The night-blooming jasmine, a leggy hedge of it next to the parking lot, filled the air with a flare of sweetness that matched the moonglow on the distant headland, Kaena Point, giving it the look of an outstretched paw in the sea, the shadowy mountain and ridge behind it like a recumbent lion.

Sharkey murmured these images in sentence fragments and pointed at each—the jasmine hedge, the headland, the mountain, the moonlight on the water, now eclipsed by a swelling cloud—and then he bent over to scratch his buzzing toe.

“My foot is killing me.”

Olive had turned her back to the sea and the mountain ridge and the cloud. She said, “How did Moe cure you of buying his weed?”

Still working on his toe, feeling the burr of his fingernail on it, Sharkey said, “It was crazy.” Then he stood and stamped the dust of the parking lot, flexing his toes. “I was in Half Moon Bay, surfing Mavericks. I’d been away for weeks—hot romance and big waves. One night I get a message to call Moe. I’m thinking, What? He never called me on the mainland before.”

As he opened the car door and slid behind the wheel, Olive said, “I think I should drive.” As she spoke, rain began to fall, plops and whispers on the nearby leaves.

“I’m fine. It’s just—” He lifted his right foot and wagged it.

“Your poor toe.”

“And a goose stamped on my foot. What was that word, ‘venomed’?”

“Envenomation.”

He repeated the word in her English accent and then, “I love it. Now look.” Sliding behind the wheel, splaying his fingers, Sharkey showed her his car key, and with precision, inclining his head, he fitted it to the slot and started the engine. “We’re good,” he said, and switched on the headlights. “Leave your car here. We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

Pearl-like raindrops began to scatter across the windshield as though flung by an unseen hand. He tapped the wiper lever and started the blades. The patter was like the tut-tut of a warning, because a moment later the windshield was awash, water streaming across the wiper blades as they slapped back and forth, two gleaming fan shapes on the window.

“Where did this dirty weather come from?”

“Wind’s from the south,” he said. He eased the car out of the parking lot into the road, moving slowly, angling his head to see through the flicking wipers. “Kona weather.”

“Moe,” she said, to prompt him. “The phone.”

“Yeah. Moe. He says to me, ‘I done a bad ting.’”

“Pig English,” she said.

“Pidgin.”