“No, I suppose not,” Petra says. “My apologies.”
Sunny blows out a stream of air, then says, “Look, I've been slinging plates to a restaurant full of testosterone cases all day. I guess I'm a little aggro.”
“Aggravated.”
“Right,” Sunny says. “So what did you want to say about Boone?”
Petra tells her about Boone attacking Harrington.
“I'm not surprised,” Sunny says. “That's where it all started.”
“Where what all started?”
“Boone's…” She searches for words. “Boone going adrift, I guess.”
Petra asks, “What is his story, anyway?”
“What's his story?”
“I mean, I don't understand him,” Petra says. “Why he's so… under-employed… beneath his abilities. Why he left the police department…”
Sunny says, “It didn't work out.”
“What happened?”
Sunny gives a long sigh, thinks about it, and says, “Rain.”
“His daughter.”
“What?” Sunny says.
“Doesn't Boone have a daughter named Rain?” Petra asks. “I mean, I thought he had her with you, actually.”
“Where did you get that?” Sunny asks.
“I saw some pictures at his place.”
Sunny tells her the story of Rain Sweeny.
“I understand,” Petra says.
“No, you don't,” Sunny replies. “Boone still works that case. He never stops trying to find her. It eats him up.”
“But surely the poor girl is dead.”
“Yes, but Boone won't let it go.”
“Closure,” Petra says.
“Well,” Sunny replies, “Boone wouldn't know that word, or he'd pretend not to. But between you and me? Yeah, I guess ‘closure’ gets it done. Anyway, that's Boone's ‘story.’ As for you and him… Boone and me? We don't own each other. Now, if you don't mind, I have a wave to catch.”
Petra watches her walk away.
A golden girl on a golden beach.
Wonders how, and if, Boone could ever let her go.
110
Sunny wonders the same thing.
She gets back to her place, peels off her sweatshirt, and flings it against the wall. Is it really over over with Boone and me? Can he just let me go like this?
I guess so, she thinks, recalling the image of the little Brit curled up on Boone's couch. Even if what she said about not having sex with Boone was true, it's only a matter of time. The woman is pretty, Sunny thinks. A total betty. Of course Boone would want her.
Yeah, but it's more than sex, isn't it? Sunny thinks as she goes to her computer to log on to the surf report. She's so different, this chick, and maybe that's the point. Maybe Boone wants something totally different for his life, and that's fair.
So do I.
And it's coming. She sees it on the screen. A big whirling splash of red spinning its way toward her, bringing the hope of a different life.
The hope and the threat, she thinks.
Am I ready for this?
Ready for change?
I guess that's what Boone wants.
Is it what I want?
She sits down in front of her little statue of Kuan Yin-the female personification of the Buddha and the Chinese goddess of compassion-and tries to meditate, clear all this relationship shit out of her head. There's no room for it right now. The big swell is coming, it will be here tonight, and she'll be in the water at first light and will need every ounce of concentration and focus she possesses to ride those waves.
So breathe, girl, she tells herself.
Push out the confusion.
Breathe in the clarity.
It's coming.
111
Dave the Love God tries to tell Red Eddie the same thing.
He sits on the deck of the new lifeguard station at PB, looking out at an ocean that is getting sketchier by the second, and tries to tell Eddie that, basically, it's not a fit night for man or beast, or boatloads of boo.
Eddie's not buying it. He thinks it's shaping up to be a perfect night to do this-black, foggy, and the Coast Guard sticking close to shore. “You are Dave the motherfucking Love God!” he says. “You're a freaking legend. If anyone can do this…”
Dave's not so sure. Freaking legend or no, he's going to have all he can handle tomorrow, and more. The water is going to be a freaking zoo, with every big-name surfer and a few dozen wannabes out there in surf that should be black-flagged anyway, trying to ride waves that are genuinely dangerous. People are going to go into the trough, get trapped in the impact zone under the crushing weight of the big waves, and someone is going to have to go in there and pull them out, and that someone is probably going to be Dave. So being out all night and then coming into a situation where he needs to be absolutely on top of his game is not a good idea.
He doesn't want to lose anyone tomorrow.
Dave the Love God lives his life by the proposition that you can save everybody. He couldn't get up in the morning if he didn't think that, all evidence and personal experience notwithstanding.
The truth is that he has lost people, has dragged their blue and swollen bodies in from the ocean and stood watching the EMTs trying to bring them back, knowing that their best efforts will be futile. That sometimes the ocean takes and doesn't give back.
He doesn't sleep those nights. Despite what he teaches his young charges-that you do your best and then let it go-Dave doesn't let it go. Maybe it's ego, maybe it's his sense of omnipotence in the water, but Dave feels in his heart that he should save everybody, get there in time every time, that he can always snatch a victim out of the ocean's clutches, never mind what the moana wants.
He's lost four people in his career: a teenager who got sucked out on a boogie board and panicked; an old man who had a heart attack outside the break and went under; a young woman distance swimmer who was doing her daily swim from Shores over to La Jolla Cove and just got tired; a child.
The child, a little boy, was the worst.
Of course he was.
The screaming mother, the stoic father.
At the funeral, the mother thanked Dave for finding her son's body.
