“Move here,” Sharkey said. “We need you.”

Then Hunter called to Anita, “Cancel the car. I don’t want to go. I’m not hungry.” And he gestured to Sharkey, holding his arms out, still seated in the wheelchair. “Thanks, bro. You’re a good listener.”

A good listener, because with Hunter he never knew what to say. But “bro” struck him: yes, they were like brothers, Hunter both an inspiration and a bad influence, always going his own way but revealing his weaknesses to Sharkey, his younger sibling. Sharkey knew nothing of books or football or the cities where Hunter was celebrated as a hero. Their common pursuits had been drugs and women, but now Hunter had Anita and Sharkey the location of a monster wave.

Sharkey had recovered from his knee injury and was surfing again. But Hunter, always in pain, had not healed. No wonder he was stoned most of the time, or always on drugs. He got no exercise—he reveled in having a wheelchair to get him onto a plane. Yet he was humiliated by his limping, as he moved with effort from the chair to the bag on the counter where he kept his stash of coke. Addiction did not wear him down; addiction was his mode of survival.

When, after a few weeks, Hunter left, Sharkey realized that when he talked to him about surfing, his sponsorships, his quest for the wave in Portugal, Hunter only half listened, or did not listen at all. Hunter was thinking of one thing only, the cruel distraction of his pain. Compared to that, nothing else mattered.

The phone rang at two in the morning. It had to be Hunter. It was five in the morning in Woody Creek, Hunter’s night of rocking or writing about to end; Sharkey knew by now that bedtime for him was dawn.

“Unner.” He grunted something unintelligible, then said, “I know you don’t care,” and Sharkey realized his grunt had been a mention of football, the Super Bowl. “You’re lucky. Just the essentials for you—it’s all about the senses. I’m done, I’m a mess, physical wreck. My head is full of trivia, and useless shit. But you—all you think about is water.” He paused, then gasped, “You don’t need books, you need water and women.” He gasped and added, “You’re a sensualist.”

Sharkey said—his first words—“I’m waiting for you, dude.”

A mumble, like chewing, then silence. Hunter was grunting again, but didn’t say, “I’ll be there,” as in other years. He said, “That’s cool. You’re smarter than the rest of us.”

“I’m a dropout, I’m a lolo, I’m not smart,” Sharkey said. “Listen carefully, man, can you hear me?” He jammed the phone against his mouth and shouted, “I don’t know anything! ”