But Frawley cut him off. “We’re not like you, sister.” He lit the cigarette and savored the pause he was creating and blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. “We stay waiting. We do nothing but stay wait. Our whole life is wait—from little keiki to big adult, always wait. I sometimes try due diligence to figure out the difference between locals and haoles. The simple answer I come up with is, haoles no wait. And all we kanaka maoli do is, what? Fricken wait. Even when I stay in my office on Bishop Street, the haoles come and go, never wait. And Frawley at his desk—wait. You got no idea what it’s like. You always have what you want. We never. Fonoti?”

“We never,” Fonoti said, amplifying the word like a cry, Nevah.

Olive allowed them a respectful silence, and then said, “I didn’t mean to rush you.”

“And plus, the other thing,” Frawley said. “What are we waiting for?”

Fonoti said, “I waiting for Max.”

“Ass right,” Frawley said. “We used to say ‘Max—he to the max,’ like an expression. Maybe we waiting for him.”

In his aggrieved rant about waiting, his talk had shifted from his accountant’s precision to a blunter lingo, more local, especially on that last word, heem.

He sat grunting, as though digesting the meaning of what he’d said, the echo of it rumbling through his big body.

“In the meantime, we ho‘omau,” Frawley said, and looked at Olive. “Push on. Persevere for Max sake.”

Sharkey turned to look out the window, seaward, where the surf had risen, chest high, and beyond the gouts of foam in the breaking waves a boy at sea, swaying on top of the water, too far out for Sharkey to discern his board, the disjunction making it seem as though the boy was dancing in the ocean.

“Hot like hell,” Fonoti said, breathing through his nose, a crackling sound.

“Give me twenty bucks,” Frawley said.

“For what?”

“For the”—he puffed his cigarette—“for the indenture. What we call the agreement.”

Olive fumbled in the bag at her feet and brought out the money.

Crushing the bill in his hand, Frawley said, “And Fonoti. For his knowledge. His mana‘o.”

“Funny old lot you are with the wonga, twenty bucks a bung,” Olive said, holding a twenty-dollar bill between the two front seats until Fonoti pinched it in his fingers and flicked it away from her. “I still have a few more questions.”

“Tanks.”

“So does Joe,” she said. And in a deliberate way, as though formally introducing him, “Joe Sharkey.”

Frawley humped and heaved in his seat until he was turned around, staring at Sharkey.

“One more house,” he said, and directed Olive back into the traffic and up the main road past the high school to a junction where he said, “Mauka here.”