“They want you to speak.”

Irene opened her mouth to say, Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to speak? But the room was silent, everyone was looking at her, there wasn’t time to argue. Sam rose and helped her out of her chair. She made a quick, nervous gesture to smooth back her hair, to straighten the lei on her chest. As she approached the podium, the vibration of applause met her ears, if not the sound itself. She smiled and laid her clasped hands on the edge of the lectern. Everyone was smiling. A flashbulb went off in the corner of the room. She thought, What in the devil have I got to say to these people?

In the old days, when Irene’s mother was still alive, when Hank Foster’s drinking was just a feature of him and not the ruination of him, Irene’s parents used to have friends over for dinner. Hank Foster was very good at dinner parties. (Irene’s grandparents would say that dinner parties were about the only thing their son-in-law excelled at.) Irene sat at the top of the stairs in her white flannel nightgown and listened to the goings-on in the parlor and at the dinner table, and it was clear that Dad was the star of the show. He wasn’t the only one who spoke—the best actors know how to play off the supporting roles—but he was the one you wanted to hear, he was the one who made you listen and laugh and think and sometimes cry, who sent you away at the end of the evening with that warm, well-fed, optimistic buzz that said, Now that was a darned good party.

Still, Irene was an analytical child, then as now, and as she got older she started to wonder how he did it. What was the secret to his style, how did he keep everyone pitched forward and engaged? Irene compared her father to her teachers at school, who just rattled on about facts and figures, names and dates, and nobody gave a damn. So why did you give a damn when Hank Foster spoke? Because he didn’t explain his ideas in lectures. He explained them in stories. He made everything human. He made you experience his ideas. She asked him about it over breakfast the next morning, and he laughed and agreed. Tell ’em a good story, I always say.

Now it was Irene’s turn. She stood in front of two hundred and twenty members of Honolulu’s best bigwigs and their tanned, expectant wives, everyone straining to hear what this remarkable woman, this aviatrix, this Irene Foster had to say.

Tell ’em a story, Hank Foster said in her ear.

So Irene opened her mouth and talked about that first day surfing with her father, and how it was terrifying at first and then you started to learn the rhythm of the ocean. How, on the way home, her father spoke about the great Hawaiian kings and how you couldn’t rule over other men unless you could master the giant waves of Waikiki and Kahalu’u. So these feats, which some might consider quixotic, are in fact vital to humankind, she said. Someone has to go out there and do them, to prove that they can be done, to plant in every breast, man and woman, the yearning to surf, to fly, to dream.

She spoke for less than ten minutes, and since she still couldn’t hear very well and hadn’t rehearsed anything—hadn’t even imagined she would be called on to speak—she remembers babbling on about the importance of aviation to the future of mankind, and her gratitude to Mr. Mallory and Mr. Morrow for this exhilarating opportunity, and her hope that women around the world would take some inspiration from this flight and consider flying as a possible hobby or even career.

She was shocked, later, to read accounts of this short speech as an “electrifying prophecy” and a “call to arms for those who believe that womanhood’s best days are ahead of her.” Shocked at the thousands of letters she received from women and girls around the world, the tears, the gratitude, all of which seemed addressed to someone else, some public icon who was not Irene at all.

As for Sam, he rode back to the hotel with her in silence. Irene figured he was tired. She was tired too; she was thoroughly exhausted. She had forgotten the flight, she had forgotten Sam’s wife and Sam’s little daughter, she had forgotten just about everything she ever knew. They parted in the hotel lobby—their suites belonged to opposite sides of the Moana, somebody’s pointless notion of propriety—and Irene hardly took time to undress before she staggered into bed, where she slept for an untold block of hours before opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling fan that dragged in circles above her and wonder where the hell she was.

Then she remembered. She was in Hawai’i.

She sat up. The room was dark, the curtains shut tight. It might have been any hour, it might have been noon the next day, but some instinct told Irene the sun hadn’t yet risen. The air was warm and damp and smelled of flowers. Irene should have left the window open to the breeze coming off the ocean. She reached for her watch on the nightstand and discovered it was half past four in the morning. No wonder she was awake! In Los Angeles, it was half past seven. Her brain jumped and sizzled like an electrical circuit. Her body felt as if she’d been overturned by a bulldozer. There was no hope of returning to sleep.

She swung her legs out of bed and staggered toward the window that overlooked the beach. When she drew open the curtains and raised the window sash, she saw that dawn hadn’t yet arrived, wasn’t even a promise, and the old familiar moon still spilled its light across Waikiki Beach and the ocean beyond.

Not so deserted. Irene rested her forearms on the ledge and allowed the breeze to whisk along her skin, and when she opened her eyes again she saw a man on a surfboard atop a ridge of phosphorescent foam, soaring toward shore.

As Irene hurried down the empty stairs and corridors, out the doors to the terrace and beach, she told herself that this surfer was probably not Sam. This was Waikiki, there were plenty of surfers, and Sam ought to be asleep after a day like yesterday. But that was just logic. She knew it was Sam; of course it was Sam. She’d recognized his figure from four stories up. She knew his hair, and the way he moved his board, and the way he positioned his arms. She also knew that he liked to surf early, before the sun came up and the people with it.

She reached the sand just as he came out of the waves, carrying the massive board under his arm like a piece of kindling. His hair was wet; his arms and shoulders ran with salt water. He shook his head and noticed her, and to her relief he grinned.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” she called out.

“Shouldn’t you?”

“I just woke up. Anyway, I’m not the one flying the airplane.”

Sam walked right up to her, and for a second or two Irene thought he might drop a kiss on her cheek or even her lips. Instead he planted the end of the board in the sand and flung himself down.

“You can, if you like,” he said.

She sat down next to him. “Can what?”

“Fly the airplane. I’ve been thinking. Staying awake so long, it’s not safe. We should take turns flying the bird, so the other man can catch a few winks.” He turned his head to the side to look at her. “What do you think?”

“I’m game.”

“I know you’re game. That’s why I asked you along. Say.” Now he rolled the rest of his body on his side so he was facing her, up on one elbow, his wet head propped up on his hand, a yard of pale, moonlit sand between them. “That was some show last night. You were terrific.”

“At the dinner, you mean?”

“When you gave that speech. That was something else. I didn’t know you could put on a show like that.”

“Baloney. I couldn’t even hear my own words.”

“Honest Injun. You socked it to them. I’ll tell you, they loved your act a hell of a lot more than they loved my sorry efforts.”

Irene held up her hand. “Wait a second.”

“What’s that?”

She closed her eyes and fell back on the sand. “I can hear you!”

He laughed and rolled on his back again. “Same thing happened to me when I woke up. Realized I could hear the waves outside the window. Then I figured I might as well ride a few of them, since I wasn’t going back to sleep.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to bring any extra weight.”

“Nah, I borrowed the board from the bellhop. You want to take a turn?”

“I can’t. I’ve got my pajamas on under this thing.” She fingered the sash of her dressing gown.

“So what? I won’t look.”

“Sure you won’t.”

“Well, I might. But it’s only me, right? Your old pal Sam.”

To the left, an indigo light had begun to outline the shape of Diamond Head. The waves thundered quietly toward Irene’s feet. The stars, which had spilled across the black sky so generously a moment ago, were dying off. Irene untied the belt of her dressing gown and sat up.