“Make it a combo,” I said. “How much?”
He licked his lips, peeled a speck of zinc from his nose. “First I gotta unlock the place, then I gotta find a flashlight so I can check the suits, make sure there’s no cracks from all the time they been sitting there. Then, I gotta check ’em for spiders and scorpions crawling in—’cause we get them, here.”
“Scorpions?” I said. “Near the beach?”
“Little black nasty ones. You think of’em as desert dudes, but they’re here, man, hibernating or whatever. Probably hitched a ride in on some truck from T.J. So I gotta stick my hand in and shake out the suit.”
“I appreciate it. Exterminator fees gonna cost me too?”
He laughed. “Well,” he said, “normally it’s twenty bucks an hour for the boat, twelve for the suit, six for mask and fins, so that would be thirty-eight up front, and we usually take a driver’s license for deposit.”
“No mask and fins,” I said. “Just the boat and the suit.”
“Your feet are gonna get cold.”
“I can live with it.”
“Your choice, man—okay, how long you planning on staying out? ‘Cause I wasn’t planning to be here all afternoon. I mean, I show up, but I don’t make a big thing out of it, know what I mean?”
“Couple of hours at the most.”
“Couple of hours—yeah, I can handle that. So that would be sixty-four bucks, but for you, let’s make it a package—say fifty-five even, and I won’t even take no deposit, ’cause where the hell are you gonna go? If it’s cash.”
Wink, wink.
“Cash it is,” I said, reaching for my wallet.
He selected a key from the ring, slipped it into the lock on the rental shack’s door. “Rusty. The ocean never stops eating—kind of freaky, idn’t it? Cool, too. The ocean’s gonna be here for a billion more years, and we’re not. So why worry about anything?”
The kayaks made up the mass beneath the blue tarp, and he pulled a yellow-trimmed, white single-rider and a paddle from the shack. I stripped behind the tiny building as Norris—after I paid him he volunteered his name—readied the kayak. Standing naked and shivering in the frigid air, I double-checked the suit’s neoprene sleeves and legs for creepie-crawlies. Once I slipped into the rubber sheath, the warmth was nearly immediate.
“Hey,” said Norris, as I emerged. He was kneeling next to the boat and wiping down the interior with a filthy-looking rag. “Mr. Lloyd Bridges, man. There’s a zip compartment on the left leg for your wallet and keys. You can leave the rest of your stuff in your car—cool car, by the way. Long as you get back in time, I won’t steal it.” Jamming the rag in the rear pocket of his shorts, he slapped the boat’s fiberglass flank. “Picked you a good one. You ever done this before?”
“Yup.”
“So you know that even when they feel like they’re tipping over, they’re probably not. If you wanna pick up speed, just keep that rhythm going—hand over hand. And don’t let go of the paddle. It’ll float, but it can get away from you, and if it does, I got to charge you.”
We toted the kayak to the water’s edge, then he eased it into the ocean and held it steady as I climbed in.
“Go for it, man,” he said, shoving me off. “You see any serious pussy, I want to hear about it.”
27
THE PLACID OCEAN meant broad shallows, and I had to maintain a twenty-foot distance from the shore to keep the kayak out of sand. As I cut through the water, a weak, misty breeze washed my face. After this morning’s clumsy jog, working my arms felt good, and so did being alone in the vastness of the sea.
I picked up speed as I passed Dave Dell’s glass bowl. The house was huge but shabby from up close—gray paint scarred by wind and salt, lowered curtains, no signs of inhabitance. The next property meandered along the bluff, fronted by clumps of rough-cut shrubbery and backed by pines twisting spastically. Rickety steps to the beach dangled—the bottom dozen steps had been sheared off.