11

TEN POUNDS OF SWEAT AND TEN MINUTES LATER, my soaking suit approached the resplendent glory of the Venice Beach Boardwalk. Street-side buildings were painted in sun-bleached versions of primary colors. Pacific Avenue was alive and reminded me of the Electric Magic Circus: street musicians scoping out corners and presenting wonder and protest in competing packages. The air was sickly sweet with saltwater taffy and popcorn. A scraggly-bearded twenty-ish beach bum in a gray shirt and bell-bottoms juggled on a corner, old bowling pins served as his clubs. At first blush, you might assume he was a bored hippie who spent most of his free time mastering the fine art of scrounging bowling alley garbage until he found his true calling, one pin at a time.

And you’d be dead wrong.

His hands were thick, long-fingered, and strong. He did not juggle so much as dance with the pins as three separate partners. The jugglers I’d known were all failed others: failed magicians, failed broad tossers, failed coin men, failed pickpockets. A juggler was about the lowest rung you could fall to on the entertainment ladder, and yet here was someone who created vistas of spins and plucks and knocks that had most of the oglers of the Boardwalk in a trance.

A girl on the other side of the street strummed a nylon-stringed guitar and spoke poetry that smelled a little too close to Weasel’s rants.

“These are the days of blood and needle

When L.A. slumbers God will hide

When dreams are all kept in empty bottles

And the gulf between us all will become a void.”

I crossed between two pillars and approached a circle of bodies surrounding three people. One was Kevin, who looked as if he hadn’t expended an iota of energy. The other was a muscle-bound rock of average height with cut abdominals and hulking arms, but without the trademark chicken legs of many new muscleheads. His blond-white hair was bleached and scraggly like Rastas I’d seen in Jamaica, his beard reddish. His body was covered in welts, easily seen thanks to his fashion choice of cutoffs and a shirtless chest.

But that wasn’t the scene-stealing sight of the Boardwalk.

That was Billy Mars.

Ghostly white with black hair slashing his face and swaying down the back of his lean, serpentine frame, Billy Mars wore a blue-and-white jumpsuit that seemed better fit for a Marvel comic cover than the waking world. But who was I to judge? Around Billy Mars’s pencil-thin neck was a silver Yin Yang medallion. The sunglasses may have been John Lennon, but the mascara dripping down his face like veins revealing themselves under a hex was pure Johnny Thunders—a popular cross-dressing guitar player who sometimes stumbled into the Thump & Grind to throw up in the bathroom stall. I poured him into a cab once and he just kept saying “Take me to the Lincoln,” as if naming a president could get you to a nice hotel.

Billy Mars had that drugged-out disdain chic that Thunders was riding to an early grave. He and the rest held boards in their hands or under their arms. I pushed through the crowd with the career expertise of a carny, resisting every urge to liberate coins and cards and bills from these awestruck rubes staring at a bottom-rung rock star.

I made it through the circle and Kevin looked embarrassed, like a son watching his dad crash his secret birthday party.

“Just found out about the Snake Competition. I understand you’re the man to talk to?” I said, approaching Mars, who faced me with a practiced indifference that made me presume he was British.

“Conformist,” he said and, sadly, instead of Oxford-posh or cockney, I was treated to the nasally bleat of a born Bostonian. “We’re starting as soon as I’m done with my smoke.” He produced a joint from behind his ear. “And I prophesize that this day, the victor will be the one who is most deserving.”

“Oh, I don’t want to race,” I said. “I just wanted to chat. Word on the street, as the kids say, is that you’re a man who knows a little about Black Lotus.”

The pretense that controlled Mars’s visage itched before being replaced with fresh smugness as he placed a joint between pompous lips. “Sure thing, grandpa,” he said as a boy with buck teeth and a Grateful Dead shirt lit his idol’s doobie. “Tell you what. You win this race, and I’ll tell you everything I know about anything and more. I win, and you fuck off from the Boardwalk and head back to the squares that produced you.”

The chuckles of the crowd confirmed that this was what passed for wit in these circles.

“He ain’t got no board,” screeched the musclehead, sounding like a wheezing George C. Scott, his diaphragm clenched by his surging physique.

“Yeah, you heard Jack Lumber,” Chestnut said, with an attitude reserved for those who worship rules. “He’s not one of us. He ain’t from the Boardwalk.”

“Kid, I’ve walked more boardwalks than you’ve bummed smokes, just not this one.”

I caught the flash of motion from Kevin’s hand just before he launched his board, and I caught it with one hand. Didn’t look too shabby, though everyone from Tumbledown was groaning. Then Kevin looked at the chestnut-haired boy. “Give me your board, Austen.”

Austen saw he was stuck. Refuse an order from his leader, and he’d lose. Give in and he’d fully accept Kevin’s actions. Frustrated, he erred on the side of loyalty and tossed him his board.

“Fine,” Billy Mars said. “Race starts in sixty. Riley is at the end of the line. He’ll throw the prize to whoever makes the jump. That clear, old man?”

I’d already gotten one of my wingtips off and was pulling off my brown sock to reveal my milk-white flesh.

“What are you doing, grandpa?”

“Oh, are there any rules about going barefoot? Would that not be too groovy?”

Billy Mars scoffed. “Whatever turns you on, gramps, but it won’t make a lick of difference.” He smiled at Kevin. “We all know this is between you and me, Little Mister Sunshine.”

Jack Lumber stood between the two like the Hulk’s shorter brother: no less intimidating, but a little more ridiculous with all the muscle he had packed on a five-foot-eight frame. Even standing up straight, with pecs as big as watermelons, he was leaning forward.

“You counting me out, Mars? I’m the baddest thing on this beach. And that prize is mine.”

“Keep your shirt on, Jack.” Mars said. “At least with the fossil in the race you won’t end up dead last!”

Jack gripped Billy Mars by the neck and lifted him a foot off the ground. “Take back the smart talk or I’ll send you back to Mars, first class!”

Both my bare feet tasted burning asphalt, and as I strode toward them I realized there was something in Jack’s intonation that rang familiar. He was built like a bodybuilder, boulders of muscle and veins welded to joints that best be made of steel, but his wild eyes and hair, his bold choke and brag—all were practiced and familiar.

“Well if you kill him, hero,” I said to Jack, “we’ll never know who the better concrete surfer was. Why, we might even think old Jack Lumber fixed the race like some crooked wrestling show.”

Mars hit the ground and Jack Lumber jabbed a finger at me that looked like it was drawn by Jack Kirby: thick and dangerous. “You say wrestling is fake? I’ll take you on right now, bubba, break you in two before all these little fans, and then win this board competition so that everyone knows Jack Lumber is the god of the Boardwalk.” Then he flexed down with a Charles Atlas pose that exposed even more muscle and spiderwebbed veins. Jack’s face was red as an unwanted stepchild.

“Then maybe we should race.”

We all looked at Kevin, cool and serene, waiting for the adults to get their shit together.

Billy firmly planted his black sneakers and straightened his lean body. “Enough of this jive. Zoey? Get ready to drop the flag!”

A wild-haired brunette in an army jacket took ten paces backward from where we stood, the crowd parting with military precision. She dipped her hand into her shirt and yanked out a small flag with a peace sign on it, and then raised it to the sky. “The only rule,” she said, in a smoky voice, “is whoever gets to the end first and grabs the prize is the winner. The rest? Losers!” She dropped the flag. “GO!”