Naked, shaving with his electric razor, buzzing it over his cheeks, he padded to the front room and threw the sliders apart, letting the day into the house, the air like silk slipping across his shoulders. He returned to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, spat out the suds, and walked to the kitchen. He swung a kettle of water onto the stove to boil, then found a pineapple and slashed at its sides, revealing its pulpous yellow, and carved slabs of its flesh and chunked them on a chopping board. He put a pinch of Dragon Well tea into a pot and filled it with the kettle of hot water. Last, the pineapple chunks in a bowl. And the tea and the bowl he took to the lanai, to sit and study the day. He was barefoot, he was content.

The ghost of a wind barely fluttered the leaves on the pak lan tree as he listened to the surf report: “. . . head-high sets in the morning, rising to twelve- to fifteen-foot faces in the afternoon, with a high-surf advisory expected for north- and west-facing shores. Light winds today and tomorrow. A storm in the central Pacific heading our way will deliver brisk and breezy conditions over the weekend.”

Hearing the radio voice, the geese squawked again, and when Sharkey had finished his fruit and drunk his tea, he took a bowl of pellets downstairs to the sloping lawn—the five geese following—and scattered it slowly, watching the big birds contend. The biggest gander he fed holding pellets in his cupped hand, and the eager bird coming close stepped on his foot, raking his instep with its fangy claws and leaving a deep scratch and a mudstain. As Sharkey nudged him away, the peacock emerged from the frangipani grove, and the two black Muscovy ducks sidled toward the scattered feed, pecking cautiously. Mourning doves settled and strutted, looking for a chance to seize some grains, and the chatter of all the birds brought a pair of small scrawny chickens—jungle fowl—from behind a clump of dusty blue bamboo.

He watched until all the food was pecked away and the geese had gone through their particular sequence: having finished their pellets, they headed down the lawn and began tearing at the short grass with their beaks, as though moving on to the next course. It seemed the pellets made them hungry for grass, and then they’d all take turns drinking at the basin. They too had a routine.