“Need you ask? A girl doesn’t just snap right back to herself after a ride like that.”

Leo studies me for a bit. “If you say so.”

“I say so.”

“Hungry?”

“Starving.”

He lets me go and rises from the bed to pull on a few clothes. He says he’ll bring up sandwiches from downstairs. (He lives above the bar, you understand.) When he’s gone, I roll on my side and contemplate a search of the premises, but I find I haven’t got the strength to lift a toe. Instead I squint at his bookshelf, trying to make out the titles, and when Leo returns, plate piled high, I ask him if he came straight here from the pier when he brought in the afternoon boat.

“Like a shot,” he says.

“And this morning. When do you leave for your boat?”

“Early. A quarter to seven.”

“So you haven’t spoken to anybody? Just me?”

Though my mouth is full of ham sandwich, Leo reaches out to cup my cheek. “Just you,” he says.

The telephone rings. He doesn’t flinch.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” I whisper.

“No.”

“What if it’s important?”

“This is important.”

But when I reach for the buttons of his trousers, he stops me. “Hold on, sweetheart. That was my last rubber.”

“That was what?”

“My last rubber.”

“How can you be out of rubbers already?”

“Well, I don’t usually need so many.”

“Can’t you get more?”

He laughs. “Sweetheart, this is Hanalei. I can maybe buy more tomorrow, on Oahu.”

“Tomorrow!” I flop myself back down on the pillows. “Why didn’t you think of that today?”

“I did think about it. But I didn’t want to push my luck.”

I roll away and reach for my dress. He rolls after me and takes me by the waist and nuzzles my skin. “You don’t have to leave, you know. I’m not some one-trick pony.”

“I know that already.”

“Or we could go to sleep. I know how to make you sleep.”

I stare at my fingers, which have stopped trembling, at least for the moment. Leo pulls, ever so gently, at my waist.

“Don’t be scared, Janey,” he says. “I don’t bite.”

“Oh, yes, you do.”

“Not where it hurts, though.”

I shut my eyes and force myself to my feet. As I pull the dress over my head, I know he’s watching me, and I think how easy it would be, how comforting, to change my mind. To slide back into his bed and fall asleep between a pair of strong arms. He’s right, he knows how to make me sleep. That’s what men are for, to help you sleep, to form a barrier between you and your phantoms. If I return to my bed at the inn, I might lie awake for hours. I might never sleep at all.