Lucy put her black one-piece on under pink shorts and a black t-shirt, stepped into her flip flops, and methodically packed a bag with her waterproof camera, towel, #30 waterproof sunscreen, shades, collapsible sun-hat, three lipsticks, hairbrush, Spanish phrasebook, pack of sugarless gum, hairbrush, and five hundred pesos. She knocked on Teresa’s door, went in, found her dressed and ready to roll, then crossed to the next door. She knocked. No answer. Knocked again, a little harder.
“Momentito, por favor.” A man’s muffled voice. They looked at each other.
“The plot thickens,” Terry said.
“Want to guess who?” Lucy said.
“Ten bucks says its Dario.”
“My bet’s on Bobby.”
“No way. He’s already babed-up. Besides, why would he speak Spanish?”
“He thinks I’m a maid.”
Lucy banged harder on the door, then waited. It opened after a moment. Wrapped in a towel, bleached hair sticking straight up, a shit-eating grin on his face, there stood El Pantero, aka pantera macho, the surf king of Sayulita, and X Dames contest judge. Blond, buff, and cut to die for. “Fuck,” Lucy said, plunged into a sudden whirl of a state: dismay, jealousy, insecurity, anger. Take your choice. “What the hell are you doing here?” she said.
He shrugged, and grinned. “Miss Marcia—she—ah–invites me. So I come.” Marcia emerged from her bathroom, naked, toweling her long black hair dry. She was slender, muscular, small-breasted; perfect, and eleven years younger than Lucy. And Lucy could not help but notice that her pubic hair had been—styled? Trimmed and groomed? What was the correct description? The Brazilian was a complete shave; Lucy knew that much. But this was more of a–landing strip!
“Hi Lucy,” she said, completely guileless. “What’s up?”
By seven-thirty they had assembled on the Villa Roma’s immaculately-groomed grass terrace overlooking the rocky south end of Sayulita Beach. They sat in white wrought iron chairs around a long white oval-shaped wrought iron table sculpted with fleur de lys and such. The Villa Roma fancied itself fancy. Lucy found herself seated next to Sandra Darwin at one end of the table, closest to the steps leading down to the beach. Sandra was distracted, tense, intent, eyes mostly on the waves awaiting her. Lucy knew she wanted this one bad. All the surfer girls were present, including the two from San Diego who’d arrived late—their names were Bev and Charlene, a pair of hard-charging, thirtyish blondes, perennial surf-contest also-rans but good enough to fill the X Dames ranks and on a good day capable of an upset win. They both featured the sculpted, angular faces and lanky musculature Lucy had come to associate with serious women surfers. Also on hand were the four ringers Bobby had gathered up on the beach the day before. Six more women to go with the Hot Surf Six, and all possessed of a strong, sexy vibe. Hector and the other camera guys roamed the periphery, documenting every moment of drama at table, as four waiters in black pants, white shirts, and black bow ties delivered platters of fruit salad, eggs, beans, toast, bacon, chile rellenos, and tortillas along with pitchers of coffee, milk, fresh orange juice, and bottles of champagne. Among the surfer girls only Marcia, tucked in between Moki Sue and El Pantero near the other end of the table, hit the bottle. Lucy counted three brimming refills. In the background, across two hundred yards of churning ocean, the waves cracked and roared, a dozen local surf kids slicing and dicing them in a hurry to get it while they could, before the X Dames Sayulita Surfbabe Throwdown took over.
They ate and chattered, while the crew filmed on. The drama had turned quiet: a bit of sexual undertow, and the girls anxiously looking out to sea. No time for bullshitting now, with the tension building. For all the Hollywood hype and the sexy babe business and the sideshow insults, there was a surfing contest about to start, and the waves out there loomed big and fast and unforgiving. These girls were up against the real thing.
Eventually Bobby tapped a spoon on a glass a few times, then stood and cleared his throat. He took off his shades and smiled his sexiest Hollywood producer smile. “Well here we are, gang. And this is it: Showtime. Never in my wildest dreams about how this show would work did I imagine that we would have a set-up like this for the first episode. Like Henrietta told me last night, ‘The surf out there is fucking ferocious, man.’ And that it is,” he said, looking towards the waves. “So I’m only going to waste one more minute of your time before we get on with it, because I wanted to say thanks to my partner Judy Leggett for steering us to Sayulita after we decided to start with a surfing contest. What a great little town it’s turned out to be. And thanks to Teresa MacDonald and Lucy Ripken for agreeing to come down here on short notice to help organize the story. And to Ruben Dario and Sandra Darwin for setting things up. Thanks to all you crew dudes, and Leslie, our fine director. And most of all thanks to the girls,” he raised a glass of champagne, “for sticking your butts on the line by signing up to paddle out in that maelstrom to compete. I for one am not going to even get my toes into that crazy ocean today. You is one brave bunch of dames. So here’s a toast to the X Dames.” Bravos and applause.
He went on. “So I know you’re all wondering how its going to work, right? Well, we decided in the interests of showbiz to keep it simple. Also the waves being so large, we thought you ladies might get worn out if things went on too long. So this is it: two thirty-minute heats, six surfers in each—well, four, since I suspect our last four entrants may end up on the beach, where I found them and where they belong, watching. We count the best six rides, you score points from one to ten, ten being tops. Each judge scores each ride then we average out the three scores. Two advance from each heat, leaving four in the final. The final’s one hour, same deal only you’ll get scored on ten rides. Judy’s wave-tracker guy says this is the last day of the swell and its probably going to start fading this afternoon so we’re planning to do the whole shoot today, probably try to squeeze the final in before lunch too if we can. Time is money in showbiz, and today the surf’s on the clock too.” He looked at his watch. “It’s eight-forty-five. First heat’s at ten. Everybody should be down at the pavilion by nine-thirty. That’s it. Do your best, girls.”
He sat down. Judy whispered something to him. “Oh,” he stood again and went on. “I almost forgot. You know this already but just in case it slipped your mind, the prize for winning today is twenty-five thousand and an invite to the next round of X Dames with its hundred grand first prize pay-off. I think you all know the drill. We’ll take one winner from each of six or eight sports, put them in a ring with a bunch of starving lions, and whoever survives gets a hundred grand. Hehe just kidding. No, the finals are still in the works. We’re honestly thinking about hiring trainers from Thailand and teaching our individual winners to kick-box, so that we can have a real fight to the finish. But the main thing is today we got some world-class waves, and you girls have a chance to strut your stuff and launch episode one with some sexy surfing. And so–may the best dame win. Everybody else, well, you got a paid vacation in Mexico.” The waiters began clearing the table and the cast and crew of the X Dames collected their paraphernalia and surfboards and headed down the road to the beach. Showtime.
“Remember, Lucy, timing is everything when you’re paddling out,” said Marcia. “Get as close as you can to the impact zone, where the waves are breaking, while there’s a set on. Then when the set is over paddle your ass off and hope you make it outside before the next set comes.”
Lucy stood between Marcia and Sandra, each carrying shortboards, waiting for the moment. Lucy had Marcia’s Mayan snake-patterned longboard under one arm and her camera with an extra-long strap double-looped around her neck and clutched in her free hand. Stretchy rubber leashes with Velcro end-straps connected the boards to the women’s ankles, so that if they took a wipe-out the boards wouldn’t get carried on the waves all the way to the beach. They wore rash-guard shirts, all but Lucy’s numbered so the judges would know who was who. An air horn blown at 9:30 had signaled to all the surfers in the water to head shorewards. Marcia and Sandra, flanking Lucy, stood at water’s edge in the cove; Martina and Bev had decided to hit the water forty yards up the beach, closer to the impact zone, but a riskier paddle. All five of them looked out to sea, making their calculations.
Standing between the buff young surfer girls, Lucy wondered what she felt she had to prove–why she’d decided she had to go out there and shoot stills from the water. They had a video camcorder guy up on the judges’ stand with enough digital telephoto power to see the whites of their eyes, two hundred yards offshore; Leslie and Bobby could easily grab stills from his tape. They had another camera guy with full telephoto power patrolling the beach, and a third in a waverunner cruising outside the break.
And yet she’d volunteered to get out there in the swim to shoot. Macho Lucy in action, planting herself in the middle of things because she felt compelled to compete with these girls yet didn’t know how to surf well enough. She’d only surfed half a dozen times and these were far bigger than any waves she’d ever paddled into. Pushing her limits, taking that risk, that’s what it was all about. She did want to get good pictures, but ultimately the camera was just an excuse.
She glanced back. A sunny, windless, eighty degree late spring morning in Sayulita. Hundreds of people sat on lounge chairs beneath umbrellas, or stood in the sand near the judges’ stand, or roamed the beach, all digging the fact that simply by being on vacation this particular week they’d stumbled into a television surf-circus featuring a dozen bodacious babes and a real life Hollyweird vibe. Up on the judges’ stand Lucy could see judges Judy, El Pantero, and Ruben Dario, clipboards in hand and binoculars at the ready, with a couple of assistants close by—and a cameraman on a stepladder above them all, his camcorder roving from the contestants, to the crowds, to the waves cracking and roaring two hundred yards offshore. The four other competing girls, already suited up in their numbered rash-guard shirts, loitered by the judge stand waiting for the second heat. As expected the four ringers hadn’t even bothered to put on rash-guards. Per instructions from Leslie, they were hanging around the pavilion in thong-style bikinis, exposing major curves and reveling in their fabulous fifteen minutes being interviewed by a guy from Mexican TV news while Hector taped them. In their divers charming accents each explained why she couldn’t possibly go out in such crazy, dangerous surf. Lucy and Teresa had fed them their lines after breakfast.
Lucy could be up there now with Teresa, monitoring the action, self-importantly playing the writer on location, but instead she had talked herself right into the thick of it. She was about to paddle a longboard out into the biggest waves she’d ever seen. Teresa, at the edge of the pavilion, gave her the thumbs up, and then the airhorn sounded again.
“Chaaaarge,” screamed Marcia, dashing for the water and leaping onto her board to start her frantic paddle to the outside, where the breaking waves awaited them. Sandra was right behind her. Up the beach, Bev and Martina dashed and leaped onto their boards. The race was on to see who would get out and grab the first wave of the contest.
Lucy took a slightly more cautious approach, moving a little farther into the water, then waiting for a wall of whitewater to rush around her legs. She slung her camera onto her back, laid down on the board, and began a fast, steady paddle out, using the receding whitewater, so powerful it almost qualified as a riptide, to push her along.
Ten of the longest minutes of her life later, Lucy, wasted to the point of near-unconsciousness, lunged over the top of an eight-foot wave and thanked Jesus Buddha and Lord Krishna too that she made it over that one, and she thanked her divers deities as well for the momentarily calm sea before her: that was the last wave of the set. She had made it! Only shoving under, over, or through six major walls of whitewater, and at least twenty minor ones, had taken every last ounce of her strength, and now she verged on a physical melt-down. She paddle-dragged herself a dozen yards further out, and a moment later was joined by Sandra.
“Did you shoot my first wave?” Sandra said. “It was awesome.”
“Are you crazy? I barely survived getting out here,” Lucy panted.
“Like Marcia said, it’s all timing, Lucy. Hey, chickie, I think I just scored a ten,” she called out to Martina, “and I didn’t even have to take my top off.” Martina ignored her. “Oh oh, Luce,” said Sandra, “Here’s comes another set. And it looks like a big one.” She shook her head. “Damn,” she said. “My energy’s really low this morning. I musta had one too many shots of sauza last night.” She shook her head again as she paddled towards the rising horizon, with Lucy, Martina, and now Marcia and Bev behind them, racing to get in position to grab one of the next waves.
Lucy felt wiped out. Usually a minute’s rest after a burn would bring her back, but she was feeling slower, less responsive, as she paddled the longboard, camera on the deck in front of her. Beyond the waves, she could hear the buzz of the waverunner, a higher tone above the roaring surf. She angled to her left, towards the waves’ shoulders, while the competitors paddled to the right, deeper into the impact zone.
As the first set wave hit the rocky reef on the bottom it pitched up to about ten feet high, and steepened radically. Marcia, closest to the break, whipped her board around and with a single stroke caught it, stood, and dropped in. Lucy, forty yards down the line, started shooting. Marcia hit the bottom of the wave at full speed and then using that speed threw a fast turn and flew up the face at a sharp angle towards the lip and then when she hit the lip instead of carving back she went airborne, grabbed a rail, and somehow, impossibly, she whipped her board around and completed an aerial 360 and landed on her feet on the board on the face of the wave. She dropped to the bottom and as the wave began to close out ahead of her raced back to the top and flew over and out.
Lucy had captured maybe fifteen images in ten endless seconds, and so she knew that regardless of what had been taped from the beach, she had still photographs of what had to be one of the most amazing surfing maneuvers she had ever seen pulled off by a woman. Guys had gotten good at 360 aerials. Not too many women had, especially on a wave that large.
Then the next wave came and Lucy, busily shooting, barely cleared the lip as she paddled over. She was narrowly missed by Bev, who caught it, dropped into a bottom turn, raced down the line and then slashed a huge cutback close enough to shower Lucy with a rainbow spray. And then the next, and biggest wave, rose up, and Sandra Darwin, in perfect position, paddled twice and caught it. As she slipped down the face, instead of leaping to her feet, her hands slid out from under her as she tried to push up off the board and she headed straight down at full speed into a pearl dive, face planted on the board deck. The wave crashed and she disappeared under it. Lucy had it all on camera, shot from the lip down the line. The board bobbed up, twenty yards closer to shore. Sandra popped up a few seconds later. She was maybe a hundred feet away by then, and so Lucy couldn’t be sure if Sandra looked over at her, and meekly called out the word, “help,” or if she, Lucy, only imagined it. Then Sandra slowly flopped over, and went face down. “Help! We need help here,” Lucy cried out. “Sandra’s down,” she yelled, but there was no one near enough to hear. Martina blasted by on the next wave, the white water behind her slamming Sandra and her board, sending her under again. Flopping on her longboard, Lucy barely cleared the wave. Behind it there was another, larger one; charging in front of that next wave, the wave runner, with two guys on it—pilot and cameraman—raced furiously towards Sandra, intent on a rescue. Lucy watched, firing away even as she felt herself sliding up the face of the wave, afloat on her longboard and trying to paddle as she realized that she was not going to get over the top–and that she was losing consciousness. She watched helplessly as the wave that was about to throw her over the falls and down to the bottom of the sea lifted the waverunner with two men and a video camera up on its breaking crest and then it tumbled down directly upon the floating body and board of Sandra Darwin, and then Lucy too was gone into darkness.
