Sharkey put his arm around her and said, “We have to split—long drive to the North Shore,” but Hunter had begun to snort more coke.

“I need another bump,” he said, and seeing Sharkey edging away, said, “Don’t go!” He lurched to his feet, snuffling and rubbing his nose, and hugged Sharkey and whimpered a little, then let go. “I’m the Duke of Puke!”

“He so lolo,” Winona said in the car.

“He writes books,” Sharkey said.

“Since when you read books?” And she laughed and poked his arm.

But Sharkey said, “I’m going to miss him.”

17

Reality Check

Why miss him, this stranger? he wondered, because the man was a fidgeting freak who talked without moving his lips, holding the growl in his mouth, who hated sitting on a beach and would only watch surf on television, in his suite, usually screaming at the set. And the book Hunter had given him was a burden, like something a sponsor would give you—a watch, a hat, a bicycle—that you’d never use and end up giving away. Sharkey had never met a writer before, and associated with Hunter, the word “writer” seemed like an excuse for being half baby and half sage, living in a world without rules—the writer made the rules and had the last word, or at least Hunter said he did.

But when he was gone, Sharkey thought how Hunter was irreplaceable; the other surfers were as flaky but wordless, and Sharkey had been bewitched by Hunter’s talk.

Hunter’s enthusiasm for the monster wave—the hundred-foot wave out there, breaking somewhere on the planet—renewed his desire to find it. And it heartened him to see that Hunter, the writer, the reckless boy ten years older than he, seemed as random and improvisational as he was—“I’m a bum, I’m a gypsy”—and he remembered Hunter saying, “Perilous quest” and “holy grail of the ocean,” the powerful words justifying what he did every day and making it seem like it mattered.

But Hunter was gone now, and would not be back for months, or until the next Honolulu marathon.

Sharkey surfed every day, and every day tried something new—a turn, a cutback, swiveling on the face of a wave as though carving his signature on it, writing on water. It was not practice or preparation; it was a way of spending the day, easing the passage of time; a way of living his life, because he made the moves his own.