When he returned to the lawn he saw Hunter propped against a fire-eater, teasing him, chanting incoherently, swigging at the Chivas bottle. The barefoot surfers were awestruck, not by the muscular men twirling the flaming sticks but by the gibbering man in the aloha shirt attempting to light a doobie in his mouth by leaning into the flapping flames of a torch.

“Da guy so kolohe,” one of the surfers said. “More worse than you, Shark.”

“He’s a famous writer,” Sharkey said.

“You read da kine?”

Sharkey said, “No can read, brah,” and the boy laughed crazily and bumped fists with Sharkey.

Hunter was now among the Tahitian dancers, mimicking the men’s tramping and knee-shaking, and when the women ran onto the lawn, wearing high crownlike headdresses, Hunter whooped and snatched at them, egged on by the whistling surfers. Seeing him clowning, Sharkey thought, He’s a boy, an excitable boy, demanding to be seen—and licensed in his disruption because he was, of all things, a writer. Hunter was the center of attention now, more conspicuous than the fire-eaters and the Tahitians with the shiny coconut-shell bras.

“Everything all right?” It was Avery, the sponsor, smiling in anxiety as Hunter humped the hip-shaking Tahitian women, the surfers cheering and whistling.

“Cool,” Sharkey said.

“We’re planning to showcase a new energy drink,” Avery said. “Is that something that might interest you?”

“Oh yeah,” Sharkey said, thinking, Free money, that’s what interests me—money without work, money without strings or office hours. And the sight of Hunter swigging from the Chivas bottle and the words “energy drink” made him smile, because he knew it was water and syrup and a label.

“I loved those little flips you did coming out of the barrel today,” Avery said.

“Off the lip. Tail slide.”

“That’s my dream.”

“Not my dream. Just ways of getting points.”

“What’s your dream?”

“There’s a wave—a perfect barrel in Indo,” Sharkey said. “You can ride for three whole minutes in that barrel. That’s one dream.”

“You have more?”

Shouting to be heard over the drumming, Sharkey said, “The hundred-foot wave!”

“Where?”

“I’m looking!”

“Get in touch with me when you find it.”

“When I ride it,” Sharkey said.

Then Hunter intruded, hugging him—gasping, sweaty, looking smaller and misshapen, as drunks do, gabbling with spittle-flecked lips. After the beer, the wine, the Chivas, the pakalolo, the cocaine, it seemed he had outlasted the others. Six surfers were sprawled on the lawn under the lights.

“Hundred-foot wave,” Hunter said. So he had heard. “That’s what I want to see, the monster wave—the biggest fucking wave in the world.”

“Me too,” Sharkey said.

“Show me some waves,” Hunter said, stumbling.

Demanding, shouting, more like a badly behaved child than a rude man—loud and harmless, he made Sharkey laugh. Hunter stamped his feet and swigged again from his Chivas bottle.

“Wanna to see some waves!”