“Wow.”

“Hey, I’ll still be here for the Gentlemen’s Hour,” Dave says. “Most of the time. And I won’t have to leave so early.”

“No, listen, congratulations,” Frank says. “Cent’anni. Every happiness. Uh, when…”

“Nine months,” Dave says. “September.”

September, Frank thinks. The best month on the beach. The weather is beautiful and the tourists have gone home.

Another set comes in.

They both ride it in and then call it a session. Two solid waves on a day like this are enough. And a cup of hot coffee and a cinnamon roll are sounding pretty good right about now. So they go up and clean up at the outdoor shower on the back of the bait shack, get dressed, then grab a table at the OBP Cafe.

They sit there, drink coffee, consume fat and sugar, and watch the winter storm now brewing on the edge of the sea.

Dark gray sky, thickening clouds, a wind building from the west.

It’s going to be a ripper.

4

After the Gentlemen’s Hour, Frank starts on his busy day.

AllFrank’s days are busy, what with four businesses, an ex-wife, and a girlfriend to manage. The key to pulling it off is to stick to a routine, or at least try to.

He has tried-without conspicuous success-to explain this simple management technique to the kid Abe. “If you have a routine,” he has lectured, “you can always deviate from it if something comes up. But if youdon’t have a routine, theneverything is stuff that comes up. Get it?”

“Got it.”

But he doesn’t get it, Frank knows, because he doesn’tdo it. Frank does it, religiously. Actually, more than religiously, as Patty reminded him the last time he was at the house, to fix a drip under the kitchen sink. “You never go to church,” she told him.

“Why should I go to church,” Frank asked, “and listen to some priest whoschtupps little boys lecture me on morality?”