Chapters (54)
Sharkey had the ocean on his gleaming face, blue eyes and fine lines from the years of sun flashing on the water, a bony mask, the leathery skin shrunk to its contours. And the other man, stocky, with a fleshy face, like a feature of the earth, big dirty feet and blackened fingernails and tattooed fingers, his knuckles bruised from handling the lava rocks he fitted onto the walls he made.
Sharkey said, “Moe, you should advertise.”
The man sniffed and considered it and dismissed it with a grunt.
“If I did that, people around here wouldn’t like me more than they already don’t.”
Laughing at each unexpected word, Sharkey said, “I’ll remember that. Want a drink?”
“Gotta go, brah.” He rummaged in the pocket of his shorts and brought out a bulging plastic bag. “Dis for you. I smoked one pig—take it. Is da kine.”
He hugged Sharkey and when he turned to go bumped a chair, stumbled a little, and walked off, lightly cursing.
“See?” Olive said. “Some people aren’t so bad.”
Sharkey sat back and stared at the ocean again. The surface had gone black but it was dimly visible and rutted; the onshore breeze swept low furrows, their edges moonlit, the nearer water gulping and dark, the water in the distance at the horizon like ripped cloth, all of it distressed and dreamlike.
“I used to buy pakalolo from him,” he said. “Then I went elsewhere.”
The pretty waitress appeared again, holding menus under her arm.
“Can I get you guys something to eat?”
Drawing a deep delaying breath of equivocation, as though just coming awake and reminded of where he was, Sharkey looked to Olive for an answer.
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
The waitress slid the check next to his drink, saying, “No hurry. I’ll just leave this with you. Mahalo.”
When the waitress had gone, slipping among the cluster of tables, twitching through the hanging strands of beaded curtains in the doorway, her ponytail dancing, Olive said, “You’re not as gloomy as you sound.”
“How do you know that?”
“I see you staring at the waitress’s glutes. Isn’t that a sign of hope and belief?”
“A mere glance at the wonder of nature and Hawaiian nutrition. God made those curves too.”
“She’s all tits and teeth. And you’re drunk, mate.”
“Just a little.”
“Instead of pigging it here, let’s have a drink at home,” Olive said, and seeing that Sharkey had become subdued, she hugged him. He held on, he kissed her. She said, “I don’t trust anyone until I see them drunk. I didn’t trust you. And then I saw you plastered. You were nicer, just a little giggly. And I realized I was safe. Hey, let’s go.”