Frye looked down, felt the panic clustering at the base of his spine. He looked down at the miniaturized shore, the tiny hotel and blue apartments, the toy cars inching along Coast Highway a thousand feet below him. He looked down at the water sucking out, the beach receding. He felt the wave rising, rising, rising with him into the gray sky, gathering its aqueous tonnage for final release.
He made one last terrified assessment, then bailed.
Grabbing his board with both hands, he yanked it back toward the ocean as hard as he could. He plopped down to safety as the wave rose, hovered for a moment, then boomed ashore behind him. Somehow he made over the next wave of the set. He sat up on his board, heart thumping, arms weak and cold. The board dipped and bobbed. He could see his feet below, pale smudges in the dark water.
Frye could never remember feeling so isolated out here, so separate and temporary. It is not good to feel part of nothing.
He just sat there and watched the next wave coming in, his face flushed, feeling some part of himself — a portion of what he’d always been, a sense of substance and character, a feeling of singularity, at very least a passion that defined him if only to himself — passing him up with every untaken wave.
The clean-up wave formed ahead of him, the last and largest by far.
What he did next was partly out of spite, partly out of desperation, partly out of shame. It was the one thing he could think to do that was positive. He did it for Li and he did it for Cristobel and he did it for Bennett and he did it for himself. He did it as a funeral for the way he had been.
He pivoted, stroked twice, and dropped in.
The downward rush was exceptionally steep and fast, his board trying to jet ahead without him. He eased a rail into the flank of water and shot laterally, the wave lip smacking his head. Then he was in front of it, banking back down, body bent and arms out for balance, centered for speed. At the bottom he snapped his heels out and leaned in, shooting up again as the board rose instantly and he loosened his knees for the shock, climbing up the vertiginous wall, looking back to the big cylinder that gained quickly on him. Near the top he crouched and leveled off and let the heaving barrel come over him, then stood and slowed just a fraction to get far back into it, where the sand and the foam swirl furiously and the world condenses to a roar that you can feel all the way to your bones. Frye gently traced his hand along the wall of water that enclosed him, fingers thrumming liquid ribs, feet vibrating with his board, looking ahead as through a fluid telescope to where the wave was forming — this momentary heart of things — fresh and big and new out of the sea. In a moment of purest velocity, knees bent slightly and his fingertips brushing the cylinder, he stood there: reduced, washed, opinionless.
As usual at this point, Frye never knew what hit him.
All he did know was that he felt suddenly dark and pressurized, strangely removed now, with only a dull thundering somewhere overhead. No light. A rotating kind of motion, but not self-governed, as if he were a gear driven by other gears in some great liquid machine.
He tried to let himself float to the top but the grinding of the huge wave held him down. A few kicks toward bottom — just where is it now? Eyes open: a gritty swirl of shadow and half-light, shapes moving within shapes. Blow out some air and follow the bubbles up. But he was tumbling still, and the bubbles simply joined the turbulence and disappeared.
Then this wonderment of the senses: a feeling of falling but not necessarily down, maybe up or sideways or all directions at once; followed by a realization that something is missing here, some fundamental faculty linking the organism to gravity. He pushed off the bottom with a fear-driven heave, but there was no bottom. Lights arced through his head. He thought of saving the last of his breath to simply float upward, but the last of his breath was gone.
He thrashed against the darkness, a burst of energy as he strained for the surface and finally gulped a mouthful of sandy water. He could feel the scream from his system: what is this, Chuck? God, please no. Then the weakness coming, and a warmth with it, and the uneasy hypothesis that he was really just dreaming and about to waken and everything would be okay and Hyla would be there with hot chocolate and let him watch TV awhile. Another breath of water. He could sense his arms out ahead of him in the murk, paddling, turtlelike, trying to lead his head to air.
Then Hyla had hold of him. She was dragging him. She was barking like a dog.
Her face finally congealed before him, at odds with memory. Blond hair and long, nothing like mom. Why is she barking? Hands under my arms now, some dragging motion on sand. Faces. Legs. Puke, then breathe, in that order. Then a hot rush of sea water up from the lungs, burning nose, mouth, ears, eyes, pores. A wolfish creature bearing down, speaking in tongues. Someone up there slaps it away. More shapes, all in black. I am in alien hands. I am on my back. Chest goes up and down. Air is good. Life is good.
Of course. Cristobel. Surfers. Dunce.
He worked himself to hands and knees, chest heaving, vomiting between breaths. Dunce barked and shot in and out of his vision with each wretched outpouring. He could sense someone beside him; bare feet, jeans, a spill of light hair as a hand tried to steady his back. In the mid-distance he saw more legs, heard mumbled concern. “Whoa, he’s like throbbin’ lucky he’s not totaled right now. Rad wipeout. Is that that Frye guy, or some tourist?”
Good God, he thought. Get me out of here.
Cristobel helped him up and guided him to where the sand meets the rocks. He settled down to the cool earth, still breathing heavily, lights still pinging around his skull. A moment later she returned with his board, both halves, which she leaned against a boulder. Dunce sat and studied him as Cristobel wrapped a towel around his shoulders. “I knew it,” she said. “I felt it, strong.”
He looked at her, hugging himself under the towel.
“I saw it. When you didn’t come up I waded out. Blaster helped.”
“Thanks,” he said. His voice was helium-high. He watched another set forming outside and shuddered, then launched into a new fit of coughing.
She knelt beside him and tucked the towel close to his neck. Her smell cut straight through his brinedrenched senses, an aroma of woman and earth so solid you could stand on it. The onshore breeze stuck a batch of golden hair to his face as she leaned in close. “Can you make it to my place?”
Awhile later he stood uneasily, straightened his shoulders and breathed deeply, which sent him into another paroxysm of coughing that bent him in half. When he’d discharged what seemed at least half a gallon of ocean water, he smiled like death at Cristobel. “Let’s go.”
“What about that?”
Frye looked at his board, halved neatly and leaning on the rocks. “Public service reminder,” he said, and offered her his hand.
Blaster led the way, his red scarf in a cavalryesque lilt to the east.
He sat in a sunlit rectangle on the floor, warming in the rays that came through the window. Jim was on a shoot in L.A. Blaster nuzzled against his leg, then turned over for a belly rub. Cristobel changed into dry shorts and a halter top, then went to the kitchen to make coffee. Frye regarded the dress she was working on, now hanging on a mannequin. He coughed. Cristobel’s humming came to him from the kitchen. He had always liked a woman who hummed. He liked it so much he fell asleep.