“Look out there to the left,” she said. Farther out stood what would look to Selfer like a shack but was a rebuilt ancient temple. “Out past that rock wall.”

“You mean that shack?”

“That’s a temple.”

“Ah. Imagine that. Nothing’s ever like it seems, this part of the world.”

She turned to him. “Plenty stuff is coming in from the Philippines nowadays, yeah?”

“Coming in?”

“Get rum and cigars and trinkets and china and who knows what, and now it’s this bisi.”

“Basi.” He added a shrug. “Well, this is a US territory.”

“You don’t requisition it yourself, though, do you? You yourself, I mean. But someone has to requisition it, and someone has to send it.”

He yanked his toes from the sand, pulled out a pack of Camels. He didn’t offer her one.

“Don’t get sore,” she said. “It’s okay if you don’t know. You can’t know everything. And, everyone has to take orders from someone.”

“It’s not that, it’s just that . . . I can’t talk about certain matters.” He paused. He put his smile back on. “You know something? Let’s just enjoy this lovely island haven for once.” He pulled himself up and jogged the few yards to the barely lapping tide, rolled up his white trousers a little higher, and splashed his feet in the water. She had to admit he didn’t dress down half bad. His aloha shirt wasn’t too gaudy, and it hung off him well.

He strolled back looking looser and plopped down next to her.

“Be more careful,” she said. “Coral out there. If coral doesn’t cut you then it’s lava rock.”

“Is anything simply as nice as it looks?” he said, adding that smile again. “Take you, for instance.”

She expected a smoother move from the likes of him, but the man had to start somehow. She smiled and buried her cheek in a shoulder. It was easy to blush with this wine.

They sipped, their shoulders touching.

“All that stuff from the Philippines,” she said. “Territory of Hawaii doesn’t need goods like that from the Philippines, never needed it before. And the US military certainly doesn’t.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Remember where I come from. Honolulu. Chinatown. Part of rackets and rings your US Military Government helped create. Yeah? So I know one smuggle job when I see it.”

Selfer didn’t answer. But he didn’t laugh in her face, either.

“Crates say ‘Wine’ or whatever—that’s no wine, just bottles on top.”

Selfer pulled out a chrome hip flask and sucked on it like a teat and offered her a snort without telling her what it was. She waved it away. Eventually, he nodded. “We require certain funding,” he said, “for what it is we do. But I’m already telling you too much.”

“Who’s we?”