The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup by Susan Orlean Page A

I woke up a few hours later, the girls were dressed for the water, eating bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Honey Bunches of Oats, and watching
Fear of a Black Hat
again. It was a lovely morning and they were definitely ready to show Hana surfing to the world. Theresa was the first to head out the door. “Hey, losers,” she yelled over her shoulder, “let’s go.”
    THE FIRST HEATS of the contest had right-handed waves, three or four feet high, silky but soft on the ends so that they collapsed into whitewash as they broke. You couldn’t make much of an impression riding something like that, and one after another the Hana girls came out of the water scowling. “I couldn’t get any kind of footing,” Theresa said to Matt. “I was, like, so on it, but I looked like some kind of kook sliding around.”
    “My last wave was a full-out closeout,” Lilia said. She looked exasperated. “Hey, someone bust me a towel.” She blotted her face. “I really blew it,” she groaned. “I’m lucky if I even got five waves.”
    The girls were on the beach below the judges’ stand, under Matt’s cabana, along with Matt’s boys’ team and a number of kids he didn’t sponsor but who liked hanging out with him more than with their own sponsors. The kids spun like atoms. They ran up and down the beach and stuffed sand in one another’s shorts and fought over pieces of last night’s chicken that Annie had packed for them in a cooler. During a break between heats, Gloria with the crazy hair strolled over and suddenly the incessant motion paused. This was like an imperial visitation. After all, Gloria was a seasoned-seeming nineteen-year-old who had just spent the year surfing the monstrous waves on Oahu’s North Shore, plus she did occasional work for Rodney Kilborn, the contest promoter, plus she had a sea turtle tattooed on her ankle, and most important, according to the Hana girls, she was an absolutely dauntless bodyboarder who would paddle out into wall-size waves, even farther out than a lot of guys would go.
    “Hey, haoles!” Gloria called out. She hopped into the shade of the cabana. That day, her famous hair was woven into a long red braid that hung over her left shoulder. Even with her hair tamed, Gloria was an amazing-looking person. She had a hardy build, melon-colored skin, and a wide, round face speckled with light brown freckles. Her voice was light and tinkly, and had that arched, rising-up, quizzical inflection that made everything she said sound like a jokey, good-natured question. “Hey, Theresa?” she said. “Hey, girl, you got it going
on
? You’ve got great wave strategy? Just keep it up, yeah? Oh, Elise? You should paddle out harder? Okay? You’re doing great, yeah? And Christie?” She looked around for a surfer girl named Christie Wickey, who got a ride in at four that morning from Hana. “Hey, Christie?” Gloria said when she spotted her. “You should go out further, yeah? That way you’ll be in better position for your wave, okay? You guys are the greatest,
seriously
? You rule, yeah? You totally rule, yeah?”
    At last the junior women’s division preliminary results were posted. Theresa, Elise, and two other girls on Matt’s team made the cut, as well as a girl whom Matt knew but didn’t coach. Lilia had not made it. As soon as she heard, she tucked her blond head in the crook of her elbow and cried. Matt sat with her and talked quietly for a while, and then one by one the other girls drifted up to her and murmured consoling things, but she was inconsolable. She hardly spoke for the rest of the afternoon until the open men’s division, which Matt had entered. When his heat was announced, she lifted her head and brushed her hand across her swollen eyes. “Hey, Matt!” she called as he headed for the water. “Rip it for the girls!”
    THAT NIGHT , a whole pack of them slept at Matt’s—Theresa, Lilia, Christie, Elise, Monica Cardoza from Lahaina, and sisters from Hana named Iris