Really it does. I would swear it was my handwriting but I don’t remember anything of it. Explain that.” Mat stared at me with tired, resigned alarm and I shrugged hopelessly. Then I found myself talking and the whole thing spilled out in one great fur-ball of words. Sentences shambled over one another like lambs to an udder as I tried to convey too many ideas at the same time. This thing had been fizzing about my head and wanted out.
“So, it’s something to do with a dream that’s released like a virus, but can only be caught by the one person it was written for?” said Mat, raising one eyebrow in that way I had never learned to do.
“Yeah, that’s about it. That seems to be what they’re on about. Why, I just really don’t know.”
“Dark,” said Mat. “Very fucking dark, in fact.”
“Sorry, Mat. I just needed to get that out. Come on, let’s surf, dude.” Although my hands were a touch blue from the chill, I could see from Mat’s pale complexion that his hangover was catching up with him again. That often happens if you stay in one place too long. A hangover gets a bit tired trying to keep up once you are doing stuff; but if you stay in one place too long, it can find you again, climb back in and say “Ah-ha! I’m back!”
“This one’s all yours.” I nodded as a line of swell breezed in happily toward us. Mat spun his board around and paddled hard. The peak surged up, and he skipped to his feet, smoothly ripping toward the shore so I could just see the top of his body behind the shoulder of the wave like a bird belly-skimming the water.
I turned slowly and shivered. The vast ocean seemed in
human all of a sudden. Alien. A galloping mass of cold power on an unimaginable scale. Then I became aware of a strange liquid feeling in my brain, as though warm, molten nectar was gently dripping from a small cavity inside my head, and the sensation was both intoxicating and alarming.
As the next peak arched forward, I wheeled around and paddled, waiting for my board to pitch down as the swell grabbed me, then I kicked to my feet. Not so much like a coiled spring, it has to be said, but more like a spring in need of some oil and perhaps a week at a reenergizing retreat.
But at least I was on my feet and surfing. The world burned through into another layer of perspective in one swift movement. I was above the sea suddenly, as though I was skipping over it, being gently juggled by nature rather than being crushed by it. I cut a wide, sweeping bottom turn into the wave, then rode up the face before twisting back with an easy snap of my hips. Mat had been right; his new board felt really sweet. I was wonderfully at peace now, divorced from the mindless man-made flotsam and jetsam that had been flying at me with destructive casualness the past few days.
It had been a fantastic decision to come here.
After a while the peak chased me down and broke, leaving a commotion of wild froth yapping about as the power drained from the wave. I could see Mat already paddling back out, so I spun the tail and flopped into the sea. He was heading for the rip and I paddled after him as the remains of the next wave came cruising down at me. I tried to duck-dive, but somehow the nose of the board wouldn’t sink and the white water smacked into me like a pack of annoyingly playful dogs. I always thought being wiped out, even by broken waves like this, was like having a massage from a large, frustrated masseuse. After being pounded for a while, you felt a lot more relaxed but also slightly bruised all over.
As the froth scurried away, something else seemed to dislodge inside my head, and it suddenly felt like my brain was vibrating ever so slightly. I paddled hard toward Mat, not knowing what to make of it, and just concentrated on getting out the back. I sat up on my board when I reached him, breathing hard, and let the tightness in my chest loosen.
“My head feels weird,” I said.
“Really?” said Mat. “What sort of weird?”
“Weird, weird. Like it’s vibrating slightly and there’s warm liquid running through it.” Mat stared toward the shore. “I only said it felt weird,” I added when he still didn’t reply.
“I had something like that yesterday,” he said.
“Really? Warm honeylike liquid, dripping around?”
“Yep.”
“What the fuck is going on, Mat?”
“I don’t know, Jonny. I really don’t know. But I don’t want to think about it now. Come on. Let’s catch some waves, and we’ll talk about it all later when we’re chilled.”
I nodded, guessing he was right, and spun the board and paddled. As I turned to see where the peak was, it reared up suddenly, much bigger than the earlier ones, and it struck me that the tide was on the push and the waves would probably grow all afternoon. As it lunged for me, white water broke from the lip and the board tipped acutely forward. I knew I had to be very quick and snapped to my feet the next instant, exactly as I had done a thousand times before.
Except I didn’t. I’d timed it all wrong.
There’s a brief moment before a big wipeout where you can’t believe it’s really going to be that bad; you can’t believe the wave won’t back off, and say: “Yeah well, could have had you there if I’d wanted to.” But “God doesn’t play dice,” as Einstein had once said. He doesn’t play charades either if it comes to that, or Scrabble. At least, there’s no mention of it in the Bible, anyway. There’s no parable of the man who chose all vowels and a “z,” as far as I remember. Either way I was fucked, sprawling headfirst, midair, like a teenager who has just shambled off the high board in the Santa Cruz swimming pool, misguidedly hoping to piece together the skills needed for a perfect dive on the way down. I hit the water with the dexterity of a bedroom wall, and the wave collapsed, crushing me like a discarded cigarette packet.
Under the surface, I was torn about in a wild world that foamed with dumb light; the sky swam above out of reach, and undefined images, boiled up by the water, cut and pasted around my head. The board felt like it had gone rabid, and seemed about to break my ankle as it jerked at the leash. Deep inside, I became aware that my brain was going weird again, and it seemed like warm golden liquid was trickling from cavities where it had been holed up. My head broke free from the water and I grasped at the air, taking in lungfuls of the stuff, then I grabbed my board and slid onto it as the next wave steamed in and I just had time to duck-dive.
I paddled back out wondering how I could have been so stupid to miss a takeoff, and felt the saltwater stinging at my eyes so I couldn’t see a thing half the time. When I got far enough out, I sat up on my board but saw that Mat was almost at the shore riding a wave in and I realized I must have passed him on the way.
What was going on with my mind? Images and memories were sliding about like icebergs in the summer sun, cut adrift from the glacier and floating free. I suddenly felt as though part of my mind was melting to reveal other parts underneath, and I had no idea which was my true self. Like when they x-ray a painting and find another one hidden below. Which is the real painting?
And that was how it seemed for a second. As though I had another life that existed beneath the life I was living, but I didn’t know which was real, or which one I should fight to keep. The sensation lasted for only a moment, then was gone—and the details of the other world I had seen echoed away. All I was left with was a sense of something. A feeling. And I wondered what the hell it meant.
“Did you see that?” called Mat, paddling up. “Did you see? I nailed a one-eighty! That was the bee’s knees, the wasp’s ankles, and the butterfly’s goddamned elbows! A one-eighty!”
“Sorry, didn’t see anything. My head is really weird, Mat. I’ve suddenly got this sense that October 18 was a marriage thing. Where did that come from? Do you know anyone who got married on October 18?”
“Shit, Jonny! Didn’t you hear? A one-eighty! I did a one-eighty. Stop meddling with all that stuff in your head and start actually being here. It’s five-foot and clean! Come on, dude! Let’s go! Let’s surf!”
And so I did try to let it go, and as we surfed on for the next hour, my head seemed fine again. The weird experience cooled until I could hardly imagine what I had been on about, and I remembered almost nothing of it, like the vivid images of a nighttime dream burned away by the harsh morning light. I didn’t feel in any sort of shock from everything that had happened, as I suppose I might have done, but instead seemed to sink back into the past.
For a while it felt like we were kids, skipping eighth grade again. It felt like time hadn’t passed and we were the young, impetuous idiots we had been back then. It even felt like we might meet Jack out the back.
For a while.
Mat nailed another couple of one-eighties, and I think he surfed with a freedom that you only experience occasionally in your life. Maybe it was the relief of still being alive, after the chaos of the morning.
“I’ll tell you my idea now, if you like,” he called, as we sat out the back waiting to catch a final wave in.
“What idea?” I said.
“My idea. I told you in Inconvenient I had an idea. Well, I do.”
“You had to be unconscious in Inconvenient,” I said.
“Only partially,” said Mat with a smile. “And that’s when I’m at my sharpest.”
“Christ, I’m learning new stuff about you even now. What’s this idea, then?”
31
Ad virus control,” said Mat, but seemingly too quietly for the guy because he didn’t move an iota. And, frankly, he gave the impression that had there been a whole bag of iotas right in his way, he wouldn’t have bothered to move those either.
“Ad virus control,” I repeated, but it came out slightly louder than I had meant to, as th
ough my throat was swollen.
I took in a deep, slow breath and assessed the full extent of this tired, stomach-bulging security monkey slouched in the chair behind the counter. He had hair that might have been cut by a family of overeager bears who had learned only the basics of scissors control and a complexion that suggested he ate most meals with a side salad of grease.
“Ad virus control,” I said again, after a pause, trying to rein in my voice so it had the right mix of authority and don’t-give-a-fuck nonchalance of a workman.
But the guy still just stared off at the screens.
I exchanged a glance with Mat. His overalls were decidedly dodgy. He looked like he’d used cheap soap powder or something, and his washing machine had got so touchy about it, it had shrunk all his clothes by rinsing them in water hot enough to cause nuclear fusion. Seeing him standing there like that made me shudder inwardly. We were treading a thin line, and even if the line had been fatter, I wasn’t that sure how good at treading on lines we really were anyway.
“What is it this time?” huffed the man, still transfixed by the banks of security screens. “A new strain of the ad that goes on about hot ice cubes?” I knew the one he meant.
“Plink! Plink! Fzzz! Fuck!” had been their slogan—which, I have to say, I liked. Particularly as it had been accompanied by a picture of a woman dropping a glass of bourbon because the addition of the ice cubes had suddenly made it excruciatingly hot to grasp.
“No, it’s golf. ‘I’m Tony Shappenhaur IV!’” I went on, trying to give the impression of disinterest. “‘You know me better as “The Thinking Buckaroo.” ‘ You come across it?” We both looked at the guy, but he seemed to have got sucked into whatever was on the screens again.
“OK. Well,” I pressed on, “your canteen is the Mother Area for the thing on our ad virus maps. See?” I held up some sheets Teb had concocted. “And we need security clearance so we can zap it before it becomes an epidemic.”
