Doug Dorst - The Surf Guru

I got out of the shower without drying myself. I switched off the lights in the room. I turned the air conditioner on full and stood in front of it, naked, my eyes closed. At first it wheezed out warm air, but it gradually turned colder, just like I imagined the outside air would as we drove farther and farther north. I imagined me and Trace in Alaska, hauling in huge catches of salmon, soaked to the bone but free and happy in the never-ending daylight and the cold ocean spray. And I imagined myself there in winter, when I’d have a wallet full of money and a head full of stories, ready to endure the long dark and the cold, a cold so deep that it would freeze out everything but your purest self, and finally you’d understand where things had gone so wrong. I stood there in the cold air, thinking, listening to the water drops hitting the thin carpet underneath the air conditioner’s sputter and grind, feeling the goose bumps rise on my arms, then my legs, then along my scalp, until she came up behind me and skated her tongue down my spine, trailed it softly with a fingernail. We made love as much as anyone could in that town.

I was scared awake by someone pounding on the door. I sat up and looked around, my heart machine-gunning inside me. It was still dark, and I was alone. At first I thought she might be the one knocking, gone for ice or fresh air and trying to get back in. Then I heard Trace. “Let me in,” he said, and in his voice was something that told me he knew she would be gone, and that I should have known, too. I found my shorts in the bathroom and put them on.

I opened the door. Trace stood there, wobbling, holding the wall for support. Roy stood back against the railing, holding a case of beer and a pizza box. “Come on in,” I said, “but I’m going to sleep.”

The door closed and it was dark.

“I can’t see,” Trace said.

“Turn on the light,” I said.

“I can’t see ,” he said, his voice getting high and scared. “Oh, fuck, I’m blind.”

I turned on the light next to the bed. Roy stood near the door, still holding the beer and pizza. Trace was lying on the floor on his side, his hands over his eyes, moving his legs like he was running. “I can’t see,” he said.

“Jesus, what’s he on?” I said to Roy. “What did you give him?”

“The bikers said it was plain old crank,” Roy said. “But you never really know.”

I got out of the bed and knelt next to Trace. “Hey, buddy,” I said, “it’s me. It’s Phil. It’s all right.” I pulled his hands away from his eyes. “You’re going to be all right.” I wondered if he was going to die, if maybe I should call someone.

He stopped kicking his legs. For a few minutes he didn’t say anything, didn’t move, but I could see him breathing. Then he blinked and looked at me. “I got us some pizza,” he said. He said it like he wanted me to say, Yes, yes, you sure did. You’re a hero .

Roy sat on the edge of the bed and opened a bottle of beer. Trace pointed at him. “That guy wants to fuck me,” he said. “He wants to fuck me in the butt.”

I looked at Roy. He sipped his beer and shrugged. “Well, I do,” he said. “It’s no secret. I told him hours ago.”

“Get out of here,” I said.

“Cool it, Sundance,” he said. “I paid for this stuff. I’m staying until it’s gone.”

Trace crawled over to the pizza box and took out a slice. His hands were shaking like crazy. “Just eat, Phil,” he said. “You gotta eat.” And I was pretty hungry, I realized. So I went and put on the rest of my clothes, took a slice, and opened beers for the two of us.

Trace and I sat at the table next to the window, and Roy sat on the bed. We ate and drank. Roy tried a few times to make conversation, but I didn’t feel much like talking, and Trace looked busy trying to maintain. Roy gave up, leaned back, and watched us, smoking a clove cigarette. No one spoke, but the room was full of sound: the air conditioner grinding away, the alarm clock humming and flipping numbers on the minute, Trace and I chewing and swallowing, Roy exhaling long streams of smoke. We heard bursts of life from the biker party outside — running footsteps, laughing, a bottle smashed, a country song belted out in three-part discord, a man and a woman cursing each other. A Harley thundered alive and revved senselessly.

“They’re from Bakersfield, most of them,” Roy said. “They come through here a lot. Best parties this town ever sees.” Then he leaned forward and said, “Bobbi’s husband is down there with them right now, you know.”

“Who’s Bobbi?” I asked.

“The woman who brought you here,” he said. “That girl gets around. So does her husband. I hope you used a condom.” Of course I hadn’t. I felt sick. I felt like I’d been stuck in that town forever.

“Me, I never use them,” Roy said. “I like to feel everything.” Then he rambled on and on about everything he liked to feel, and everything he wanted to do with Trace, and everything was my cock this and my cock that, and Trace just sat and ate and drank and smiled like it was the best joke he’d ever heard. I got sick of it. I told Roy to shut the hell up and leave. “Look who’s Mister Manly all of a sudden,” he said. “I bet I could make you cry.” He unbuckled his belt. “I could make you call for God.”

That’s when Trace threw a bottle at him. It shattered on the wall. Roy got wet from the spray.

“Settle down, Butch,” Roy said. “I’m just kidding.”

Trace took another bottle out of the case and threw that one, too. It barely missed Roy’s head. “Leave Phil alone,” Trace said.

Roy’s mouth opened and he stared at Trace. “It was a joke ,” he said. His voice wavered a little, but he didn’t move.

“Trace,” I said. “Come on. It’s no big deal.” But Trace wound up and threw another one and this one thumped Roy in the chest. It made a dull, hollow sound. Roy cried out and jumped off the bed, limped toward the door. Trace kept throwing, and even as I was telling him to stop I found myself picking up a bottle and letting fly.

Roy fell once.

By the time he got the door open there was blood on his face, but I don’t know if we hit him straight on or if he got cut by a ricochet. For some reason he stopped in the doorway to yell at us. “You guys are insane,” he shouted, his hands in fists. “You guys are sick.” I picked up the pint bottle that Bobbi had bought and I threw it. Roy ducked, and it sailed over the railing. I heard it shatter in the parking lot below. Then Roy was gone, his uneven steps thunking down the stairs, his undone buckle jangling.

We’d wrecked the room. The carpet, soaked. The bedside light, broken off the wall and dangling from its wires. The mirror, hit dead-on, angry cracks snaking out from the point of impact. Blooms of beer seeping into the walls, into the fabric of the coconut print. I stripped the sheets and blankets off the bed and Trace crawled onto the bare mattress, the only thing in the room not covered with glass.

“We should get out of here,” I said.

“I’m going to sleep,” he said. “I’m all of a sudden sleepy.”

It was only then that I remembered the baby. I asked him if the cops had taken it.

“Oh, the baby,” he said slowly, like he was remembering the night one frame at a time. “The baby.”

“Where is it? Did you have it at the party?”

“I gave it to someone,” he said. He closed his eyes. “Mo would want one that’s her own.”

Then he fell asleep. I didn’t think that was a good sign. Like maybe his heart was giving out.

I know I should have tried to find the baby. I may even have wanted to. But outside was a dark town with too many people I didn’t want to face alone. Inside was Trace, who needed me to make sure he kept breathing. I shook the glass off a chair and sat, watching him, trying not to think about the baby, trying not to think about my life. I watched for cops, but they never came. Neither did any friends of Roy’s. No angry husband, no fucked-up bikers. No one. In a way, that made it worse.