Don Winslow: Dawn Patrol

After that, they were inseparable.

“You and Boone should get married and produce offspring,” Johnny Banzai told them a few weeks later. “You owe it to the world of surfing.”

Like, the child of Boone and Sunny would be some sort of mutant superfreak. But marriage?

Not happening.

“CCBHS” is how Sunny explained herself on this issue. “Classic California broken home syndrome. There ought to be a telethon.”

Emily Wendelin's hippie dad had left her hippie mom when Emily was three years old. Her mom never got over it, and neither did Emily, who learned not to give her heart to a man because men don't stay.

Emily's mom retreated into herself, becoming “emotionally unavailable,” as the shrinks would say, and it was her grandmother-her mother's mother-who really raised the girl. Eleanor Day imbued Emily with her strength, her grace, and her warmth, and it was Eleanor who gave the girl the nickname “Sunny,” because her granddaughter lit up her life. When Sunny turned eighteen, she changed her surname to Day, regardless of how pseudohippie it sounded.

“I'm matrilineal,” she explained.

It was her grandmother who persuaded her to go to college, and her grandmother who understood when, after the first year, Sunny decided that higher education, at least in a formal setting, wasn't for her.

“It's my fault,” Eleanor had said.

Her house was a block and a half from the beach, and Eleanor had taken her granddaughter there almost every day. When eight-year-old Sunny said that she wanted to surf, it was Eleanor who saw that a board was under the Christmas tree. It was Eleanor who stood on the beach while the girl rode wave after wave, Eleanor who smiled patiently when the sun went down and Emily would wave from the break, holding up one imploring finger, which meant “Please, Grandma, one more wave.” It was Eleanor who went to the early tournaments, who sat calmly in the ER with the girl, assuring her that the stitches in her chin wouldn't leave a scar, and that if they did, it would be an interesting one.

So when Sunny came to her and explained that she didn't want to go to college, and tearfully apologized for letting her down, Eleanor said that it was her fault for introducing Emily to the ocean.

“So what do you intend to do?” Eleanor asked.

“I want to be a professional surfer.”

Eleanor didn't raise an eyebrow. Or laugh, or argue, or scoff. She simply said, “Well, be a great one.”

Bea great surfer, not marry one.

Not like the options were mutually exclusive, but neither Sunny nor Boone was interested in getting married, or even living together. Life was just fine the way it was-surfing, hanging out, making love, and surfing. It was all one and the same thing, one long, unbroken rhythm.

Good days.

Sunny waited tables in PB while she worked on her surfing career; Boone was happy being a cop, a uniformed patrolman with the SDPD.

What busted it up was a girl named Rain Sweeny.

Things changed after Rain Sweeny. After she was gone, Boone never really came back. It was like there was this distance between Boone and Sunny now, like a deep, slow current pulling them apart.

And now this big swell is coming, and they both sense that it's bringing a bigger change.

They stand outside Boone's office.

“So… late,” Sunny says.

“Late.”

Walking away, Sunny wonders if it's too late.

Like she's already lost something she didn't even know she wanted.

Boone walks into Pacific Surf.

Hang Twelve looks up from Grand Theft Auto 3 and says, “There's an inland betty upstairs looking for you. And Cheerful's way aggro.”

“Cheerful's always aggravated,” Boone replies. “That's what makes him Cheerful. Who's the woman?”

“Dunno.” Hang Twelve shrugs. “But, Boone, she's smokin' hot.”

Boone goes upstairs. The woman isn't smokin' hot; she's smokin' cold.

But she is definitely smokin'.

“Mr. Daniels?” Petra says.

“Guilty.”

She offers her hand, and Boone is about to shake it, when he realizes that she's handing him her card.

“Petra Hall,” she says. “From the law firm Burke, Spitz and Culver.”

Boone knows the law firm of Burke, Spitz and Culver. They have an office in one of the glass castles in downtown San Diego and have sent him a lot of work over the past few years.

And Alan Burke surfs.

Not every day, but a lot of weekends, and sometimes Boone sees him out on the line during the Gentlemen's Hour. So he knows Alan Burke, but he doesn't know this small, beautiful woman with the midnight hair and the blue eyes.

Or are they gray?

“You must be new with the firm,” Boone says.

Petra's appalled as she watches Boone reach behind his back and pull the cord that's connected to a zipper. The back of the wet suit opens, and then Boone gently peels the suit off his right arm, then his left, then rolls it down his chest. She starts to turn away as he rolls the suit down over his waist, and then she sees the flower pattern of his North Shore board trunks appear.

She's looking at a man who appears to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but it's hard to tell because he has a somewhat boyish face, made all the more so by his slightly too long, unkempt, sun-streaked brown hair, which is either intentionally unstylishly long or has simply not been cut recently. He's tall, just an inch or two shorter than the saturnine old man still banging away on the adding machine, and he has the wide shoulders and long arm muscles of a swimmer.

Boone's oblivious to her observation.

He's all about the swell.

“There's a swell rolling down from the Aleutians,” he says as he finishes rolling the wet suit over his ankles. “It's going to hit sometime in the next two days and High Tide says it's only going to last a few hours. Biggest swell of the last four years and maybe the next four. Humongous waves.”

“Real BBM,” Hang Twelve says from the staircase.

“Is anyone watching the store?” Cheerful asks.

“There's no one down there,” Hang Twelve says.

“‘BBM’?” Petra asks.

“Brown boardshorts material,” Hang Twelve says helpfully.

“Lovely,” Petra says, wishing she hadn't asked. “Thank you.”

“Anyway,” Boone says as he steps into the small bathroom, turns on the shower, and carefully rinses not himself but the wet suit, “everyone's going out. Johnny Banzai's going to take a mental-health day, High Tide's calling in sick, Dave the Love God's on the beach anyway, and Sunny, well, you know Sunny's going to be out. Everyone is stoked. ”

Petra delivers the bad news.

She has work for him to do.

“Our firm,” Petra says, “is defending Coastal Insurance Company in a suit against it by one Daniel Silvieri, aka Dan Silver, owner of a strip club called Silver Dan's.”

“Don't know the place,” Boone says.

“Yeah you do, Boone,” Hang Twelve says. “You and Dave took me there for my birthday.”

“We took you to Chuck E. Cheese's,” Boone snaps. “Back-paddle.”

“Aren't you going to introduce me?”

It's amazing, Boone thinks, how Hang Twelve can suddenly speak actual English when there's an attractive woman involved. He says, “Petra Hall, Hang Twelve.”

“Another nom de idiot?” Petra asks.

“He has twelve toes,” Boone says.

“He does not,” says Petra. Then she looks down at his sandals. “He has twelve toes.”

“Six on each foot,” says Boone.

“Gives me sick traction on the board,” Hang Twelve says.

“The strip club is actually immaterial,” Petra says. “Mr. Silver also owns a number of warehouses up in Vista, one of which burned to the ground several months ago. The insurance company investigated and, from the physical evidence, deemed it arson and refused to pay. Mr. Silver is suing for damages and for bad faith. He wants five million dollars.”