He seemed to speak in an accusing way to a man crouching slack-jawed on the sidewalk, his skinny arm flung around the neck of a dog with stiff dirty fur and a fat twitching tongue.

Seeing Sharkey, the man extended his arm, cupped his hand, begging. But Olive drove on.

“We don’t know that. Right?”

He grunted, an unwilling no.

“All we know is that he had a life. We owe it to him to find out what it was, and why he ended up at night on a bike in the rain and then dead in Waimea.”

“I hate going to the airport here. Every flight you take is so long. I’m not in shape to fly.”

“If we don’t do this, your life won’t be worth living. It’s awful now. Look at yourself. You don’t eat, you hardly sleep—and you don’t surf anymore.”

“You think I’m cursed,” he said, giggling mirthlessly to show he didn’t believe it.

“Wrong word.”

“What would you say?”

“No one did anything to you. The thing’s inside you.” She was glad to be driving so that she didn’t have to see his face when she spoke. “I think you’re in trouble.”

“Whatever.” He covered his eyes, masking himself, feeling nagged again.

“The worst of it is you don’t know it.”

“Arkansas,” he said. “It’s so far away.”

“You’ve flown to South Africa. To Portugal. To Indo.”

“There are waves in those places. There’s no waves in Arkansas.”

He spoke softly, keeping the words in his mouth as though he were chewing, so that what he said was a vibration rather than a clear statement. He objected to the trip but, weakened, he was docile, mildly stubborn, too slow in his movements to object. It seemed to be his usual state now, ineffective, more like a child than a man.

But Olive was used to that—with Sharkey, and in her work. The sick at the hospital who raised their eyes piteously to her as she made her rounds from bed to bed—they were childlike. Fearful, helpless, haunted, they needed her to soothe them, to encourage them and make them hopeful.

Sharkey had become like them, a semi-invalid, dependent on her. And so he hated going to the airport and whispered his objections and said the homeless people by the roadside disgusted him—“Why don’t they go back where they came from?” Still, he did not have the strength to oppose her with any conviction. He followed her because he needed her.

What heartened Olive, and appalled Sharkey, was the knowledge that he would follow her anywhere now. But it was not love—it was need. He had nowhere else to go.