Desperation Reef

I went room to room, looking for John. The house was a three-story custom that climbed a steep hillside, and you could see the ocean from all the windows and the stairway landings. If I could afford a home in Laguna it would be something like this. I looked at myself in the mirror of a well-lit second-floor bathroom, and saw this almost cute chick with a pale green face and a bowl of orange hair on her head. Set one hand over the bottom of that bowl and lifted, seeing if it was attached. I leaned over and splashed some water on my face to sober up, but it sparkled musically going down the drain and I thought I heard a melody in it, so I let my face just hang there in the sink, watching the music go down.

Nobody on the third floor except behind a closed door, from which came the grunts and whimpers of Human Reproduction 101.

Muted and urgent.

A bump and a gasp.

A moan I knew.

John.

And — I realized, through a psychedelic and powerful surge of nausea — Ronna.

Of course, with my senses addled and perceptions blurred, I had to see.

So I shut myself in a catercorner hall bathroom, turned off the light, and left the door ajar.

Five minutes later John strode past, and five minutes after that, Ronna.

The longest ten minutes in sports.

I locked the door, ran the faucet, then turned and knelt on the cold tile, felt the foul surge rush out, splashing toilet water and vomit onto my face.

When the second wave of nausea ended, I rinsed in the sink, then zipped my long down coat up to my chin, and sat on the john.

Betrayed.

Hung on a noose of innocence.

One chapter concluded and another about to begin.

Over the next few days, John was as attentive and affectionate as he’d ever been, fueled by guilt and the brittle comfort that he had gotten away with something. He smiled more than usual, a sheepish, apologetic thing in which I also saw pity, which infuriated me.

I was a moody wreck but hid it. Threw myself into my weightlifting and breath-control exercises for the Monsters of Mavericks. Spent extra hours in the ocean, wrestling the jet ski through the local waves and whitewater, trying to master that eight-hundred-pound brute. Sometimes I’d head into the open sea and gun the throttle, cutting a straight line across the ocean, fast as the ski would go, pretending I was outrunning John’s betrayal. Outrunning John himself. Leaving him behind in the smoky roar of the machine.

Two nights after the New Year’s Eve party in the canyon, I led John into our bedroom and made love to him. It was heartbroken and powerful, and left me in tears. I wouldn’t let him go and we made love again, this time long and sweetly desperate for me. He told me he was sorry though he didn’t say for what.

Lying there after, I knew I’d catch that wandering spirit again, that life that had been trying to find a home inside me.

I knew it. Felt it.

Smiled as I lay there, listening to John’s soft, slow breathing.

John’s breath of life.

All ours.

33

This from Brawn, the latest far-right social platform that Brock figures will be out of business in a year:

Kasper Aamon #kasperaamonrightfight

The devil broke my jaw yesterday at the Breath of Life Rescue Mission in Aguanga, CA when I asked Brother Brock Stonebreaker how many illegals were living there. Ninety-two, and hardly a white face among them. Ugly, dark people picking the lice off each others’ backs. A fake sermon by a madman with rabies. Stay away! Or...?

Brock sits at one end of a gray-and-blue plaid Salvation Army couch in the mild morning sunlight outside his Breath of Life chapel. He’s got his phone out, trading punches with his enemies. Months ago, he got tired of the Right Fight and other creeps hounding him on his website and Twitter page so he dove right into the sewer with them on Brawn, where he can always find a fight if he’s in the mood.

He’s also got a tablet beside him, with live Mavericks cameras on Surfline.com. Right now the surf is flat, gray, no swell, just windy chop and pelicans diving into a school of anchovies. But FreakZilla — freakishly early for sure — is forming more strongly now, its speed and width growing, but its path still open to interpretation. Brock studies the NOAA Data Center maps: impressive. Surfline is bullish on the swell hitting Half Moon Bay; NOAA cautious. Brock’s gut tells him it’s going to be big, very big. Possible ETA at Half Moon Bay is 120 hours: five days from now. A key reading of the Southeast Papa buoy in Oregon currently has a twenty-six-foot, nineteen-second swell. A swell that big, with a nineteen-second interval, Brock knows, means very large, once-in-a-decade surf — if it stays on course.