“Just a hunch.” She glanced to the car, because her cheeks had turned a little warm. “I’d better be off.”

Mr. Mallory tucked the kitten back into his left elbow and touched the brim of his cap with his other hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Foster.”

“Likewise, Mr. Mallory.”

“Suppose I’ll be seeing you around, some morning.”

“I’m here most mornings. When I can get the car started, anyway.”

Mr. Mallory stroked the kitten with his large, bony fingers. He squinted at some point over her shoulder, toward the ocean. Irene shifted her feet.

“Look, Miss Foster. I . . .”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. Glad to meet you at last, that’s all.”

Irene opened her mouth to say Likewise and realized she was only repeating herself, the same bland word. Instead she said, “I suppose we were bound to meet sometime, both of us surfing here like this,” which wasn’t exactly true.

But Mr. Mallory nodded, just as if their meeting were indeed inevitable, and said, “I guess you’re right.” He turned to his car, a handsome Nash Six, canary yellow, four or five years old in Irene’s estimation. Took a step or two. Stopped and turned and touched his cap again, and for some reason this image of Mr. Mallory stamped itself on her brain, tanned and sober, touching his cap while the rising sun tinted everything gold, so that ever after, when she thought of him, or when she sat in the dawn, he made this picture in her mind.

She waved and got inside her own car, her father’s old Tin Lizzie held together with baling wire, and set the choke. Went around to turn the crank but though the engine turned and turned it wouldn’t start. Mr. Mallory noticed her trouble in the nick of time and came over from his Nash, which had started impeccably from its automatic ignition. He opened the hood and they peered inside together.

“Spark plug’s blown out,” she said.

“Got a spare?”

“No. You?”

“’Fraid not. But they’ll have plenty at the airfield. I’m headed out there now.”

“Airfield?”

“Where I work.” Mr. Mallory straightened from the innards of the Model T and smiled at her confusion, for maybe the first time since hauling her surfboard up the dunes, and Irene thought it was worth the sacrifice of a mere commonplace spark plug to experience a smile like that. He yanked down the hood and dusted off his hands.

“I’m a pilot,” he said.

And that was when Irene put one and one together, Mallory and flying.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re Sam Mallory. The Sam Mallory.”

He scratched his head and peered at the sun. “Does it make a difference?”

Irene bent down to pick up Sandy, who had escaped from the Nash and wandered across the grit to curl around Irene’s ankles. “Of course not,” she lied.

Hanalei, Hawai’i

October 1947

The boy sprawled beside me is the kind who sleeps deep, apparently. I like that in a fellow. You can slither out of bed, dress and brush your teeth, even write him a tender good-bye note if you’re so inclined, and he won’t so much as flutter an eyelid.

Dear Boy [I can’t remember his name],

That was too lovely for words and just what a girl needs. A thousand thanks for the ride out there [he captained the boat from Oahu yesterday afternoon] and the ride in here. I enclose a five dollar bill. As I tried to explain last night, I might allow my escorts to pay for dinner, but I always buy my own drinks. You can keep the change for good luck.

Yours always,

Janey

I lay the note on the nightstand and pull the camera from my pocketbook. My companion’s all tangled up in the sheets like a Bernini god, except tanned. I find an angle that preserves his modesty. The light’s not terrific, but I open the aperture as far as it will go and hold myself steady.

Click.

Then I steal out the door before he starts to miss me.

Among the many gifts I received from that nice young man last night, he told me where to find Irene Lindquist. I don’t believe he meant to do that, but when a fellow’s plied with enough drink and female companionship, his lips will loosen in more ways than one.

A good thing, too, because the rest of the locals in this two-bit Hawaiian village weren’t inclined to admit she exists, let alone lives among them, even though I know for a fact that Lindquist, together with her husband, Olle, runs an island-hopping operation called Kauai Sky Tours out of an airfield five miles away. By the time the good captain sauntered through the door of the town watering hole last night at a quarter past nine—acting as if he owned the joint, and it turned out he did—I had just about given up and prepared myself to walk those five miles through the darkness to wait for Lindquist at her place of business, since I wasn’t getting anywhere else fast. Tenacity, that’s what separates success from defeat. Also a willingness to do what’s necessary, though I admit that going to bed with this particular informant wasn’t exactly a noble sacrifice, except of sleep.

Outside, the sun’s just begun to color the eastern horizon. The air tastes of the tropics, a pleasant change from my previous assignment in Nuremburg, Germany, which stank of rain and human decay. This place, you’d think it never heard of war. The vegetation tumbles from every nook, streaked with flowers; the lane meanders toward the beach as if it’s got all the time in the world. While the birds twitter and toot in abundance around me, there’s neither sight nor smell of another human being. Just the scent of sultry flowers and salty ocean. The sound of my own footsteps on the packed earth.

Lindquist likes to surf in the morning, before anyone else is up. So my sea captain informed me last night, anyway, under a certain amount of duress. He wouldn’t reveal exactly where she surfs, but my money’s on the beach. Isn’t yours? Anyway, I’ve already discovered, in the course of my research, that Hanalei Bay is favored territory among those who enjoy the act of skidding on the ocean. Stands to reason I should find Irene Lindquist (not her real name, by the way, but we’ll discuss that later) somewhere along that sweep of sand, and it suits my purpose that we should meet at dawn, before the sea is peopled.

Now, my informant’s bedroom isn’t far from this beach, because nothing in Hanalei is far from the beach. Already the waves beat incessantly against my ears. Another hundred yards and the Pacific Ocean will wash up before me, and there she’ll soar, Irene Lindquist herself, right across its surface, hiding in plain sight. Assuming that dear, strapping boy was telling me the truth last night, of course. Boys will say anything when you have them at your mercy. But I have the feeling this one was on the level. He has an earnest face; the kind of face I’d like to photograph, if some grander mystery weren’t consuming my imagination at the moment.

At first glance, the beach appears empty. The waves hurtle in from the northwest, golden-pink in the rising sun, but nobody rides them. On the other hand, Hanalei Bay swoops down in a magnificent arc, and there’s plenty more beach to explore. If I were a surfer, I might know where to go looking for this woman, who has surfed all her life. Where the best waves form, according to the laws of physics and geography. But I don’t surf and never have. I’ve got my instincts, that’s all, my instincts and a Rand McNally map, and it seems to me that the beach to the right ends in some kind of river mouth, while the beach to the left winds all the way around to a cliff called Makahoa Point, if I’m interpreting Rand McNally correctly, which I am. Maps and I, we get along pretty well.

To the left it is.

The sand is soft and cool, like powder. I remove my shoes—a pair of ragged espadrilles I acquired in Spain—and enjoy the way this unfamiliar substance pools around my feet. The dawn grows bright behind me. Ahead, the beach turns northward and narrows as it approaches the cliffs at the tip of Makahoa Point. Thus far, no Lindquist. Nobody at all. I might be the only person left alive after some great epidemic. Of course, it’s also possible that Lindquist has had some advance notice of my arrival, and chooses not to expose herself to discovery. You ask a few questions in a tiny, no-account burg like this one, where everybody’s knee-deep in each other’s beeswax, and it doesn’t take long for word to get around. And believe me, I understand the impulse to run for cover at the first sign of predators. I’m camera-shy myself. Would a million times rather stand on the taking side of the lens than the giving, and I don’t have half as much to hide as this Irene Lindquist. If indeed she’s the woman I’m searching for.