Sharkey squinted out the window. “Waikiki.”

“Far out,” Hunter said, still groggy, his head down, swaying heavily.

After Sharkey parked at Magic Island, he helped Hunter out of the car—Hunter had been fumbling with the door handle—and led him through the palms to the far end. The two women followed, again like spouses, something tribal and old-fashioned in their trooping behind the men in the moonlight to the break.

“No waves tonight,” Sharkey said. “All the action’s on the North Shore. This is great in the summer, though—the south swell. I spent my boyhood here.”

“The snot-green sea,” Hunter said.

“True, you know, in some places. Not here.”

“The sea. The snot-green sea. The scrotum-tightening sea,” Hunter said. Then he grunted, “Joyce.”

Sharkey considered the name for a moment. He said, “You don’t get too many surfer chicks. Rell Sunn—Auntie Rell. Couple of others.”

“What about me?” Winona called out behind him.

“And, yeah, this wahine.”

A ship’s lights winked in the distance, and the glow smoothed the ocean, shimmered on it and made it silky under the paler gleam of the moon, as they watched above the gulping lava rocks, amid the rattling palms.

“Mother ocean,” Sharkey said.

“My mother is a drunk,” Hunter said.

“Mine was,” Sharkey said. “‘Just a cocktail, darling. I can’t move until I’ve had a drink.’ Got drunk, broke her hip. Make-die-dead.”

In a forced prissy voice, Hunter said, “Make mine a highball.”

They were still standing on the grassy outcrop over the rocks, the two men, the women just behind them. Hunter mumbled, almost as though he were eating something, and then threw his arms out and leaned back and howled into the night. The two women stepped back, to give him room in case he did it again, but he rubbed his nose with his knuckles and mumbled some more, quieter now that he had released what seemed like a bellow of anxious rage.

Sharkey had not moved. He said, “My mother said surfing is a waste of time. Hey, it’s my living. I never asked her for a penny.”

“You can pick your nose but you can’t pick your relatives,” Hunter mumbled.

“She never watched me surf.”

“My mother never reads my stuff. She thinks I’m a fuck-up.” He laughed, the laugh gargling low in his throat. “She’s probably right. I keep telling her it’s part of my image.” He then leaned over the ledge to where the small waves were slapping the rocks. “I saw you on TV today, surfing at Pipeline. I gotta hand it to you, man. They were some diabolical waves. I’m thinking, I could never do that.”

Sharkey said, “I could never write a book.”

“That reminds me, I’ve got a copy of my new book for you. Curse of Lono. It’s at the hotel.”