In the Break

by Jack Lopez

  “I wonder where that old Mexican will take us?” Jamie said, changing the subject. He didn’t seem concerned about what he would do, now that he was down here. All he wanted to do was surf, and he was doing it. I didn’t want to leave until he was settled, I knew that much.

  “You’re so lame. He’s not taking us anywhere,” Amber said, releasing out of her pose at one-eighth speed.

  “He’s got a boat.”

  “So he says.”

  “He probably does,” I said.

  “See.” Jamie sneered at Amber.

  “I’m not going out with that drunk,” Amber said.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “He won’t be drunk tomorrow.” Jamie took a big swig of sloe gin.

  Amber looked at me. Jamie looked up in the sky.

  I threw some small pieces of brush on the fire. It sputtered awake. “Jésus.”

  “Jesus, shit,” Jamie said.

  “What?”

  “His name is Jésus.”

  “Absolutely. Jesus.” Amber lay back on a sleeping bag. She arched her back so that only her shoulders and feet made contact. I could hear her slow, deep breaths.

  I sat with my legs crossed, sifting the sandy dirt between my feet.

  Jamie stood up a little wobbly and threw a rock over the cliff. You couldn’t see it hit water; it was that dark, though you could see the whitewater of breaking waves out in the lineup.

  I stretched out my leg, stopping it on Amber’s sleeping bag. I stretched farther, until I touched her foot. She came out of her pose and sat up smiling, rubbing my shin, back and forth.

  “I don’t want to go out on the ocean with that guy,” she said.

  Jamie took another drink of the gin. “I do.”

  “Really, Jamie,” Amber said. “I don’t want to go out on a boat.”

  “Don’t come, then. Juan’ll go. Right?”

  Amber stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff. She looked over.

  I lay down on the sleeping bag, right where she had been seconds earlier.

  “Right?” Jamie said much louder.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got my mom’s car here.”

  “One more day won’t mean shit. It’s not like you’re not in trouble. Whatever happens, happens.”

  “Stop it, Jamie,” Amber said.

  I fell for the taunt. “Let’s see what his boat is like. One more day won’t make that much difference.” I hoped the people at my aunt’s place would be gone by then; I hoped my parents were …

  Approaching the fire, Amber said, “Jamie, you think you’re Kurtz going farther and farther up the river. Well, you’re not! We need to decide some things. Now! How are you going to stay down here? What if that trailer’s not …”

  “What river?” he interrupted her. “We’re surfers! And I’ll stay right here, surfing.”

  “Get real.”

  “I am. Realer than I’ve ever been in my life.” He took another swig from the bottle.

  “Don’t be so lame!” Amber sat down again on the sleeping bag, right next to me.

  Jamie got up, sort of half-walked and stumbled over to my mother’s car, rooted around on the floor, came back, and plopped down on his sleeping bag. He pulled something out of his pants pocket. With unsteady fingers he placed it onto a burning branch.

  “Where’d you get that?” I could see Amber’s bare legs, see the tiny hearts on the gold ankle bracelet she always wore, a gift from Robert Bonham.

  Jamie took a hit off the joint and passed it to me.

  I hated pot; it makes you stupid and lazy, and that was how I felt now, though I still refused it. I passed it on to Amber but she refused so I passed it back to Jamie.

  “Cindy,” he said, exhaling smoke.

  “Did you get her phone number?” Amber put some more brush on the fire.

  Sometimes they would do that, just start talking about a subject that nobody else knew, except for them. One of them would say something, a complete non sequitur, but the other one would be right on track.

  Amber placed the paper bag of stuff from the store in front of her, sitting down. She reached under her Indian jacket and unhooked her bra, pulling it out and looking at the back strap. She frowned at it, and then squinted. She opened the nail polish and painted some on the metal hook.

  “No. What are you doing?”

  “Address?”

  “No. What for?”

  “Talk to her, write to her.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “What are you doing?” I pretended to be calm in spite of the appearance of her silky black bra.

  “This thing’s rubbing my back.”

  “My sunglasses are rubbing my ear,” Jamie said.

  “Let me see them.”

  He took off his glasses and tossed them to her. She squinted at them and then painted some nail polish on the curved part.

  “Why are things so fucked up?” I said.

  Amber looked up in the sky and chuckled.

  “My brother got married just because Bonnie’s pregnant. Why’d they have to get married?”

  “She’s pregnant? I didn’t know that!” Amber shouted.

  “Why’d Mom marry F? Marry!”

  “Why did you mark up his underwear?” Amber said.

  “They were skid marks,” Jamie said.

  “Shit,” Amber said.

  “My point exactly.”

  “It wasn’t a very good welcome for him.”

  “He wasn’t welcome.”

  “He did his flamethrower shit,” I said.

  “What?” Amber said.

  “You know how he always farts? Well, one time when Juan and I had just gotten back from surfing, he spread his legs wide apart, put his butt in the air, and lit his fart with a match. Can you believe it?” Jamie looked to me for commiseration.

  “It was foul shit,” I said.

  “You guys,” Amber said.

  “Full dick stuff,” Jamie said. “Skunk city.”

  When F had first moved in to Jamie’s house after he married Claire, Jamie and I put shoe polish on his underwear. You had to respond, I mean the guy’s sitting right where Mr. Watkins used to sit, lighting his farts on fire. My older brother shoe-polished my uncle’s underwear when we were younger. My uncle was a farter too. When Jamie and I did it to F’s — the asshole wore huge white briefs! — we couldn’t stop giggling, and now, when I thought of it again, I giggled.

  “It’s not funny, Juan,” Amber said. “You guys didn’t give him a chance. He was trying to help.”

  “He was gravy training,” I said.

  “Oh, and you were so good to him, Amber,” Jamie said. “You took his coins too.”

  F went berserk on that one. He had a coin collection, or so he claimed, in a huge glass jar. Jamie and I took coins from the so-called collection any time we wanted money. When the level became noticeably low, F hid the remaining loot somewhere where we couldn’t find it. And gave Jamie a tongue lashing. Evidently everyone was raiding those coins.

  “He is a jerk,” Amber said. “Let me have a beer, then.”

  We had a cheap foam cooler filled with ice and sodas and a few beers. I opened three bottles and passed them around. Amber took some of Jamie’s pot as she handed his glasses back to him. He put them on and leaned back.

  We sat there, watching the Baja sky, listening to the sounds of the empty night: waves breaking over the rocks, wind rustling sand and fire, and every so often tires echoing off the pavement up on the road.

  Amber did have a point about F. He hadn’t always been so bad. In fact, at first, I sort of liked him. He established an account for Jamie at this place that made hamburgers — Bimbo Burgers they were called — miniature hamburgers that were outrageous. Jamie could eat eight at a time, no sweat. I could eat four or five when I was hungry. Any time we wanted, and especially on our way back from surfing, we could stuff ourselves with those little hamburgers. That had been cool on F’s part.

  There
were other things as well. One time F took Jamie, Greg Scott, and me to this all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. It was after surfing, and F insisted on taking us. He paid, and then had to go run some errands. Jamie and Greg and I got down to business, going for the roast beef first, with mashed potatoes. We each had two plates of that, and then went back for turkey plates. By that time I was stuffed, but I just had to get some desert, German chocolate cake. But Jamie wasn’t finished. He went back for ham, and then had two salads, and three deserts. When F came back from whatever he was doing, the manager of the place was at our table telling Jamie that he couldn’t come back. Greg and I couldn’t help cracking up.

  Jamie looked sort of embarrassed, when F intervened and said, “What are you talking about? Isn’t this all you can eat?”

  The proprietor said, yes, it was, but there were limits, and Jamie had exceeded them.

  “What limits?” F said.

  “Look, I don’t want no trouble, okay, but this boy isn’t welcome here again.”

  “Your food tastes like shit anyway,” F said. “C’mon, guys.”

  He followed us out of the big room that was the restaurant, but stopped right in the entryway that separated the eating part from the lobby. And there, before the manager, the staff, and the patrons, he lifted his leg and shook it as if there were something stuck high up in his pants, all the while cutting a huge fart.

  We were in the eighth grade and thought that was the funniest thing that would ever happen in our lives. Greg Scott fell on the ground he was laughing so hard. My stomach hurt the next day, I’d laughed so much. But when I told my older brother, he didn’t think it was that funny. He said it might have been funny if I had done it, or Jamie or Greg, but he said it wasn’t funny when a grown man acted like a kid. Something’s off, he’d said.

  It was later that I understood what my brother meant. It was like F had missed the day when they taught you boundaries or something. He seemed to understand how to act around adults, but around kids he tried to be one of us, and he wasn’t, no way. So it was inevitable that things would go wrong when this dipshit who sometimes outdid the kids tried to assume authority, tried to impart discipline and shit, cause it just didn’t wash. And that was Jamie’s whole issue. How can you accept advice or punishment from someone when you don’t respect them?

  Jamie finished his bottle of sloe gin. He lit another joint.

  “How much of that shit you got?” I said.

  “This is it.”

  “Do you like her?” Amber wiped her leg where she’d spilled beer.

  There they went again.

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t even know her.”

  “I think you do.” Amber took another swig of beer.

  Jamie lay down. And fell asleep.

  “Wake up, asshole,” Amber said to him. Then to me she said, “So this is one of your famous surf trips?” Without waiting for an answer she said, “It’s a big bore.”

  “What do you want, nightlife?”

  “What do you expect from fif …” She caught herself and stopped. She tried to smile at me but I turned away.

  She was thinking of Robert Bonham, I bet. Robert Bonham. When he first started taking Amber surfing. He was patient with her, helping her in the way that those who have gone before can help those who are beginning. And he wanted Jamie along to help as well. Robert Bonham figured, Jamie told me, that with the two of them, they could help Amber to get waves, even though she was a beginner. The problem was, however, I wasn’t invited. Jamie went with Robert Bonham and Amber once without me, the first time. The second time Robert invited Jamie to go with him and Amber, Jamie declined. He said if I couldn’t go, then he wouldn’t go either. I remember because I was doing yard work or something, Nestor leading the charge, and I saw Jamie coming over the dirt path in the field next to our house.

  I turned off the lawn mower when he got close to me. “I thought you were surfing,” I’d said in a snotty voice.

  “I didn’t go with that cheapskate. Need some help?”

  Jamie worked with Nestor and me, helping with the lawn and trimming some bushes and stuff.

  When we finished, we rode our bikes back to his house, where we shot some hoops. During an intense game of Horse, Amber showed up with Robert Bonham.

  He handed her her board without coming up the driveway.

  “Cheapskate,” Jamie muttered. And that day, I knew the kind of friend Jamie was. He’d rather not go surfing than leave me behind.

  “Not anymore,” Amber had said. “You can surf with us from now on, Juan.” She had smiled at me.

  Remembering that smile from Amber, I had a huge excitement in my gut. My hands were shaking, so I placed them under my bottom. My mouth was dry in spite of the cold beer.

  “Look, Juan, I’m sorry, okay?”

  I tried to play it cool, and didn’t answer.

  She stood up and helped her groggy brother get in a sleeping bag. I felt a warmness inside, watching her take care of Jamie. My friend was okay; F couldn’t touch him, get him arrested. She helped him into one of the bags — there were only two of them.

  When she was finished she came over and sat next to me on the other one.

  I looked long and hard into her eyes. Blue. Ice and sky. People would look at Amber and not know if her eyes were green or gray or blue. Different people would give all those colors as their answers, if they were asked. I never really thought about it that much because I knew: they were blue. Why would she want to be with a fifteen-year-old?

  “Listen, Amber, let’s go check out that island, okay? If those people are still at my aunt’s when we come back, I’m leaving. But if they’re gone, you and Jamie can stay if you want. But I would like to check out those waves on that island.” Why not? When would I ever get another chance like this? If the universe sends you something, take advantage of it, is what I say. Yet the universe hadn’t sent me anything: I’d taken it, no doubt about it. I’d taken my mother’s car, taken all the money from her purse, used Jamie’s misfortune as an opportunity to find a perfect wave.

  “Look at Jamie. He thinks we’re on vacation or something. We’re not, Juan, we’re not.”

  “I know. But the swell’s pumping and we’re down here. And a guy with a boat? C’mon, when will we ever get a chance like this again? Never. Besides, we could get the perfect wave.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no such thing.”

  “I think there may be. Why did this fisherman show up? He’s gonna take us to an island where the waves are perfect. I can feel it. There’s gotta be a perfect wave. Jamie thinks there is.”

  After a time she said, “Okay, I guess.”

  We both looked up at the stars, the night filled with them. The wind blew in fresh ocean air over everything. As I inhaled the salt smell I looked down at the one remaining sleeping bag. So did Amber.

  “You can sleep with me, Juan, but no fooling around, okay?”

  “What about Robert?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I’ll try.”

  “No trying. If you don’t agree, then you can sleep over there.”

  The fire was fading. I got up and fed it all the stuff we’d collected, building a huge, flaming globe. It highlighted Jamie as he drooled on his sleeping bag. It lighted Amber’s soft smooth legs, her creamy face. While I fed the fire she laid out the sleeping bag, first shaking the sand out of it.

  After I turned off the music we lay side by side on a blanket with a sleeping bag over us, staring into heaven. It was like going to the planetarium at Griffith Park, only much, much better. So vast and ethereal, like a fully formed idea that you can’t verbalize. And so quiet.

  As the fire burned out, the sky became brighter, until it was so luminous that it had come alive, a swirling, moving mass of entities. Life. Alive. Jamie’s, Amber’s, and my problems were so inconsequential in the big scheme of things, as the cliché goes. For once I understood it. I was experiencing the “real” right before my very eyes. T
he night sky, the stars, Amber, Jamie. The now. The moment.

  It had a liberating effect.

  My family would be okay. I would survive the lapse in good judgment. My mom and dad would get over it. My brother would become a father, I would become an uncle. Jamie would return. Amber …

  I leaned over and kissed her on the lips. She kissed back, nestling into the crook of my arm, as we began messing around.

  CHAPTER 9

  The day was melancholy, the sky silently weeping over the vast and unseen ocean. It wasn’t what you would call raining, and it wasn’t really foggy, but the fact remained that everything was all wet, and a light, filtering mist dusted the ocean. Huge smooth-thick swells would hump up, and then we’d freeboard down their backsides.

  Jésus worked the helm, which was in the center toward the stern of the dory. The bow and stern had points to them, mostly keeping out the seas that we bobbed forward on. A Mercury outboard engine made the dory very fast indeed when he gunned it, and there were three sides and a roof to the tiny wheelhouse in which Jésus stood, intent and braced against the swell. A thick tarp stretched from the bow to the wheelhouse, and Amber slept under its sheltering dryness. Jamie sat on the bait tank in the stern, looking back at the direction from which we’d come. I stood in between Jésus and Jamie.

  As we had motored out of the harbor Jamie had said to me, “I know what’s going on with you and my sister.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “Don’t play stupid, Juan. I know what’s up, so knock it off.”

  “I’m not good enough for your sister? Is that it? Is that what you’re saying? Listen, a-hole, she’s old enough to make her own decisions and so am I. Comprenez-vous, cabrone?”

  “What about Robert?”

  “Fuck Robert.”

  “Just fuck off, Juan.”

  He had made for the bait tank, and I had remained next to the wheelhouse by Jésus.

  We’d not spoken for quite some time. None of the Watkins were talkative, and I don’t know why. When he was alive Mr. Watkins would exclaim a lot after he’d drunk a few martinis, his drink of choice. Mrs. Watkins was quiet most of the time I saw the family interacting when I’d eat dinner with them. In fact, their meal routine was wholly different from that of my family. In my family we’d practically fight over the food when it was put on the table. My little brother and sister would get yelled at, most likely sent to their rooms for screwing up the sanctity of the meal. Everyone in my family would talk at once, making the most dominant one raise their voice. In my family people would shout their conversations from different sides of the house! But in general, mealtime was abuzz with laughter and talk. Not so at Jamie’s. Everyone was tight-lipped.