Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

“Get your face into, you mean, if you mess up,” Oscar said. Charlie gave him the finger. They both laughed. Oscar took another sip of more-or-less Primo. “Besides, we’re not just surf-riders, you know. We’re fishermen, too.”

Charlie grimaced. “Waste time,” he muttered, a handy phrase that could apply to anything you didn’t like. He too took a pull at his miserable excuse for a beer. “Nobody shooting at us up there nowadays.”

“You hope,” Oscar said. “God only knows what the Japanese are doing up there these days, though.” He didn’t say Japs in front of the barkeep, either.

“Hey, come on. Don’t you want to get away from all this for a while? Or are you married to that gal of yours?” Charlie laced his voice with scorn.

It struck home, too; Oscar’s ears heated. “You know I’m not,” he said. He and Susie were getting along pretty well, which was nice, but it wasn’t married. He jabbed a forefinger in Charlie’s direction. “If we go up to the north shore, how are we gonna get there? Even if we could find gas, my Chevy’s got a dead battery and four flats. Hell, it probably doesn’t even have flats any more, the way the… Japanese”-almost slipped there-“are stripping the rubber off cars these days.”

Charlie clucked reproachfully. “And here I thought you were such a big, smart haole. ”

“What do you mean?”

“You were the guy who thought up sailboards,” Charlie said. “We can go on them, catch fish”-he evidently didn’t mind when he was doing it for himself-“sleep on the beach, have a hell of a time. No huhu. ”

He made it sound so easy-probably a lot easier than it really would be. And he tempted Oscar, and Oscar knew damn well he was tempted. He gave back the strongest argument against the trip he could think of: “What do you want to bet the surf will stink?”

“Bet it won’t,” Charlie retorted. “It’s October by now, man. You can get some good sets up there.”

He wasn’t wrong. The waves hadn’t been that high last December, which had disappointed Oscar and Charlie but no doubt relieved the Japanese invaders. Oscar wouldn’t have wanted to try to get a landing craft over thirty-foot breakers, and no doubt the Japs hadn’t wanted to, either. Storms could start up in the Gulf of Alaska this early, and waves from those storms had a straight shot over the Pacific, all the way down to Waimea Bay.

Charlie Kaapu gave him a slightly sloshed grin. “Come on, Oscar. Don’t be a grouch. We pull this off, we talk about it forever. You want to be a fisherman all the goddamn time? Go ride a sampan if you do.” Maybe Oscar would have said no if he hadn’t had some beer himself. But he had, and he didn’t like coming back to Waikiki every day any better than Charlie did. “I’ll do it!” he said. “Let’s leave tomorrow.”

“Now you’re talking! Now you’re cooking with gas!” Charlie’s grin got wider and more gleeful. “Can’t change our minds if we go right away.”

Oscar wasn’t so sure. He would have to tell Susie. When he did, she was liable to change his mind for him. Charlie didn’t begin to get that. Oscar didn’t think Charlie had ever stayed with a girl more than a couple of weeks. Charlie no more understood settling down than a butterfly understood staying with one flower all the time. That wasn’t in a butterfly’s makeup, and it wasn’t in Charlie Kaapu’s, either.

How much of it was in Susie’s nature? There was an interesting question. Oscar told her that evening, over steaks she’d cut from a tuna he’d caught and tomatoes he’d acquired for another, smaller, fish.

He stumbled and stammered more than he wanted to. She looked at him for a while, just looked at him with those eyes that always reminded him of a Siamese cat’s. The mind behind the eyes was often as self-centered as a cat’s, too. But all she said-all she said at first, anyway-was, “Have fun.”

He let out an elated sigh of relief. “Thanks, babe,” he breathed.

“Have fun,” Susie repeated. “And if I’m still here when you get back, we’ll pick it up again. And if I’m not-well, this was fun, too. Mostly, anyhow.” And if that wasn’t praising with faint damn, Oscar had never run into anything that so perfectly fit the bill.

He wondered if he ought to tell her to stay. She’d laugh at him. She was no damn good at doing what anybody told her to. He also wondered if he should can the whole thing with Charlie. The trouble with that was, he didn’t want to. And if he did can it, Susie would get the idea she could run roughshod over him. Whatever else that would be, it wouldn’t be fun.

“I hope you’re still around,” he said after that calculation, all of which took maybe a second and a half. He wondered if he ought to add anything, and decided not to. It said what needed saying.

Susie cocked her head to one side. “I kind of hope I am, too,” she said. “But you never can tell.”

She didn’t yell, I look out for Number One first, last, and always, but she might as well have. It wasn’t anything Oscar didn’t know. Drop Susie anywhere and she’d land on her feet. That was one more way she was like a cat.

She did the dishes as well as she could with cold water and without soap. Neither she nor Oscar had come down with anything noxious, so it was good enough. He dried. He’d become domesticated enough for that. As she handed him the last plate, she asked, “You want one for the road?”

“Sure,” he said eagerly, and she laughed-she’d known he would. They always got on well in bed. This time seemed special even for them. Only afterwards, while he wished for a cigarette, did Oscar figure out why. This was, or might have been, the last time.

Susie leaned over in the narrow bed and kissed him. “Trying to make me want to stick around, are you?” she said, so he didn’t have to worry about Was it good for you, too? tonight. Not that he was going to worry about much right then anyhow. He rolled over and fell asleep.

When he got up the next morning, she was already out the door, heading for her secretarial job in Honolulu. No good-bye kiss, then, and no early morning quickie, either. But a note- Good luck! XOXOXO -made him hope she’d still be here when he came back from the north shore.

Breakfast was cold rice with a little sugar sprinkled on it. It wasn’t corn flakes-and it sure as hell wasn’t bacon and eggs-but it would have to do. He’d just finished when Charlie Kaapu banged on his door.

“Ready?” the hapa -Hawaiian demanded.

“Yeah!” Oscar said. They grinned at each other, then hurried down to Waikiki Beach.

As usual since the occupation, surf fishermen were already casting their bait upon the waters. They moved aside to give Charlie and Oscar room enough to get their sailboards into the Pacific. For a wonder, they also stopped casting till the two boards were out of range.

“How many times have you just missed getting hooked by the ear when you went out?” Oscar asked.

“Missed? This big haole reeled me in once. Bastard was all set to gut me for a marlin till he saw my beak wasn’t big enough,” Charlie Kaapu said.

Oscar snorted. “Waste time, fool!” They both laughed.

Once they got out past the breakers, they set their sails. Oscar was used to sailing out a lot farther than that, to get to a stretch of the Pacific that hadn’t been fished to death. Instead of running with the wind today, he swung the sail at a forty-five degree angle to the wind and skimmed along parallel to the southern coast of Oahu. Charlie’s sailboard glided beside his.

“You want to talk about waste time, talk about fishing,” Charlie said.