Chapter Text
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
The first time Johnny sees it, he’s taking a phone call at the beach. Harp is on the other end, so he’s only half-listening, but for once, Harp isn’t harping on him, instead pleading pathetically. He rambles, at length, about all the annual leave pay that Special Agent Utah has accrued over his time with the bureau. The waves peacefully drown out his grating voice, their low rumble beckoning Johnny in for another round. His skin is cured in seasalt from his dawn patrol earlier and his hair, in need of a cut, has dried out curly.
Harp pulls out all the stops for him. He’s ‘gotta be honest’; he wants to commend Johnny for his dedication— everyone wants to— all that travelling, and he never once took a personal day or clocked in late. That one raid goes unmentioned. According to Harp, no one kept their nose to the grindstone like him. Maybe the guy’s having memory issues in his old age. He goes down a list like he’s reading it off a computer screen; or maybe Deer printed it out for him, if he still keeps her within arms’ length at all times. Oregon to O’ahu. Tahiti to Tofino. He badly butchers the names of several places in Mexico, and in an uncharacteristic show of intelligence, he doesn’t mention Australia at all. Johnny stays silent, his bare chest rising and falling with the ocean.
“There’s something you might not know,” he tells Johnny. “You’re a local legend here now. The boys just love you. It’s a hell of a story. I tell them all, you were a real hotshot blue flamer. Nobody saw it coming, least of all me. If you’re in California, we can throw you a real party the way you deserve.” He hesitates. “Are you in California?”
The Pacific pushes back and forth, insistent. Johnny’s shoulders are starting to burn a little in the morning sun, and the white sand is uncomfortably hot on the tired soles of his feet. His stomach growls. He could pack up and go home now; rush hour is probably almost over. The scapular muscles in his back ache exceptionally, so maybe he could make a stop at the pharmacy for some Bengay. His whole body seeks his attention.
“Hello? Hello? Agent Utah?”
“Not anymore,” jokes Johnny. He leaves his board behind, propping it up against the old log where he’s been sitting for who knows how long. No one will steal it— of that, at least, he can be certain. His cellular phone he brings with him, wading up to his ankles. “I gave my two week notice.”
“Your— you— you dropped your badge— on a random beach in Australia— in the middle of a rainstorm— after finally tracking down the perp you’d been chasing for five years and then uncuffing him and letting him swim to his death,” shouts Harp, falsetto-shrill. “I hope you don’t expect a fucking severance package!”
The saltwater laps at his shins. Johnny closes his eyes. “What about my annual leave pay?”
Harp explodes. Johnny ignores him, stepping slowly and wiggling his toes in the smooth sand. No crabs pinch him and he somehow avoids every sharp rock edge. Tyler sent him a nice pair of water shoes for his birthday, and yet he never wears them, even on the spikiest beaches. Before Bells, he carried a small amount of stupid superstition about it. He figured there was only so much bad luck that could befall one guy, so each scrape and every wipeout would bring him closer to good luck, finding Bodhi.
After Bells, he couldn’t let go of the bad habit.
“I’m not going to yell at you anymore, Utah,” Harp gasps, finally running low on air. “I want you and I to handle this like adults, alright? You come into the office and we’ll talk about it, alright? Listen, you’ve got to be reasonable. After how you handled the Ex-Presidents, you understand. You and I are on the same page, alright? But it isn’t right to end it like this, Utah.”
The water is up to his waist now and he’s still holding his phone up to his ear. The Pacific pushes him around and he allows the motion but doesn’t lose his footing. Less than three miles away, something jumps up; too small to be a whale but too big for an otter. It flips back into the water before he can properly register its existence, let alone try and distinguish what it might be.
Harp changes speeds again, like the down-low dirty rotten fucker he is. “And when you come by, Johnny, don’t forget to remind me, I’ve got a box of Pappas’s old things here. I think they belong with you now.” He sighs melodramatically. “How long would it take you to get here? We can fly you out, don’t worry about that… we can get you a car, whatever you need…”
Everywhere the light hits the water it sparkles, and in the middle of all that glitter, Johnny sees the whatever-it-is again. He only spots it because he was looking, and he still can’t discern what it might be. It moves too quickly, almost golden as it twists up above the waves. A porpoise hunting for lunch, maybe.
“Take your time,” Harp says with as much empathy as he can muster, then mutters before the call drops, “ungrateful little asshole——”
Whatever-it-is doesn’t resurface. Johnny’s gaze drifts away to the shadows cast over the sea by the cliffs overhanging this spot. The darker water and higher waves of the point break call his name and it doesn’t sound a thing like Special Agent Utah. He couldn’t describe the sound if he tried; all he can do is let it wash over him.
He calls Tyler on his way back to the log. The line is loud— lunch rush at Neptune’s Net— but she still picked up right away. He always wonders what she’s doing when he’s not around. “Morning, Johnny.”
“Morning, Tyler,” he tries to match her tone, but just doesn’t sound as cute. Nothing much he can do about that. “I’ll do the shrimp and fries, to go.”
“Fuck you,” she laughs easily, the curse an endearment. Johnny misses her fiercely; he’d eat shrimp until he turned pink as a flamingo just to sit at her bar. In a few months, it’ll have been a year since they last saw each other. “Any news?”
“None.” Guilt churns up a whirlpool in his stomach. It’s so easy to lie to Tyler. He deserves every bad thing Harp said about him, and then some. If he was a good person, a strong man, then he’d be able to tell her the truth about what happened to Bodhi. It isn’t like he’s trying to protect her; Tyler is well-acquainted with grief. She’d probably help him deal with it if only he asked, and if only he loved her enough to be honest with her.
Pathetically, Johnny asks, “What’s new with you?”
“Nothing,” then, “I’m working. Call me later, kay?”
The line goes quiet. He finally puts his phone back into his bag, heaving a sigh. He gets the sense that something is watching him over his shoulder. But when he looks back west, all he can see is the glimmering ocean.
He reaches for his board.
If anyone asked him what he’s been up to— anyone he wouldn’t have to lie to— and how he’s been spending his hours of unemployment, after years of chasing a ghost around the world and surfing every day, Johnny would tell them that things are pretty much the same except that the ghost is finally dead. He surfs it all— mushy waves, huge sports magazine centerfold poster waves, shitty waves, choppy waves, whatever. He doesn’t think about anything; he doesn’t need to think about anything, just paddles out and rides back, paddling out and paddling back, spending hours and hours giving himself to the water, over and over. He drives back home every afternoon before rush hour, never has the energy to jerk off or go out or straighten up his rental apartment. He sets an alarm only so that he doesn’t miss the dawn patrol. So much for the grindstone. His body is primed for what he needs it to do, and what he needs it to do is move; his mind, however, has been disconnected somehow.
A massive, gorgeously steep wave distracts him and he makes a critical mistake. Bound to happen to everyone. No one else is around to witness his blunder this time, though, and he doesn’t pop up in time to hold his footing. Johnny barely has a second to think, let alone inhale— then the closeout yanks him under. The water thrashes his body, and Johnny holds his breath and pushes to regain control.
Difficult is an understatement. He pushes and pushes, moving up towards the surface, glad to not have been thrown into any rocks; but he resurfaces at the wrong time. Another wave shoves him back down.
For the first time since Bells Beach, Johnny is afraid. The fear pricks through him. He’s awake, alert, alive— he holds his breath until he can surface again. The sea is cold. One can only swim for so long and he’s already dipped well into his reserve of strength. He makes it back to air, stealing another gasp of oxygen, but he can’t see straight. His board is nowhere in sight. None of the water around him is in focus at all, everything blurry— somehow, it’s totally, totally peaceful.
He wakes up with a wet gasp, aching. Awake, alert, alive, somehow, “what the fuck,” Johnny spits, dribbling out seawater. He’s deeply exhausted, but he made it. Somehow, he’s on top of the rock jetty, lying on his back. Gulls circle overhead, curious to know if he’s carrion or not. Johnny knows how they feel.
He moves slowly, one muscle at a time. He’s bruised, maybe, but he’ll live. He has no idea how he survived. He must have totally blocked out the incident, pushed past his limit and… what, crawled up here himself?
Johnny stares at the ocean for another minute before forcing himself up.
He takes a day off from surfing; as in, he drives into town and buys a new board.
The reporting on Bodhi’s death was offensively mild.
Australian news outlets took up the story to fill the ad spaces they hadn’t yet sold. They framed it as an avoidable tragedy, and with that, Johnny bitterly agrees. Local columnists took umbrage with the unnamed late American tourist himself, accusing him of being a rookie surfer who gives surf culture a bad name. Bodhi would hate the defamation, but he isn’t around to read any of it, so it doesn’t matter. When Johnny flies back across the world everyone has moved on; the beaches are emptier, and the water is colder, but somehow he can’t find so much as an obituary. He calls the California Department of Public Health from a payphone asking after the process to obtain a foreign death certificate, and right when they start to take the call seriously is when they ask for the name of the deceased.
Johnny, embarrassed, had slammed the phone against the receiver violently enough that the whole booth shook.
Every so often when the world gets too quiet Johnny goes to one of the more popular beaches, the kind he skipped over when he was first scouting out potential Ex-President territories. There’s a stall selling drinks and snacks, a freezing shower for everyone to wash off their sandy legs next to the trashcan always overflowing with empties. People play music and volleyball and sit on towels. Nobody else surfs here, which means no one really talks to him, so when someone does talk to him, he completely misses it.
At first he thinks they’re calling someone else. There are six of them, and the whole group is loud, drunk, and happy, waving to— a seventh friend, surely. It’s nice to pretend he’s still part of the world and not just living in it, and yet Johnny is still shocked when he glances over and sees their attention on him. He waves back awkwardly. Does he know them? He’s sure he doesn’t know any of them, and yet, they’re smiling right at him.
He smiles back more out of instinct than anything else. The group engulfs him, eyes on his board, gear, body, face. “We saw you surfing, man,” shaka, “that was so rad,” “so fucking dope”, “how long you been doing it, bro?” After a long morning spent mostly quietly humming to himself, Johnny is immediately overwhelmed.
But for day-drunk wannabe-beach-bum poseurs, they don’t seem half-bad. They’re a handsome group, all guys, all young. He’s got longer hair and cheaper trunks than any of them, except maybe the blond with the bandana around his neck. He figures they’re probably businessmen or lawyers or something; or if they’re cops, they’re definitely rookies. When blondie asks if he wants to come party with them, Johnny finds himself helpless to resist, starving for everything they could give.
The party is aboard a private yacht anchored to the nearest marina. She belongs to one of the poseurs, perhaps the biggest poseur of all; the one with a dark blue shirt and white board shorts. Johnny learned his name along with everyone else’s on the drive over, sandwiched into someone’s crowded van, passing around two bottles of expensive rum. Even though he left his board back in the lockers at the beach, they’re clearly proud to have snagged a bonafide surfer for their adventure— so Johnny gets shotgun, and they encourage him to drink like a fish.
The van careens down the coastal road, its passengers drunkenly warbling along with the radio. Nobody asks him about the biggest wave he ever surfed— nobody asks him anything, really. Johnny watches the palms fly by and doesn’t think about duffel bags or parachutes or security footage or campfires.
By the time the party is underway, Johnny can’t remember anyone’s name except the boat’s— Anita Vacation, by the way. She takes off fast— within minutes, the shoreline is far behind them. Someone presses a citrusy, cold bottle of clear, sparkly Zima into his grip, and he downs a third of it in a gulp, smiling freely. The others laugh about everything and nothing at all, and one of them fights to be heard over the waves as he tells some terrible story about either a marriage or a concert— it’s not clear which.
The head poseur, navy shirt ballooning out from where it’s tucked in, like he’s biking on the highway, gives the helm to his blond friend so he can knock back a shot of tequila. Johnny is perched on half a seat at the back of the boat when he suddenly gets the mind to stand up, which is right when Anita Vacation sharply turns, rolling and heeling. Johnny and his bottle tip over the side, and if anyone notices he doesn’t hear their reaction before he hits the water.
Johnny flails as he sinks straight down through the choppy, foamy waves, his heart pounding; he sends shouts bubbling up to the surface, but nothing changes. The yacht noisily sails away. The water is unexpectedly warm, but his limbs feel sluggish. If he could just make it up to the surface, he could wave for help. Johnny pushes up, and up. It almost feels like he’s pushing in the wrong direction, and when he spares a glance down to where the ocean floor should somewhere lie, all he can see is dark water. Something cracks, distantly. Johnny closes his eyes.
Then the light changes, and he opens his eyes to peek and then barks out a surprised yell and chokes on seawater immediately, because reaching for him through the water is none other than a ghost.
He drifts out of consciousness again, and when he comes back from almost drowning— again— this time it’s to the soft feeling of someone’s mouth pressed gently to the top of his head, and the sight of strong golden arms shrinking back from him, back into the water. Johnny reaches out before he knows what’s going on, and manages to grab hold of the arm before it can disappear, surprising both of them.
Bodhi startles, his eyes flashing wide. He looks literally the same as always, if only a little more wet than usual. Johnny, still gasping for air, sinks his nails into Bodhi’s arm, holding on with all the strength he’s got left. The rest of his body is limp, sprawled out across a huge piece of wooden debris floating in the water. He can’t think about how he got up here. All he can do is stare at Bodhi, and stare, at Bodhi.
Bodhi finally moves, returning the gesture. His grip is warm and firm on Johnny’s arm, like a brand in the afternoon sun. A little hoarse and more than a little irritated, Bodhi tells him, “Stop trying to kill yourself.”
Before Johnny can do anything, he uses his grip to push them apart, then sinks back down into the waves. He doesn’t resurface. Johnny loses track of how long he watches the water.