The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

And maybe it’s too much, on the end of what’s been a heavy year.

There was the whole Tammy Roddick case that brought Petra into Boone’s life, and blew up into a massive child prostitution ring that almost cost Boone his life; there was Dave blowing the whistle on local gangster Red Eddie’s smuggling op; the big swell that rolled in and changed all their lives; and Sunny riding her big wave, making the cover of all the surf mags, and leaving.

Now Sunny was off riding her comet, and Dave was in limbo waiting to see if he’d ever have to testify in Eddie’s constantly delayed trial, and Boone was treading water on the edge of a relationship with Pete.

“Is he coming up?” Hang asks the others, starting to get concerned. Boone’s been down there a long time.

“I don’t care,” Dave mumbles. I’m the one who’s supposed to die, he thinks, not Boone. Boone’s not hung over, Boone didn’t down double-digit mai tais—whatever the hell they’re made from—last night. Boone doesn’t deserve the dignified relief of death. But Dave’s lifeguard instincts take over and he looks over the edge of his board to see Boone’s face underwater. “He’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Hang says, “but how long can he hold his breath?”

“A long time,” Johnny says.

They’ve actually had breath-holding contests, which Boone invariably won. Johnny has a dark suspicion that Boone is actually some kind of mutant, like his parents were really space aliens from an amphibian planet. Holding your breath is important to a serious surfer, because you might get held under a big wave and then you’d better be able to go without air for a couple of minutes because you’re not going to have a choice. So surfers train for that eventuality, which, in reality, is an inevitability. It’s going to happen.

Johnny looks down into the water and waves.

Boone waves back.

“He’s good,” Johnny says.

Which leads to a not very animated discussion of whether it’s possible for a person to intentionally drown himself, or whether the body would just take over and force you to breathe. On a cooler day, with more active surf, this is the sort of topic that would have engendered ferocious debate, but with the sun stinking hot and the surf a no-show, the argument falls as flat as the sea.

August blows.

When Boone finally pops back up, Johnny asks, “Did you figure out the meaning of life?”

“Sort of,” Boone says, climbing back on his board. “We’re dying to hear,” Dave mutters.

“The meaning of life,” Boone says, “is to stay underwater for as long as possible.”

“That wouldn’t be the meaning of life,” Johnny observes, “that would be the secret of life.”

“Okay,” Boone says.

Secret, meaning, secret meaning, whatever.

The secret meaning of life might be just as simple as the Dawn Patrol itself. Spending time with good, old friends. Doing something you love with people you love in a place you love, even when there’s no surf.

A few minutes later they give up and paddle in. The Dawn Patrol—that early-morning, prework surf session—is over. They have places to go to: Johnny’s coming off the night shift but needs to get home because his doctor wife is on days, Hang has to open Pacific Surf, Tide is due at his gig as a supervisor in the Public Works Department, responsible for storm drains even when there are no storms to drain. Dave needs to man the lifeguard tower to protect swimmers from surf that doesn’t exist.

The Dawn Patrol—Boone’s best friends in the world.

He doesn’t go in with them, though.

Having no work at the moment, there’s no point in going into the office to see if the red ink has gotten any redder.

So he stays out there for the Gentlemen’s Hour.



4

The Gentlemen’s Hour is an old surfing institution.

The second shift on the daily surfing clock, the Gentlemen’s Hour follows the Dawn Patrol in the rotation, as the hard-charging younger guys from the early-morning session go to their j-o-b-s, leaving the beach to the older veteranos—the retirees, doctors, lawyers, and successful entrepreneurs who have the nine-to-five in the rearview mirror.

Now, young guys can stay for the Gentlemen’s Hour, but they’d better know and observe the unwritten rules:


1. Never jump in on an old guy’s ride.

2. Never hotdog by doing stuff your younger body can do that their older ones can’t.

3. Never offer your opinion about anything.

4. Never, ever say anything like, “You already told us that story.”


Because the gentlemen of the Gentlemen’s Hour like to talk. Hell, half the time they don’t get into the water at all, just stand around their classic woodies and talk story. Share memories of waves out of the past, waves that get bigger, thicker, meaner, sweeter, longer with time. It’s only natural, it’s to be expected, and Boone, even when he was an obnoxious gremmie—and there were few more obnoxious—found out that if you hung around and kept your stupid mouth shut, you could learn something from these guys, that there really was a pony under all the horseshit.

Everything you’re seeing for the first time, these guys have already seen. There are still old boys out on the Gentlemen’s Hour who invented the sport, who can tell you about paddling out into breaks that had never been ridden before, who can still give you a little vicarious glow from the Golden Age.

But some of the guys on the Gentlemen’s Hour aren’t old, they’re just successful. They’re professionals, or they own their businesses, and everything is going so well they don’t have to show up anywhere except the beach.

One of these fortunates is Dan Nichols.

If you were going to make a television commercial featuring a forty-four-year-old California surfer, you’d cast Dan. Tall, rugged, with blond hair brushed straight back, tanned, brilliant white smile, green-eyed, and handsome, Dan is the male version of the California Dream. Given all that, you’d also think you’d hate the dude, but you don’t.

Dan’s a cool guy.

Now, Dan didn’t grow up anything like poor—his grandfather was in real estate and left him a tidy trust fund—but Dan took that nest egg and hatched a whole lot of chickens. What Dan did was marry his vocation and avocation, building a surf clothing line that just exploded. Started with a little warehouse in PB, and now has his own shiny big building in La Jolla. And you don’t have to be in San Diego to see Nichols’s “N” logo, you can see kids wearing Dan’s gear in Paris, London, and probably Ouagadougou.

So Dan Nichols has many, many bucks.

And he can really surf, so he’s a member in good standing of the PB Gentlemen’s Hour. Now he paddles out behind the barely discernible break and finds Boone sunbathing on his longboard.

“Boone, what’s up?”

“Not the surf,” Boone says. “Hey, Dan.”

“Hey, yourself. What keeps you out past the Dawn Patrol?”

“Sloth,” Boone admits. “Sloth and underemployment.”

If Boone weren’t self-employed he’d be unemployed, and very often it amounts to the same thing anyway.

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dan says.

Boone opens his eyes. Dan looks serious, which is unusual. He’s normally jovial and ultra-laid-back, and why not? You would be too if you had double-digit millions in the bank. “What’s up, Dan?”

“Could we paddle out a little farther?” Dan asks. “It’s kind of personal.”

“Yeah, sure.”

He lets Dan take the lead and paddles behind him another fifty yards out, where the only eavesdroppers might be a flock of brown pelicans flying past. Brown pelicans are sort of the avian mascots of Pacific Beach. There’s a statue of one by the new lifeguard building, which, even now, Dave is climbing to begin another day scoping turistas.

Dan smiles ruefully. “This is hard—”