“Maybe they live here,” said Hand.
The horses had no symbolic value.
Pilar wanted to describe, to Hand, how she felt, every twenty minutes or so, about being there with him. They were together in the room, which had a roof and was warm. They were alive, though neither of them could have predicted with certainty that at their age they would both be alive — people flew on airplanes and drove cars after so many drinks, and every time they were away from each other or their family or friends, it seemed very likely to be the last; it was more logical, in some ways, to die or disappear. She had not grown up — her parents stayed home always — thinking that people could go far away, repeatedly, all over the earth, starting and finishing lives elsewhere, and then see each other again.
She wanted to rub herself in bananas. She wanted to open umbrellas into the faces of cats, make them scurry and scream. How could she sleep with Hand in this room? If it would be the only time, she wanted mirrors everywhere, so she could remember it a dozen ways.
But it would not be this night because he hadn’t kissed her on the forehead yet. But this would happen. Tomorrow one of them would find a reason to hug the other, and they would hold each other for too long, making sounds about how good it was to be here, and then he would pull away a few inches, to kiss her on the forehead. And the rest would come soon after. She pictured his penis flying across the room and into her, and then shooting in and out. His head on the wall, mounted.
Hand took the couch and Pilar took the bed and they slept to the pulse of crickets and, above, the overeager tick-ticking fan.
The morning arrived with applause and they made toast. In the sun the dirt road was white. All was white. As if Pilar’s eyes had been scrubbed free of pigment.
In a dark shop built to simulate a thatched hut, they rented two surfboards and the woman, orange-haired, oval-faced and Australian, pointed them to the nearest path to the water, across the street and beyond the blond sand.
They carried the boards across the white dirt road and onto the path, the sand soft and ashy. Through thin twisted trees and past a tin-roofed house, the beach spread left and right, flat and hard, at low tide a brown-gray parking lot. Close to the water the hard sand was wet, reflecting a blue sky, wide and musical with huge white flat-bottomed clouds.
There were dozens of surfers out already, ten just in front of them, another ten a few hundred yards to the right. The waves were small, with children playing in the shallows. Rocks to the left, body boarders close to shore. Pilar rubbed lotion on Hand’s back and he did hers. Look at him, she thought. His face is strong. What would a man do, she wondered, without a chin! The skin on his back was taut and smooth. His neck aquiline, if that were possible. There was, she felt, a world full of beautiful future leaders, each with a thousand fulfillable promises, in Hand’s neck.
Pilar couldn’t surf well. She could paddle. She could lie on a board and balance and lay her face on its smooth cool wet fiberglass surface and rest. She was good there. And when the waves came she could do a few things. She could get up. She could stand, turn a little (only to the right), and keep herself steady for a few seconds.
But everything closer to shore for her, this day, was more difficult. She worried if she was holding the board correctly. She worried if when she drew the rented board from the rack, she did so correctly. She wondered if she was supposed to carry the board with its slight concavity out, away from her hip, or toward it. She worried if she should attach the Velcro ankle strap, which was in turn attached to the board and prevents the board from flying away after surfer and board fail, while in the surf shop area, once she hit sand, or when her ankles were wet with water. She didn’t know if the board, when not in use, should be set upon the sand bottom-fin up, or down. She was concerned that if she did any of these things wrong she would be laughed at or pointed at and removed.
So she watched. She watched when others rented their boards to see how they drew them from the rack. She watched to see how they held them, carried them, when they strapped on their ankle bungees. And she did as they did, even though, as often as not, they didn’t know either. Everyone was an amateur, everyone pretending at grace — that’s why they were renting boards and did not own them, and that’s why they were surfing here, at Alta, where the waves were small and forgiving and the water was warm, like the inside of a plum.
GOD: I own you like I own the caves.
THE OCEAN: Not a chance. No comparison.
GOD: I made you. I could tame you.
THE OCEAN: At one time, maybe. But not now.
GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.
THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what’s happened to me.
Pilar and Hand walked into the water, same temperature as the air, and Hand bent himself in half, dropping his face in the foam and coming up headsoaked. He pushed the hair back from his face and looked at Pilar and Pilar knew that some people, implausibly, look better wet.
“The water’s so warm,” she said.
“It’s the greatest water I know,” he said.
They paddled out past the breaks. The waves were not large but the process was more tiring than she had remembered. She was knocked back six times and by the time they were on flat water again she was exhausted, her triceps aching, shuffling their feet, children in museums.
Pilar and Hand were straddling their boards, watching the horizon for coming waves.
A good swell came, five feet high, and with two quick strong strokes Hand was up. Pilar watched him depart for the beach. From behind, it looked like he was riding a very fast escalator. Or a conveyor belt. A conveyor belt being chased by a wave. From behind she saw only the round of the wave’s top, and this obscured Hand’s lower half. She was watching and he was going and going. He had a nice longboard stance, standing straight up, knees only slightly bent, leaning back, his whole frame one perfect diagonal line.
Then he was back, paddling quickly, smiling. He settled next to her and sat up on his board.
“That was nice,” he said.
“It looked nice,” she said.
Pilar liked what he had done, but for the time being she was content to sit. Or even to lie down. She had been in this town for half a day, awake this morning for an hour, and was prepared to do more resting, even if it was here, on the water. She stretched out on the board, resting her cheek on its wet cool creamy white, the wax, sand-encrusted, rough on her face. The water came over the board gently and kissed her. It said shuckashucka and it kissed her. She could sleep here. She could probably live here, on this board, her shoulders burning. There was no difference between resting her face here and resting her face on her mother’s stomach when she was younger, no difference between feeling her breasts flattened against the board and feeling these breasts flattened against the backs of men. She liked to sleep that way, with men on their stomachs and her breasts on their back. It never worked — she never actually fell asleep in this position, but she liked to try.
With one eye she could see Hand, still upright, scanning. To the right of the beach, to the far right, a mountain, the color of heather, lay like a broken body.
“Are you going to take one of these or what?” Hand asked before dunking his head into the sea, coming up again so good, a mannequin’s perfect head soaked in cooking oil.
“Right. Sorry,” she said.
“Do you need a push?”
“Ha. Yes. Ha.”
She had to try. She sat up again. They waited, both straddling, watching the blue horizon for a bump.
A bump was on its way.
“Take this one,” he said.