The Surf Guru Read Online Free PDF Page A

The first time she apologized. The second time she said, “Deal with it.” The last time she stayed awake long enough to watch him leave their room with a pillow under his arm.
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    On Monday morning, Kacy called the number on Dinaburg’s business card. The phone was answered by a secretary with a haughty tone, who pecked at Kacy with questions (Was she a client? No? Had she been referred to Mr. Dinaburg?) before putting her through.
    â€œI have an idea,” Kacy told him. “I could use your water. You could ship it to me.”
    â€œI appreciate the offer, Kacy,” he said. “I do. But it’s a done deal. Signatures have been signed. Cash has been paid. I’m sorry.”
    After hanging up, Kacy flung open her desk drawer and took out a pack of Winstons that Marisol had left the last time she’d cleaned. She shook out a cigarette and rolled it in her fingers. She’d quit smoking three years before, so her taste buds could be in top shape. She considered lighting up, could almost feel the smoke caressing her lungs, but she tucked the cigarette back into the pack. She wasn’t about to let a man like Dinaburg-as-in-dynamo drive her back to a habit she’d worked so hard to break.
    April appeared in the family kitchen and began pawing through the fridge. Her hair was limp and greasy, and a patch of scalp glared out at Kacy, pink and naked in a morning sunbeam. Kacy considered throwing the pack of cigarettes at her daughter. “Here,” she imagined saying, “try being self-destructive like a normal person.” But she didn’t throw the cigarettes, and she didn’t say anything—proof, maybe, that she was not the worst mother in the world, after all.
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    A week later, Kacy called Dinaburg again. She reached the same secretary, who sniffed and put her on hold. After a few minutes with Neil Diamond crooning tinnily over the line, Dinaburg picked up. “I’m sorry to bother you, Joel,” Kacy said, “but could you tell me where you’re getting the cake? I need to know my competition.”
    â€œSure,” he said, as if nothing were wrong, as if he’d never raised her hopes and then crapped all over them. “We’re getting it from Rona Silverman. You’ve heard of her, right? She’s famous. A New York institution.”
    â€œRona Silverman,” Kacy repeated. The name was bitter on her tongue.
    She drove to the library and found a profile on Rona Silverman in a magazine called Bridal Elegance . The full-page photo showed a birdlike, maroon-haired old woman inspecting a cake through gold pince-nez, surrounded by three shiny-toothed young men in starched chef’s coats. The article gushed about Silverman’s attention to detail, claiming that she spent afternoons picking flowers and bringing them to her kitchens for her assistants to study and re-create in painstakingly detailed gum-paste miniatures, which were then put in tiny boxes and filed away in refrigerators. Kacy quietly tore the article out of the magazine, folded it, and tucked it in her purse. Gum-paste flowers! A cheap gimmick. Dinaburg ought to know better.
    On the way home, she stopped at a red light on Guadalupe, the sky blackening behind her as an early-summer storm rushed in toward downtown. She was watching a cluster of spike-haired kids slouch around a storefront when she saw April walking past them on the sidewalk. Yes, it was her daughter: the thick legs, the slump-shouldered trudge, a newish bald patch on the back of her head. And no hat. Good Lord. Kacy was about to honk the horn and call to her, but she stopped herself when Skillet—wearing a ridiculous pair of orange-plaid bell-bottoms—emerged from a café and flagged April down. They walked together, talking, and Skillet gave no sign that he noticed how mangy she looked. For once, Kacy found herself thankful that men refuse to see what they don’t want to