He lived in a garden, enclosed by fruit trees. He drank his second cup of tea, gloating on the pleasure of it all, the trees growing more fragrant as the sun warmed them, his birds contented and fed, no longer squawking for food but strutting on the grass, and some of the geese resting, their heads tucked under their wings.

The drawn-out boom of the waves at Waimea a mile down the hill, the muffled rumble, then the collapse, like crockery shattering, the sigh and retreat of the heavy water, was a continuous rehearsal of slow bursts. It was as though the ocean were being filled somewhere far-off and the big bulky ripples of its filling were slamming the edges of the shore, rising higher, brimming against the beach, the sea like an enormous swilling pot, the fury somewhere over the horizon pushing its disturbance to its rim.

Light offshore winds would mean almost glassy conditions, wave faces burnished to velvet.

Sharkey sat in silence. The silence was composed of the racket of mynah birds, the cheeping of green sparrows, the chitter of finches, the dry rustle of the palms, the clatter of their fronds, the distant sound of the surf—now a chug-chugging, now a suck-squeeze and a drenching crash, a vast sieving of ocean, a bolster of water butting against sand and rock, growing louder, beckoning with a loosening boom.

He’d woken with the assurance that the whole day belonged to him. Olive was at work: her absence helped. There was never any question of his doing anything he didn’t want to do. He told himself that he’d earned this solitary splendor: he’d worked, he’d sat unwillingly at his laptop and tried to please his sponsors; but now all that was over.

It was not a question of retirement—apart from a few years lifeguarding, he’d never had a real job, and so there was nothing to retire from. The life he was leading was the life he had always led. To those who said, “You’ve got all the answers,” he smiled, and when they added, “You’re selfish and spoiled,” he replied, “It’s called being happy.”

“Here’s the secret,” he said. “I don’t want more than I have—therefore I have everything. It’s the economy of enough.”

He was content; he’d found the best place to live—a little farm on the North Shore of this island; and the best way to spend his days—surfing. When the surf was up, as on this sunny day in January, he knew he’d spend the whole morning catching waves, and after lunch, and maybe a nap, more waves.

“You’re such a wanker, you never think of anyone but yourself,” Olive said after a week with him. It was not an accusation but statement of fact, marveling one night as he speared the last slice of mango from the bowl that sat between them.