Tapping the Source (36 page)

PART IV

36

The drive to Milo’s party was not a pleasant one. The moment Ike got his first look at Hound Adams, he could see that Hound had not been getting much sleep lately. He looked coked out, on edge, and he drove that way. Foot to the floor. Gray concrete ribbons unwinding too fast in the early light. They rode in the Sting-Ray. Frank Baker was going up too, delivering some equipment in the van. Hound stuck the boards and wet suits in there as well and they started out together, but Frank was soon left far behind. At one point Michelle said something to Hound about slowing down and he snapped back at her, told her to stay off his case as the tires left skid marks around a long curve. The incident left Ike wondering just how much Michelle really knew about Hound’s habit.

•   •   •

It was still early in the day when they arrived at the small brick house guarding the entrance to the Trax estate. Nothing here to prepare one for the grandeur that lay just beyond: the lush forest that seemed to spring suddenly from the dry hillsides. Huge dark trees. Moss like pale ghosts beneath black limbs. Patches of blue sky, straight up, so you had to crane your neck to see. Sounds of running water. And suddenly, the emergence from the trees. The great circular lawn, stone drive. The huge house with its small Spanish windows, iron-railed balconies, and tiled roofs, patterns of old ivy clinging to the walls, ancient stuff, black with time. And over everything, a silence.

Hound stopped near a fountain and pool. Dark birds, bathing in the water, darted at the sound of the engine, and then returned, their singing mixing with the splash of the fountain, the soft ticking of a hot engine.

They went up a series of stone steps, through a tall wooden door, and into a rose garden. And it was passing through the garden that Ike noticed for the first time, as if the initial impact of the place had been enough to blind him to any imperfections, that the house was in a surprising state of disrepair. The rose garden was spotted with weeds and thick dry grass, among which the few old bushes sprouted a handful of bright petals like points of flame in the sunlight.

They crossed another stone entry and climbed a set of heavily carpeted stairs. They found Milo Trax seated behind a desk, engaged in conversation on the phone. He nodded at them as they entered the room, his small eyes twinkling, but his voice betraying nothing to the party on the other end. Hound led them to a window from which they could admire the view.

They were on the west side of the house here, and looking down through a heavily wooded canyon that Ike realized was the patch of dark vegetation he had once seen from the water, they could see the ocean. A magnificent view, like having the world spread out below them. Green hills. Yellow patches of wild mustard. Distant collision of blues. At his side, Ike could hear Michelle suck in her breath.

“So what do you think?” a voice asked from behind them. Milo Trax had risen from his desk, and was now walking toward the window, the muscles flexing in an odd way in his short thick thighs.

“Beautiful,” Michelle said. “I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Good,” Milo said, putting a hand on her back. “There’s plenty of time before the party. Look around. Enjoy. Ike, you brought your board?”

Ike said that he had. He looked past Milo and noticed Hound Adams, now standing back, at the side of Milo’s desk, arms folded across his chest, head bowed, face pointed toward the floor, as if he were lost in thought, or asleep on his feet. Ike could not see his face clearly enough to say which.

•   •   •

By midmorning Ike was alone with the waves, Frank having arrived with the boards before disappearing along with Hound Adams somewhere on the grounds. Michelle had stayed at the house to let Milo show her around. She had agreed to meet Ike later, on the beach.

The morning, the surf, could not have been more perfect. A clean swell, three to five feet out of the southwest. Paper-thin walls with long workable faces turned toward the sun. While he surfed, a school of porpoise arrived to join him for a time in the waves, passing in a leisurely fashion, slapping at the water with their bodies, calling to one another with strange sounds. They passed so close he could have reached them in a single stroke. A group of pelicans cruised by in formation, their bodies within inches of the sea. They circled the point and passed him once more, this time just inside the lineup, actually skimming along the faces of the waves, the last bird just ahead of the falling crest so it was like they were surfing, at play on the empty point, and he joined them in the waves, letting jewel-strung faces slip beneath his board, carving lines out of crisp morning glass.

He did not have to rush, to worry about beating anybody back outside, or watch for someone dropping in on him. He could paddle out slowly, take as much pleasure in watching the empty liquid lines as he did in riding them. It was something he had not fully appreciated on his first visit, how surfing was not just about getting rides. It struck him this morning that what he was doing was not separated into different things. Paddling out, catching rides, setting up. Suddenly it was all one act, one fluid series of motions, one motion even. Everything coming together until it was all one thing: the birds, the porpoise, the leaves of seaweed catching sunlight through the water, all one thing and he was one with it. Locked in. Not just tapping the source, but of the source. It must have been what they felt before him, what two young men had felt and given a name to. And he thought of what it must have been like then, beaches like this one scattered up and down the coast like jewels at the edge of the sea. It must have seemed too good to be true, and it must have seemed that it would be that way forever, and yet now it was the wreckage of that dream that lay between them. And he saw too that it was not just Preston and Hound who had lost. He thought of the pier, the crowds fighting for waves, the entire zoo of a town crouched on the sand and what had once passed as hunger and vitality had only a certain desperateness about it now, coked-out fatigue, because they had all lost and it was one great bummer, one long drop with no way back over the top. It was plain now, plainer than it had ever been before, what Preston had wanted him to see here. And he did see it. Preston had been right. There was something here, in this moment, that was worth hanging on to, that was worth building a life around. And he could see it, within reach, if he could only break away now, if he could only go and take Michelle with him.

•   •   •

Michelle was there when he reached the beach, turned on her stomach, eyes closed. He came up through the warm white sand and stopped to watch, quietly, because it looked as if she was asleep.

She wore a white two-piece suit, the top unfastened at the back. Her legs and arms seemed slenderer than he had remembered. Fine golden hairs glistened along the backs of her thighs. Lost moments from Huntington Beach returned to haunt him. Self-pity and desire rose to choke him, like dust on a desert wind. He was dizzy with it. He pulled off his wet suit and lay down beside her.

His body was still cold and damp. Hers was hot, warmed by the sun. She started and then shivered as he pressed against her. She turned to face him, laughing softly. “You’re getting good,” she whispered. “I was watching.” There were small bits of sand stuck to her skin, on the cool white places beneath her breasts where they had been pressed against the towel. He lowered his face and took one of her nipples into his mouth, feeling the tiny grains of sand against his tongue. He moved his mouth across her body, tasting her skin. She arched beneath him and the sun was a fire at his back. He felt her fingers in his hair as he worked the bottom piece of her suit down over her legs and then they were both naked, on the white rectangle of cloth, on the white crescent of sand. He moved his face back toward hers, felt her hand upon him now, guiding him inside, and he felt the heat of her body reaching to swallow him. He came very quickly, and for a long time, shuddering, as if his whole body were emptying itself into hers. He closed his eyes against the ache of it, pressing his face into that sea of light-colored hair, mouth open, lips parted and pressed against her neck, his heart pounding between them. He felt himself still moving a little inside her, still hard, and then he was aware too, for the first time, of a minor distraction, a small sharp pain near his temple as if something was digging at his skin. He opened his eyes and raised his head. Her hair had fallen back, spread in a golden arc across the towel beneath her, and a sudden flash of light caught his eye—a piece of ivory, brilliantly white in the sunlight. The ivory was delicately carved in what looked to be an oriental design—a long slender alligator with jaws running two-thirds the length of its body and holding, now, in a devilish grin, Michelle’s strawberry-blond hair as it had once held the coal-black hair of Ellen Tucker.

37

The sight of it stopped him. He lay still in her, but staring, suddenly aware that her eyes had fixed upon him as well, though they were not turned toward his face but rather toward the tattoo that spread itself across his shoulder, and the expression on her face was something between fascination and horror—much, he imagined, like the expression on his own face.

Though their eyes met, neither of them spoke. And then the spell was broken by the sound of loose rock tumbling somewhere far above them and Ike raised his eyes to see a pair of boards catching sunlight and two figures picking their way down the long, crumbling staircase. Hound Adams and Frank Baker, come to surf the point.

•   •   •

In the time it took Frank and Hound to reach the beach, Ike was able to pull his wet suit back on. The black and purple material was still wet and cold and the coldness seemed to reach him at once, to find its way down and into the bones. Michelle had begun to move also, replacing her suit and covering the bottoms with a pair of white shorts. And then they were both dressed, sitting suddenly side by side, in silence, the magic of only moments before lost. The combs. The tattoo. He knew that for a few seconds she had watched him, puzzled by the change that had come over him. But he had not trusted his voice and had remained silent. And while she watched him, he had felt her hand, cool upon his own, but still he had been unable to turn toward her and the hand had slipped away.

He knew now, without looking, that Hound and Frank were nearly upon them, still moving across the sand. “Those combs,” he said finally, his throat tight around the words. “Where did you get them?”

“Milo gave them to me,” she said. “I think they’re pretty.”

There was something defensive and rather distant in her voice, and when he turned to look at her he found that she was staring toward the sea.