The Maui Effect (Man-Made Trilogy #1)

No Second Chances

Dane

The world looked different when you were lying on the floor. Dane’s area rug was covered in dog hair, dust gathered along the baseboards and an empty wine bottle lay under the bed. His hands moved down to his crotch area, and sure enough, he had pissed himself. He had fallen while trying to drag himself from the bed to the wheelchair, and decided that this was as good a place as any to spend the day. Isla came over and licked his face, and then began circling around and pushing on his body parts with her snout.

“You think I want to be down here?” he said.

She growled at him.

“Yeah, I know. I’m an idiot.”

‘Iwa had left town five days and seven hours ago. No goodbye, just a note that said, DANE, I HOPE YOU GET BETTER, I HONESTLY DO, BUT PLEASE DON’T CONTACT ME. I DON’T BELIEVE IN SECOND CHANCES.

Sunny had been the one to see ‘Iwa standing there like an apparition in the hallway. ‘Iwa didn’t say a word, just backed away slowly. Yeti had driven Dane home soon after, and railed into him about how he was throwing everything away. It was time to shake things up, do something about his sorry-ass attitude. By the time they arrived home, ‘Iwa and all her stuff were gone.

“She was always too good to be true,” Dane slurred.

Her leaving was an inevitability, one that he no longer had to dread. Beneath the numbness, there was something like relief. Relief that he would no longer have to think about ‘Iwa twenty-four seven. Relief that what he feared most had already transpired and now he could get on with things. Women were definitely overrated.

“You don’t really believe that.”

“Oh yeah I do.”

“You have no idea what you’re even talking about. Keep spewing this bullshit and you won’t have anyone left to spew to. You’re burning through everyone’s patience, mate.”

Now, flat-out on the rug, Dane felt like crap on so many levels. Back sore, hip throbbing and a ragged ache in the center of his chest. On the bed, his phone buzzed. He pulled himself up and felt around for it hoping like a dumbass it might be ‘Iwa.

It was Kama. Coming over in 30. Be ready.

Dane texted back, Ready for what?

Kama didn’t respond, so Dane stayed where he was and eventually drifted off, hugging Isla close, her dog scent the most comforting thing in his dark life. He awoke to the sound of voices, Kama and a woman. Familiar, but not Hope. It must have been dark outside now, and someone hit the lights.

“Dane?”

“Dane! Oh my God!”

A warm hand gently shook his shoulder. He opened his eyes. Closed them again. Blinked open, sure he was dreaming. Then not so sure.

“Mom?”

“Are you okay?” she asked, brow furrowed as she peered down at him.

“That depends.”

Belinda and Kama exchanged looks.

“How long have you been down here?” Kama asked, as his mother felt his forehead with the back of her hand. Weirdly, her touch caused him to tear up.

“A while. I’m not hurt, just resting, so you don’t need to worry.”

They could probably smell the piss, but neither said anything. Together, they hoisted him up and sat him on the bed. Kama had obviously called Belinda as a last resort and he could feel their pity rubbing off on him. Dane was ashamed at what this had come to and figured he was probably better off dead than in this sorry state.

“Your mom is taking you home with her,” Kama said, matter-of-factly.

“Thanks but no thanks.”

“Brah, right now you don’t have a choice. None of us can be here full-time and look what just happened. You need help,” Kama said.

Dane closed his eyes and flopped back, tired of fighting. Tired of being angry. Tired of everything, really. “Fine, but the dog comes, too.”

The next morning, he woke up in a dark place that smelled like clementines and Danish tung oil. He lay for a few moments trying to remember where he was, but there was only one place he knew of that had this combination of scents. His old bedroom in Ventura County. He hadn’t slept here in years. The old oak tree outside his window now housed a family of crows, who were all noisily talking to each other. Dane wanted to tell them to shut up, but he was too worn out. Instead, he put the pillow over his head.

“Did you sleep okay?”

The voice startled him. He pulled off the pillow and turned to see his mom sitting on the floor cross-legged in a pool of morning sun. Blond hair gone dark. Isla was in her lap.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If you don’t know, then you must have.”

Dane rolled over, away. “It feels like I have a line of red ants running down my leg, other than that, I’m fine. How long have you been sitting there?”

“A while. I get up early.”

“Good for you. Now leave me alone.”

“I told you if you came here, we’d do things my way, and I meant it, Dane. You and I have a lot of work to do, and it starts now.”

If he had agreed to that, he couldn’t remember. The whole previous day had been a blur. He looked toward the bedside table, where back home he had kept the pills.

His voice was gravelly. “Where are my meds?”

“Somewhere safe.”

“For fuck sake, Mom, I need them when I need them. Just leave them in here.”

She left the room and came back with a glass of water and half of a pill. “It’s obvious to everyone around you that these are poisoning you. As of today, you’re on ration.”

He groaned. “You have no idea.”

Those pills were his lifeline. His only means of erasing the deadness in his legs, and more recently, the absence of ‘Iwa. But somewhere in the back of his awareness, he also knew they were eroding his soul.

“I do have an idea.”

“Just let me do this on my own time. I’m getting better,” he said.

“You might be physically, but not mentally. Come on, take the pill and let’s get you up.”

Dane took the half pill and felt like throwing the rest of the water in her face, which had formed new lines and creases since the last time he’d seen her. All that time in the sun was finally catching up to her, but she was still beautiful with her golden hair and big chocolate eyes. “Just do me a favor and don’t act as though you’re suddenly an expert on what’s best for me. You’re no doctor or counselor, hell, you’re hardly even a mother.”

Belinda paled, and he felt bad for half a second. “That may be true, but there’s something you should know, something I should have told you a long time ago.” Her gaze went to the window and he saw tears in her eyes. “Your father was an addict, Dane.”

A cold wind blew through the room. How would she know this?

He shook his head, unwilling to believe her. “No, my father was a one-night stand on a layover in Australia. You didn’t know him.”

“I lied, Dane. I thought I was doing the right thing to protect you,” she said.

He forgot all about the meds and pushed himself to sitting, hair matted on his forehead. “Holy crap, Mom. Is he still alive?”

“No. For a few years, he was on and off the streets, but then I got a call from one of his friends, who told me Butch had overdosed. You were four then and I figured why bother,” she said.

Butch.

“Did he know about me?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And he was too strung out to know the difference or be able to do anything about it. I told him he could meet you if he could be clean for at least a year. I think he tried, but he couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to put that onto you, too.”

Dane looked down at his hands. They were trembling. “I can’t believe you never told me.”

“I’ll never know if it was the right decision, but it was the one I made and we both have to live with it.”

“What kind of drugs are we talking?” he asked.

“In the end, heroin. But when I first met him, we would just get high on weed and sometimes coke.”

He looked out the window. Most of the crows had left, but a dark one with equally dark eyes was sitting on a branch staring in at him. He swore the bird nodded, as though it had been in on the secret. He tried to kick the blankets off and wanted nothing more than to get up and leave. But he was trapped.

Dane had not talked to his mother in years, and things had been strained before that—ever since she’d called him a sellout. Being the quintessential soul surfer, she had not been able to accept that Dane would be on the tour and making money off the sport.

“Guys like you are ruining surfing,” she’d told him, a week after his first contest on the tour.

“If someone had offered you money when you were my age, doing what you love to do, traveling and riding the best waves in the world, don’t tell me you wouldn’t have taken it.”

“The money will change it for you. As will the glory and girls that go along with doing what you’re doing.”

That had just pissed him off. “I had glory and girls long before I earned my first dollar surfing,” he said, more to spite her than anything.

“That attitude is exactly what I’m talking about.”

“You’re a hypocrite, Mom. I gotta go.”

He’d hung up and spent the next few weeks soul-searching and questioning. What bothered him the most was that her words carried a grain of truth, it just took him a few years to realize that. Not everyone had the good fortune to grow up, like his mom had, in the sixties and seventies when surfing was still pure. Easy for her to judge.

The crow on the branch flapped its iridescent wings and flew off, leaving him alone with Belinda.

“Come on, let me make you some juice and I’ll tell you the rest,” she said.

Dane groaned but pushed himself up. He positioned his legs so they were hanging off the edge, and braced himself. He’d yet to cross the hurdle of going from seated to standing. He’d almost done it a few times and had been trying like a madman since ‘Iwa left, but that was how he’d ended up on the floor yesterday.

On several acres, his mother’s house was surrounded by rows of olive trees and a thick oak grove. Inside, it had changed some since he’d last been here. Less clutter and big new sliding doors onto a patio that faced down the valley. His mom had inherited the property from an uncle in the late seventies who’d lived by the theory of why buy something when you can make it .

Growing up, the house hadn’t seemed like much—a big lot with a tiny hand-built timber cabin—but over time, Dane had come to appreciate how every piece of it had a story. This section of the wall came from an old barn swept away in a flood. This tabletop comes from an olive mill in Santa Barbara. This bench is made from an oak tree felled in a storm. It was why he’d ended up a carpenter. Wood was a living, breathing thing with many lives.

He sat by the sliding glass doors, looking out and counting crows. How had he messed things up enough to end up back in the house he had spent his whole life trying to leave?

He could hear his mom’s knife on the cutting board behind him. As if reading his mind, she said, “When you were little, you used to go through these periods of only eating one thing, do you remember? Everything else you would turn up your nose at. One month it would be eggs, the next month potatoes and a few weeks later tangerines. There was no swaying you. I worried about malnutrition and being a bad mom without giving you a balanced meal, but nothing I did could change your little mind.”

He did remember. At one point, he had lived and breathed grape juice. No water, no milk, no nothing.

“Eventually, you grew out of it with food, but your single-mindedness carried over to other areas of your life, surfing being the most obvious one. I recognized your father in you, the way you focused on something until you were the best. It scared me.”

“You should have told me.”

She seemed not to hear. “And now it feels to me like you’re teetering on the edge of a very dark place and those pills have become your latest addiction. You can’t get your natural high, but you’ve found an alternative.”

A twitch started up in his leg and began working its way down the side of his calf. He felt clammy and cold and uncomfortable in his skin. “Stop already. You think lecturing me is going to help anything?”

She threw a bunch of spinach in the blender, along with chopped pineapple. “This isn’t a lecture, this is me telling you that you have addictive tendencies.”

“Old news,” he said.

Her voice wavered. “How about this then? Your father died, Dane, because he could not stop. Are you sure you want to go down that road? Or would you rather spend a few painful weeks here with me and dig yourself out before it’s too late?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? And enough about me, I want to hear more about my dad.”

She looked away as she turned on the blender, blocking out any more conversation. Then she poured two tall green drinks and carried them to the table. “Come over here and I’ll tell you.”

In January of 1982, Butch Getty had made the drive from St. Augustine, Florida, to California in a yellow VW van full of surfboards. He showed up at Venice Beach one day with an attitude and an enormous alligator airbrushed onto his longboard. Belinda and her friend had laughed, until he paddled out and scored a few perfect waves. Within a few weeks, Butch had made friends with all the local heavies, and ended up with Belinda’s phone number in his board shorts pocket.

“He was the kind of guy who could talk anyone into anything. Butch would make friends with a homeless guy and later that day be serving drinks to the mayor and have him ready to build a new boardwalk. It made him a great bartender and he made a lot of money that way, but it also got him into trouble.”

Dane realized he was clenching his fists and tried to relax. “What kind of trouble?”

“Hooked up with the wrong guys and pretty soon he was pulling all-nighters, flaking on plans, missing work. Three months after we met, we were living together in a tiny studio on Horizon Ave. We were madly in love but things began to fall apart pretty quick once he started using coke. He was always chasing the next high. And he could never do just one line. Looking back, he had the classic addict behavior.

“When I found out I was pregnant, we had only been together about nine months. I ended up leaving him and coming to live here with Uncle Warren. I was so young and clueless, but I knew if I didn’t leave then, I never would. Butch had this irresistible pull. To this day, it was the hardest thing I ever did. But I did it for you.”

As Dane drank, the glass shook in his hand. He stared down into the green-flecked liquid trying to make sense of it all. His father was a VW-driving drug addict named Butch from Florida.

“So you weren’t already a flight attendant when you had me?” he asked.

As a kid, he had never done the math.

“Not then, no. I was waitressing to make ends meet. I got a break with United when you were almost two, a year before Uncle Warren died.”

“A break for you maybe. Would have been nice of you to stick around more,” he said, feeling hard and bitter inside, and full of resentment.

She set her palm on his hand, sending heat across his skin. “I made mistakes, Dane. We all do, it’s a part of being human.”

He downed his smoothie and set it on the table. “This is going to take a while to digest, Mom. I’m going to go back to bed.”

“Fair enough, but I want you to do one more thing with me before you do.”

“What’s that?”

Her eyes were full of determination. “Feed the horses.”

Horses?