Wrack and Ruin

by Don Lee

  He backed away from the water’s edge and looked out at the waves, shading his eyes. He couldn’t tell who was who from this distance. Among a handful of spectators underneath the cliff, a woman was videotaping the windsurfers, and he asked her if he could look through her camera for a minute. He zoomed in and out, and at last saw Dalton Lee catching a wave in. He carved out some S-turns and then jibed, after which he stalled a second, waiting for a gust.

  “Hey, hey, Dalton!” Woody yelled, waving his arms. “Dalton!”

  He couldn’t hear him, and even if he could, Woody knew he would have pretended not to. The wind came in, and Dalton pumped his sail and hooked in and disappeared, speeding out to the horizon.

  Another set of waves rolled in, and a windsurfer charged down the first of them, cut back up its face, floated above the crest, landed hard, and tripped off his board. Everything—board, rig, and sailor—tumbled inside the big wave, a washing machine, and then was flushed out in the whitewater, the gear crashing against the rocky shore and breaking into pieces. It appeared the sailor would be next. He was drifting perilously close to the rocks, unable to swim out with the current and tide. “Man,” one of the spectators beneath the cliff said, “he is going to eat it.” But then a man on a jet ski—a rescue sled attached to its rear—roared up to him, swooped him up, and motored him to safety.

  It was no ordinary jet ski—not, as expected, a lifeguard or Coast Guard vessel. The jet ski was tricked out like a hot rod or low-rider, painted in jade green with a metallic flake finish, adorned with THUNDERDOME and MFP in flowing mother-of-pearl script, and decorated with airbrushed illustrations of kangaroos and crocodiles, flames on the sides, and an elaborate, exquisitely detailed depiction of a woman, naked, spread-eagled, on the rescue sled.

  Woody hobbled to the beach, where the jet ski had slid ashore. The rescued windsurfer and some of his pals were walking back in Woody’s direction to fetch his gear from the rocks, and the jet ski driver was securing the ropes that connected his rescue sled.

  “How much to rent your jet ski?” Woody asked. He knew how to operate a jet ski. Years ago he had rented one for an hour in Manzanita.

  The man stood up. He wore mirrored sunglasses, a green canvas hat with a chin strap, the brim pinned up on both sides of his head, and a farmer john wetsuit, his jacket and life vest unzipped to accommodate an immense beer belly. “What do you think this is, bush week?” he said in a heavy Australian accent.

  “It’s an emergency. I have to talk to one of the windsurfers. I need to get him to come in.”

  “Not for sale, mate. No one drives this ski but me. Now rack off.”

  Woody took out his money clip and began flicking off bills. “You drive, then. I’ll sit in back. I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”

  The man looked at the bills. “Well, g’day, cobber, reckon that’s the go, onya,” he said.

  “What?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Woody.”

  “Everybody calls me Mad Max,” the man said, crushing Woody’s hand (why couldn’t people shake hands normally around here?) and revealing a horsey, brown-teethed grin framed within his scraggly fu manchu. He had curly brown hair spilling out from underneath his hat, and was grossly hairy in general, curlicues matting his chest and the backs of his hands.

  “Mad Max. As in the movie?” Woody asked.

  “One and the same. You gotta wettie?”

  “What?” This was ridiculous. He could hardly follow a thing the Aussie was saying.

  “Wetsuit. You gonna get wet out there. Water’s fifty-two degree.”

  “That doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Will if you fall off. That cut’s not going to help, neither.”

  Woody glimpsed down at the rip in his jeans. He hadn’t realized that his knee was cut. It was bleeding rather freely.

  “Noah will love you,” Mad Max said.

  “What?”

  “Noah. Big Mac. The holy mother of shit-your-nicky-nanas scary motherfuckers, mate! Great white shark! They don’t call this the Red Triangle for nothing. Three attacks in the last five years. Woman at Wads got her arm gnawed to a stump, surfer up at Rummy Creek had his foot bit clean off, bloke here got ripped to shreds, don’t think they found anything below the nips. Once saw Whitey myself half mile out, thought there were two of them, his fins were so far apart. Big big big! They had a dead humpback beach herself up the coast couple weeks ago, heard some scientists took her out for a feeding frenzy and got Noahs from hundreds of miles away to congregate in the area. So don’t fall off, mate, or with that cut you’ll be yum-yum din-dins!” He laughed. He had hanks of nose hair that seemed to meld into his mustache. “Just kidding, mate. Don’t listen to me, I’m just an old drongo. But I’m an ace waterman, anyone here will tell you.”

  He opened the front storage compartment of the jet ski and pulled out a life jacket for Woody—“Personally, I’m opposed to these, for political and religious reasons,” he said, “but it’s the fucking law in California”—and also handed him a pair of foul-weather bib pants, made of slick orange PVC. “These will keep you a little dry.”

  Woody stepped into the pants, which were several sizes too large for him, and tightened the suspenders as far as he could, but he was still swimming in them.

  “Nice dacks,” Mad Max said. “Ready?”

  There was nothing to hold on to, no hand grips or railing. Mad Max told him to put his arms around his waist, but, given his girth, that was impossible, so Woody feebly grasped the straps on the sides of Mad Max’s open life vest as they roared off to sea. Just past the shore break, it became apparent to Woody that this might not have been the best of ideas. First they smacked into the chop, which came from every direction, completely unsystematic, churning, roiling, foaming, heaving mounds and peaks, making Woody seasick, the wind howling, the water freezing and spraying up and splashing all over them, and then there were huge swells, inexplicably breaking in the middle of the ocean. Mad Max would drive over the top of a pitching wave, and the bottom would drop out behind it, the jet ski free-falling and slamming down into the trough. He’d have to gun the throttle to get them going again over the next swell, and the jet ski would whine and tip back, nearly vertical, and they’d be staring straight up to the sky. To counter the weight, Mad Max would stand and lean forward, and Woody, now absolutely terrified, would have to rise off the seat with him, hanging on to the Aussie for dear life.

  “Coo-eee!” Mad Max yelled. “Coo-eeeeee!”

  “What are you doing?” Woody screamed. “You’re crazy!”

  “I’m calling out to the goddess Wuriupranili!” Mad Max said. “Coo-eee!”

  He banked the jet ski around toward shore, and windsurfers began crisscrossing their path, one of them catching air off a swell and floating downwind over their heads, taking one hand off the boom and casually waving his fingers at them.

  “Jesus!” Woody said, ducking.

  “You’re hilarious, you prick,” Mad Max shouted at the windsurfer, laughing.

  “There!” Woody said, pointing. “There he is!”

  Dalton Lee was coming toward them, and Mad Max immediately spun the jet ski upon a parallel course, angling just a few feet away from him as they raced side by side at over thirty miles an hour.

  “Yo, Dalt!” Woody said. “Yoo-hoo!”

  Dalton gawped at Woody—the last person he had expected to see out here. Without warning, he laid down his sail and swept out a wide, screaming-fast jibe and sped away in the opposite direction.

  Woody slapped the back of Mad Max’s life vest. “Don’t lose him!”

  “He don’t seem all that happy to see ya, mate,” Mad Max said, but obligingly turned the jet ski around and revved after Dalton.

  Back and forth they chased him, following him to the reef break and out to sea again, but they couldn’t get him to slow down or even acknowledge them.

  “Cut in front of him,” Woody told Mad Max.

  “What?”

/>   “Make him fall.”

  “I’m not going to do that,” Mad Max said.

  “I’m paying you.”

  “Don’t go acting the yobbo. Somebody could get hurt.”

  “I’ll give you another hundred.”

  “You’re being a bloody nuisance.”

  “Two hundred. Here he is again!”

  Dalton was whizzing toward them, going so fast, his board was almost continuously airborne, skimming over the whitecaps.

  “Do it!” Woody said.

  “Rack off!” Mad Max said.

  Woody stood and reached around Mad Max and pushed his hand over the Aussie’s on the throttle and shoved the handlebar, making them lurch in front of Dalton.

  “Cark it!” Mad Max said, swatting at Woody’s arm, and at the last second he veered the other way, causing Woody to lose his balance and cartwheel off the jet ski into the frigid water right in front of Dalton, the nose of whose board was plowing directly toward Woody’s head.

  Dalton bailed, dropping his sail, instigating a spectacular crash, his board flying up and then ramming to a dead stop. “What the fuck are you doing!” he yelled when he surfaced, treading water.

  “Pick me up! Pick me up!” Woody shrieked to Mad Max, swiveling around in a panic, searching for fins.

  “Get stuffed,” Mad Max told him. “You can swim in. I’ve had enough of you.” He cruised back toward the beach a quarter mile away, the spread-eagled invitation of the woman on his rescue sled slowly withdrawing.

  “Help me!” Woody, bobbing in his life jacket, said to Dalton.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Dalton asked, paddling to his gear.

  Thrashing his arms, Woody could feel his bib pants filling with water, pulling him down. “Help me! Do something! I’m not going to make it. I’m bleeding. There are sharks out here!”

  He could see Dalton deliberating, thinking of leaving him to fend for himself, but he said, reluctantly, “Grab the strap on the back of the board,” and hoisted his sail into the air, letting it lift him out of the water and onto the board, after which he towed Woody to shore, trolling him like bait, the trip an agonizing eternity, Woody expecting, at any time, to be eviscerated and devoured from below.

  THEY WENT TO A RESTAURANT to let Woody warm up. He was shivering, certain he had hypothermia. Dalton had lent him a hoodie and a T-shirt, and he’d talked a couple of friends on the beach into donating a baseball cap, some ratty cargo pants, and a grubby pair of sheepskin uggs. A ridiculous outfit for a grown man. While Dalton unrigged his equipment, Woody had sat in his Rover with the heat blasting. His key remote no longer worked. Neither did his cell phone or BlackBerry, everything waterlogged and fried.

  The restaurant, the closest to Davenport Landing on Highway 1, was a hole-in-the-wall called the Cuckoo’s Nest, with neon beer signs, rickety wooden booths, and tacky checkered oilcloths. There were Harleys and Ducatis parked outside. It was, evidently, a shrine of sorts, a tribute-themed establishment, for on the walls were dozens of movie posters and framed eight-by-tens dedicated to a single icon: Jack Nicholson.

  Dalton looked around admiringly. “This is fantastic,” he said. “I’ve never been in here. I always passed by and assumed it was a biker joint.”

  “Know what you want yet?” a waitress asked. She was wearing tinted Ray•Bans.

  “Soup,” Woody told her.

  “We’ve got tomato bisque and chowder.”

  “Chowder. And coffee. And one ‘As Good as It Gets’ burger, medium rare, blue cheese. And an order of onion rings. And potato salad.” Diet be damned.

  “You still serving breakfast?” Dalton asked, smiling at the waitress. She was young, blond, pretty, in a wholesome, freckly, small-town way.

  “All day, hon.”

  “A western omelet, but tomatoes on the side instead of home fries.”

  “Gotcha,” the waitress said. “Coffee?”

  “That’s not a problem?” Dalton said. “Substitutions?”

  The waitress glanced at him, then, catching on, tapped her pencil against her notepad, stuck it behind her ear, and placed a hand on her hip. “No substitutions.”

  “I can’t have tomatoes?”

  “Only what’s on the menu,” the waitress said.

  “Okay, then whole wheat toast.”

  “No toast.”

  “No toast? You make sandwiches here, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then a western omelet, coffee, and a chicken salad sandwich.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “But hold the mayo, hold the lettuce and tomato.”

  “All right.”

  “And hold the chicken.”

  “Hold the chicken?”

  “Between your knees!” Dalton said, and he and the waitress laughed. “I bet that gets pretty old,” he told the waitress apologetically.

  “Never,” she said, picking up the menus.

  “What was that about?” Woody asked Dalton.

  “Don’t you remember the scene in Five Easy Pieces, the scene in the diner?” Dalton asked. “Come on! You’ve got to remember that.”

  Woody pulled out his asthma inhaler and sucked in a dose, unimpressed. Jack Nicholson’s box-office numbers stank these days.

  “Are you all right?” Dalton asked.

  Woody nodded, though his face was covered with calamine lotion, he had a bandaged cut on his forehead and now on his knee, he was cold to the bone, and his ass itched excruciatingly; though in the course of less than forty-eight hours he had almost drowned, sunk in quicksand, and gotten hit by a truck, killed by a Samoan drug dealer, crushed in a building collapse, and eaten by a coyote and maybe a lurking great white shark. “There was no family emergency, was there?” he said.

  “The truth?” Dalton asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Son, you can’t handle the truth,” Dalton told him with a Nicholsonian snarl. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

  The waitress came back with their coffee. “So you’re a fan?” she asked Dalton.

  “Totally. I’m a director.”

  “Really?”

  “You ever see a little film called There Once Was a City?”

  “You made that?” the girl asked. “I loved that movie. I saw it in Santa Cruz at the Asian American Showcase.”

  “You go to school there?”

  “Community college.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “Multicultural media.”

  “We should talk,” Dalton said.

  “Maybe we should,” she said.

  Dalton watched her walk away, raised his eyebrows at Woody, then tore a sugar packet and poured it in his mug.

  “You didn’t have to go out of town, did you?” Woody asked.

  “No,” he said, stirring. “I didn’t.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “The truth is, I’ve sort of had some reservations about this project.”

  “It’s Yi Ling Ling, isn’t it? You don’t want her. Well, that’s fine. Between you and me, I don’t really, either,” Woody said, although he’d admired Ling Ling’s recent demonstrations of discipline and had begun to think she’d be just fine in the role. “We can change that. We can cast someone else—someone younger.”

  “No, it’s not her, not entirely.”

  “What, then?”

  Dalton shrugged. “You know the types of scripts I’ve been getting since Sundance?” he asked. “Asian gang stories, Asian immigrant stories, Asian racism and war and internment and adoption stories, Asian kung-fu/sex-tourist/bootlegging/drug-smuggling/slave-trafficking/human-rights-abuse stories. It’s been so depressing, seeing these things, one after another. I even got a treatment from a studio for a remake of Charlie Chan. You believe that?”

  Brilliant, Woody thought. Why hadn’t he come up with that himself? “That’s why our movie’s going to be fresh and hip,” he said. “It’s cross-genre, cross-ethnic, cross-market.”

  “It’ll still be just another m
artial-arts movie, you know. It’s just going to perpetuate all those tired, old stereotypes about Asians. Especially women.”

  “What do you want to do, reduce the female lead? Flip it around and make it more a male vehicle? We can do that, I suppose. Maybe that’d even work better. Maybe we could get Andy Lau or Takeshi Kaneshiro.” They would, however, have to alter the love-interest angle of the story. Demographic studies indicated that audiences might accept Asian women with white men, but not the other way around.

  “You’re not getting what I’m saying,” Dalton said. “I mean, why is it we can only do fresh-off-the-boat, three-generations-of-immigrants, interracial-relationship, cultural-misunderstanding movies? Why are we stuck with comfort women, picture brides, geishas, and greengrocers, with exploring our roots and searching for our birth parents and examining what it means to be Asian American? I mean, come on, why does it always have to be about race and identity? I’m sick to death of race and identity. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Uh-huh,” Woody said. Dalton Lee had gone activist on him, he’d become a bleeding-heart, Asian Nation, Yellow Power crusader while being bankrolled with Woody’s $100,000 pay-or-play guarantee.

  “So if we don’t do those kinds of stories, we’ve sold out?” Dalton said. “We’ve gone white-bread? Who came up with that? Who planted that shit? Here’s a radical thought for you: maybe the white hegemony did. They like us over in this corner, you see. They like it when we segregate ourselves. They want us to endlessly mull over our cultural heritage and wrestle with discrimination and assimilation. They want us to keep thinking of ourselves as victims, just whine whine whine. I mean, for fuck sake, aren’t you bored with that shit? Doesn’t that shit just bore the hell out of you? It does me.”

  This tirade went on—sometimes making sense, sometimes not, every argument contradicting a previous one. Of late people had a tendency, it seemed, of making long, impassioned speeches to Woody. He didn’t know why. Their lunches came. He squirted antibacterial lotion on his hands and cleaned his utensils with a napkin. The chowder was lumpy and too salty, his burger over-cooked and dry, appallingly served in a red plastic basket.