Engrossed in surfing, the pure frolic on water, he hadn’t paid much attention, and when he mentioned it to Olive soon after he met her, she had not taken any interest. You couldn’t scare a nurse, nor impress a nurse with a horror story or a mention of a bad smell: their working lives dripped with blood and wounds and puke. One of the traits he loved in Olive was that she could cap any gruesome tale with one much more macabre. She’d seen people in every form of distress, humans trapped and suffering—the ailing, the maimed, the dying; drowning victims, battered wives, dope-sick tweakers.

If Sharkey mentioned a surfer who had planted himself headfirst on a reef, she could counter with the head trauma of a motorcyclist tipped into the path of an oncoming car. She was unshockable in the face of physical injuries. If anything, the sight of a mangled body made her more efficient, more studious and attentive—as she’d been the first day he’d seen her in the house at V-Land, reviving with the kiss of life a boy who’d overdosed—so Sharkey’s stories did not mean much to her. Human cruelty was to her the great offense; it was all the worse when it was bloodless, and so “I hit a drunk homeless guy” was an outrageous statement, one she found hard to forgive or explain.

Sharkey had not noticed anything unusual. In his improvisational life, the awkward or intrusive incidents that had preceded the collision had at the time seemed unremarkable, more annoyances than portents. He was as confident in his daily life on land as he was on the water, where he could ride any wave that lifted him.

Surfing was the pulse and passion of his life, not like a sport that involved catching a ball or swinging a bat, and not a recreation either. It was a way of living your life that only other surfers understood—even the posers and punks who’d somewhat spoiled it; and good waves took precedence over everything on land. When the surf was up Sharkey was on it, no matter what else was happening. And nothing was compatible with surfing—no job, no enterprise, no other event. Surfing had dominated his existence, made him a hooky-playing student and a wayward son but a happy man. At just the point he was criticized by his disapproving mother—then a recent widow—for spending so much time in the water, when he had seemed so self-indulgent, he had begun to win surf contests and make money, on the tour and from appearance fees. He was well known at sixteen, a champion at seventeen, famous at twenty, a winner of the Pipeline Masters and the Eddie at Waimea, holder of the Triple Crown.

“Being on the water is all that matters,” he said, “and surfing is the best way of being on the water.”