Sharkey enjoyed the ritual, feeling that he belonged to this little band of watermen. School had not worked, his mother didn’t know him; in town he was reminded of his failures. Here on the North Shore, among his fellow lifeguards, he was among friends. His was a job that came with distinction and authority; the lifeguard commanded the beach, he was obeyed, he sat upraised in the open, and whenever he made a rescue it was a spectacle.

He was the only haole among the lifeguards; as Eddie’s protégé he was respected. Eddie often told the story of how they’d met that evening on the road to Hale‘iwa and how in that meeting they’d felt a bond. Eddie made the meeting sound momentous. He did not remember saying, “Gas, grass, or ass—no one rides for free,” and Sharkey giving him a dollar.

At the perimeter of the circle of boys in yellow lifeguard T-shirts and red shorts, some girls had begun to gather and kneel, more numerous on Fridays because the weekend loomed. Like an extension of the boys’ tribal rite, the girls sat a little distance apart, pretending to be uninterested but often glancing over at the lifeguards. Sharkey resisted staring at them, fearing that he might choose the wrong one. He knew from Roosevelt High School that though the girls kept to themselves, whispering, and allowed themselves to be teased by the boys, each girl had a lover among the boys. It was only after dark that they met and paired off, and it was dangerous to presume and flirt, since every girl was spoken for.

“Hear that?” Eddie said. “Haole boy wen’ rescue one Japanee wahine and he come horny.”

“She had no muscles,” Sharkey said. “She was so soft, her flesh like something I could eat. And she was all wet, her clothes sticking to her.”

“Ha! You see surf bunnies with plenny papaya in little bikinis all day long and you get horny when you see one Japanee wahine in a wet dress.”

Sharkey laughed and tried to deny it, but it was true, just as he said. The dress alone made her sexy: a wet one on a soft little body filled him with desire.

“Thass crazy,” one of the other boys said.

Sharkey said, “I can’t explain it.”

“Is a mystery,” Eddie said.

He had gotten to his knees. He wagged his head to see across the patch of sand, where the girls had gathered beneath the feathery overhang of an ironwood bough.

“Eh—Rhonda,” he said, leaning, then putting his fingers to his lips and whistling.

A small figure emerged from the shadow of the tree, the glow of her white shorts making her visible.

Sensing a moment that might involve him, Sharkey said, “I’m heading into town. Friday traffic,” and jammed his beer bottle into the sand.

“Not yet, haole.”