Anybody who lives in this area knows some surfers. Surfing is what they do here, our beach has great waves and everybody who's old enough to walk surfs. I only moved here a few years ago and did not grow up surfing, but I have borrowed friends' surfboards and tried it a few times. If I use a big long board, I discovered, I can actually stand up on it. I can also stay in the shallow water, on little waves. That was enough to satisfy my curiosity about the topic. I can see why they love it, but I have been more obsessed with fly-fishing, and not surfing.
My buddy Marty was also fairly new to the area, but he had recently been bitten by the surf bug. He had an old board that somebody had given him, and had gotten pretty good with it, and now he was thinking about getting a nicer one. There are a lot of aspects to consider, from length to fins to coolness and color, and he was going around talking to everybody about it.
Of course I didn't have any opinion to offer, but when he came to visit me I sat and listened to him review all the points, all the questions he had and the answers he had come up with so far. There isn't much in the way of furniture in my little room, so I sat on the corner of the bed and let him have the chair. He had a little stack of magazines in his lap and was flipping through them, showing me the different designs. Part of it was that he was still new to it. The other part was that I was not really any help at all, except to listen.
There was suddenly a tapping at the door and it flew open before I could say anything, and my little friend Anna blew in like a blast of wind, looking yummy. Anna made a habit of appearing at random moments; she once told me that if I was with somebody else she would just pretend to be selling Avon products. I don't even know if that is still a thing, but "Avon calling" would explain her showing up at my door. If I was not with somebody then she would just tear off her clothes and jump into bed with me. It was a good plan and had worked so far. Well, she had not had to use the Avon thing.
Anna always wore the same bright red lipstick and honestly it looked fucking hot on her. She was wearing her usual peasant blouse and skirt, and I knew there was nothing under them. Her long hair was a kind of tangled waterfall down her back, across her shoulders, a sort of signature that warned the world they'd better hold onto their horses, because shit could get crazy when she was around.
"Yo, Anna," I said as the screen door slammed behind her. "Good to see you. This is my friend Marty, I don't know if you two have met."
"I don't think so," Marty said. "Nice to meet you."
"I think I would have remembered if I'd met this guy," Anna said. "Well, any friend of Doc's is fair game, I always say. I'm Anna." I don't know how she does this, but she was flirting with Marty a little bit already.
"Marty is thinking about getting a surfboard," I said. "We're just looking at them."
Marty held up a magazine that was in his lap, and Anna stepped over next to the chair for a better look. Well, that is, to give Marty a better look. I know she knows exactly what she is doing. She bent over to look at a picture in the magazine, with her tits almost hitting him in the side of the face. Also, in plan view at that angle.
"Oh, that's a pretty one," she said, pointing to one with a nice paint job. "Get that one." Her arm brushed his as she pointed. He looked alarmed.
"Well, I don't know if I should decide based on the way it's painted, do you?"
"Huh, seems like guys do that all the time, at least with girls," Anna joked. "So what are you looking for?"
"I think I want one maybe a little longer, five feet maybe, about that. Two fins. I'm just learning."
"I could teach you," she said.
"Do you surf?" I asked her.
"No," Anna said. "I don't know anything about that. Is that what we were talking about?"
I have seen Anna at work before. She identifies her target, takes aim, and never misses. I have seen her poor husband stand there patiently while she gets some guy nearly to the point of blasting a frantic load into his jeans, then she moves on. Or if the husband is not there, she doesn't move on. I don't know what happens after that, but I figure somebody gets lucky sometimes. I am friends with her husband, too. We just don't talk about it. Fairly awkward, but somehow they have figured out how to make their marriage work.
"We were talking about buying a surfboard," Marty explained patiently. I could tell he was already getting a little baffled by Whirlwind Anna. Marty looks like he'd be a ladykiller but I don't think he has much experience. He is a guy who will have a girlfriend, and things will be good, and then something happens. My theory is that he just doesn't know what to do, and he probably pisses them off, and they leave after a few months. Then he lives without them, not really looking for a girlfriend but women do find him attractive, and after a while he has a new girlfriend, rinse, repeat.
He is, in other words, not a guy who chases women, and mostly steers clear of the wild ones. And being here at the beach, we get a lot of those, girls from the valley who come over for a crazy time and then leave again. Anyway, ordinary oversexed chicks could not have educated him about how to deal with Anna.
She came back and plopped down on the bed next to me. Of course nobody on the beach knows about her and me, so we are cool around people. She sat on the bed and where normally I would tip her back and fuck her, we sat watching Marty looking at pictures of surfboards.
"Where do you know Marty from?" she asked me.
"Shit, I don't know," I said. "I guess we met through Theresa, didn't we?" Marty looked up and nodded at mention of her name. "Turned out we were both fucking her and didn't know it, until we both showed up at her apartment at the same time. I thought we were going to have a fistfight, didn't you, Marty?"
"Yeah," he said. "I didn't know. I thought she was my girlfriend, and then you showed up."
"And I thought she was my girlfriend," I said. "So me and Marty ended up getting shitfaced at Ray 'n Red's, and we've been friends ever since."
"Sweet story," Anna said. "What happened to Theresa?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe she went away. I haven't seen her in a few years."
"Me either," Marty said without looking up.
"Huh well I know what I woulda done if both of you had shown up," Anna laughed.
Marty stopped reading. "What would you have done?"
"Jeez, do I have to spell it out?" Anna said, looking like maybe she had gotten out over her skis a little bit.
"Well she just started crying," Marty said. "I was pissed, Doc was pissed, and she was fuckin' crying."
"Stupid girl," Anna said.