“Earthquakes,” he said, and a smile flickered on his lips. He did not hear Olive’s shallow sigh. “Great occasions for meeting girls—I mean, hooking up. They run out of the building and cower in a street or in a doorway. I get next to the chicks, hugging them during the tremor. There’s no rush on earth like it—better than a wave. ’Quake foreplay, ’quake sex.”

“San Francisco,” Olive said.

“We were in the doorway”—he hadn’t heard her—“and the car alarms are going off and the windows breaking—glass shattering in the street—and we’re snatching at each other, insane, like it’s the end of the world. And that’s how the world will end, destruction and orgies.”

“And you spent the night with her.”

“Another time,” he said, gabbling now, his eyes fixed on his sore foot, which he was flexing, “I’m in a hotel in Bali—surf meet at Uluwatu—and there’s a fire alarm. Everyone is evacuated and standing in the dark in their bathrobes, seriously worried, except me. I put my arm around this gorgeous woman and reassure her, and she thanks me as I stroke her. There’s no fire. But the sudden event, maybe fear, has bonded us. I head back to her room with her and we get it on—panic sex.”

It gave him such pleasure to relate these ridiculous stories, as though for the first time, that she stopped saying she’d heard them before.

“Getting married? Big mistake. ‘Why should I have to share you?’ ‘Why doesn’t anyone talk to me?’ Good thing we didn’t have any kids. Her family wanted them, so they could have them to themselves. Big pressure, because her family was involved. Women in Hawaii live close to their families, so they’re always making bad decisions, and the family sorts it out. Kids, bills, all the crises. They ended up hating me.”

“You were young.”

“And I was young.”

Olive withdrew, she took refuge in her work, but on her return home Sharkey was glad to see her so that he could lead her back into his past, all of it known to her now.

“We used to paddle into the big waves. Then they towed us. These days the young guys paddle into bigger and bigger waves. It’s the boards. Smaller, lighter. And the guys are more intense.”

He had wooed her with his stories once, and now she was near to being repelled, except that she was so sorry for him in his plodding in circles.

“My mother wanted me to stop surfing. She saw me lose a contest—I was just a kid—and she mocked me. But when I became successful she boasted about me to her friends. She was weak and hypocritical. Yet I was so sad when she died.”