The Surf Guru by Doug Dorst Page A

right past a tall, well-muscled young man in a chef’s coat with SILVERMAN CATERING stitched over the breast. He was flirting with a waitress, steadying his tall chef’s hat on her blonde head, and he didn’t even glance at them. They jogged around the hotel on a flagstone walkway, running in rhythm with each other, Kacy in her tennis shoes and April in her clompy black boots. As they waited for the valet to appear with the minivan, Kacy unfolded the towel. Daubs of chocolate icing stuck to the terry cloth. She held the cake out to April. An offering.
    They ate with their fingers.
    â€œWhat’s the verdict?” Kacy asked her daughter, her depressed and mangy daughter whom she loved more than anything.
    â€œIt’s good,” April said, a chocolate-buttermilk crumb clinging wetly to her upper lip, “but not as good as yours,” and that was all Kacy needed to hear.

La Fiesta de San Humberto el Menor

    I t will be a hot day, perhaps the hottest in years. It is only nine o’clock, yet sweat soaks my clothes as I sit alone in the shade of my fruit stand. It has not rained in weeks. The air is as still as San Humberto’s bones.
    The great saint is buried in a vault beneath our cathedral, along with the remains of the hyenas that he collected on his travels across the water. Each morning since his death three hundred years ago, the church bells have rung at eight o’clock, sounding the beginning of the daily Mass in his honor. The bells woke me today. In my throbbing head it sounded as if they were calling out, No fruit! No fruit! No fruit! —admonishing me for another late night with the bottle, for another wasted morning. Once again I have disappointed my early customers, the people who like to eat fruit on the cathedral steps as they wait for Mass to begin. Now, with everyone filling the pews inside, the town is quiet except for the buzz of fat, dizzy f lies as they circle and dive and swarm.
    I pass several minutes admiring a sturdy beetle as it rolls a dung ball many times its size through the dirt. When I look up again, I see someone running toward me from the town square. Though my vision is blurred, I know it is my friend Vargas, the carpenter. Vargas is a fat man. He runs neither often nor well. When he reaches the stand, he leans on it to support himself. He holds his side and doubles over like a man stuck by a knife. I give him the glass of lemonade I have made for myself; he needs it more than I do.
    â€œManolo,” he says through shallow breaths. “Come to the square. You will not believe what you see.”
    â€œWho will watch the stand?” I ask.
    â€œYour fruit is safe. Everyone is at Mass.”
    We walk toward the square, shading our eyes from the sharp morning sun. “What news could be so important that it makes you run?” I ask.
    â€œYou would already know if you had not slept so late,” he scolds. Vargas likes to think it is his job to teach me lessons. I have told him he is wasting his time. Lessons are burdens, and I do not need any more of those.
    He turns to me. “It was another one of those nights, yes? You drink and you clean the gun?” He says this quietly, with concern.
    â€œI did not touch the gun,” I lie.
    The square is at the exact center of the town, where our two alamedas cross; one runs north-south, the other east-west. In the southwest corner of the square is our town wishing well, shaped from rough-cut chunks of limestone. As we pass it, I mouth a prayer of contrition to the saint and drop in a coin, as is my custom. There is no splash, just the flat sound of the coin landing in the muck below.
    Vargas leads me through the square to the mayor’s office. A scroll hangs from the door on a braided purple cord. The parchment is thick and smooth, with bright purple and yellow borders, long black leather fringes attached to the corners, and elegant script that glitters as if it has been written in gold. I