Jake Chase lumbered a few feet across the sand, defeated, confused but grateful these men had more 4x4 know-how than he did. His dark, curly hair now blew in his face, long on the sides to counteract the middle-aged, thinning spots on the top. “Thanks guys, I feel like a fool. I just wanted to say hi, hang out a little.”
Kona said, “You know, Jake, when you drive on the beach, you’ve absolutely got to air down first.”
“Air out what?” Jake chuckled and punched Kona’s arm too hard. “It’s a fuckin’ safari vehicle with the whole sky open to the passengers.” He wondered what the hell Kona was referring to, and hated not knowing.
“Jake. Take a breather, man. I’m talking taking air out of the tires. It is actually called ‘airing down,’” answered Kona, returning the verbal volley. “If you want to drive on sand, you have to air down the tires.”
“The guy who sold it to me never said I had to do that,” Jake responded, cranky over his disastrous Scout unveiling. He’d had a completely different entry in mind: he’d roll on the sand, the guys would hop on the side runners, they’d all plow down the beach to a good Kanye West song Jake had already queued up in his playlist. “If you knew what I paid the guy to . . .”
“It actually doesn’t matter how much the truck cost. Regardless, you gotta ‘air down the tires’ when you’re driving any vehicle down the beach,” answered Kona calmly, like he was putting a mental patient into a straitjacket. “The softer tires with less air in them allow it to stay on top of the sand, making them wider, instead of getting stuck. When you plan on driving on the pavement, you gotta air back up to normal, hard tires.”
During this explanation, Jake had his hands on his hips, shaking his head back and forth furiously like a five-year-old who didn’t want to eat his peas. He cut Kona off, saying, “No fuckin’ way am I doing that.”
Just then, Julia Chase rolled up to the lot in her own clementine-orange 1974 Porsche Targa, which she thankfully had the good wits not to drive into the sand. Kona spotted her and took off his shirt as he gallantly shoveled her husband out of the mess he was in.
“Hey, Julia!” Kona couldn’t help but yell. “We got this!”
“I wouldn’t have bought this fucking car if I’d known I needed to go to mechanic trade school to . . .” Jake whined.
“It’s pretty basic. It’s not like the guy who sold it needed to explain,” lectured Kona.
“Dude,” Jake clarified, his need for acceptance driving his blood several degrees warmer. “Let’s get real here. I’m just a working guy like you. I ain’t actually like these rich city assholes who think they’re better than you locals who grew up here. I’m sure you know them.”
“Yes, I do actually, my fair share,” Kona answered, curious where this line of reasoning was going.
“I’m just like you guys. No different and no better,” Jake, a titan controlling half a billion dollars of Laundromats and mall properties, contended. “My dad never once made more than fifty K in a year, my mom was a substitute teacher.”
“Well, now I wouldn’t . . .”
“Put myself through school. Drove a laundry truck to get by. Swear, if luck didn’t fuckin’ follow me around. If it hadn’t, I would’a been happy teaching water-skiing for a living like you guys!” Jake thought hard about how much that would suck. “Point is, I work like a sweaty son of a bitch to run my properties. Never will I air a tire up, down, or even fuckin’ sideways.”
“So why don’t you hire someone to lie down in the trunk anytime you want to go on a little off-road adventure?” Kona laughed and shook his head. “He could just pop out when you need him.”
“I’m not, I just meant, I fuckin’ work all week already. It’s not fair on my weekend when I’m trying to relax to have to . . .”
“C’mon guys! Let’s shovel him out before the Seabrook people come down,” Luke yelled. Kona fell to his knees to shovel the sand away from the buried tires. He hoped it would make him look like a stud in front of Jake’s wife, Julia.
After only two minutes, Jake’s patience on the dig-out wore thin. He yelled at the guys, “How long is it going to take you to work me out of here anyway?”
The fact that it wasn’t Kona’s job to work him out of there didn’t enter Jake’s mind. Neither did the fact that it might present a problem that his wife, Julia, was digging out the exact same tire Kona was working on. In fact, she was now kneeling in front of Kona at the perfect angle, so that her bulbous butt bumped into his inner thighs as she helped shovel her own husband out of humiliation.