The Gentlemen's Hour

As a homicide detective for the San Diego Police Department, killing Dave is right in Johnny’s wheelhouse. It’s refreshing to put his mind to a murder that

isn’t

going to happen, as opposed to the three all-too-real killings he has on his desk right now, including one he doesn’t even want to think about. It’s been a hot, tetchy summer in San Diego—tempers have flared and lives have been extinguished. A vicious drug war for control of the Baja Cartel has spilled across the border into San Diego, and bodies are turning up all over the place.

“Drowning him would be easiest,” Boone suggests.

“Hello?” Tide says. “He’s a lifeguard?”

Dave the Love God is a lifeguard, only slightly more famous for the lives he’s saved than for the women he’s slept with on his one-man crusade to boost San Diego’s tourist industry. Right now, though, he’s belly down on his board, moaning.

“Are you kidding?” Boone asks. “

Look at him.”

“Drowning is too blatantly ironic,” Johnny says. “I mean, the headline legendary lifeguard drowns in flat sea? It doesn’t work for me.”

“Do you have your gun?” Tide asks.

“In the water?”

“If you were my friend,” Dave says with a groan, “you’d paddle in, get your pistol from your car, and shoot me.”

“Do you know the paperwork involved in discharging your firearm?” Johnny asks.

“What’s in a mai tai anyway?” Boone wonders out loud. He was also at Mai Tai Tuesday, his office being next door to The Sundowner and he being sort of an unofficial bouncer for the joint. But he left after having only a couple and went back to his office, upstairs from the Pacific Surf Shop, to see if there were any e-mails from Sunny or any offers for work. Zippo on both, Sunny being really busy and the private investigation field being really not.

Boone’s not so bummed about the work, but he does miss Sunny. Even though they have long been “exes,” they’re still good friends, and he misses her presence.

They all shut up for a second as they feel a wave building up behind them. They wait, feel the slight surge, but then the wave gives up like a guy who’s late for work, just can’t get out of bed, and decides to call in sick.

Later.

“Could we get back to killing Dave?” Tide asks.

“Yes, please,” Dave says.

Boone drops out of the conversation.

Literally.

Tired of making talk, he rolls off his board into the water and lets himself sink. It feels good, but then again, Boone is probably more comfortable in the water than on land. A prenatal surfer in his mother’s womb, the ocean is his church, and he’s a daily communicant. Working just enough to (barely) support his surfing jones, his office is a block from the beach. His home is even closer—he lives in a cottage on a pier over the water, so the smell, sound, and rhythm of the ocean are constants in his life.

Now he holds his breath and looks up through the water at the relentlessly blue summer sky and pale yellow sun, distorted by refraction. He feels the ocean gently pulse around him, listens to the muted sound of the water running over the bottom, a scant ten feet or so below, and contemplates the state of his existence.

No serious career, no serious money (okay, no money at all), no serious relationship.

He and Sunny had split up even before she got her big break and went off on the pro tour, and although there is that thing with Petra, who knows where that’s going? If anywhere. They’ve been “seeing” each other casually since last spring but haven’t closed the deal and he’s not sure he even wants to because he has a feeling that Petra Hall would not be into the friends-with-privileges thing, and that if they did sleep together, he would instantly have a serious relationship.

Which he’s not sure he wants.

A relationship with Petra “Pete” Hall is heavy-duty reef break, nothing to be trifled with. Pete is gorgeous, smart, funny, and has the heart of a lion, but she’s also a career-driven lawyer who loves to argue, ferociously ambitious, and she doesn’t surf.

And maybe it’s too much, on the end of what’s been a heavy year.

There was the whole Tammy Roddick case that brought Petra into Boone’s life, and blew up into a massive child prostitution ring that almost cost Boone his life; there was Dave blowing the whistle on local gangster Red Eddie’s smuggling op; the big swell that rolled in and changed all their lives; and Sunny riding her big wave, making the cover of all the surf mags, and leaving.

Now Sunny was off riding her comet, and Dave was in limbo waiting to see if he’d ever have to testify in Eddie’s constantly delayed trial, and Boone was treading water on the edge of a relationship with Pete.

“Is he coming up?” Hang asks the others, starting to get concerned. Boone’s been down there a long time.

“I don’t care,” Dave mumbles. I’m the one who’s supposed to die, he thinks, not Boone. Boone’s not hung over, Boone didn’t down double-digit mai tais—whatever the hell they’re made from—last night. Boone doesn’t deserve the dignified relief of death. But Dave’s lifeguard instincts take over and he looks over the edge of his board to see Boone’s face underwater. “He’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Hang says, “but how long can he hold his breath?”

“A long time,” Johnny says.

They’ve actually had breath-holding contests, which Boone invariably won. Johnny has a dark suspicion that Boone is actually some kind of mutant, like his parents were really space aliens from an amphibian planet. Holding your breath is important to a serious surfer, because you might get held under a big wave and then you’d better be able to go without air for a couple of minutes because you’re not going to have a choice. So surfers train for that eventuality, which, in reality, is an inevitability. It’s going to happen.

Johnny looks down into the water and waves.

Boone waves back.

“He’s good,” Johnny says.

Which leads to a not very animated discussion of whether it’s possible for a person to intentionally drown himself, or whether the body would just take over and force you to breathe. On a cooler day, with more active surf, this is the sort of topic that would have engendered ferocious debate, but with the sun stinking hot and the surf a no-show, the argument falls as flat as the sea.

August blows.

When Boone finally pops back up, Johnny asks, “Did you figure out the meaning of life?”

“Sort of,” Boone says, climbing back on his board. “We’re dying to hear,” Dave mutters.

“The meaning of life,” Boone says, “is to stay underwater for as long as possible.”

“That wouldn’t be the meaning of life,” Johnny observes, “that would be the secret of life.”

“Okay,” Boone says.

Secret, meaning, secret meaning, whatever.

The secret meaning of life might be just as simple as the Dawn Patrol itself. Spending time with good, old friends. Doing something you love with people you love in a place you love, even when there’s no surf.

A few minutes later they give up and paddle in. The Dawn Patrol—that early-morning, prework surf session— is over. They have places to go to: Johnny’s coming off the night shift but needs to get home because his doctor wife is on days, Hang has to open Pacific Surf, Tide is due at his gig as a supervisor in the Public Works Department, responsible for storm drains even when there are no storms to drain. Dave needs to man the lifeguard tower to protect swimmers from surf that doesn’t exist.

The Dawn Patrol—Boone’s best friends in the world.

He doesn’t go in with them, though.

Having no work at the moment, there’s no point in going into the office to see if the red ink has gotten any redder.

So he stays out there for the Gentlemen’s Hour.