So the conditions of the water had always determined the rhythm of his days. The tidal variations were so small—a few feet at most in Hawaii—they hardly mattered; but the swell and the shapes of the waves were the pulse and beat of his vitality. And when, between the big swells, the surf subsided, Sharkey swam, he free-dived off Shark’s Cove or spearfished; he did not sit. Either he was active in the water or else he lay in the sand, chewing air or lightly snoring, the coarse grains clinging to his skin, the sand heating his back. And when he was rested he rolled himself down the beach to the water and flashed into the bluey-green depths among the parrotfish and shoals of manini and the needle-nosed sea eels.

He ate what came to hand—the sweet eggs from his chickens, mangoes and avocados and lilikoi from his trees, breadfruit when it was in season. He drank green tea in the morning, one strong coffee after lunch, beer at night. He browsed when he was hungry, yawned and dozed when he was tired, and when he was aroused he rolled against Olive as though body-surfing a warm wave, entered her, and rode her until they both lay ashore on the bed.

But since the accident he’d shown no interest, as though the shock to his system that had made him repetitive and forgetful had also short-circuited his libido. Once, when she mentioned this, he said, “We made love yesterday.” But they hadn’t.

These days he was asleep when she returned from work; he’d drunk a few beers, he’d eaten, the house was frosted with moonlight and skeletal in semidarkness. When he saw that the surf report was for clean conditions he was up early; otherwise he was unresponsive when she left for the hospital.

Nor had he noticed that she was wakeful, sometimes retching, and it annoyed her that she could not get his attention with her seemingly fragile health. Scrupulous in taking precautions, sometimes a pill, sometimes a patch, she knew she could not possibly be pregnant. She wanted to scream at him (as patients sometimes howled at the hospital), “Don’t you see I’m sick!” But really she wasn’t sick enough, and didn’t want to be so sick that she needed him, because what use would he be? He’d been no help at all to his aged mother. He told her, I saw her losing it. He’d say, When I get like that, hit me with a brick—shoot me.

One morning when the surf was up and he was alert, moving quickly, slapping the pockets of his shorts for his keys, his board already on the car, she said, “Joe—wait.”

“Yeah,” and rattled the keys in his impatient hand.

“You’re better off alone.”

He looked at her, irritated, deaf with detachment.

“Can’t find my new sunglasses!”