Page 18 of Malibu Rising

She ran her right hand along the side of the sink, felt the smooth porcelain curve down, level out, and curve back up. And then she kept running her hand along the cold tile and rough grout, until she hit the curve of porcelain of her second sink.

10:00 A.M.

Nina pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and shut off her engine. As she got out of her car, she glanced up at the sign and wondered if it was time to have it redone.

Riva’s Seafood, once known as Pacific Fish, was still very much old Malibu, complete with a faded sign and peeling paint. It was no longer just a roadside dive but an institution. The children who used to come with their parents now brought their own children.

Nina walked through to the kitchen entrance with her sunglasses still on. She found herself leaving them on more and more lately. It wasn’t until she saw Ramon that she took them off.

Ramon was thirty-five and had been happily married for over a decade with five kids. He had started as a fry cook and had worked his way up over the years. He’d been running Riva’s Seafood since 1979.

“Nina, hey, what’s up?” Ramon asked her as he was simultaneously keeping an eye on a fry cook and getting shrimp out of the freezer.

Nina smiled. “Oh, you know, just making sure you haven’t set the place on fire.”

Ramon laughed. “Not until you add me to the insurance policy.”

Nina laughed as she came around to his side of the counter and took a sliced tomato off the cutting board. She salted it and ate it. Then she braced herself and headed out to the picnic tables to smile and shake hands with a few customers.

As she stepped outside, the sun was already bright on her eyes and she could feel the false version of herself coming to life. Her face took on an exaggerated smile and she waved at a few tables full of people who were staring at her.

“Hope everyone is enjoying lunch!” she said.

“Nina!” shouted a boy not much older than fifteen. He rushed toward her in madras shorts and an Izod polo. Nina could already see the rolled-up poster in his right hand, the Sharpie in his left. “Will you sign this?”

Before she responded, he started unrolling it in front of her. She could not count the number of people who had showed up at the restaurant with a poster of her surfing in a bikini, asking for her signature. And despite how bizarre she felt it was, she always acquiesced.

“Sure,” Nina said, taking the Sharpie from his hand. She wrote her name, a perfectly legible “Nina R.,” in the top right-hand corner. And then she put the cap back on the pen and handed it over to the boy. “There you go,” she said.

“Can I get a photo, too?” he asked, just as his father and mother got up from their table, armed with a Polaroid.

“Sure.” Nina nodded. “Of course.”

The boy sidled up right next to her, reaching to put his arm around her shoulders, claiming the full experience for himself. Nina smiled for the camera as she inched away from the boy ever so slightly. She’d perfected the art of standing close without touching.

The father hit the shutter and Nina could hear the familiar snap of the photo being printed. “You all have a wonderful day,” she said, moving toward the tables in the front, to greet the rest of the customers and then head back inside. But as the boy and his mother lookedat the photo coming into existence, the boy’s father smiled at Nina and then reached out and smoothed his hand over the side of her T-shirt, grazing her ribs and hips.

“Sorry,” he whispered, with a confident smile. “Just wanted to ‘see for myself that it’s soft to the touch.’”

It was the third time a man had tried this line since her ad for SoftSun Tees launched last month.

Nina had posed for it at the top of the year. It had been her biggest payday to date. In the ad, she stood, in red bikini bottoms and a white T-shirt, her hair wet, her hips jutted out to the left, her right arm up against a doorframe. The T-shirt was threadbare. You couldn’t see her nipples but if you stared enough, you might be able to convince yourself you could.

The photo was suggestive. And she knew that. She knew that’s why they wanted her in the first place. Everyone wanted the surfer girl to take her clothes off—she’d made her peace with that.

But then they had added that tagline without telling her.See for yourself, it’s soft to the touch.And they’d placed it right under her breasts.

It had invited a level of intimacy that Nina didn’t care for.

She grinned insincerely at the boy’s father and moved away from him. “If you’ll excuse me …” she said as she waved to the rest of the customers and went back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

Nina understood that the more often she posed—most likely for even more high-profile campaigns—the more people would show up at the restaurant. The more often they would want her photo, her signature, her smile, her attention, her body. She had not quite figured out how best to handle the sense of ownership that people felt over her. She wondered how her father had tolerated it. But she also knew they didn’t touch him the way they touched her.

“You don’t have to go out there and shake all their hands,” Ramon said when he saw her.

“I don’t know … I wish that were true,” Nina said. “Do you have time to go over the books?”

Ramon nodded, wiped his hands on a towel, and followed her into the office.

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