The “office,” if you can grace it with that name, is a mess, a hovel, a bedlam, except for the back wall, which is neat and ordered. Several black wet suits hang neatly from a steel coatrack, and a variety of surfboards lean against the wall, sorted and ordered by size and shape.

“Forty-some years ago,” Cheerful says, “a bra was something I tried with trembling fingers and little success to unsnap. Now I find that I am a brah. Such are the insults of aging. What can I do for you?”

“Would you be Mr. Daniels?” Petra asks.

“I would be Sean Connery,” Cheerful replies, “but he's already taken. So is Boone, but I wouldn't be him even if I could.”

“Do you know when Mr. Daniels will be in?”

“No. Do you?”

Petra shakes her head. “Which is why I asked.”

Cheerful looks up from his calculations. This girl doesn't take any crap. Cheerful likes that, so he says, “Let me explain something to you: Boone doesn't wear a watch; he wears a sundial.”

“I take it Mr. Daniels is somewhat laid-back?”

“If Boone was any more laid-back,” Cheerful says, “he'd be horizontal.”

8

Boone walks up Garnet Avenue from the beach in the company of Sunny.

Nothing unusual about that-they've been in and out of each other's company for coming on ten years.

Sunny originally flashed onto The Dawn Patrol like daytime lightning. Paddled out, took her place in the lineup like she'd been born there. Boone was about to launch into a six-foot right break when Sunny jumped in and took it from him. Boone was still poised on the lip when this blond image zipped past him as if he were a buoy.