The Surf Guru by Doug Dorst Page B

difference?” Roy said.
    â€œIt’s no big deal, Phil,” Trace said. “We ought to know.”
    â€œIt’s not right,” I said. I thought the kid deserved better. “Don’t do it, Trace,” I said, in the voice I used when he took things too far.
    Trace picked the baby up. He knew I only challenged him when I meant it. Someone called Roy’s name for the next game of pool. “The little guy looks just like you,” Roy said to Trace. With his thumb and index finger, he tickled the baby’s chin. Then he tickled Trace’s, which was thick with stubble. “Tell Sundance to lighten up,” he said. He shot me a look and walked over to the pool table.
    â€œHe’s hitting on you,” I said.
    Trace shrugged. “I know,” he said. “It keeps the drinks coming, though.” He smiled a smile that said he was in control, he’d take care of everything, he’d save the day all by himself.
    I knew he wasn’t happy, though. I knew it bothered him that Mo was probably in bed with her utility infielder, happy and horny after a Yankee win and post-game fireworks in a starry sky over the stadium, while Trace was dead broke and stuck in the desert with Roy chucking his chin. So I wasn’t surprised when, once the beer was gone, Trace went quiet and his droopy eye sagged almost all the way closed and he started looking around the place like he couldn’t believe his life had come to this. And I wasn’t surprised, either, when he laid the baby on the table and went to the pay phone to call big Mo.
    The baby waved its arms up and down like a drunk piano player, tiny fingers pattering on the table. I kept my hand on its legs so it wouldn’t roll over and fall. My father once told me that when I was little I’d fallen off a picnic table and hit my head on the cement patio. “Your mother was supposed to be watching you,” he said. “It’s her fault you’re a fuckup.” He said this the day before Trace and I saw him necking with a teenaged girl in the parking lot behind the bank.
    The jukebox was too loud for me to hear what Trace was saying, but in the space between records I thought I heard him say something ridiculous like We can be a family . Then Patsy Cline started wailing and Trace was smashing the receiver against the phone, which answered with cheerful pings. People looked over, then looked away. “At least do it on the beat,” the bartender shouted, like he’d seen it a hundred times. Trace wound up and gave the receiver one more whack, then threw it down and left it to twist and swing. He came back to the table. I assumed she’d hung up on him, so I didn’t ask.
    â€œShe wouldn’t listen to me,” he said. His face looked red, but it might have been the lights.
    â€œWas the Yankee there?”
    â€œPinch-hitting sonofabitch.”
    â€œHe’s no star,” I agreed.
    â€œShe didn’t believe me about the baby.”
    â€œYou could have held it up to the phone.”
    â€œThis baby’s pretty quiet,” he said.
    â€œYou’re right,” I said. “I wonder if something’s wrong with it.”
    Trace picked up the baby, cradled it. He seemed to relax. “You have to support its head, see?” he said to me. “It doesn’t have neck muscles yet.”
    Â 
    Â 
    We needed more to drink, so Trace left to find Roy. I made him take the baby with him, to show it around. Right after he got up, a woman sitting at the bar turned on her stool and looked at me. I’d seen her in the bar before, and she’d been on the hill at the fireworks show, but I hadn’t talked to her. She was forty, forty-five, thin, a redhead halfway to gray. She wore jeans and a faded black shirt with the top two or three buttons open and the sleeves rolled up. She walked over, pulled up a chair to the end of the booth, and sat down.
    â€œI hear your name is