He was now used to their playful defiance—it made them whole and equal and more desirable.

Tahiti was his first trip away from Hawaii, on his own, away from his mother—she saw him off, looking sad. He arrived in Papeete, set against old mountainous volcanoes, overgrown and thickened in rainwashed green, steeper than the pali of O‘ahu. But the town itself was much smaller than he’d expected, no tall buildings, a human scale. The plane had circled and come in low across the reefs, Sharkey scanning the breaks for surf spots, his face pressed against the window.

“New board,” said the taxi driver, Hawaiian in his big brown bulk but with a French accent.

“A prize.”

“You win this board?”

“Oui, mon ami.”

“Vous êtes un grand champion.”

“That’s me!”

He was someone else, someone exceptional; no one knew him here. He was happy in the freedom of being able to say anything he wished about himself, and still remembered a little French from Roosevelt. He discovered the first day in Tahiti the transformation of travel, liberated in a far-off place.

This is all mine, he thought. He possessed the island with all his senses. The town smelled of sea-rotten wood and old rope and decaying fish, and the women were lovely in their bright pareus, knotted at their breasts, walking beneath the arcades of the shop houses in a stamping, assertive way, as though to show they weren’t owned by the French. Food smells, the blatting of motorbikes, and a strange and fragrant cigarette smoke—all new. Another odor he could not identify, from great woven baskets and burlap sacks—blackened husks. He saw it was the sourness of broken coconuts. “Copra, m’sieur.”

The taxi driver found him again, calling out, “Champion!”

He strapped Sharkey’s board on pads on the roof of his purple Renault Dauphine and drove him along the coast, Sharkey in the backseat, a pretty woman in the front; he was fascinated by the simple knot of her pareu at the back of her neck, which he mentally untied.

“What country?” she asked.

“Hawaii.”

The word cheered her; she relaxed, as though he’d announced himself as a relative. And then she was narrating, “Maraa . . . Papara,” indicating the surf beyond the reef, and farther on Sharkey saw a wave rising on an outer reef and no one surfing it.

“Stop,” he said, but already the taxi had begun to slow down.

“Teahupo‘o,” the driver said, and got out with the girl, who helped unload the board. Her hair was thick; she had a flower on her ear; her face was sculpted, thin-lipped, a pretty chin. A slender neck; the pareu still neatly in place, with a simple knot.