“You keep rubbing it.”

“That bite,” he said. “It’s itchy, like an old beesting.” He scratched it again. “Actually sort of pleasant to dig at it,” and he kicked off his sandal and raised his foot. “And that other thing—the cut.”

Holding his foot firmly, she used her thumbs to examine his big toe. His foot was long and brown, his twisted toes curled like a flipper.

“Two claws—or fangs—that’s a centipede signature,” Olive said, and chafed one thumb against the reddened bumps. “Papular urticaria—these are the papules. An allergic reaction to the bite.”

“Thanks, doc. It feels better already.”

Olive was peering closely. “Envenomation. I’ll clean it again when we get home. This could ulcerate or go septic. You need to put something on it. Your poor foot!”

He toed his flip-flop and slipped his foot in. “There were no centipedes here until humans came. No pigs, no goats, no mongooses, no mosquitoes, no feral cats, no dogs. Humans are the problem. Humans are an infection on the earth.”

In his pitch of indignation he sniffed and wrinkled his nose, then drank again, and he used his knuckles to clear spittle from his lips. He became self-conscious as he did so, turning aside to see whether anyone had noticed him.

As he turned, a big brown fat-faced man grunted at him, and Sharkey, startled, jerked his head away as though he’d been slapped.

But the man laughed and said, “How’s it, brah?”

Tattoos on his neck, a cluster of scars raked beside one eye, a low rattling laugh—Moe Kahiko. His hand seeking a fist bump, was so tattooed it looked like a blue glove. The man had come from behind him and was now crouched beside him like a snorting wordless animal hoping to be petted.

Bumping the tattooed fist with his own, Sharkey recovered from the surprise and said, “I’m good, brah.”

“You scared him,” Olive said.

“Nothing scares this braddah,” Moe said. “They tell me you stay out here on the lanai with the wahine.” Moe smiled, showing his discolored and broken teeth. “I try say aloha to my braddah.”

“You catching any waves?”

“A few. Da kine. Too much da wind.”

“I was out at Rubber Duckies yesterday.”

“Was insane,” Moe said.

“A malihini did a face-plant on the rocks. Cracked his leg. Olive fixed him at the hospital.”

“Today was big but more worse da wind.”

“Moe, this is my wahine, Olive.”

“Nice to meet you,” the man said, and clutched at Olive’s hand, enclosing it with his two thick tattooed ones as though trapping a small bird.

“Besides being a great surfer, Moe is a wall-builder. He did the walls at my house with his team of Tongans.”

“No walls nowadays.” Moe shook his head, saying, “Business is junk all over the island.”

“What about the North Shore?”

“Here is more worse. It the junkest.”