Fear Nothing

impatient with the nearer view and favors the sky, the sea, and the shimmering lights of Moonlight Bay, which look more distant than three-quarters of a mile.

Buying time to settle my nerves, I leaned my bike against the front porch railing and walked past the cottage, to the end of the point. There, I stood with Orson at the top of a slope that dropped thirty feet to the beach.

The surf was so slow that you would have to work hard to catch a wave, and the ride wouldn’t last long. It was almost a neap tide, though this was the fourth quarter of the moon. The surf was a little sloppy, too, because of the onshore wind, which was blustery enough to cause some chop out here, even though it was all but dead in town.

Offshore wind is best, smoothing the ocean surface. It blows spray from the crest of the waves, makes them hold up longer, and causes them to hollow out before they break.

Bobby and I have been surfing since we were eleven: him by day, both of us by night. Lots of surfers hit the waves by moonlight, fewer when the moon is down, but Bobby and I like it best in storm waves without even stars.

We were grommets together, totally annoying surf mongrels, but we graduated to surf nazis before we were fourteen, and we were mature boardheads by the time Bobby graduated high school and I took my equivalency degree for home education. Bobby is more than just a boardhead now; he’s a surf mensch, and people all over the world turn to him to find out where the big waves will be breaking next.

God, I love the sea at night. It is darkness distilled into a liquid, and nowhere in this world do I feel more at home than in these black swells. The only light that ever arises in the ocean is from bioluminescent plankton, which become radiant when disturbed, and although they can make an entire wave glow an intense lime green, their brightness is friendly to my eyes. The night sea contains nothing from which I must hide or from which I must even look away.

By the time I walked back to the cottage, Bobby was standing in the open front door. Because of our friendship, all the lights in his house are on rheostats; now he had dimmed them to the level of candlelight.

I haven’t a clue as to how he knew that I had arrived. Neither I nor Orson had made a sound. Bobby just always knows.

He was barefoot, even in March, but he was wearing jeans instead of swim trunks or shorts. His shirt was Hawaiian — he owns no other style — but he had made a concession to the season by wearing a long-sleeve, crewneck, white cotton sweater under the short-sleeve shirt, which featured bright quizzical parrots and lush palm fronds.

As I climbed the steps to the porch, Bobby gave me a shaka, the surfer hand signal that’s easier to make than the sign they exchange on Star Trek, which is probably based on the shaka. Fold your middle three fingers to your palm, extend your thumb and little finger, and lazily waggle your hand. It means a lot of things — hello, what’s up, hang loose, great ride — all friendly, and it will never be taken as an insult unless you wave it at someone who isn’t a surfer, such as an L.A. gang member, in which case it might get you shot dead.

I was eager to tell him about everything that had transpired since sundown, but Bobby values a laid-back approach to life. If he were any more laid back, he’d be dead. Except when riding a wave, he values tranquility. Treasures it. If you’re going to be a friend of Bobby Halloway’s, you have to learn to accept his view of life: Nothing that happens farther than half a mile from the beach is of sufficient importance to worry about, and no event is solemn enough or stylish enough to justify the wearing of a necktie. He responds to languid conversation better than to chatter, to indirection better than to direct statements.

“Flow me a beer?” I asked.

Bobby said, “Corona, Heineken, Lowenbrau?”

“Corona for me.”

Leading the way across the living room, Bobby said, “Is the one with the tail drinking tonight?”

“He’ll have a Heinie.”

“Light or dark?”

“Dark,” I said.

“Must’ve been a rough night for dogs.”

“Full-on gnarly.”

The cottage consists of a large living room, an office where Bobby tracks waves worldwide, a bedroom, a kitchen, and one bath. The walls are well-oiled teak, dark and rich, the windows are big, the floors are slate, and the furniture is comfortable.

Ornamentation — other than the natural setting — is limited to eight astonishing watercolors by Pia Klick, a woman whom Bobby still loves, though she left him to spend time in Waimea Bay, on the north shore of Oahu. He wanted to go with her, but she said she needed to be alone in Waimea, which she calls her spiritual home; the harmony and beauty of the place are supposed to give her the peace of mind she requires in order to decide whether or not to live with her fate. I don’t know what that means. Neither does Bobby. Pia said she’d be gone a month or two. That was almost three years ago. The swell at Waimea comes out of extremely deep water. The waves are high, wall-like. Pia says they are the green of translucent jade. Some days I dream of walking that shore and hearing the thunder of those breakers. Once a month, Bobby calls Pia or she calls him. Sometimes they talk for a few minutes, sometimes for hours. She isn’t with another man, and she does love Bobby. Pia is one of the kindest, gentlest, smartest people I have ever known. I don’t understand why she’s doing this. Neither does Bobby. The days go by. He waits.

In the kitchen, Bobby plucked a bottle of Corona from the refrigerator and handed it to me.

I twisted off the cap and took a swallow. No lime, no salt, no pretension.

He opened a Heineken for Orson. “Half or all?”

I said, “It’s a radical night.” In spite of my dire news, I was deep in the tropical rhythms of Bobbyland.

He emptied the bottle into a deep, enameled-metal bowl on the floor, which he keeps for Orson. On the bowl he has painted ROSEBUD in block letters, a reference to the child’s sled in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane.

I have no intention of inducing my canine companion to become an alcoholic. He doesn’t get beer every day, and usually he splits a bottle with me. Nevertheless, he has his pleasures, and I don’t intend to deny him what he enjoys. Considering his formidable body weight, he doesn’t become inebriated on a single beer. Dare to give him two, however, and he redefines the term party animal.

As Orson noisily lapped up the Heineken, Bobby opened a Corona for himself and leaned against the refrigerator.

I leaned against the counter near the sink. There was a table with chairs, but in the kitchen, Bobby and I tend to be leaners.

We are alike in many ways. We’re the same height, virtually the same weight, and the same body type. Although he has very dark brown hair and eyes so raven-black that they seem to have blue highlights, we have been mistaken for brothers.

We both have a collection of surf bumps, too, and as he leaned against the refrigerator, Bobby was absent- mindedly using the bottom of one bare foot to rub the bumps on the top of the other. These are knotty calcium deposits that develop from constant pressure against a surfboard; you get them on your toes and the tops of your feet from paddling while in a prone position. We have them on our knees, as well, and Bobby has them on his bottom ribs.

I am not tanned, of course, as Bobby is. He’s beyond tanned. He’s a maximum brown sun god, year round, and in summer he’s well-buttered toast. He does the mambo with melanoma, and maybe one day we’ll die of the same sun that he courts and I reject.

“There were some unreal zippers out there today,” he said. “Six-footers, perfect shape.”

“Looks way slow now.”

“Yeah. Mellowed out around sunset.”

We sucked at our beers. Orson happily licked his chops.

“So,” Bobby said, “your dad died.”

I nodded. Sasha must have called him.

“Good,” he said.