She closes her book when he comes out of the water holding the tuna–so big he has to use both arms. Its tail still flaps, and he dumps it on top of the cooler about fifty feet in front of her, sets his spear next to the surfboard. The board is short, designed for tricks, for performance. This boy is designed for performance. He takes a knife the size of his catch out of his backpack and begins to gut the fish right there on top of the cooler. His hair hangs in black seaweed ringlets down to his shoulders.
There’s so much seaweed here, piled in the water, in the sand. Green tinsel, noodles, peapods, and purple balloons of salt from the tide. Children run along the beach with handfuls of it clasped in fists sticky with Dippin’ Dots from the bait shop on the pier. He’s sharpied Sigma Phi on that filthy container he’ll open and drop his victim into when he’s done. He’s covered it in drawings–maybe a rite of passage for Greek life here? Red canyons and waterfalls from Lake Havasu. Sunsets next to symbols from ancient places she’s never had time to see. He exchanges the wetsuit for a bathing suit beneath a towel he’s tied around his waist. She has no idea surfers wear wetsuits commando until she sees a hint of his perfect buttcheeks above the trunks as he slides them up. She feels creepy for a second, staring, old as she is. But only for a second. After all, isn’t that what he is looking for?
Ten yards to the right, in the middle of this umbrella mass, another man puts on a show of his own. This one’s wearing cargo shorts and a long white beard, a trucker’s cap, and skinny, sun-wrinkled arms. He flies a stunt kite–a giant rainbow snake at least five yards long. It barely clears the heads of people walking to the water with its frenetic dips and curls and turns. No one seems to blink; they trust the thoughtfulness of his action, the expertise in his maneuvering. She, the more anxious East Coast girl, feels her breath hitch every time the serpent descends. She remembers when she got turned around that first time she swam in the Pacific. Her parents brought her to Torrance Beach to visit her aunt when she was thirteen, and she ran straight into the water. The cold knocked the wind from her, and she swallowed gravel time after time before she caught a barrel on the boogie board, angling at just the right moment to relish that magic hollow sound. She immediately wanted to hear it again. It has taken 30 years in a government job and retirement to bring her back. But the tiniest swells still upend her, and now she is way past any athleticism, except for the yoga class around the corner where they show her how to modify her poses.
Everything hits so much bigger here–the waves, the mountains, the movement of the earth. The salaries, housing prices, and behaviors. No gentle seasons–just microclimates, droughts, monsoons. Fog so thick in the morning and air so cold when the sun goes down. Reds and browns, oranges and yellows. No greens or baby blues. Those colors from home require a more gentle touch. She grew up swimming the Atlantic, respecting the unpredictability of currents. They can fool a person. Everything here is so much more in your face. Like the frat bro with his gutted tuna, or the old man teasing the crowd with the tip of a snake diving down.
She knew East Coast frat boys back in the day. Learned to lie and say her roommate would be home anytime–learned to swim in the direction of their riptide until she could come to shore. She also used to see another bearded man with wrinkled skin on the way to work every day. He held a spear as well–picked up litter from the highway. He wore a ski jacket in the rain instead of cargo shorts. Rumor had it he had done time for killing a guy in a bar fight, and this was his self-imposed work release, continued long after he served his sentence. She always felt a little guilty at the stoplight staring. That wasn’t what he was looking for.