But this experience is not unknown to me. I know what to do when I wake in a thundering panic, when the unexpected crash of an airplane starts the process all over again. You just lie where you are and listen to your breath, you count the beats of your pulse and your respiration until they return to normal, and then, if you haven’t got a body lying conveniently next to you on the bed, you rise and hunt for one.

I strap on my espadrilles and head to the Hanalei Tavern.

“So where’s Leo?” I ask the bartender.

“Bringing in the afternoon boat.”

I lay down my five dollar bill and ask for a pair of whiskey sours. By five o’clock, I’m good and tight, and Leo’s walking in the door, whistling.

“There you are,” he says.

“Here I am.”

“I’ve got something for you upstairs.”

“So I hear.”

“Bill,” he says to the bartender, “cover for me tonight, will you?”

What I left behind at Leo’s place last night was my necklace.

It’s not much, really. A small gold oyster shell containing a small pink pearl, strung on a fine gold chain, not worthless but not priceless, either. Still, it’s got sentimental value. Leo goes to fasten it on my neck, but I swat him away and fasten it myself. Leo’s got nothing to do with my necklace. That’s between me and the person who gave it to me.

“Suits you,” says Leo.

A word about Leo. He caught my eye on the boat from Oahu, not just because he was commanding the ship—there’s something about a sea captain, isn’t there?—but because he’s rather beautiful. I don’t think he’s altogether Polynesian, but he’s not wholly European, either. He has dark hair and hooded light brown eyes that turn up at the tips, and his skin is the color of wood drenched in sunlight. He’s not especially tall, but his proportions are divine, and the maritime life seems to keep his muscles honed. I don’t usually prey on fellows younger than me—in fact, the opposite—but this one made my mouth water, and as I said, it was no hard duty to take him under my wing last night and make him sing.

Now he regards me in the mirror, as I work the clasp of the necklace and finally catch the hook. Suits you, he says, when I turn around at last. He holds out his hand and pulls me back into bed. I’m wearing nothing but necklace, and he’s wearing nothing at all. He stretches my hands above my head and kisses the hollow between my breasts, beneath the tiny pearl snug in its tiny shell. He asks me why my fingers shook as I fastened the necklace.