“How can I help you?” she replies patiently.

“My name is Janey Everett. I’m a photojournalist. I was wondering if I might have a word with you?”

She stares at the top of my head for several seconds. I don’t think I need to tell you how disconcerting that is. She brushes a little sand from her board and says, “A photographer, is it? I can’t imagine why. I never give permission for photographs. You’ll find a dozen surfers more willing. And more attractive.”

“Oh, I’m not at all interested in photographing you. I don’t wish to disturb your privacy. If you want to go on hiding from the world, that’s fine by me.”

Lindquist lifts both eyebrows in a way that might slay some ordinary person. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? I’m amazed. You can’t tell me that nobody’s ever remarked on your astonishing resemblance to the famed aviatrix Irene Foster.”

At the words Irene Foster, Lindquist flinches. It’s a tiny gesture, but my eyes are trained to notice these things, the tinier the better. Poker players call them tells, I believe. I hoard them like treasure, because they represent the truth, they represent a subject’s instant, unguarded opinion of things. And this flinch of Lindquist’s tells me everything I need to know.

She is no more a Lindquist than I am.

Now, listen up. There was a time, which many of you may recall, when you couldn’t walk into a drugstore or listen to the radio or pick up a newspaper without encountering the name Irene Foster. I myself grew from girl to woman in that particular decade, when Foster was held up as a shining example of American womanhood and what she was capable of in this brave new age of ours, the age of flappers and aviation.

In those days, we had no idea what fate awaited her. Foster was invincible. Pilots around her might crash, might fall short of their destinations, might die of terrible injuries or disappear into the ocean, but you could believe in Irene Foster. Her keen, smiling face adorned books and periodicals, museum exhibits and newsreels, advertisements for everything from toothpaste to cigarettes. It got so that you almost felt sick of her, from time to time, and just when she started to fade from view, just when the public began to tire, ever so slightly, she would accomplish some astonishing new feat, break some impossible record, and you fell in love with her all over again.