“Yup. All my grandparents came from Turkey, trying to get away from massacres. I grew up in this totally Armenian little town in New Jersey. Armenian church, all the old people speaking with funny accents. Almost every person in town had a name that ended in ian.”
“Must be weird for you to be here, where it’s such a melting pot.” We both stood up and started carrying the canoe toward the water.
“I think it’s cool. I hated everybody being the same back home.” He shrugged. “I guess that’s why I joined the army. To go someplace where people were different.”
“Well, you certainly found a place here where people are different. Although there aren’t a whole lot of people around at the moment.” I looked around; where there had been twenty people at the halau the first day I’d shown up, now it was just Rich and me.
“How come you haven’t gone back to Honolulu?” Rich asked me. “You’re not scared?”
I shrugged. “I used to be a cop. I’ve had people shoot at me before. I don’t particularly like it, but you have to get philosophical after a while or you freak out. When it’s my time to go, I’ll go. Until then, I have to get up every morning, get dressed, and get on with my life.”
We continued toward the water, stepping carefully on the sand. “How about you?” I asked. “How come you’re still here?”
“I’m the anti-surfer,” he said, with a little laugh. “If anybody’s killing off surfers, they aren’t going to aim for me.”
“You’re assuming they were all killed because they were surfers. It could be some other reason altogether, just a coincidence that they all surfed. And as a matter of fact, Brad Jacobson didn’t surf at all.”
“But he was with someone who did,” Rich said, as we lowered the canoe into the water. “You won’t catch me making that mistake.”
Melody showed up then, along with a couple of others, enough to fill one canoe. “This place is like a ghost town,” she said. “I never thought I’d see all the surfers chased away.”
“If it was up to me, I’d chase them all away,” Rich said, as we were pushing the canoe into the water.
“You don’t mean that,” Melody said, jumping into the front of the boat. “You were a surfer once yourself. You can’t hate surfers all that much.”
“Try me,” Rich said, and then we were all in the boat, paddling out past the breakers, and there was no more idle conversation. We did a couple of runs up and down the coast, parallel to the shore, and then we did a few in and outs, catching a wave and riding it back in, then paddling out and doing it all over.
It wasn’t surfing, but it was pretty close. Riding atop a wave like that, the coastline rushing in toward you, the spray in your face and the sun above you. If something happened to me, like Rich, and I couldn’t surf again, I’d definitely find myself in outriggers.
It was interesting, I thought, as I sat behind Rich and paddled, that I was starting to like him. Underneath the anti-surfer bluster was a real person.
Of course, I’ve learned that you can be a really nice person and still be a murderer, a rapist, an arsonist, or a child molester. But it always makes it harder for me to hate a suspect if I start to feel like he (or she) is a human being.
We paddled for a while, but without another canoe to race against there wasn’t a lot of fun in it. We did surf in on the waves a couple of times, and that was fun, but eventually we beached the canoe. Rich and I volunteered to carry it in and hose it down before putting it in the storage shed.
“So why do you hate surfers so much?” I asked, as he unfurled the hose.
“I used to surf.” He pointed to his leg. “Can’t any more. Everybody thinks that’s why I hate them.”
“But that’s not it.”
He shook his head. “You saw where I work. Mr. Clark’s property. I see the way the surfers treat the place. Like it’s theirs to destroy.”
I turned the spigot on, and Rich began spraying the canoe. I turned the canoe for him so we could get all the salt water off. “What do you mean?”
“If the surf’s up, surfers will drive right up on the beach, they’ll drag their boards across the sand, tear up the vegetation. They don’t care that it’s private property. All they care about is catching a wave. That’s not right.”
“I know a lot of surfers who do care about private property, who do respect the environment,” I said. “You can’t characterize all of us like that.”
“All I know is that my job would be a lot easier, and the property a lot better off, if there were no surfers up here at all.”
It felt good working out there in the sunshine, the sweat and salt water drying on my skin. I decided to push Rich a little, see what he had to say. “Somebody told me you used to work at The Next Wave,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I just find it hard to picture you working in a surf shop.”
“It was when I first moved up here.” He motioned to me and I turned the canoe upside down. “I used to know Dario, before I went into the Army, and I looked him up when I got up here.”
“Interesting. I used to know Dario a long time ago, too.”
“I didn’t know him that way,” Rich said. “He tried, but I wasn’t interested.”
“Man. Who the hell hasn’t Dario screwed, or tried to screw, on the North Shore?”
“There are a couple of chickens out back of Bishop Clark’s place,” Rich said, laughing. He swung his arm and I righted the canoe again. “But I think it’s just that Dario hasn’t gotten around to them yet.”
I laughed too. “So what did you do there? Don’t tell me you sold surfboards.”
“No, I never sunk that low. I worked in the outdoor gear department. Until I let my temper get the best of me when this surfer asshole got on me about my leg.”
“Wow.”
I turned the hose off and began coiling it up as Rich stood the canoe on end to drain the water. “Dario was cool about it, and the guy decided not to press charges, but it was clear I couldn’t work there any more. Dario hooked me up with Bishop.”
“Don’t tell me Dario and Bishop…”
Rich laughed again. He looked like a whole different person when he laughed. “Not that I know of. They’ve got some real estate deal together.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. He showed us the plans.” I’d forgotten for the moment that Dario was an investor in Ari’s plan to develop Bishop’s property. The whole North Shore seemed to be related in some way or another.
We stowed the boat away, and Rich peeled off toward the other side of the lot. “See you around.”
“Yeah, see you.”
I was sure Dario would tell me the rest of the story about Rich and The Next Wave, so I headed down there, where Dario was sitting at the empty cappuccino bar. “Let me make you a latte,” he said, when I walked in. “Put me out of my misery.”
“When you phrase it like that. With extra whipped cream?”
“Only if I get to pick where I put it.”
I smiled. “Do you ever stop thinking about sex, Dario?”
“It stops me thinking about bankruptcy.”
“Surely you aren’t going to go bankrupt after a couple of bad days,” I said, sitting down at the counter across from where he was acting the barista. “What do you do when we get a stretch of bad weather?”
“Bad weather is my best friend. It pulls the surfers off the beach and into the store. This is like a month of blue skies and mauka trades.”
He handed me the coffee. “You been out on the water yet today?”
“At the outrigger halau,” I said. “I met a guy there used to work for you.”
“Rich Sarkissian. Rich-punch-the-customer-in-the-kisser-ian.”
“He really did that?”
“In front of my very eyes.” Dario leaned back against the cabinets behind him. He had a barista’s apron on over his logo T-shirt. There was not a single customer in the store, and as far as I could see Dario was the only employee on duty.
“Not that the guy didn’t have it coming,” Dario continued. “Made a rude crack about Rich’s leg. But still, I couldn’t keep Rich here after that. Rich was damn lucky the customer didn’t press charges. I had to go over and see him at the place where he was staying and have a little chat with him. I told him the case could drag on long beyond surfing season, and convinced him the judge wouldn’t look too kindly on someone who made fun of the handicapped.”