Hunter was lying on the sofa in his suite, his shoes on the cushions, wearing a misshapen fedora and sipping a whiskey. Sharkey shrugged at the question, which was unanswerable in its vagueness.

“I was telling you about the Ali-Foreman fight in Kinshasa.” Hunter began to laugh, and his laughter gagged him.

The names meant nothing to Sharkey, even now, years later, this Ali Foreman—who could he be?

“You said, ‘Kinshasa—any waves there?’” He hooted and coughed and choked, gargling phlegm, then leaned over and spat on the carpet. “Fucking heavyweight championship of the world, and you didn’t have a clue! You didn’t even know who Ali and Foreman were!”

Sharkey said, “They probably don’t know who I am.”

“I love that,” Hunter said. “I mention people and you go, ‘Who?’”

“Because I don’t know,” Sharkey said, to deflect the shouting. He had the sense he was being teased, and he resented it. He didn’t understand what was behind it except the drunken ranting of Hunter, who was lying fully clothed—sweaty shirt, crushed hat, stained shorts—on the white sofa.

“Carville, Clinton, Wenner, Joe Montana, Ayn Rand, Carter, Ken Kesey, Johnson.”

“Which Johnson? Kimo—the long-boarder?”

“Samuel Johnson.”

“I guess I know Clinton. He stopped here once.”

“But politics,” Hunter said.

“Politics is a shit game. It’s just winners and losers.”

“Exactly. That’s why you’re focused. You’re on your own wave.”

“Where else would I be?” Sharkey said.

“Like Sherlock Holmes,” Hunter said. “Watson tells him that the earth revolves around the sun. Sherlock thinks it’s the other way around. Watson’s incredulous at this dumb fuck. Sherlock says, ‘So what? It doesn’t matter to me.’ He’s on his own wave!”

“I’ve heard of Sherlock Holmes,” Sharkey said.

“I tell people, ‘There’s this surfer dude in Hawaii. He’s never heard of Joe Montana or Jimmy Carter.’”

“So?” Sharkey said in a faltering voice.

He was beginning to redden, his face heating with shame, and he was a child again at Roosevelt, being interrogated by a teacher and then teased by the local kids—“Haole! Panty! You not akamai!”—and for those hot moments he hated Hunter, the greedy, careless, wasteful man who knew nothing about Hawaii and yet wrote books about it.