“Peace and quiet,” Oscar said, more plaintively than usual. “I told that Shirley it was only for fun, but she didn’t want to listen.” He took a hand off the wheel to touch his right ear, the only part of his anatomy the vase had grazed. Four inches to the left and he would have been very unhappy. As things were, he wouldn’t be able to go barefoot in his apartment till he swept up all the broken glass.

Charlie Kaapu laughed at him from the back seat. “Women hear what they want to hear. Don’t you know that by now?”

“I ought to,” Oscar said. “I mean, she was fine for a week or two, but forever?” He shook his head. “She’d drive me nuts. Hell, I’d drive her nuts.”

“They put out for you, they think it’s gotta be for life,” Charlie said, and then, philosophically, “She’s gone now. You don’t gotta worry about it no more.”

“Yeah.” Oscar spoke with a mixture of relief and regret. He was glad Shirley’d got on the liner and out of his hair-no doubt of that. But he still wished things had gone better. He didn’t like ugly scenes. They weren’t his style. A kiss on the cheek, a pat on the fanny, a good-bye from the pier as the ship headed back to the mainland… That was how he liked things to go, and how they usually went.

He got out of Honolulu, went past the back side of Pearl Harbor, and drove up the Kamehameha Highway toward the north coast. The drive wasn’t so pleasant as he would have wanted. He got stuck behind a snorting convoy of olive-drab Army trucks chugging up to Schofield Barracks. Not only did they slow him down, but the exhaust made his head ache. He hadn’t had that much to drink the night before… had he?

Pineapple fields stretched out along the right side of the road, pineapple and sugarcane to the left. Most of the time, he would have smelled the damp freshness of growing things. Diesel stink made an inadequate substitute.