This was play, sex was play, lifeguarding was friendship—a team, and that involved play too. None of it was work. He was paid enough that he never had to ask his mother for money. That he was independent confused her, thwarted her in her hovering, since his accepting money from her had held them together, and now he didn’t need her.

“I can give you more,” she said.

“I don’t need more. I don’t need any.”

Girls had money and sleek bodies, girls had cars, girls had rooms where he could crash, girls had parents who encouraged him. He surfed with Rhonda’s father, Kawika, who said, “You got a job. You got respeck.”

The pink C-shaped scar on Sharkey’s face set him apart, it masked him, it gave the illusion that he was less a haole than the others—someone with a story, a secret, an altered face, the scar a distinction like a badge of honor, as though he’d been injured in battle, more proof that he might be a hero.

From the loneliness of lingering on a swell, waiting for a wave to ride, he became aware that he was being watched, that someone—probably a girl—saw what he was doing and understood the difficulty; and the very fact that he knew someone was watching him—someone onshore to surf to, an appreciative spectator—helped him put forth his best effort. So he rode the wave to the girl on the beach and that night lay in her arms.

It was so simple, this notion that there was someone watching him, someone who desired him—more than one, perhaps many: this attention drove him to perform, the play became serious, and he was reminded of how he wanted to win and had a reason for winning, not for money but to impress a girl, to possess her for a night, or more.

He saw that the other surfers had the same idea, competed against each other to be noticed—less warriors battling for a trophy than a pack of poi dogs nipping each other and lolloping for a favor. Sharkey usually came second or third. He was complimented—so young, smaller than most of them, a haole, but distinguished with a scar.

One day he won at a surf meet at Sunset. He was crowned with a lei, a ring of flowers on his head. The prize was a new surfboard and a ticket to Tahiti, and a girl that night murmured to him, “Watch me, watch me, watch me—what I do to you.”

The neglected aspect of his growing up, what was missing in his childhood, was a girlfriend; and now, with money, he slipped out of his mother’s grasp and eluded her control. He had lovers.

“Them Tahiti wahine better be careful.”

“I’ll come back to you,” he said.

“Maybe I no stay here. Maybe I no wait.”