Except for the cuts on his arms he had not hurt himself. Then he had only sighed, seeing the sodden corpse of the man, and instead of a tremor of guilt or fear he had felt a towering vitality, the dizzying conceit of having survived, standing in the rain, a whole man, slightly bewildered at the sight of Olive crouching over the dead man, her fingers on his wrist, saying, “He’s gone.”

Sharkey had not been injured; he was surprised, feeling weirdly strengthened, as though having come through a testing ordeal, proven himself, the sense of having surfed a big evil wave that had tricked and toppled him, the joy of bobbing up after a hold-down and paddling to shore.

Driving from the dealership with the new car he’d felt the first of the back spasms, the tugs on his head, hot wires of pain wrapping his neck, seeming to yank his eyes from behind, and, fighting this, his lower back came apart.

“I almost didn’t make it,” he told Olive—and it was true, he’d just missed hitting a cyclist on Nimitz and nearly sideswiped a car on the H-1, his hands greasy with sweat gripped the steering wheel—pain in his eyes, pain in his finger joints.

Once, long ago, in Indonesia, surfing Mentawai Reef, he’d contracted dengue fever—a week of pain in his joints, his temperature 103 degrees, thirst, headaches, and low spirits. It was less like a sickness than a bereavement, like sorrowing, a fatal melancholy that was also physical anguish.

That was how he felt now. “Can’t drive” was an understatement—he couldn’t sit or stand, and even lying on the sofa he was in pain, as though he’d broken his back. At night the fever headache kept him awake and, weakened by sleeplessness, he felt sharper pain in the daytime.

The Valium Olive gave him for the back spasms depressed him and sent him to sleep, but he seemed comatose, and when he woke, unrested. A week of this, but even when he was well enough to stand, or shuffled to the car, he felt the pain again in the driver’s seat.

“I guess I’ll do the driving now,” Olive said, knowing how he hated to be driven and thinking it might encourage him to deal with his pain and drive.

But he accepted her offer, and though he still surfed or swam, there were days, medicated, when he was slow and sleepy and felt like an invalid, people he knew at Foodland or on the beach surveying him with surprise and saying in their gauche overfrank way, “You look terrible, man,” or “You okay, brah?”

Yes, he said, insisting. It was a bug. It was going around. He’d be fine.

8

Intrusions