Air (14 page)

Precisely thirty minutes later, I was in the extravagant fitting room of a ridiculously expensive boutique, four dresses hanging up beside me, when I received a call from Sephy.

“Something's not right with Zeke.”

So it wasn't just me who thought so.

“Where is he? Did he leave?”

“Bathroom. We need to talk.”

“OK. When?”

“I'm gonna tell Zeke you called me to say you need my help choosing your dress. Where are you?”

“A shop called Tallulah. You probably walked past it on the way to the cafe. The mannequins in the window are green.”

“I remember it. Stay there.”

“What about Zeke?”

“He says he's tired and needs to take a nap. He's going back to your hotel.”

“Another nap? He's sleeping a lot on this trip.”

“I have to go he's coming back.”

When Sephy arrived at the shop, she looked really worried.

“Is something happening between you two? Zeke says everything is fine, but I don't buy it.”

The assistant handed me another three dresses. “Do you want to come into the fitting room?” I said to Sephy. “I'm the only customer, so we can talk in there.”

She sat in a heavy armchair set to one side, and I pulled on a blue halter-neck number that was about a foot too long.

“So what's really happening with you guys?” she asked me, looking concerned. “Did you have a fight?”

“We did, but we made up, and he was acting weird before that anyway. I don't think it's that. Zeke seems different in Miami,” I said. “Distant. Does he have history here or something?”

“I don't think so. Leastways, not the kind that could make him unhappy. He used to come and visit Chase here a lot, after Chase's parents moved their real-estate business from Oahu. I never heard of anything bad happening to Zeke here he always loved Miami.”

“Oh,” I said, my heart sinking even further.

Sephy reached out for my hand and held it tight.

“Zeke makes his own choices. I wondered if you might know something that would help me make sense of this change in him, but you are not responsible for Zeke's behavior, Iris, you hear me? Whatever happens, whatever he does, you are not to blame.”

“He hasn't really done anything bad,” I said, starting to feel defensive, and Sephy raised her eyebrows.

Cynicism. Had she seen these signs in Zeke before? Was he about to go off the rails?

She bit her lip and said, “You wanna hear something kinda heavy?”

I didn't, particularly, as I was already feeling worried and down, but maybe I needed to know. “All right.”

“Zeke wrote me an email the week after he met you. He said he'd found someone, this local surfer girl, and he didn't know what to do, because he had to leave, but he really, really wanted to stay. And one of the things he said about you, I'll never forget. He said you have the eyes of a shut-in. I thought that was a strange thing to say about a person you just met.”

“A shut-in? You mean, like a hermit? Someone who won't leave the house?”

“Yeah.”

Great. Apparently I had mad-person eyes.

“He said your eyes looked alarmed by the world, until the moment you were in the ocean. In the ocean you were calm, and he thought that was because in the ocean you felt home. Zeke's that way too. And I knew then that he was right. He'd found someone who could be with him.”

“Did he say anything to you just a minute ago, about what's been going down with us? . . . Actually, don't worry. I don't want you to get caught in the middle.”

“Honey, Zeke loves you. But something's eating him and he won't open up about it to me. At all. You have to try.”

“I have, but I can't make him talk if he doesn't want to.”

She must've heard the upset in my voice, because she said, “You're right. It's just hard for me to remember that he's not little anymore. I still want to sweep in there and rescue him.”

I nodded, because I could see how much love Sephy had for Zeke and vice versa. But if she couldn't get him to admit what was bothering him, what chance did I have?

Sephy broke the worry chain that was starting up in my head by saying, “So, there's actually another reason I wanted to talk to you: Iris Fox, will you be my maid of honor?”

“Wait, you're getting married? To Dave?”

She nodded. “Second time around maybe it'll stick,” she laughed. “So, will you?”

“Course I will, yeah. I'd be honored. Does Zeke know?”

“I just told him back at the restaurant.”

“I bet he was so stoked!”

“He was. I don't think he believed it at first. We both swore we'd never risk those vows again.”

“When is it going to be?”

“A little while yet. There are people we want to be there. Two of them are climbing mountains, one is on a sailboat somewhere in the Pacific and a few we've lost track of altogether. To give us time to round everybody up, we're going for early June. So, what do you say?”

“I'd love to,” I said, hugging her. “And congratulations.”

“There's something else.” She paused. “What is that funny phrase the English use for
hapai
? Oh yeah: ‘up the duff.' I am, I mean.”

“Oh my God! You're pregnant? Wow, that's wonderful. Congratulations! Two lots of congratulations!”

I hugged her again, more gently this time.

“That's not why we're getting married though. Just in case you were thinking that,” she said.

“Of course not.” Sephy and Dave would never get married because they thought society expected it. Sephy couldn't give a rat's ass about those kinds of expectations; it was one of the many things I admired about her.

“I bet Zeke's thrilled to bits.”

“He sure is, and a little shocked. He didn't say too much, so I think he's still processing it, you know? So, these plans you have for this afternoon . . .”

“Yeah, we have to teach some disadvantaged kids how to surf.”

“Sounds terrific. Can I come along?”

“Absolutely. You could take a group out too, if you feel up to it. It's not just pros.”

She beamed. “I'd love that.”

The charity surf lesson with some of Miami's underprivileged kids was yet another event Anders had slid into our schedules, but this was one we were looking forward to. It was billed as an Inspire event, and although I'd played it cool when Zeke told me about it, I'd been secretly frothing to teach some kids to surf. The littlest ones were four not much older than my cousin Cara, who I missed like crazy.

We collected Zeke from the hotel, where he emerged looking bleary-eyed, and when we got to the beach the other instructors were there already. One of them, a certain girl with red hair, was sitting with ten small children around her, explaining the theory of surfing. I watched her pop up on her board, and they clapped. She had them eating out of her hand. Then she tied up her hair into a high pony, and looked directly at me. Saskia.

I waved at her, and was really relieved when she waved back. I hoped it meant she'd forgiven me for the bathroom incident at Chase's party.

Another of the instructors I recognized was Beth, who competed on the Billabong tour with me. As soon as she came over, I felt the nerves kick in.

Beth was an insanely talented charger, who grew up surfing Maroubra one of the coolest, toughest beach breaks in Australia. She had a military haircut, a full sleeve of tattoos and a junior kick-boxing title. Most of the girls in the contest prepared for heats with meditation and yoga, others pulled ballet moves and one girl loosened up her hips by solo ballroom dancing up and down the waterline. The cameras loved that. Beth, however, stuck in earphones, pulled her hood down around her face and spent every spare minute before the buzzer jumping rope or shadow-boxing. If I could've picked anyone on the tour to be friends with, it would have been her.

“Hi, Ivy,” she said, grinning.

“It's, actually, um, Iris.”

“That's what I said.”

“I, err, thought you said Ivy.”

“You wanna stick your hearing aids in then!”

She knew my name. We'd competed at the same events, gone to the same after-parties, we'd even made a short promo film for Billabong together. I sighed. This was all part of it. It had started already, in readiness for Saturday. The psychological warfare.

The advice Anders gave me right before my first tour contest was: “Do not allow yourself to become the omega animal.”

“What does that even mean?”

“The omega animal has the lowest status. It's the animal that binds the rest of the pack together. The scapegoat. The rest of them get their kicks from picking on it. Eventually, when its weakness becomes a hindrance, they kill it and find a new omega animal.”

“And you think that'll be me? Thanks a bunch!”

“Depends how you play it. The omega animal has an important role, don't get me wrong, and there has to be one, but nobody wants to be it, Iris. The other girls will want it to be you, just so it's not them. Do you understand?”

It had sounded a lot like school, I thought, but the reality of contest surfing was worse, because the money up for grabs, and the pressure to impress in front of a bunch of cameras, made everyone even more desperate. And at the end of a long day there was no going back home to your family and your best mates.

I rooted through my bag for some surf wax. I was looking forward to trying out a new board our shaper had sent. He'd experimented with a new template, just a few subtle changes to the width and volume, but I knew it could really impact my performance.

Beth saw my fruitless searching and started pulling her own stash of surf wax out of her bag and arranging the little white discs into a flower shape on the sand.

“Can I borrow a tiny bit of your wax?” I said.

“Don't have any spare,” she said, piling up her stash into a tower.

“You've got enough there to wax an aircraft carrier.”

“Sorry, mate.”

I gritted my teeth and said nothing. I didn't want to pick a fight with Beth. For one thing, the girl could take me down, and not just in the line-up.

But it was so tedious to have to go through this drama. One day a girl would act like your best friend and you'd have a proper laugh together, the next she wouldn't even acknowledge your existence. Or she'd go from freezing you out for a week to being all charm ten minutes before your heat. Some of them would attempt to sing Top-40 hits in the line-up, awful tuneless numbers by Beyoncé or Katy Perry, always in the wrong key. And when they exhausted their song repertoire, they'd whistle.

It was like they were always trying to find out what your weakness was, what would most rattle your cage. Zeke warned me that you had to have a spine of titanium not to be bothered by the mind games, or if you couldn't manage that, the only thing to do was keep to yourself as much as possible, which was pretty lonely. Zeke didn't get sucked in. He didn't talk to anyone in the water. Not for big contests anyway. If the guys tried to talk to him during heats, all they'd get is blue steel. His eyes would be to the horizon, waiting for set waves. The judges called Zeke a super-freak, because he was so calm in the water, so exceptional
under pressure, but he'd forced himself to be that way, made blanking someone feel normal.

But this wasn't even a competition; it was a charity event and it was supposed to be friendly.

Each of the adult surfers took out a child for thirty minutes, and Sephy covered for one of the local instructors who was a no-show. By five o'clock we'd taught at least eighty kids how to stand on a small crumbling wave, which felt absolutely amazing even Beth was thawing.

To end the day, the organizers put together a fun heat, where all the coaches duked it out in one winner-takes-all mini-contest, with a bag of fresh cronuts as the prize.

It was a mixed heat and I was up against Beth, Saskia, Sephy and a girl called Kate, plus Zeke, and three other male pros local to Florida. Zeke outclassed them completely and I knew he was the guy to beat.

But, when we were out there, it was like Zeke had lost all of his grace. It was embarrassing. His timing was off and he was choosing all the wrong waves.

Sephy locked eyes with me over an approaching ripple, and I saw Saskia further out, watching Zeke like a hawk.

One of the local guys won and held aloft his bag of cronuts like it was a solid gold trophy. We all clapped and I tried to process what had just happened. If it had been a real contest, I'd have beaten Zeke. I'd surfed better than him. Miles better.

I'd have been scrapping for third place, and he'd have come in sixth at best.

“Are you feeling all right?” I said to him as we walked up the beach.

“I'm fine.”

But he wasn't, and I knew it. I knew he wasn't fine, and I did nothing.

I went and made small talk with Sephy, and when I came back Zeke was staring down at his favorite shortboard, which he'd somehow managed to ding on the lifeguard booth a rookie mistake.

The event commentators, a couple of guys who'd volunteered to help out and keep the kids motivated by shouting encouragement over the loudspeaker, were having a field day: “
Wait, wait, wait . . . would you look at this! Seems like Zeke Francis has dinged his surfboard! How'd ya manage that, Zekey-boy? Checking out the girl in the red bikini?
”

They started laughing, and I saw Zeke flush scarlet, along with the girl in the red bikini.

“Ignore them,” I said, but rather than do that, he decided that a good course of action would be to take his board and start smashing it up against the side of the lifeguard booth. Its beautiful clean lines gone forever, it was junk, a fortune of cutting-edge surf tech reduced to worthless rubbish.

It happened so quickly, and I was so aghast, that the only words I could get out were, “Stop it, Zeke!”

The commentators continued, even louder than before, “
Whoa
,
he's having a meltdown! Took out some serious aggression on his surfboard just then. Who'd have thought it, Mike? All that yoga obviously not paying off for the kid.
”

“That's not good. No one wants to see that from a world-champion contender. Boo!”

Zeke's face was still burning up, whether from embarrassment or anger it was hard to say.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Total waste of time coming here and trying to teach anyone to surf in these conditions. What a shit show.”

“
He's used to winning
,” they went on, getting into their stride, “
but he made mistakes today, had a shocker.
”

“
Having a bit of a powwow with his girlfriend, newbie Iris Fox, from a thumpy little beach break in the United Kingdom, here today on Billabong dollars. Let's hope she can talk some sense into him!
”

“Christ, just cool it, OK?” I said. When I'd first met Zeke, I couldn't believe how chilled out he seemed; the Aloha spirit practically seeped out of his pores, but I guessed that was all in the past, because the Zeke in front of me, Miami Zeke, had just gone mental.

“What the hell is going on?” I said.

He put his hands over his eyes and murmured, “I just can't even . . .”

I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and fanned my neck with my ponytail. Florida in the afternoon sun was a furnace and the beach shimmered in the heat haze. On another day I'd
have found the scene beautiful, but with everything that was happening, the heat was overwhelming and made my brain feel like it was melting into my throat.

“Zeke?” Sephy said, joining us. “Honey, what's going on?”

He wouldn't look at either of us. He turned toward the sun-sparked ocean. Suddenly a fourth person was with us.

A spiky-haired grom of about ten was staring up at Zeke and asking, “What up, yo? You keeping the buckled board?”

Zeke looked at the boy and said, “Why? Wanna sell it online?”

“Free money.” The boy touched the surfboard, appraising it like some sixty-year-old pawnbroker. “Double concave for control, extra beef for paddle power, four-fin quad set-up. You trashed it real good, but I'll take it.”

“There's no fixing that, child,” Sephy said. “It's gonna be surfing landfill.”

“This board? Famous owner, yo. Might fetch a few hundred dollars on eBay if the crazy dude signs it. So I can have it, yeah? Yeah?”

Zeke rubbed the blond stubble on his chin and then said, “Kid, it's yours. You have a sharpie?”

The boy didn't have a marker pen but did produce a spray can out of his school bag. Zeke shook up the can and sprayed his name over the broken nose of the board.

“Thanks,” the boy said, and grabbed the tatty board before running back to his friends.

Zeke pulled off his shredded blue rash vest, and his bare chest looked awful, with a deep graze from the final wipeout, which must've smashed him against an underwater rock. He hadn't
even complained. Little rivulets of blood snaked down his abs and stained the white drawstring of his board shorts.

“Oh lord,” Sephy said. “Let me get something for that.”

She went in search of antiseptic cream while I took a clean T-shirt from my beach bag and dabbed the cut, hoping I could at least get the sand out of it, but Zeke flinched and turned away.

“Leave it,” he said.

“You're bleeding. We need to get you cleaned up.”

“A little blood is the least of my worries, Iris,” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. When he moved his hand away, I half expected to see him crying, even though he'd never done that in front of me before, not even when his nan died. His eyes though were dry.

I looked around me. The narrow beach was packed with people who had come for the charity event, and at that moment it seemed as if half of them were staring at us. A hundred yards away, a cameraman was walking our way, his lens trained on Zeke.

“Come on. We have to get out of here,” I said. “Or this is going to end up in the surf mags.”

“Here.” Sephy was at our side again, dabbing antiseptic on to Zeke's cut. I opened my mouth to ask him something else, but he pursed his lips. Message:
Zip it
.

The commentators piped up with, “
Drama aside, it's been an awesome day and we'd like to thank the surfers who gave their time today for this great cause. Zeke Francis, if you need the number of a therapist, come see us and we'll fix you up.
”

Saskia, who'd been very obviously keeping away from me, waved Sephy over to help teach a bunch of the older kids some
yoga moves. “They'd like to learn how to do a headstand!” she shouted.

“This is what happens when people hear you once had a yoga studio,” Sephy said, “even if it was fifteen years ago.”

As soon as she left, I grabbed Zeke's hand, which was sweating just as much as mine, but he wriggled free of my grip, raked his hands through his hair and said, “Everything is so messed up.”

The cameraman got closer, and some other journos turned in our direction.

“Seriously, Zeke, we need to go,” I said.

Then he was right on top of us, shouting questions at Zeke, the other guys right behind.

“Bad day, Zeke?”

“No comment,” Zeke said.

“Back on the juice?”

“What? No.”

“You were on it though, right? Just last year?”

“Get lost. I don't want to talk to you people.”

“Golden boy off his head on . . . crystal meth, was it?”

“Leave him alone,” I spat. “He said he has no comment, so bugger off.”

But the questions kept coming.

Zeke's back was rigid, his fists clenched, and I dreaded him lashing out at the guy an assault-and-battery charge was all he needed.

“Please, Zeke, let's go,” I said, and then turned to the reporters, “Happy now? We're off.”

We went over to Saskia and Sephy, and Zeke said, “Mom, we have to bail. You need us to drop you at the airport? The organizers arranged us a car service.”

“No, I'm gonna help Saskia a little longer, so I'll find my own way. But I'll call you when I land at Heathrow. I love you, baby. You too, Iris.”

Heads down, hands not touching, we left the beach, questions and camera flashes hitting our backs.