“Since when the fuck do you know what Kona wants and doesn’t want?” answered Jake, protective of his ability to cull local “buddies.” “I know that guy better than you do. I was the one who talked to him about his business plan last summer, not that he knew what the fuck I was talking about. I could tell my advice was fuckin’ Mandarin to that guy. But this summer I’m going to help him get his ass in gear to . . .”
“No fair!” yelled Richie, yanking off his headphones and taking his eyes off his Candy Crush game on his iPad for a precious three seconds. “If Alexa goes, I want to go. If Luke is teaching, I want to see him.”
“You don’t have your bathing suit or wetsuit, honey,” said Julia. “I wasn’t planning on having you all go to camp today. It’s so early in the summer, I just want family time at home, I’m not . . .” Julia, who sensed she wouldn’t get her way, suddenly decided to save her arguing capital for another fight. It was easier to let the kids and husband believe they were in charge so she could squash their demands like insects when it really counted.
“They have so many wetsuits for kids always. Old ones for kids who forget, come on, Mom, pleeease? If Alexa gets to go, I get to.”
Jake patted Mario on the shoulder. “Stop the car at that water sports camp. We’ll drop off the two kids. Who cares, Julia? We’ve got all weekend.”
Once in a while, Jake had to trump his wife. He loved her to death, but still, she had to let him act like a man when it counted with the kids. He was happy she had a bigger brain than him, and wasn’t one of those women who obsessed over exercise classes to keep her ass from drooping. On the other hand, nothing worse than a droopy ass, Jake thought to himself, as various moms’ rear anatomies shuffled through his head like a deck of cards.
Mario guided the Cadillac Escalade up through the public parking lot toward camp, and Alexa bounded from the back row and out the side door, stepping into her gold flip-flops on the hot pavement. Into a rubber Birkin-style fuchsia beach bag, she stuffed her plush Hermès bedsheet of a towel and her patchwork designer Cynthia Rowley wetsuit (which was so tight it gave her breathing issues).
Richie ran out past his big sister. He headed directly for the plastic bins filled with wetsuits that dozens of children had peed in. They smelled like a combination of teenage boys’ feet and rotten fish.
Evan, meanwhile, waited in the car, disgusted by anything having to deal with the local leeches on the beach, lost in their inane, underclass notion that instructing children in the water was an actual vocation.
“Hey, man, happy summer once again,” Jake said as he fist-bumped Kona, who was rushing up from the bay area to the ocean side with a boogie board for one of the kids. “I got two very late kids here who want to jump in. You cool with that?”
“Yeah, we already started camp, but if you want to sign up for a full morning now, you can do that. We don’t do half fee on late arrivals, but, hell, you wanna pay full fare, that’s fine. And you know, we’ve been meaning to talk to you. That day on the beach with your Scout truck, you know there are these people at the club who weren’t so happy with that. They are trying to shut down the camp which would pretty much ruin my life, so it caused some . . .”
“Hey, lemme settle in for my weekend. You wanna call me next week?” Jake said, checking the weather app on his phone. He was hoping that sand incident was long forgotten.
“Yeah, fine, but I do need to talk,” Kona answered, desperation clear in his voice.
“I said, call me. I meant it, buddy,” Jake answered, loving that he was needed by one and all.
Alexa pulled her new patchwork wetsuit up her thighs and leaned over for several beats too long, just to make sure there wasn’t a man within a five-hundred-yard vicinity who hadn’t noticed that purrrrfect wedgie, rammed up inside her full butt cheeks.
Jake went on, his back thankfully facing his daughter’s sideshow. “You know, come to think of calls, Kona, something’s bugging me and I’m a very direct guy who’s gotta say it.”
Kona cracked his neck purposefully, feigning interest in Jake as his eyes tried hard not to look at Alexa’s bending and stretching. The way she walked around the lot sickened him as if she were his own child. Last summer, this girl was a kid. The image of her Memorial Day weekend in that orange romper, on her knees in the sea grass still haunted him. Maybe he’d force her to wear a sensible, black wetsuit with long legs and arms like most of the other kids did. That’d be a start in the right direction for her.