“My day,” he said, and shook his head.

I’m old—I’m ancient to them, Sharkey thought, not hearing the rest of what was being said. I’m craggy, I’m gray, and they think I’m past it. And it was true—he was lean, and sinewy rather than thick-muscled. He was deeply lined and leathery from decades of sun, with bright lizard eyes and a lizard face and long skinny hands, and many of his tattoos were sun-faded and others indistinguishable from bruises. I am unknown to most of them. I am the past.

“My day is every day—today and tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve been there”—and he pointed at the TV screen, which was showing a man on a big wave in Portugal. “Nazaré. Used to be unridable. It’s a gangbang now. Try Chile—the wave they call El Gringo. That’s a wave. Try El Quemao—more dangerous than most—not just huge but it breaks on a dry rocky reef.”

A traveler’s tales, boasts about destinations like playing cards, snapped down in a game of trumps.

“In Portugal?”

“Lanzarote, Canary Islands. I smashed a helmet in half there,” Sharkey said. “Shippies—Shipstern Bluff, Tasmania. A slabbing wave, a mutant. It creates steps. I air-dropped off the steps.”

You don’t know me, he wanted to shout. I’m not old!

They stared at him as though looking at a stranger, staring at a corpse, implying with their eyes the idle notion “You won’t be here much longer.”

One of them turned aside and said, “He reminds me of that guy a long time ago who ate mushrooms and then surfed Waimea at midnight.”

Briefly he hated them. Then he laughed and murmured, They don’t matter!

He thought with wonderment, I’m old. When did it happen? It wasn’t sudden—no illness, no failure; it had stolen upon him. It could have been while I was surfing, going for smaller waves, becoming breathless and needing to rest as I paddled out. Or maybe on the days I stayed home, making myself busy, unaware of time passing, and then it was sunset and too dark to go anywhere except to bed. I hadn’t really noticed except for the ache in my knees some days. And growing old is also becoming a stranger, with a different and unrecognizable face, withering to insignificance, ceasing to matter. Nothing more will happen to me. So soon, so soon—and how sad to know that I will only get older.