“I surfed Midway,” he said. “It’s just up there, end of the chain—three hours away. The waves aren’t great, but it’s amazing for bird life. Everywhere you look there’s albatrosses nesting on the ground, thousands of them. And dead chicks. The mother albatross flies five hundred miles to scoop up a colorful scrap of plastic floating on the ocean. She flies back and jams it into the chick’s throat.”

“Crikey,” Olive said softly, but Sharkey was still talking.

“All the problems on earth, the ones that threaten our existence, are caused by humans,” he said, palming the pipe; and she was reminded of how a few drinks, or a hit, made him pompous.

“If they threaten our existence, then isn’t that a good thing? Our extinction will solve the whole business.”

“Not fast enough,” he said, slurring his words. “Instead of eliminating litter and nuclear waste and dirty air and traffic, and all the rest . . .”

“Eliminate people.”

“You got it,” he said, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Lose them. Not a few. All.”

“I must be in the wrong profession,” Olive said. “Grafting away in a hospital. Making people healthy.”

“You’re easing their pain. That’s noble. I’m thinking of something else.”

“Zero growth.”

“That’s a start,” he said. “Negative growth. Progressive depopulation.”

“No one’s having babies in Germany or Italy, or Russia, or Japan,” she said.

“India’s overflowing with them,” he said, and still talking disgustedly he raised his empty glass, signaling to the waitress. “So’s China, so’s Africa. It has to stop. I like the idea of shrinking cities, cratered towns, empty villages—huge areas of hollowed-out houses and collapsed communities—thanks”—the waitress was filling his glass again—“grass growing where there were once streets, wolves roaming in the old broken neighborhoods,” and he smiled and giggled a little as the waitress hurried away. “Frilly knickers.”

“You’re drunk.” He was toasted, he was deaf and doll-like, sure of everything, precise in his movements, meaninglessly cautious.

Instead of replying, Sharkey sat back and stared at the ocean. The surface had gone black but it was dimly visible and rutted; the southerly breeze created low furrows that caught the edge of moonlight, the flop of the shore break, the distant sea like wrinkled tinfoil, all of it distressed.

“My father was in ’Nam,” he said. “He’s in a chopper, heading to Khe Sanh, his first week in the war. A young soldier is strapped next to him, and he sees he’s scared, and my father says, ‘I’m going to give you some advice, kid.’” Sharkey paused and Olive became attentive. “‘When you get to the firebase, consider yourself already dead. With that in mind, you’ll be fine.’” Sharkey filled his pipe again and spurted a flame into it.

Olive closed her eyes and intoned, “Consider yourself already dead, and you’ll be fine.”