“You have any children?” Sharkey replied, folding his arms, trying to minimize his visible ink.

“Got a poi dog. Real ugly mutt,” Wallis said. “That’s my baby.” Then she poked Sharkey’s arm and said, “Eh, you a good conversationalist.”

Sharkey could not think of a reply. He saw that May had found a baby and was holding it, making noises at it. Embracing her father, hugging Winston, bouncing the baby on her lap, she was in her element. “Brandon!” she cried to the baby’s face. “You have one luau next month! Say aloha to Uncle Joe!” She was more content than he’d seen her—happier than when she’d surfed a big wave. She was not a surf bunny; she was the obedient daughter of a stern unsmiling man, a member of a family, a tight fit in an ohana.

“Get one keiki for yourself!” Wallis said to May, pinching the baby’s cheek—too hard; the baby began to bawl.

The family: how Hawaiian they were, Sharkey thought—more Hawaiian than they perhaps knew, and they might have objected if he’d mentioned it, since they presented themselves as having so much Chinese pride.

“Be right back,” he said, to get away from the crying baby, and stumbled through the packed restaurant to go to the lanai to smoke a joint. Other men were there, smoking cigarettes.

One of the men said through his teeth, “Gong hei fat choy.”

“Far out, man,” Sharkey said, swallowing smoke, squinting in the glare of the afternoon sun. He turned and put his forehead against the glass of the restaurant window and, searching the room, at last found the Wong table.

At Roosevelt he had been the bullied haole, yet he’d had a vague sense of attachment, doing battle and sometimes winning. But at this meal, with this family, in this restaurant of Chinese families yelling and eating, he had never felt so alien. The mention of surfing evoked nothing but murmurs of disapproval. May seemed unable to defend Sharkey to her family, but worse, Sharkey was incapable of defending himself.