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

un

employed, 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—”

“Take your time,” Boone says.

Probably Dan suspects that an employee is embezzling, or selling secrets to a competitor or something, which would seriously bum him out, because he prides himself on running a happy, loyal ship. People who go to work at Nichols tend to stay, want to spend their whole careers there. Dan has offered Boone a job any time he wants it, and there have been times when Boone’s been almost tempted. If you’re going to have a (shudder) nine-to-five, Nichols would be a cool place to work.

“I think Donna’s cheating on me,” Dan says.

“No way.”

Dan shrugs. “I dunno, Boone.”

He lays out the usual scenario: She’s out at odd hours with murky explanations, she’s spending a lot of time with girlfriends who don’t seem to know anything about it; she’s distant, distracted, less affectionate than she used to be.

Donna Nichols is a looker. Tall, blond, stacked, leggy—an eleven on a California scale of ten. A definite MILF if she and Dan had children, which they don’t. The two of them are like the poster couple for the SoCal Division of the Beautiful People, San Diego Chapter.

Except they’re nice, Boone thinks. He doesn’t know Donna, but the Nicholses have always struck him as genuinely nice people—down-to-earth, amazingly unpretentious, low-key, generous, good community people. So it’s a real shame that this is happening—

if

it’s happening.

Which is what Dan wants Boone to find out. “Could you look into this for me, Boone?”

“I don’t know,” Boone says.

Matrimonial cases suck.

Megasleazy, sheet-sniffing, low-rent, depressing work that usually ends badly. And you’re always left feeling like some leering, Peeping Tom pervert who then gets to present the client with proof of his or her betrayal or, on the other hand, confirmation of the paranoia and mistrust that will destroy the marriage anyway.

It’s a bad deal all around.

Only creeps enjoy doing it.

Boone hates matrimonial cases, and rarely if ever takes them.

“I’d consider it a personal favor,” Dan says. “I don’t know where else to turn. I’m going crazy. I love her, Boone. I really love her.”

Which makes it worse, of course. There are a few thousand deeply cynical relationships on the Southern California marital merry-go-round—men acquire trophy wives until the sell-by date does them part; women marry rich men to achieve financial independence via the alimony route; young guys wed older women for room, board, and credit-card rights while they bang waitresses and models. If you absolutely, positively have to do matrimonial, these are the cases you want, because there’s very little genuine emotion involved.

But “love”?

Ouch.

As has been overly documented, love hurts.

It’s sure laying a beat-down on Dan Nichols. He looks like he might actually cry, which would violate an important addendum to the rules of the Gentlemen’s Hour: there’s no crying, ever. These guys are old school—they think Oprah’s a mispronunciation of music they’d never listen to. It’s okay to

have

feelings—like if you’re looking at photos of your grandchildren—but you can never acknowledge them, and showing them is

way

over the line.

Boone says, “I’ll look into it.”

“Money is no object,” Dan says, then adds, “Jesus, did I really say that?”

“Stress,” Boone says. “Listen, this is awkward, but do you have . . . I mean, is there anyone . . . a guy . . . you suspect?”

“Nobody,” Dan says. “I thought you might tail her. You know, put her under surveillance. Is that the way to go?”

“That’s one way to go,” Boone says. “Let’s go an easier way first. I assume she has a cell phone.”

“iPhone.”

“iPhone, sure,” Boone says. “Can you access the records without her knowing it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do that,” Boone says. “We’ll see if any unexplained number keeps coming up.”

It’s kooky, but cheaters are amazingly careless about calling their lovers on the cellies, like they can’t stay off them. They call them, text them, and then there’s e-mail. Modern techno has made adulterers stupid. “Check her computer, too.”

“Got it, that’s good.”

No, it’s not good, Boone thinks, it reeks. But it’s better than putting her under surveillance. And with any luck, the phone records and e-mails will come up clean and he can pull Dan off this nasty wave.

“I’m going out of town on business in a couple of days,” Dan says. “I think that’s when she . . .”

He lets it trail off.

They paddle in.

The Gentlemen’s Hour is about over anyway.