“Hunter used to tell me that he envied me. His pseudonym was a kind of compliment.” Sharkey smiled in the direction of the shadow, as though meeting a ghostly gaze. “Mr. Joe.”

Listening, Olive thought, At what point will he realize that he is rabbiting on in a blatant parody, almost as though he’s testing me to challenge him? In speaking of the past, describing his surfing exploits, he had told such extraordinary stories that even the blandest retellings sounded like boasts. Yet the offense of boasters was not the oversized, obnoxious stories but that they were bores, because boasters repeated themselves and couldn’t keep their stories straight, being essentially untruthful in their exaggeration. And they never listened.

What she longed to do these days of his talking was to face him and say, “For the love of God, park it!”

But Olive was too watchful, too cautious, to make an objection to Sharkey, because that was the other trait of boasters—their insecurity, their thin skin. Yet Sharkey had seemed to her to have a healthy ego, and she wondered at this monologue about Hunter Thompson that she had heard before.

“‘Writers are surfers,’ he said. He was a great guy, a kind of tragic figure really, who liked being around stronger men—outlaws, pirates . . .”

“Bikers,” Olive said. “Gun nuts.”

“You got it,” Sharkey said, and seemed to relax, though he did not look at her, was still peering across the room.

What was going on? Didn’t he remember?

That was all he said that evening. But it was enough—too much.

Out of the blue another day he began to talk as though someone had flicked a switch. They were at the table, using chopsticks to eat the bowls of ahi poke and rice that Olive had brought from Foodland on her way home from work. Sharkey put his chopsticks down and sat forward and stared past her.

“I was at this surf meet at Mavericks,” he said. “When it was over—I came second, a money prize—I drove up the coast and had an urge to look up an old girlfriend. Not just an old girlfriend but a great passion, the kind that makes you wild and irrational. I’d been divorced for about a year—my wife never watched me surf.” He made a resentful face, pushing out his lips. “‘People don’t care about me. I’m nobody to them. All they want is to get close to you.’”

Olive said, “San Francisco.”

He nodded. “Mission District. You’re going to think she was some airhead surf bunny I’d known years before that I’d nailed in the back of my van.”

“I don’t think that.”