Paul Levine - Riptide

Keaka Kealia walked a step behind her, his eyes lumps of coal, his skin the ruddy brown of cedar. He bounced on his toes gracefully, without swaying, his head perfectly still. Sinewy muscles stood out on either side of his neck, and his chest bulged through a black-and-red T-shirt with the logo of the World Cup Slalom Event in Japan. He looked like a sprinter, maybe even a wide receiver.

“I’m Jake Lassiter, your host.”

“Hello, Mr. Lassiter.” Lila Summers’s smile was polite, nothing more.

“Please call me Jake. Mr. Lassiter sounds like an undertaker.” I’m a fossil to her, he thought.

Keaka stepped between them and extended a hand. They went through that curious male dance, an arm-wrestling handshake, Keaka at first in control, then Lassiter battling to a draw. He could feel the faint traces of calluses on Keaka’s palm, remnants of hundreds of hours’ hanging from the booms. Before letting go, Keaka asked, “Do you have the check?”

Lila gave the Hawaiian a pained look. “Keaka, mind your manners, we’re in civilization now. Your direct ways might not be appreciated here.”

Tarzan and Jane, Lassiter thought.

“I’m only asking because last year I was stiffed in Mexico after an exhibition,” Keaka said. “Everything was mahana, then mahana came, but the pesos never did.”

It could have been a witty line, but the Hawaiian did not smile. Not a latter-day Duke Kahanamoku, joking with the tourists after riding waves at Diamond Head. No, this guy had all the charm of a hammerhead shark.

“Quite right to be concerned in this day and age of charlatans,” Lassiter said stiffly. “Check’s right here.” He patted his suit pocket, not liking the sound of his own voice. Uptight and pickle-assed, out of his element with the two great athletes. Wanting to tell them that he didn’t always tote a briefcase. But what would they know of a quarterback sack on third and long?

They loaded their gear into Lassiter’s old convertible and headed for Key Biscayne where their boards, masts, sails, and booms — shipped ahead from Hawaii — waited in storage sheds on the beach. Keaka and Lila checked into the Sonesta Beach Hotel and twenty minutes later were rigging their equipment in the white sand twenty yards from the Atlantic. Other competitors were fine-tuning their colorful sails, tugging lines taut, and bending masts to the proper angle. It was one of those postcard days, endless blue sky and temperature in the high seventies, wind humming a steady twenty knots from the east.

The beach was awash with young athletes, deeply tanned and exuberant, so that the pale couple — an old man and a sharp-featured, squinting woman — looked like characters from an Ingmar Bergman film, displaced persons drifting by. How long had it been since Samuel Kazdoy had walked along a beach, decades maybe, but here he was slogging through the deep sand in black oxfords and baggy pants, looking unsteady and ill at ease. Alongside was Violet Belfrey in a short skirt and tight blouse, guiding Kazdoy by the elbow, his chalky arm poking out of a short-sleeve white shirt.

“Keaka, these are friends of mine,” Lassiter said. “Violet and Sam, say hello to the greatest board sailor who ever lived.” They exchanged greetings and the old man inspected the board, running a hand over a hard rail, the bottom edge that speeds the craft through the water. “Keaka’s the first board sailor to have completed a three-sixty, a back sommersault off a wave. Now that it’s fairly common, he does them blindfolded.”

Violet’s gaze locked on the bulge in Keaka’s swim trunks. “Ah’d somersault on that thing any ole time he wants,” she stage-whispered to Lassiter.

Keaka Kealia silently continued rigging an old board dinged with scars from collisions with coral rocks. The professionals all used custom-made boards with airbrushed designs — rainbows or sunsets or sponsors’ logos — but Keaka’s board was decorated with the grim face of an ancient Hawaiian warrior, mouth curled open in a bloodthirsty scream. Because he had spent hundreds of hours on it, the board would give him a true reading of the conditions at a new sailing spot. How fast was the current? Were the waves crisp or mushy? Did the wind have holes or was it steady?

Violet was fidgeting, shielding her eyes from the glare. “When the hell they gonna do something?” she asked impatiently. Count Dracula would have been more comfortable in the midday sun.

“They’re adjusting the equipment,” Jake Lassiter said. “The sail has to be tuned just right for the strength of the wind. Think of the board as a sailboat, except you sail it standing up, and you use your feet and the angle of the mast to steer.”

“You should have seen that stinking boat I crossed the Atlantic on, the Petersburg,” Samuel Kazdoy said. “I was sick the whole time. Swore I’d never go near the water. Never did, not even the Staten Island ferry.”

Some of the competitors were carrying their equipment into the surf, boards held overheard, masts pointed downwind. Lassiter tried to bring the old man back into the 1990s: “This is only practice. On Saturday, they’ll go for the gold.”

“Jacob, did I ever tell you what they said in Kiev about New York?” Kazdoy asked, his mind somewhere between Key Biscayne and czarist Russia. “They said the streets of New York were paved with gold and when I got off that farshtinkener boat, I saw a man following a horse with a broom and pail, but… but…”

“… But what he was sweeping wasn’t gold,” Violet said, finishing the story that the old man had told a thousand times. Now Lassiter worried even more about Sam Kazdoy losing his sharpness. Lassiter had seen it happen before, a younger woman of shadowy background drawn to an old man’s money. In the beginning it’s innocent enough, the woman running errands, tidying up, providing companionship. Before you know it, her name pops up as joint owner on the old coot’s brokerage accounts.

Keaka finished tying the clew of his sail to the boom with an outhaul line. When the sail reached the perfect curvature, he jammed the mast into the sand and leaned back from the boom, testing the rigging against the steady easterly. The sail supported all his weight, a precise trim.

Lassiter watched him and said, “Keaka, I brought you a navigational chart, though I doubt you’ll need it. I’ll be in the lead judges’ boat, and if everything’s true to form, you’ll be right behind us and all the other racers can follow you. But this will give you an idea where we’re going. It’ll be a Le Mans start from the beach, then forty-eight miles due east across the Gulf Stream, finish just a mile or so off North Bimini at the Great Bahama Bank. There’ll be a finish line strung between two barges with checkered flags flying, so just sail under the line and tie up. The awards ceremony and a champagne celebration will take place right on the barge.”

“Finish at the Great Bahama Bank,” Keaka repeated.

Violet watched him crouch in the sand, her eyes still on groin patrol. “Smart to finish at a bank,” she said, nodding sagely. “Easier to pay off the winners.”

Keaka ignored her, tugged on his windsurfing gloves, and jogged into the water, carrying his equipment effortlessly. “Practice now,” he said without looking at them. Violet watched his muscular body disappear into the surf.

A moment later Lassiter caught sight of Lila Summers, twenty yards down the beach. Her hair was pulled straight back and tied in a ponytail, accentuating her cheekbones, the muscles in her calves undulating as she carried her rig into the water. He guided Kazdoy closer to the shore break.

“Here’s who I want you to see,” Lassiter said, pointing toward Lila’s board as it shredded the small offshore waves. “Watch her bottom turn.”