Banzai is there, almost as if he wants to take responsibility for blowing the murder case.
A lot of surfers show up, too, as many as the gallery can hold, more outside the courthouse, a bunch of “human rights” groups holding signs reading “Justice for Kelly,” “Stop Hate Now,” and “Racism” with that diagonal line through it. Their disgust at the plea arrangement is palpable, and, inside the courtroom, Boone can feel their eyes burning through the back of his head.
So it’s just the defense team—Alan, Petra, and Boone—who’s there for Corey. If any of them was expecting gratitude, they’d have been disappointed. Corey just looks at them with his stupid, conflicted “I just got away with something” smile.
Alan feels that he has to say something. “You’ll probably be out in three years, maybe less. You’ll have your whole life in front of you.”
Sort of, Boone thinks. Corey probably hasn’t figured out yet that his father’s estate will be tied up in litigation and then sold off to pay lawsuits. So Corey will get out of the hole without a home or a dime in the bank, with a felony sheet, in a city that hates him, and not a friend in the world. Boone doesn’t bother to enlighten him to that, nor to the fact that he saved the kid from a jailhouse shanking or worse.
Corey looks at Alan, then at Petra, then Boone, and mutters, “I have nothing to say.”
Me neither, Boone thinks.
Nothing at all.
5.
164
He doesn’t have anything to say, either, when he walks outside the courthouse through a mob of protesting surfers.
Some of whom shout his name and couple it with “Traitor” and “Sellout.”
He just puts a protective arm around Petra and helps her into the waiting car that takes them back to the law office.
165
They lie in bed at his place that night.
After a little while she asks, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? Because you seem sad.”
He thinks about it. “Yeah, kind of, I am.”
“Your friends?”
“That’s part of it,” he says. “But only part. It’s the whole thing, you know? It’s made me question . . . who I am. I never saw the ugliness until it was too late, until it killed someone like Kelly. Maybe I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to see it. I only wanted to see . . . paradise.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“No, I’m not,” Boone says. “If you don’t see something, you don’t have to do anything about it. And I didn’t do a damn thing.”
“You’re not responsible for the whole world.”
“Just my piece of it.”
Petra kisses his neck, then his shoulder and his chest, and slides down his body gently, because he’s bruised and sore and aching, but she does soft, loving things until he cries out. Much later, her head in the crook of his neck, she asks, “Have you had a chance to think about Alan’s offer?”
Boone smiles. “He told you about that?”
“Yes.”
“Before or after he made it?”
“Before,” she says. “Does that matter?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Ah. I see. I didn’t ask him, Boone. It was his idea.”
“But he ran it by you first.”
“I’m sure just to see if I’d be comfortable with the idea of you being around the office,” she says.
“Are you?” Boone asks. “ ‘Comfortable’?”
She rolls over and puts her head on his chest. “Much,
He holds her tight. “Why don’t you stay here until you’re ready to move back in to your place?”
“Yes?” she asks. “Yes, thank you, I’d love that, but it wasn’t an answer.”
“Yeah, Pete,” he says, “I think I’ll do it, the law school thing.”
She smiles and settles closer into him. A few minutes later Boone feels her breathing deepen and he looks down to see that she’s fallen asleep. He loves the smell of her, the feel of her, her hair splayed against his chest.
He doesn’t sleep.
Lies there and thinks.
166
Boone beats the sun out of bed.
He carefully disentangles himself from Petra, so as not to wake her, pulls the sheet back up around her neck, then throws on a sweatshirt, jeans, and sandals and walks into the kitchen to write her a note.
He steps outside into the still-dark morning, gets into the Deuce, and pulls off the pier onto the PCH. His route takes him right past the spot where the Dawn Patrol goes out, and in the faint light that is just now gathering, he can see their forms on the beach, performing the morning ritual of waxing and stretching and quiet conversation.
He doesn’t stop, but keeps driving north.
167
The lightness in the bed wakes Petra up.
She misses his weight and warmth, but she’s glad he’s going back out on the Dawn Patrol, and then she thinks how nice it would be to have a morning cup with him before he goes out, maybe look out the window and watch him surf before she goes in to work.
She gets up and goes into the kitchen, but he’s already gone.
A note is propped against a cup on the table.
