The Strokes - "Call It Fate, Call It Karma". For eleven years, Charles has lived near the Maui beach. He has never regretted it - "Not even once," he tells Moe and Freda, the tourists who are briefly his neighbours, "not even one single time". Charles came to Maui after Suzanne passed away. "She wasn't my wife but she was near as, if you understand," he says. Moe and Freda nod. They do understand. Charles is wearing a size XL navy blue tank top and white beach shorts. His cap says Maui nō ka 'oi, with an embroidered coconut. His beach shoes are high-tech, with articulated toes. "So you said the best snorkeling is on the right side of the beach?" Moe asks. It has been ten minutes since he asked the question, and Charles replied, instantly, with an engineer's certitude, "Right side." Charles said this even though Charles has never snorkeled. "My hip, you understand," but since he moved to the Maui beach, eleven years ago, he has nurtured certain traditions. One of them involves macadamia nuts and All Bran cereal; another involves only-once-a-week showers; and a third consists of every afternoon's activity. After lunch, if it isn't raining, he drags a rattling deck-chair to his rattling corner of the beach and he watches. He sits and watches, with mirror shades. He doesn't read and he doesn't swim - he just watches the bouncing, bounding, tanned and pale bodies, festooned in swimgear, glad with living, forgetting for a moment, in the sunsets and surf, that there is such a thing as grim forever death. [buy]