And now he turned to look at the froth accumulating at the edge of the beach; but it wasn’t froth, it was flotsam, junk, plastic bags pulsing just beneath the surface like the odd beanies of blobby jellyfish, and a condom like a sea creature, and he was disgusted and angry, thinking, Everything that is wrong with the earth has a human origin—they are the problem, befouling the planet. The trash was a reproach to him for leering at the waitress.

“So I’m running late. I’m in my car. I won’t be much longer.”

“You know where I am. Aloha.” And, clicking off his phone, he gave his full attention to the waitress. He loved her lips, he loved her feet, she was small and solid, had dimpled knees and tousled hair that had worked loose from the clip that held her ponytail. She had everything. Most of all she had youth.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“A beer, please.”

She drew her whole face into a puckered grin, like a child’s awkwardness before an adult.

“I know who you are.”

He said, “I’d like to know who you are.”

“I’m nobody.”

“You’re a surfer,” he said, and—hesitating, laughing like a bashful boy—reached, squeezing the hard meat on her well-developed shoulder.

“Yeah, but I’m a surf bunny. It was too big today for me.”

He said, “I was out. Pipeline was cranking.”

She laughed, full-throated, appreciatively. “My boyfriend thinks you’re awesome. His father thinks so too. He says he used to see you in the lineup when he was a kid.”

And that was that—the boyfriend, the admiring old man—she could not have put him in his place more neatly, without any effort. I’m a bystander, he thought. Everyone is spoken for, or too young. I should be glad with what I have, which is a whole life, yet the animal in me is always hungry.

“Want a glass?” she said when she came back with the beer, the bottle on a tray.

“I think beer tastes better in a glass,” he said. “You need to get your olfactories going, dip your nose in it—you know, smell it.”

“Old factories, I guess so,” she said, suddenly flustered, and he was reminded that he should not be so glib. She was sweet, in the island way. He knew the stare of incomprehension, as though he’d lapsed into another language or was mocking her.

Olive slid past the waitress as she was bringing the glass, saying, “Here you are,” and claimed him by kissing him hard, saying to the waitress, “White wine.”

“And one more of these,” he said, pouring the last of the bottle and handing it back to her.

“They told me you were out here,” Olive said.