Chapter 1 – Hello again, my surf ghetto
April 1977
"Hey, Jayboy! Back in town, huh?" The high-pitched female voice cutting across the asphalt parking lot made Jay skid to a sudden tailstop as he scanned around looking for the source.
"Nah, I'm still in Hawaii. What you're seeing is just a figment of your imagination, Blanca," he shot back with a tight smile as he recognized the girl who had interrupted his ride to the beach.
Unfazed, his distracter quipped, "Doubt that. If were my imagination at work then I would have dreamed up someone way cuter than you." Her facial expression belied her sarcastic tone as she stepped up for a quick hug, which Jay naturally turned into a mock headlock. Blanca, no stranger to his roughhousing, deftly twisted free and aimed a kick at his shin with a suede moccasin. "Yeah well, glad to see you too, ratso," she told him as he jumped backward to get out of range.
Jay regained his stance and popped the kicktail of his Z-Flex deck hard onto the pavement with one toe so the nose flew up into his left hand. "I'm lookin' for my woman," he informed Blanca, who folded her arms over the front of her white Mexican peasant blouse and assumed a cryptic look.
"She's around. Last I saw she was headed for the breakwater with Billy, Red Dog and Paul. Bunch of guys surfing there today." At the mention of the second name Jay's expression hardened almost imperceptibly, but Blanca noticed nonetheless and suppressed a tiny smile.
"Huh. She wasn't hanging around Re- uh, those guys a lot while I was gone, was she?" he blurted out, his cocky façade withering in the face of his uncertainty.
This time Blanca couldn't resist flashing a quick grin, obviously amused by the way she'd disconcerted the normally insuppressible Z-Boy with a casual quip. "I dunno. You'll have to ask her, won't ya?" The look she got for that was black and a lesser soul would have instinctively taken a couple of steps backward, but Blanca held her ground.
"Well, she better not have been screwin' around on me," Jay growled as he dropped the nose of his board back on the ground and prepared to jump on it.
"Hey, why don't you give her the benefit of the doubt?" Blanca suggested in a light tone, partially letting him off the hook – but only for a second. "I mean, just 'cause she went to Red Dog's party alone doesn't mean anything, ya know?"
But Jay refused to take the bait. "Whatever, Blanca," was his only reply before he pushed off and resumed his oceanward trek, the sound of her catty laughter fading away behind him. "Chola bitch," he muttered disgustedly, his eyes narrowed to near-slits as he stared into the middle distance, hardly seeing the pavement for the angry, disjointed thoughts in his head.
"Who's a chola bitch? Not me, I hope," another female voice rang out and interrupted his progress again. He whipped his head to the right and saw the object of his search leaning against a faded brown Jeep, her wind-blown wavy hair half-obscuring her tanned face.
"Kathy baby! I been lookin' for ya," Jay exclaimed as he stepped off his skateboard and caught her up in his arms in a bear hug that half-lifted her off her sneaker-clad feet.
"So who's a chola bitch?" she inquired again after he let her go and stooped to tuck his board under one arm.
"Oh, not you," he hastened to reassure her. "Fuckin' Blanca. We ran into each other a minute ago-"
"Hope you didn't knock her down too hard," Kathy cut in jokingly. At Jay's blank look she elucidated. "You know, when you ran into each other. Joke, Jay!"
He shook his blonde head and rolled his eyes. "Hah. Yeah, I wish I'd knocked her bitchy ass down."
"Geez, such hostility! Since when do you got a problem with Blanca?" Kathy inquired, her light brown eyebrows knitting over her similarly-shaded almond eyes.
Without missing a beat, Jay snapped back, "Since she implied that you might be messin' with Muir. And it's not the first time she's brought it up, either."
At this admission Kathy's eyebrows unknitted, but flew up her smooth forehead. "Muir? Red Dog? No, that's totally not true. We hung out a little bit the two times you went to Hawaii, but not like, together hanging out, ya know?" Jay stayed silent, gauging her tone for sincerity. She continued. "I went to a party of his last week but we were never alone or anything like that. Ask my brother if you don't believe me. He was there the whole time."
"Yeah, and probably too high to remember anything," Jay shot back, but in a mollified voice.
Kathy gave a short relieved laugh. "Hey, you know Tony. But he wasn't that out of it." She stepped closer to Jay as her face and voice both assumed a softer note. "Jay, come on. You know I wouldn't step out on ya while you're out of town."
Slightly crestfallen at his momentary display of weakness, he gave her a smug smile. "Of course I know, babe. Just fuckin' with ya."
Kathy gave him another skeptical raised-eyebrow look but forbore a reply in favor of turning her face toward the nearby ocean. She was wearing tiny white shorts and a pale yellow tank top embroidered with pink and red roses, beneath which she was going braless. As he subtly checked out her unbound curves Jay found himself getting turned on and quickly shifted his skateboard so it covered the front of his jeans. Her gaze still focused in the direction of the beach, Kathy didn't notice any of it. "So are you going to go back and get your surfboard or what? The waves are pretty good today."
Reluctantly Jay tore his stare from his girlfriend's frame and squinted toward the west even though the sunshine was milky and diluted from the high but thick haze of clouds above. "Yeah, guess so, but after comin' back from the North Shore even the good surf here just seems so weak, ya know?"
"I wouldn't know the difference exactly, but maybe I'll find out firsthand someday," Kathy shot back, giving Jay a subtly pleading look from under her long lashes.
He fell for it and his features turned from peeved to wistful as a stray breeze blew a sun-streaked streamer of hair across his face. He brushed it away, then stepped closer to place one hand on Kathy's hip. "I'll take you with me next time if you really wanna go," he promised.
"Yeah, I wanna go. But isn't it expensive to fly out?"
He shook his head and frowned a bit. "Nah, it's not too bad. I'll just enter a few more contests or do an ad in Skateboarder or something. Nothin' to it."
She raised her eyebrows skeptically, but the rest of her face betrayed her delight. "That would be awesome, Jay. If you make it happen I'll…"
"Do me on the beach at Pipeline?" he cut in with a leer, causing Kathy to bark with laughter and slug his shoulder with a balled-up fist.
"You horndog," she growled, but with a sly wink to show she wasn't exactly down on the idea.
Jay grinned proudly as he rubbed the spot that Kathy had just hit. "I am a horndog, s'what you love about me, baby," he boasted, then grabbed her by the waist and pulled her close. "Now you got me thinkin' about sex instead of surfing, so how 'bout we both go to my place and catch up. If the waves are still going afterward then I'll surf."
"Such a romantic," Kathy quipped as she rolled her eyes but didn't try to move out of his grasp. Sensing her hesitation, Jay pressed his forehead to hers briefly, then lifted her chin with one finger and placed a kiss on her mouth.
"I really did miss you and I really was a good girl while you were gone," she assured him.
"Yeah well, I was a good boy in the Islands too," he assured her.
Kathy's eyes met his, searchingly. "You didn't have to be, ya know."
"I know," he answered as his gaze slid toward the cracked pavement. "But still…I was. 'Cause…you know…" his voice trailed off awkwardly.
To his relief Kathy picked up the conversational thread with a casual laugh. "Yeah, because you were probably way too busy surfing all day to even notice chicks," she said with a grin that wrinkled her lightly freckled nose.
"Actually, that's true," he replied honestly as he pushed his hair back from his face. "Man, it was goin' off the whole time we were there. Surfing my fuckin' guts out every day."
"So even if I had been there you would have ignored me, huh?" she teased with one uplifted eyebrow.
He grinned again. "Not once the sun went down. After it gets dark there isn't a lot to do there except drink and f– "
"Yeah, I get the picture," Kathy cut in with a little toss of her wavy mane.
Impatiently Jay grabbed one of her hands with his free one and started to pull her in the direction of his house. "So c'mon, we're wasting time that we could be using to catch up, ya know?" he urged, his voice laced with impatience and lust.
Kathy dug her heels into the pavement and laughed, showing small pearl-like teeth. "Chill out, it's only been a few weeks! You act like it's been five years or something."
"It felt like five fuckin' years, not gettin' any action," he moaned, trying for the sympathy ploy.
"World's tiniest violin," Kathy smirked as she rubbed her index finger across her thumb in the classic mocking gesture. But at the look of genuine frustration on her teenage paramour's face, she relented and slipped her soft hand into his ocean-roughened one. "What the hell, the waves will probably blow out soon anyway and I'm sick of looking at those other guys' faces, so let's bail this joint and go back to your place," she quipped, giving him a kittenish grin that made him readjust the position of his skateboard so she couldn't see the direct evidence of his arousal with a sidewise glance. Still, she seemed to sense his desire and cruelly decided to make the three-block walk back to his apartment a painful one: "And then you can show me just how much you missed me these past few weeks."