by Paul Theroux
Meanwhile the girl had sat down on the grass, cross-legged, and placed a smaller coconut in her lap.
“Can I have this one?”
“Take,” she said, and opened her legs.
The coconut lay between her legs, on her silken wrap. Sharkey reached but could not grasp the coconut without disturbing the cloth or grazing her thighs with his fingers. She sat back, resting on her arms, and widened her legs more as he leaned and looked into her eyes and slowly grasped the coconut, his knuckles bumping the warmth of her inner thighs. But he merely held it, he did not lift it, he sensed her body bumping it. When he tried to lift it she brought her legs together and clasped it.
“You like to taste that?”
His mouth went dry. He licked the sea salt from his lips, the sweetness of the coconut she’d cut for him. But now they were alone in the shadow of the palms, half hidden by the bushes of big leaves that grew just behind them.
He nodded, and fearing that she had not seen him clearly enough, he spoke. “Yes—yes.”
“J’aime,” she said, reaching for his hair and clawing it slowly, “vos cheveux d’or.”
He made an attempt to pick up the coconut, but when he did she closed her legs on it again, and on his hands, and she laughed softly. Her thighs were warm against his hands as she laughed again, teasingly. She was staring past him at the setting sun—her cat eyes gilded by it—and the sun sank, too slowly he thought. When they were in darkness she put her face near his—did not kiss him but inhaled deeply, against his nose.
“Where?’ he said. “When?”
“Ici,” she said. She flung the coconut aside and pushed his head into her lap, clasping it as she had clasped the coconut, and whispered, “Maintenant.”
Her name was Fillette, she told him after they’d made love and were lying half asleep on the grass. And that became the pattern of their days—she greeted him in the morning and then was gone—“J’aide ma mère dans le jardin”—his school French was a help, but there was much she said that he did not understand. “Garden” meant gathering coconuts and bananas. He surfed all day, she met him at sundown in the bower beneath the palms, and when his week was over she was laughing, he was tearful.
Before her brother drove him to the airport, Sharkey said, “I’ll come back.”
“Je serai une vieille femme alors.” And she laughed again.
“Fillette she say, she be old woman then,” her brother said, settling behind the wheel.
At home, in the circle of lifeguards after work, he told his story to the others, who listened intently. He was the adventurer, with the power of the sexy tale of the Tahitian girl at the break at Teahupo‘o.
Then Eddie said, “What about the waves?”
“Awesome.”
He described the configuration of the break, how solitary it was, the good days, his rides, how the girl had said that in winter it was huge. But his mind was not on the waves, because all he could think of was the expression she’d taught him, which he was too shy to share with these boys, words he had not learned at school: “Goûtez-moi”—taste me.
The surf subsided in early spring and the ocean flattened, shimmered as a lake of blue—more swimmers, easier rescues, later sunsets, and still the girls lingered by the lifeguard chair, calling to him, teasing him.
“Haole boy!” But it was affectionate, flirtatious.
To avoid the long drive from town he rented a room in a house near Rocky Point, surfed at Velzyland on his days off, and sneaked girls into the room for . . . what? To him it was never more than play, and for the girls too; blameless, joyous, brief.
He was with a girl on the late afternoon his mother stopped by the beach. His mother was with a man he’d never seen before.
“Puamana, this is my mother.”
“Glad to meet you,” his mother said. And to the man, “This is my son, Joe.”
“Jamie Kunzler,” the man said. “I was in your father’s outfit in ’Nam, running recon patrols.”
“Jamie wants to talk to you about school,” his mother said.
“I’m done with school,” Sharkey said.
“You’ll be in good shape with a high school diploma.”
“I’m in good shape without one.”
“Can’t enlist without one,” the man said. “But if you get one and join up, the army will look after you. Put you through college on the GI Bill. That’s pretty much a free ride.”
His mother stared, saying Answer that with her severe gaze.
Sharkey said, “The Colonel—my dad—said we were just helping out in Vietnam. Advisers. Recon. But now there’s all kinds of fighting. He didn’t see that. A lot of guys are getting killed, and lots of injured men are at Tripler. I don’t want to go.”
“You don’t want to help your country.”
“Ever ask yourself, ‘Why are we dying there?’” Sharkey said. Then he smiled. “My dad said they got waves.”
The man winced, and what angered Sharkey was that his mother was on the man’s side—a new man, a new date—and not on his.
“Think of your future,” she said. “What will you do?”
Sharkey was holding his board, standing near Puamana. Now he put his arm around her waist and drew her to him, and he faced his mother, who had edged away from Jamie Kunzler, who stood, hands behind his back, at ease.
“This,” Sharkey said.
12
The Year of the Rat
The distant boy appeared climbing onto his outthrust board at the lip of the wave at Pipeline just before sunset—half the western sky glowing dusty pink, the light whittling his body small. He crouched on the board and dropped in and cut left, scissoring the face of the wave.
Sharkey watched with pleasure as though seeing his younger self rejoicing and riding, the small brown buoyant boy in the hollow of the water, racing left, jamming the board down in a well-timed bottom turn and carving upward as he climbed to the foaming lip again and spun, sweeping the board across the curling wave, just escaping the collapse of the overhang in a cutback that took him into the sliding trough. There he attempted to carve upward, and swiveling, he toppled, holding his head. Lost in the froth and boil of broken water, he appeared again, chased by his board, tumbled in the shore break.
“He’s not bad,” Sharkey said.
His new surf buddy, Skippy Lehua, said, “Wahine.”
Sharkey laughed, walking down the beach and seeing the small breasts in the wet shirt, the pretty mouth, the too-big board shorts.
“Surf bunny,” Skippy said.
But before Sharkey got to her she’d hurried up the beach to her pile of clothes and changed into her dry T-shirt. She was Chinese, small, deeply tanned, her black hair cut short, strands of it burned reddish by the sun.
“You almost wiped out on the reef,” Sharkey said.
“I never wipe out. I seen the reef. I bailed.” She looked him up and down; she hadn’t stopped frowning. “You worry I do a face-plant?”
“I’ve done plenty there,” he said. “How do you think I got this nose?”
“Normal haole nose,” she said.
But his talk was simply to detain her while he studied her. Close up he could see she was older than she’d seemed at a distance, a young woman rather than a girl, with slender arms and legs, her shoulders just a little muscular for someone her size, her face catlike and compact, her short hair still plastered to her scalp like a skullcap. She was small and so slim, no wonder he’d taken her for a boy.
Her sweet face and delicate features were in contrast to her tight muscles, flexing now as she rocked on her heels and grasped the leash of her board with her bare toes, passing it with her foot to her hand.
“Monkey,” he said.
She laughed—lovely teeth. “My father, he calls me that.”
“I want to meet your dad,” he said suddenly, and he was not sure why.
She tilted her head at the unexpected remark and scowled. Lit by the setting sun, one eye was tightly shut against t
he glare.
“You know me?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But you’re just in time.”
“For what?”
“Pakalolo. Beer. Grinds. Whatever.”
“You don’t want to meet my dad,” she said. “You a bad influence.”
But she sat on the sand with him while he lit a joint and sucked on it and held the smoke in his lungs, gasping a little.
She said, “That fat one cost you, what? Ten bucks?”
“Five,” he grunted, still trying to hold the smoke in.
“So instead of I try smoke it, give me five instead.”
He hooted at her impudence, then fished in the pocket of his shorts, found his ragged wallet, and handed her a wet five-dollar bill.
“I was joking. I don’t want your money. I got one job.”
“Where you working?”
“Sunset Grille, waiting tables.”
He pinched the joint and slipped the roach into his shirt pocket. “What about a beer?”
“I never drink. Anyway, you don’t want to see it. I come all red in the face, can hardly breathe. You know pakay—bad drinkers.”
“So what do you do for fun?”
“Family.” She slapped the board. “And this.”
“You need to bend your knees more. And lean into the nose of the board. And keep your feet farther apart.” He turned to face the surf. “Too much west in the wave. It’s closing out at the corners. You need to compensate.”
“The big expert,” she said.
He laughed at her defiance, but he was struck by the smoothness of her skin, her hairless arms sparkling with salt crystals, her tiny wrists, her lovely neck. He said, “No. But I know a few moves.”
Now he touched her hand with his pale water-soaked finger and traced her salty forearm to the crook of her elbow and up her brown biceps, and as he did he sensed her stiffening, her shoulders rising, her mouth going grim.
“Not that either,” she said.
He pulled his hand away as if he’d been scalded. He was thrown, her flat voice like a reprimand, the worse because she was so small yet so severe, as though with that touch he’d violated her. And what? Just a friendly poke on her arm.
“I wasn’t suggesting anything.”
She shrugged. “I don’t like people touch me.”
“I’m Joe,” he said.
“I know. Sharkey. I seen you shredding Rocky Rights.” She faced him, squinting when the last of the sun caught her gaze. “I’m May.”
She picked up her board, struggled to keep it under her arm, and muttered something he took to be sarcastic as she walked up the slope of the beach.
“Girl Scout.” It was Skippy, approaching him with a can of beer in his fist.
“What’s wrong with Girl Scouts?”
“No action.”
“You know, that might be cool—the best thing in the world for me,” Sharkey said. “Not a contest.”
It wearied him to think of the jokey negotiating. Worse, it shamed him to think of how easily he’d had sex with girls he’d met casually on the beach, whose names he never knew—and one in particular, a pale Japanese tourist who’d murmured, “Hurry, mister!” because she had a bus to catch. He was aware that since he had won the Pipeline Masters the previous year girls sought him out, and not only for his glory. He always had pakalolo, he had money for beer, he had a car, and one of his sponsors was a sportswear company: he had surf gear, he had free stuff. In return for sex the girl would get a rash guard or a board leash.
May did not want anything, nor did she want to be touched. And she had a job. She was a rare bunny.
“I seen her,” Skippy said. “All the guys wen’ try her. She so straight, brah. You get less.”
“I don’t care if I get less.”
“You get more less.”
“Maybe I don’t want much.”
“Everybody want something,” Skippy said, almost pleading.
“Just a friend,” Sharkey said.
The simplicity of a friend, the purity of it, the relief—wanting nothing from her but companionship. She had promise as a surfer, and he would help her any way he could. She’d been cautious with him on the beach, but she’d been daring, at moments reckless on the wave, her moves exceeding her control. She was not strong, but she was sturdy and small, with a low center of gravity. He’d started that way—independent, a bit defiant, hard to convince, determined, untrusting. He too had hated to be touched.
* * *
She did not show up the next day. Sharkey waited on the beach, assessing the young surfers on the head-high waves. Skippy walked toward him, swigging beer. He finished it and crushed the can in his hand, squeezing it flat.
“You looking for the surf bunny?” he finally said.
Sharkey was always astonished by how keen-eyed and shrewd an apparently illiterate local surfer could be—louts, as he’d heard them described by haoles from town. But with animal cunning and a kind of hunger they could read your mind.
“Da tita,” Sharkey said.
That was what she was, a sister. That was the ideal. And he thought, Maybe that was why I said, “I want to meet your father,” perhaps in a fit of prescience, of a yearning to see a whole family, to join them as a brother and a son.
He found her later at Sunset Grille, not the small dripping surf bunny anymore but taller—her sandals had thick heels, and her purple head wrap gave her a few more inches, with a shapeless untucked blue blouse with loose sleeves, and a skirt—the one piece of women’s clothing that was so rare on the North Shore, so feminine, more teasing than a bikini, sexier than shorts. He was noting that distinction for the first time, seeing how it mattered. In a place where most young women were half naked, clothes were provocative.
She was standing at a table of four people, taking their order, scribbling on a pad. He heard her say brightly, “I’ll bring you your drinks right away.”
As she passed his table, Sharkey said, “What about my drinks?”
“You,” she said, and kept walking. “No make ass.”
But after she’d served the four people their drinks, she walked over to Sharkey, saying, “What can I do for you, mister?”
“Go surfing with me tomorrow.”
“What about a drink?”
“No drink, no grinds.”
“You come all the way from Rocky Point to ask me that?”
“How you know I stay Rocky Point?”
“You’re Joe Sharkey,” she said.
“Yes, I came all the way from Rocky Point to ask you that.”
She folded her arms, the pad in one hand, her pen in the other. Her expression gave nothing away. She might have been tasting something—that same evaluating look.
“I stay town,” she said. “I drive home after work.”
“Really? You don’t live up here?”
“I stay with my ohana,” she said. “Kapahulu side.”
The word ohana was so complete and all-encompassing, with a reassuring softness and density. “Family” didn’t do it justice. It put him in mind of a warm nest.
He was about to speak when there was a cry from across the room. “May!”
Another waiter—a man in an aloha shirt—was gesturing to her with a cocktail shaker.
“See you at Lani’s,” she said. “Pipe’s going to be too gnarly for me.”
* * *
He was early, eager to see her, pleased when she showed up, walking gingerly, toes raised, off the side of the road where the shoulder was rocky, hard on her tender soles. She seemed nonchalant, but when she said, “Aloha,” that touched his heart.
“Come more big out there,” she said, looking past him, speaking with respect for the wave.
“Himalayas,” he said of the offshore wave, rising and curling. “Someday you’ll be riding it. Just not today.”
They were watching a surfer charging the wave and dropping into a bomb, carving under the collapsing lip and soon smothered.
“The left bowl
has a mean pinch. You need speed,” he said. “And there’s a heavy rip out there.”
Another wave rose before the swimming surfer and he dived into the steep slope of its face and vanished as the wave slid toward the smaller shore break, finally crashing, the whole ridge of water disappearing into its own frenzy of froth.
“Someday,” May said.
“Before we go, put your board on the beach. I want to look at your posture.”
May set her board down carefully, burying the fin in the soft sand.
“Show me how you stand normally.”
She stepped onto the board and stood, flexing, crouching a little, lifting her arms.
“Move those feet apart, put your right foot forward. When you get on a wave, try to remember where they are.”
“I try.”
“I think you should have a bigger board.”
“Can barely lift this one.”
“I’ve got one for you.”
He’d brought four boards, different sizes, but all of them longer than May’s board and several of them wider. She stepped on each of them in turn, and finally settled on a wide Willis board that Sharkey carried to the water’s edge for her.
And then she was in the shore break, flopped on the board, paddling into the surf and duck-diving under a wave, reappearing behind it, seated on the board, rocking in the lacework of swirling bubbles, rising and falling, waiting for a ride. Sharkey watched her climb onto the board with a nimble swiftness that impressed him and steer it left until the wave subsided and slowed and she toppled, calling out a word—a squawk—he understood as triumph.
She did not swim in, as he expected; she paddled out again and surfed three more waves until, exhausted, she rode the big board to the beach and leaped off it with a dance step, and pulled the nose of the board onto the sand but no farther, such was its weight.
Sharkey snatched it from the slop of a wave and carried it up the beach.
“I didn’t know,” she began, “with a bigger board,” and gasped for breath.
“The right board can make a big difference.”
“But it more heavy!”
