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remained clinched.
    “A
year?”
Suddenly I lost my wind.
So she’s been sleeping with the two of us all along? The whole six months I’ve known her?
    “When did you meet Niki?” Captain Jacoby kept in his fighting stance.
    “On Maui,” I said wistfully. “Long ago–so long I can’t recall.”
    The pilot relaxed his stance and grinned. I was no longer a threat. “Who should I tell her stopped by?”
    “Never mind.” I turned and started walking down the stuccoed hall. “She probably wouldn’t remember me anyway.”

IX: Chapter Thirteen: Surfing at Canoes

    When Kai lands in Honolulu after his brief trip to Los Angeles, he returns to his studio apartment and finds a
Star-Bulletin
story about a missing fisherman, who turns out to be the victim’s assistant, Baron Taniguchi. In earlier drafts, however, Kai goes surfing at Canoes to unwind. This nearly three-page interlude contains Kai’s painterly description of a sunset in Waikiki. Though an amateur painter at best, he tries to convey the glow on the water that he also feels inside himself. The last line containing “Missing Fisherman’s Tackle Found” is the point where the passage would have connected to the published version.

(cut from)
thirteen

    My plane landed in Honolulu at five. I knew only one way to clear my head. I rode a shuttle into Waikiki, dumped my bag in my apartment, then toted my longboard to the beach. The sun hung low over the teal horizon–slipping slowly toward the surf.
    I paddled out by the Moana Surfrider to that fabled wave-riding spot called Canoes. Catamarans, outriggers, and booze cruise boats having already cast off for their sunset sails, the beach lay empty except for a few late swimmers near shore. The ocean and air temperatures were the same–about eighty
A warm bath.
    As the sun dipped into amber tinted surf, the shimmering sea actually glowed. When I gazed toward Diamond Head, luminous in the flood of golden light, the rolling swells next door at Queens reflected like mirror. Only a few dapples on the liquid glass from a Trade Wind breeze proved I wasn’t dreaming.
    As this amber calm settled on the lineup, I became one small figure on a vast impressionist canvas of glowing ocean and surf and sky–a sunset scene rendered in warm, passionate hues worthy of Renoir or Monet.
Awesome.
To me, each wave rolling in was an incredible gift. Sets of two and three welled up over the reefs, each comber luring a half dozen surfers. The swell rose slowly, feathering rather than breaking top to bottom. Despite the crowds, I got some nice rides.
    When the sun’s amber arcs faded into a pearly twilight, it was time to head in.
Pau.
The next set looked promising, but I let the first wave go by. Several surfers paddled for it. The second wave came and lured those missed the first. I let the second one go by too.
    Only a pair of us remained for the third wave. I stroked hard and dropped in, feeling my board scoot forward in a rush. Rising to my feet, I noticed I had company. The other guy suddenly dropped in right in front of me.
Hey, you!
I had every right to knock him off his board. Instead I gave him stink eye and turned into a broken section of the wave. When I glanced back he was walking the nose when his board pearled and shot tail-first
–Look out!–
into the air.
    The wave was mine. It reformed and I rode it all the way in.
    Longboard dripping under my arm I stepped with light feet up Waikiki Beach–
stoked
from my last ride–toward the grand, white-columned Moana Hotel, home for forty years of radio’s “Hawaii Calls.” All along the beach, oceanfront bars and restaurants were hopping. The aromas of rum and coconut milk and pineapple filled the air. Slack key guitars twanged. A Hawaiian singer crooned in falsetto that classic kitsch tune still haunting me from my breathless evening with Adrienne:
“Moonlight and you in blue Hawaii . . . .”
    The song’s effect was different now. Melancholy, it made me feel. And