A family somehow fitted together, unlike the Colonel and his mother and him, not a family but strange pairings for him, first with his father, then with his mother, all of them discontented, a bad fit. The Wongs were exuberant, and May was one of them, with a role as respectful daughter, adoring her father, humoring her mother, admiring her brother and sisters. She fooled with the children, whom Sharkey saw as annoying. But he was an outsider, he was not entitled to an opinion, and anyway even the pesky children belonged to the family. These brats had membership. He smiled, remembering how he’d seen May as a sister, and hoped he might be brotherly until she allowed him more access. He’d liked their abstinence, no hugs, once or twice a chaste kiss on her cool lips. He was glad it had gone no further: her keeping him away had freed him. There was nothing to explain, nothing to apologize for. He was a stranger.

Buzzed from the pakalolo, he peered at May’s father and imagined saying to him, “You have nothing to fear from me. I want nothing from you. I am May’s friend, that’s all—and hardly a friend. Just a haole who surfs with her.”

When he returned to the table, the old man was holding a red restaurant menu and peering through wire-rimmed glasses. “It say here the rat is akamai. Very clever. Save things—save money, and maybe a little cheap with money too. Have lots of children.”

“Iole we call rats when I live on Big Island—some iole nui come so big,” Mrs. Wong said. “Trouble with rats is too many keiki.”

Then Wallis turned from the snow scene on the television screen, hitched herself in her chair. “Lai see!” she said, and the children shrieked.

“Money,” May said.

The old man was shuffling a thickness of red envelopes. He tapped them on the table to straighten them and worked them with his thumbs.

“There goes my pager,” Winnie said. She stood up, brushed crumbs from her scrubs, and said, “Mummy’s got to go to work.” And to the solemn man, “Kenny, get them in line.”

Kenton pushed the children toward to the old man, the children falling silent, a faint expression of hunger on their faces, which were smeared with food. One by one they crept near the old man, who handed each one a red envelope. Clasping the envelopes in sticky fingers, rewarded, they dropped to the floor and fought for space between the chairs while the others resumed eating.

“When you was born?” Mr. Wong suddenly asked Sharkey.

“Forty-eight,” Sharkey said.

The old man picked up the menu again and ran his finger down the back of it and exclaimed, whipping off his glasses. “Was a rat year too!”

“I born fifty-one,” May said. “Rabbit year.”

“You’re a bunny,” Sharkey said. “I knew that.”