Last Light (Novella) Read Free

two, listening to the liquid booming of the breakers pounding the shore, the sound of eternity declaring itself—and therefore the voice of hope.
    She walked to Sharkin’, the restaurant, where Rainer waited in a booth. How handsome he was. And how he seemed to adore her when he saw her approaching.

3
Inside the Beautiful Man
    Suspended from the ceiling were life-size sharks that were not plastic replicas, but real specimens preserved by a taxidermist, as sinuous as they would have been when swimming, as if searching now for yet another meal. On the walls hung colorful custom surfboards and photographs of local surfing celebrities dating from the 1930s to the present. Slabs of koa for tabletops, red and lustrous and sensuously figured. Dick Dale and the Deltones, the Beach Boys, the Ventures, Santo & Johnny, the Chantays, Jan and Dean for nostalgic background music. Slices of lime garnishing the beer glasses. It might have seemed too theme-restaurant in style if the details hadn’t been right and real, and if the owners hadn’t been lifelong surfers.
    After a long drink of ice-cold beer, while Rainer scanned the familiar menu, Makani said, “What do you do when you’re not watching girls on the beach?”
    “I’ve been known to paddle out and take some waves myself.”
    “I didn’t see you on the ride today.”
    “You wouldn’t have, not as into it as you were.”
    “I was into it,” she admitted.
    “I suspect you’re always into it. I’ve never seen such concentration.” He put the menu aside. “So where’d you first learn to surf?”
    “Oahu. I was born there.”
    “Hamakuapoko
?
” he asked, naming a popular and sometimes difficult surfing location on Oahu.
    “I learned some there. Here, there, and everywhere on the island, from when I was seven and only bodyboarding.”
    “Nuumehalani
?
” he asked, and then he translated, perhaps to impress her with the fact that he knew more than just the name. “ ‘The heavenly site where you are alone.’ It means alone with the gods, no matter how many people might be there.”
    “Sure. Went there so often, I maybe could have staked a claim to part of the beach.”
    Something like delight enlivened his face. While he tipped his beer to his lips and drank, Makani waited to hear what amused him.
    He licked the foam off his lips and put down the glass and said, “I saw you there once.”
    “I don’t think so. I haven’t been in Oahu in more than five years.”
    “This was ten years ago. I was a month short of my twenty-first birthday, in the islands on business, wanted to catch some waves. A weekday in October. You were with three girls, a couple of boys. You were wearing a yellow bikini.”
    “Must be a million girls with yellow bikinis.”
    “You were riding a Mayhem by Lost Boards,” he said.
    Surprised, she said, “I loved that board. I broke it two months later when I bailed out on a big set.”
    “Couldn’t be two girls in the world who looked like you, with those eyes, and riding a Mayhem.”
    “You recognized me right away, out there today?”
    “At first sight.”
    “Get real.”
    “It’s true.”
    She was flattered, but also embarrassed. “I don’t remember you.”
    “Why would you? You were with your crew, having a great time.”
    That October, ten years earlier, the unwanted gift of psychic insight had not yet been given to her. She had been normal. Free.
    “I admired you from a distance,” he said. “Almost approached you to say
’sup,
or something just as stupid. Then I realized you must be the same age as the other kids, fifteen or sixteen. And I was almost twenty-one. Wouldn’t have been right.”
    Makani didn’t blush easily, but she blushed now.
    “That day,” Rainer said, “you were so radical, so
live,
the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
    Flattery had always embarrassed her. Virtually from the cradle, her mother had taught her that humility was a virtue as important as honesty, just as
she
had been