Ashley Bell: A Novel (25 page)

At 7:05, using the phone on her father’s desk, Bibi called Pogo. She expected to wake him, but he sounded as sharp as a shark’s tooth when he answered on the second ring: “Tell me.”

“I thought you knew it all.”

“Hey, Beebs. You never call me.”

“Don’t mom me, bro.” She asked about the surf rats with whom he shared an apartment: “How are Mike and Nate?”

“Still in bed. Probably abusing themselves.”

“I’m surprised you sound so together at this hour.”

“I was gonna catch a few before work,” he said, meaning a few waves, “but I wake up and it’s like milk soup. You’ve got to have a guide dog to surf this. Anyway, you had me scared, Beebs.”

“You mean the cancer thing.”

“Sounded too tough even for you.”

“But here I am. Clean and ready to tear it up.”

“You’ve always torn it up.”

“This has nothing to do with cancer. That’s totally yesterday. But I need some help, Pogo.”

“Why else do I exist?”

“That old Honda of yours. Does it have GPS?”

“Hell, Beebs, it hardly even has brakes.”

“Could I borrow it?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“Why would I need to know why?”

“I might want it for a few days.”

“I’ve got friends with cars. I’ve got a skateboard. I’m cool.”

“Listen, this isn’t the boss’s daughter working you.”

“Hey, no, you and me grew up together, Beebs. Anyway, I don’t think of Murph as my boss.”

“He’s aware of that. I’d appreciate it if you don’t say anything to him about this.”

“Not a word. When you want the car?”

“The sooner the better. I’m at the store.”

“I’ll be there in like twenty minutes.”

“You’re the real thing, Pogo.”

“Beebs?”

“Yeah?”

“You catch a bad wave or something?”

“A real thunder crusher,” she said.

“Maybe you need more help from me than just the car.”

“If I do, I’ll let you know, sweet boy.”

After she terminated the call, Bibi opened her purse and took from it the book with the panther and gazelle on the cover. There was no title or author’s name on the spine, either, and no text on the back. When she opened the book and thumbed through it, the pages were blank. Or they appeared to be blank until faint gray lines of cursive script rippled across the paper, flowing as fluidly as water, gone before she could read a word. She paged through it more slowly, and twice again words appeared, shimmering as if seen through a film of purling water, but rinsed away before they could be read.

She examined the binding. There was no space for electronics or batteries to be concealed within the spine. It was just a book. But not just.

With more than fourteen thousand combined horsepower, the three General Electric engines produced a confidence-building shriek, and the huge rotary wing thumped the air like a heavyweight boxer’s fists pounding the crap out of a punching bag. SEALs and Marines and associated Navy men left the ghost town and headed out-country in the last two hours of light, at an air speed of 150 knots.

As the deck vibrated under them, the seven dead terrorists were restless in their body bags. Restless as they had been in life. Good men and women sought calm, peace, time for reflection. Evil people were eternally restive, intractable, always eager for more thrills, which were the same few thrills endlessly repeated, because the evil were unimaginative, acting on feelings rather than reason. Forever agitated, they were unaware that the cause of their fury was the confining narrowness of the worldview they crafted for themselves, its
emptiness.
There would never be an end to them—and always a need for men and women willing to resist them at whatever cost.

Just before sunset, without incident en route, they touched down on the aircraft carrier, much to Paxton’s relief. There would be a debriefing, after which he expected to call Bibi in California, where it was morning. That expectation was deflated three minutes after they debarked from the helo. Washington wanted all team members to maintain silence with the outside world for at least another eight hours, for reasons that they did not feel obliged to share.

When headlights tunneled the fog in the parking lot and the primer-gray Honda glided to the curb like a ghost-driven spirit car, Bibi stepped out the front door of Pet the Cat.

Because the heater took a long time to warm up, Pogo left the engine running and came around the front of the car to Bibi. “You’ve got that surf-goddess look going more than ever.”

“Maybe cancer was good for me.”

She knew that she was pretty enough, but not fall-down gorgeous or anything. On the other hand, Pogo made most of the male models in the big fashion magazines look as if they were trying out for roles as orcs in a possible sequel to the
Lord of the Rings
movies. He seemed oblivious of his physical perfection, even when girls were throwing themselves at him in such numbers and with such insistence that the air became scintillant with the fragrance of estrogen. It sometimes seemed to Bibi that if Pogo’s appearance meant anything at all to him, it was largely an embarrassment. But they truly had grown up together, as he had said earlier, and going to bed with him was as unthinkable as going to bed with a brother, if she’d had one. Two years older than Pogo, Bibi had taught him how to take the drop (how to slide down the face of a wave immediately after catching it), how to pull a rollover to get through white water, how to perform a roundhouse cutback, and other moves, when he was a preadolescent surf mongrel, before he surpassed her skill level. His good looks might have mattered to her when she was a preteen and early teenager. Then it had been a power trip to have the full attention of the boy that all the other girls most wanted. But now and for some years, what she loved about Pogo was his spirit, his humility, his tender heart.

He kissed her on the cheek and looked her in the eyes and said, “Who’re you hiding out from?”

“That’s not the way it is.”

In a staring contest, neither one of them would ever be the first to look away.

Pogo decided not to make it a contest. He surveyed the lonely mist-soaked morning, as the distant foghorn sounded at the mouth of Newport Harbor. “Just so you know where to get help when you’re finally not too stubborn to ask for it.”

“I know where,” she assured him.

He opened the passenger door and took from the seat a bag of breakfast staples from McDonald’s and a paperback novel.

After Bibi put her laptop and purse on the seat, she closed the door and said, “You don’t hide the books anymore.”

“Doesn’t matter if my folks find out I can read. I already escaped college.”

“You’ve always known what you wanted. Doesn’t it sometimes scare you that years from now, it’ll turn out not to have been enough?”

“The past is past, Beebs. The future is just an illusion. All we have is now.”

Indicating the McDonald’s bag, she said, “I don’t want that to get cold. But I have a couple questions.”

He gestured toward the store. “There’s a microwave inside. This stuff heats okay.”

She could smell the faint exhaust fumes as the Honda tailpipe pumped faux fog into the real stuff. “Has Dad ever mentioned someone named Calida Butterfly?”

After a hesitation, Pogo said, “She comes here. Tall woman, blond, jingles with jewelry when she walks.”

“Comes here to the store? How often?”

“A couple times a month.”

“I look at her,” Bibi said, “I don’t think boardhead.”

“She’s totally an inlander, not even a wish-was surfer. She comes to see Murph.”

“What about?”

“Beats me. They go up to his office.” She met his eyes, he read her instantly, and he said, “That’s not how it is, Beebs. They aren’t humping up there.”

It hurt her to ask, but she asked, “How do you know?”

“I don’t
know,
but I know. They go back a long way, but the vibe isn’t sex.”

“When did this start?”

“Maybe a year and a half ago.”

Continuing to pour in from the sea, the morning fog defied the sun. But there must have been some clearing inland, because jets were taking off from John Wayne Airport, the dragon roar of their engines speaking down through the fog as if from some Jurassic otherwhere.

“What about a guy named Kelsey Faulkner?”

Pogo considered, shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

“Birkenau Terezin?”

“That’s a name? Sounds like some kind of rash.”

“Ashley Bell?”

“I knew another Ashley once. Ashley Scudder. She traded surfing for corporate finance.”

“Must be some who do both, corporate-finance surfers.”

“Not many.”

“I better go, you better microwave,” Bibi said.

When she kissed him on the cheek, he hugged her fiercely. With his head on her shoulder, his face averted, he said, “When Murph called from the hospital Tuesday to say about the cancer, I closed the store, turned out the lights. Sat behind the counter and cried for an hour. Didn’t think I was gonna stop. Don’t make me cry again, Beebs.”

“I won’t,” she promised, and when he looked at her, she lightly pinched the tip of his perfect nose. “Thanks for the wheels.”

“Whatever thunder crusher you’re riding,” he said, “just walk the board the way you do so well.”

To maintain control of a board, a surfer walked back and forth on it, shifting her body weight.

Bibi went around the Honda, opened the driver’s door, and looked across the roof at Pogo. With an affection so profound that she could never have found the words to describe it in a novel, she smiled and said, “Dude.”

He returned her smile. “Dudette. Walk the board, dudette.”