Joe Burke's Last Stand

Copyright (c) 2003 by John Moncure Wetterau

Joe Burke's Last Stand

Every Story Is A Love Story

John Moncure Wetterau

(c) 2000 by John Moncure Wetterau

Library of Congress Number: 00-193498

ISBN #: Hardcover 0-7388-1663-9

ISBN #: Softcover 0-9729587-2-X

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License. Essentially, anyone is free to copy, distribute, or perform this copyrighted work for non-commercial uses only, so long as the work is preserved verbatim and is attributed to the author. To view a copy of this license, visit

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Creative Commons 559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, California 94305, USA.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, or to any events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by:

Fox Print Books 137 Emery Street Portland, Maine 04102

207.775.6860

foxprintbooks@earthlink.net

Thanks to Larry Dake, Christopher Evers, Bruce Gordon, Majo Keleshian,
Jane Lowenstein, Sylvester Pollet, and Nancy Wallace for valuable
suggestions and invaluable support. Gino's poem, "Aesthetic," is by
Sylvester Pollet and is used with his permission.

Cover print: copy after Ogata Korin, 1658-1716.

This book is for Rosy

Joe Burke's Last Stand

1

"My rig's a little old, but that don't mean she's slow—Batman—that don't mean she's slow." Joe Burke was singing, driving south. His rig was a blue Ford pickup with a battered cap on the back. Batman, all six inches of him, was propped upright on the dash.

Joe followed signs to the Weston Priory, climbing through woods and out onto an open plateau. A cluster of wooden buildings stood near a pond. A monk was raking leaves from a path that curved around the pond like a trotter's track. Joe got out, stretched, and entered a gift shop by the parking lot. A middle aged woman seated next to the cash register closed her book.

"Where is everybody? Rehearsing?" She smiled slightly and remained silent. "Lovely day," Joe said.

"Yes, isn't it."

He bought a cassette made by the monks. "A bit stagy, Batman," he said climbing into the truck and closing the door. "We must continue to seek truth and contend with the forces of evil." Batman stared resolutely ahead.

Joe cut over to the interstate. When he reached the highway, he played the cassette: resonant voices and a single guitar, encouraging. "Sappy," Ingrid had declared impatiently. Joe smiled. She was free of his taste in music now—had been for a year and a half.

At Brattleboro, he turned off the highway, rented a motel room, and walked into town. He found a brew pub where he sat at a corner table with a pint of ruby brown ale—cool and fresh, the malt veiled with lacy astringent hops. He had another and watched the bartender talk on the telephone, her elbows and breasts on the bar, a vertical worry line dropping between her eyes. She was about his daughter Kate's age. The room began to fill, the nasal sound of New York mixing with flat New England tones. The Connecticut River valley narrows in Brattleboro, a gateway to upper New England for New Yorkers. He was going through in the other direction, trying to figure out what to do next. What do you do at 52 when the kids are grown? The same things all over again?

He took out a notebook and remembered the drive—the blue sky, the red and gold ridges, small fields tilting greenly in their arms. On such a day, one could almost be forgiven, he wrote.

A blonde woman with a wry smile, an experienced charmer, sat down at the next table. He considered having another ale, making friends with her and starting a new life in Brattleboro or over the mountain in Bennington, but he knew that he was fooling himself. It was too familiar; he might as well have stayed in Maine.

"Gotta go," he said to her sadly. She raised her eyebrows, acknowledging the human condition, and he walked back to the motel. At the edge of town, trees were dark behind a body of water that was platinum and still. Fish broke the surface with soft slaps in the centers of expanding circles. Ansel Adams might have caught the many shades of silver just before the lights went out.

The next afternoon Joe was across the Hudson, driving through the mountains on roads that were more crowded than he remembered. There were many new houses and the trees were larger. He stopped on the hill by his grandparents' old house in Woodstock. Captain Ben had retired during the depression to that rocky hillside and made a homely paradise of gardens and fruit trees. A slow silent job. Emily was beside him, canning, cooking, and mothering. They said you couldn't grow pears around there. We ate a lot of pears, Joe thought. And plums, apples, rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus . . . The house smelled of geraniums from the solar greenhouse that his grandfather built onto the dining room long before anyone ever heard of a solar greenhouse.

Captain Ben was a son of an old Virginia family who in better days had owned Monticello. Lee's Lieutenants lined a living room shelf. Noblesse oblige came with mother's milk. You are born privileged; you have an obligation. He had a company garden when he was serving in the Philippines—men who got out of line did time weeding and afterwards ate fresh vegetables. Once a year he would go to town and whip the touring chess master who was playing 20 people at once. "Pawn to King's four," he taught Joe, "control the center." Joe opened with pawn to Queen's knight four, bringing a smile. "Learn the hard way, huh?"

He died when Joe was in seventh grade, and Joe spent his high school years with his grandmother, well cared for, but living more or less alone. She remarried about the time Joe graduated. The new husband moved Lee's Lieutenants to the attic and Joe moved out. The house that Joe remembered had disappeared inside a gaudy renovation, but the mountains hadn't changed. What is it about land, Joe wondered. It gets inside you, deep as your loves, maybe deeper.

He ate dinner in town. He saw Aaron Shultis across the street, but Aaron didn't recognize him after twenty-five years. Joe drove back into the hills and parked by a narrow lane across from the one room schoolhouse where he had gone to fifth grade. He fell asleep in a cradle of memories: fucking Sally in this very spot . . . apple fights, BB gun fights, the sound of the schoolhouse bell calling them out of the woods after a long recess.

A steady rain was bringing down the leaves when Joe woke up. He drove over to Morgan's house and pounded on the door. When Morgan opened, Joe could smell breakfast cooking.

"Joe, well, well. What brings you out in the rain?"

"Hey, Morgan, bacon! They say you're cooking bacon."

"They're right. Come on in."

"Remember that time you were hitching to Florida and you met those guys heading for Georgia because they'd heard that a Salvation Army cook was serving meat?"

"Some trip that was." Morgan was grayer but still powerful. "So, what are you doing?"

"Starting over. I've been saving since Ingrid and I split up. I put a bed in the back of the truck, got rid of a bunch of stuff, and here I am."

"When did you leave? You want some eggs?"

"Three days ago. That's affirmative on the eggs," Joe said. "I've had it with computer programming. Jamming all that stuff in your head messes you up. You wake up at two in the morning and start working."

"Good money," Morgan said.

"For good reason."

"Did you sell everything?"

"Just about. Kept my tools, a couple of boxes of books, some clothes.
Kept the cat, Jeremy, but he jumped ship on Deer Isle at my father's.
Oh yeah, my notebooks, a footlocker full—I was wondering if you'd
stash them for me. I'd hate to lose them; they go all the way back."

"Sure. Maybe you'll write a book one of these days."

"I don't know; all I ever do is look at things and try to describe them. Should have been a painter like my father. No talent, though. Anyway, after I took off, I went up to see him and Ann on Deer Isle. He gave me a painting for Kate."

"How is he?"

"Going with his boots on. Just before I left, he gave me a drink from his stash of Laphroiag in the barn. We had a country music toast. 'Younger women, faster horses, older whiskey, and more money,' he said. I asked him if 'children, old dogs, and watermelon wine' wouldn't cut it."

"Tom T. Hall songs," Morgan said.

"Right. My father just laughed. I think he was trying to tell me something but didn't know how."

"Hard to communicate at this point, I suppose," Morgan said. "What's next?"

"Drive out and see Kate. Me and Batman—he's riding on the dash." Joe gave Morgan the cassette from the Weston Priory. "Try this some stormy night."

"O.K.," Morgan said. "The damnedest thing . . . I bought a tape of Chesapeake Bay sea chanteys a while back. One of the voices was familiar. I looked on the picture of the group and there was Jason! I hadn't even noticed."

"Best banjo player I ever heard," Joe said. "He disappeared into the world of big biz. What a waste. I thought he'd given up on music."

"Why don't you take it? I'll pick up another."

" Good deal, a trade. So, how's Daisy doing? I was thinking of dropping in and saying hello."

"She's in France. She's fine." Morgan took a piece of bacon. "She and
Wes have stuck together. Of course it helps if you can nip off to
Provence whenever you feel like it. Their daughter, Yvonne, just got
married. Jake is in New Zealand, I think. Nice kids."

"New Zealand? That's where Max is, Ingrid's son." Joe hesitated. "I remember when Daisy was choosing. She said, 'I feel happy and excited when I'm with you, and I feel warm and safe when I'm with Wes."' Joe shook his head. "Knowing what I do now, about women that is, I'd say she made the mainstream choice. She'd have had rice and beans with me."

"Red beans and rice aren't bad," Morgan said.

"True. We could have gone the distance, though. Strange how you know these things . . . Not that I haven't had good relationships since. I mean, Sally and I had Kate, and then I had the chance to be part of Maxie's life. I wouldn't trade that for anything, but . . . So, how's your love life?"

Morgan's eyebrows raised. "Prospects are bright," he said.

"Prospects, plural?"

"Singular," he said.

"Yok, excellent. And the book, how's that coming along?"

"Slowly. My publisher's annoyed, but he's used to delays."

"And The Houses of the Hudson Valley aren't going anywhere."

"I wish that were true," Morgan said. "They're going downhill. On the other hand, if they weren't, I wouldn't have any work."

"Rot," Joe said, "your enemy."

"Neglect," Morgan said.

They finished breakfast and hauled Joe's footlocker to the barn. "I'm going to have a book shop when I retire," Morgan said.

"The fortress and the cork," Joe said, putting down one end of the footlocker in a room filled with books. "Two good strategies: strong walls or travel light, bob up and down in the heavy weather."

"You always did travel light," Morgan said, "but you probably don't bob as well as you did." Joe hopped on both feet to demonstrate his buoyancy.

"Thanks for the reminder." Departures required gallantry. "Good eggs.
Listen, if you get a chance . . . give Daisy my love. Tell her
nothing's changed." Morgan nodded and they walked out to the truck.
"Take care of yourself," Joe said. "Hang in there."

"Good luck," Morgan said.

Joe drove down the mountain in the rain. When he reached Route 212, he turned towards Phoenicia. His old high school district covered a thousand square miles; half an hour later as he crossed its western boundary, he felt a twinge of nostalgia and relief. It was like graduating again; his mind was free to drift forward.

At tech school in the Air Force, he used to spend Friday and Saturday nights in the BX with a guy named Shannon. The BX was always jammed with G.I.'s drinking cheap beer and eating French fries. One man tried to keep up with the empties and the dirty dishes. He was bald, slow moving, friendly, and particular. His cart was organized to hold as much as possible on each trip. It seemed like the original dead end job, but he did it well, never flustered, taking pride in his cart and the tables that were clean for moments. He told Joe once that he was saving money to buy tools so that he could help in his friend's garage.

As Joe drove, the rain and fog lifted, revealing lonely bays and wooded hillsides. Route 30 curved endlessly along the banks of the Pepacton Reservoir. Joe had the highest entrance score they'd ever recorded in that Air Force tech school. Sergeant Quimby told him, reading it, unbelieving. Joe was an athlete, a most likely to succeed guy; yet there he was every weekend in the BX with Shannon, fascinated by the aging bus boy loading his cart. And Shannon? He was from Ten Mile Creek, south of Pittsburgh; what had happened to him? Joe decided to cut through Cat Hollow and over to Roscoe on Route 17. He followed 17 west, taking his time, enjoying the October colors. He had lunch in Hancock and stayed overnight in a motel outside Painted Post.

The next afternoon he was in Ten Mile Creek, coal country. A black hill in the distance, the highest point around, turned out to be a slag pile. Containers suspended from cable were hauled up the pile, tipped over, and returned upside down. The top of a silo, last sign of a buried barn, waited a few feet above a spreading shoulder of slag. The air was gritty and had a sulfurous tang.

He stopped outside an American Legion hall and walked into a dimly lit bar. In one corner a fat man sat upright before a video poker machine. Only his right hand moved as he inserted quarters, one after another. Joe sat at the bar, three stools down from a short guy who was staring over the top of a half empty glass of beer. The bartender moved a step in his direction and waited.

"I'll have a beer," Joe said, putting a five dollar bill in front of him. The bartender was about forty. He had a blonde crew cut and a face like a poker chip, Robert Redford run into a door. He set the beer down, made change, and resumed his position. It was oddly as though he hadn't moved at all.

"I was in the service—with a guy named Shannon. Long time ago. Said he was from around here." Silence. Friendly place.

"Which service?" Shorty didn't turn his head.

"Air Force."

"That'd be Bobby," Shorty said.

"Yeah," Joe said, "Bobby."

"Jacky, he went in the Navy."

"Bobby was a good guy. He around?" Shorty glanced at the bartender.
They had a committee meeting.

"California," the bartender said.

"California," Shorty confirmed. "Stayed in and retired. He's out there cashing checks with eagles on 'em."

"Shit," Joe said. "Would'a liked to seen him."

"Two more, Floyd." The gambler said, putting a twenty on the bar.

The bartender laid two quarter rolls soundlessly next to the bill and asked, "You come around just to look up Bobby Shannon?"

"I, ah, well, got sick of working. Had some money saved. Thought I'd take a break, look around." Shorty shook his head. "I mean, what do you do after . . . " Joe meant, after you'd done pretty well, at least compared to these guys.

The bartender said:

"Beware of gnawing the ideogram of nothingness:

Your teeth will crack. Swallow it whole, and you've a treasure

Beyond the hope of Buddha and the Mind. The east breeze

Fondles the horses ears: how sweet the smell of plum."

"What!?"

"Mitsuhiro, 17th century," the bartender said. For an instant his eyes came at Joe like horses jumping the gate.

"Who are you?" Joe asked.

"Pretty Boy Floyd," said Shorty. "Best athlete ever come out of this town." There was a blaze of sound from the poker machine followed by a crash of quarters. Shorty turned his head. "I'll take some of that, Earl."

"Can't win if you don't play," Earl said.

"Used to pitch for the Pirates," Shorty said. The bartender's expression didn't change. Joe noticed that he stood balanced on both feet.

"Why aren't you teaching in a university somewhere?" Joe asked him.

"You know Bob Dylan's line about the difference between hospitals and universities?"

"No."

"More people die in universities. Also . . . " He did a quick soft-shoe shuffle. "I drink, so be it." A trace of amusement crossed his face. Mitsuhiro, Dylan, and Mr. Bojangles; one, two, three. A silent ump pumped his right fist. Joe was gone.

"Let me buy a round," Joe said. About four beers later he got into the truck, blinking. "Jesus, Batman, Ten Mile Creek, hell of a place!" He made it to a motel and called it a day.

The next morning he had a big breakfast. The grip of the Northeast was loosening. Driving all day was beginning to seem natural. "Roll 'em, Batman," he said, "Bach first. Then, we'll move on to Gabby Pahinui, get into Willy Nelson, and The Grateful Dead. We've got a delivery for Kate." The truck was running great. Traffic was light. Ohio went by, and Indiana, like a dream.

2

Madison, Minneapolis, Fargo, the long run over to Missoula, Spokane,
Seattle, finally. Joe parked by Ivar's and stretched, tired but
satisfied. He was meeting Kate for lunch where they could look across
Puget Sound.

A few minutes later, Kate appeared from behind a group of tourists.
They had a reunion hug.

"How was the trip, Dad?"

"Pretty good. Took the northern route, right straight across. Let's eat." They were in time to get a window table.

"So, long drive," Kate said.

"I was up for it. It's nice to see the country that way once in a while—you forget how big it is. Those high rolling plains in Montana are something else. They'll have snow in a couple of weeks. I could use some new tapes and a book or two."

"You know the place: Elliot Bay Book Company."

"Yeah, I thought I'd check it out this afternoon. I'm going to get a room at the Edgewater and be Mr. Luxury for a couple of days."

"You could stay with me. Audrey's on a trip for a week; it wouldn't be any hassle."

"Thanks, but I don't want to be in the way . . . I'd take some home cooking, though."

"How about tomorrow night? You could meet Jackson."

"Sounds good. What happened to Rolf?"

"Oh, Rolf. We have lunch. I love Rolf, but he doesn't really want to live in this period. That's what he calls it, 'This period.' He's happier in bookstores reading about early Scandinavian immigrants."

"I was just reading about a Swede who was making cider with a hand press he bought for a quarter when he was 12. It was in the paper this morning. He'd been married 50 years. Said his wife was Norwegian but she was taking pills for it." Kate laughed, a full wraparound laugh. She had her mother's coloring—chestnut hair, light brown eyes, and rosy cheeks.

"You'll like Jackson; he's very different."

"I'm sure I will. I liked Rolf—he was appealingly gloomy."

"Jackson's an artist. He gets mad when I say that; he says he's a craftsman. You should see the things he makes: jewelry, furniture—he can make anything."

"Speaking of art, your grandfather gave you a painting. It's in the truck."

"Oh! Is it good?"

"I like it. I don't know if you will."

"Oh, Dad! Don't be such a parent. If you like it, I know it's good." The fish sandwiches arrived, and Joe watched the toddler with an ice cream cone in Honolulu, the girl veering her bike into a Maine hedge, the teen-ager leaving home, the Seattle executive as she took a large bite. "Mmmm," she said with her mouth full, "mmm—Ivar's."

"Have you heard from Maxie lately?" she asked.

"Not for a couple of months. He's still in New Zealand."

"I had a card from Auckland in August," Kate said. "Sounded like he was having a good trip."

"How's your mom doing?

"Fine. She's got a new job working for a mineral exploration outfit.
Have you seen Ingrid?"

"Not recently," Joe said. "She's doing well, at least she was the last time I saw her. She's been selling her jewelry, and her classes keep her busy. Same as ever. She has a new boyfriend."

"Oh good. I love Ingrid. She always sends a Christmas card and tells me how Maxie's doing." Kate had known Max since he was eight. They had become brother and sister even though there was no blood relationship. They had been especially close when Kate lived with Ingrid, Max, and him during her high school years. Kate had been lucky, Joe thought, to have had two mothers, or a mother and a half. His own mother had died when he was seven. It was long ago, but he could remember well enough that he'd never liked her very much.

After lunch Joe watched Kate walk with long strides toward her office, hair bouncing on her shoulders. Strong, he thought proudly. He checked in at The Edgewater, lay down on the bed, and didn't wake up until four.

The days were getting shorter. A salty breeze drove layers of cloud across the sound as Joe walked down Alaskan Way to the Elliot Bay Book Company. The ocean was to his right, but he was headed south instead of north as he would have been on the east coast. It took days in Seattle to stop thinking that he was going the wrong way.

The bookstore was well lit and cheerful. A tall woman with dark hair and hammered silver earrings was browsing in a corner. She wore a caramel colored T-shirt that showed a black elongated figure above the name "Caffe Ladro." Her shoulders were wide; the cotton draped comfortably around high flat breasts and fell a distance to her hips. She appeared to be in her forties. Joe hoped that she didn't have blue eyes.

Two types of women got to Joe immediately. One was black Irish, blue eyed. He looked into those eyes, something slipped, and he was calling for fire, night, and Vikings to ax. The other was blonde with translucent skin, full breasted and silent. The blondes were anima projections. When he was 24, he'd had a disastrous affair and afterwards discovered the explanation in a book by Jung. A man loses touch with his female side and then sees an unlucky woman who resembles the inner image of his lost self. POW, he is on her, has to have her. Irrational trembling, dry throat, pounding heart, out of control-it's an anima projection. Women do it too, of course, the other way around.

"Yes?" the woman asked. She had brown eyes.

"Oh, God," Joe said. "Excuse me. I was thinking about anima projection."

"Psychology's in there." She pointed to another room. "This is cooking."

"Ah, yes, well . . . " Joe turned away. The floor was slick with banana peels. He made it around the corner and took a breath. Too old for this, he said to himself.

He drifted through several rooms and found Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt, a book he'd heard about for years. He was interested in the economy because his small savings were mostly in the stock market. He picked up a copy of Trader Vic — Methods of a Wall Street Master by Victor Sperandeo. By the time he chose a tape of slack key guitar by Cyril Pahinui, Gabby's son, it was dark. On his way out, he averted his eyes from the cooking section, but he needn't have; the woman was gone.

The Edgewater Hotel bar has floor to ceiling windows on the water. Joe ate a sandwich and watched huge ferries slide through the night, brilliant against the black water. They made the Portland, Maine ferries look like life boats. Joe went to bed early, slept fitfully, and spent the next day walking, reading, and exercising. His back wasn't what it was—too many years in front of a computer monitor. If he kept at the yoga exercises, it didn't bother him, but a real day's work would be the end. For a long time he could do whatever the kids could, and then he couldn't. It made a divide between them and even, sometimes, between the past and present. Memory was suspect; did he really do that?

"You did, Dad, you really did." Fortunately, Kate was there, confirming the past, regaling Jackson with stories from the old days. They were eating seafood linguini in her apartment. Jackson listened as he twirled pasta with his fork and spoon. He was tall and thin, pleasant. His hair was dark, pulled back into a short pony tail. He drank a lot of wine without seeming to be much affected. His eyes got brighter.

They considered Kate's new painting which was propped up on a side table. A young woman stood in a barn door looking out at a rainy morning and an apple tree in full white bloom. Her hair was long and brown; her bare feet interacted with paint splattered floor boards. She seemed to dance without moving.

"Lot going on," Jackson said.

"Lot of life in there for an old guy," Joe said. "What do you think for a frame?"

Jackson considered. "Simple, but with relief—to give it a little more depth, be more inside the barn."

"Definitely simple," Kate said.

"I see what you mean," Joe said. "That will be my part, Kate—getting it framed."

"I could do that," Jackson said.

"Hey, great. Let me know what it costs . . . "

Jackson lifted a hand. "No problem. I've got a friend with a frame shop."

"That's quite a chess set," Joe said, pointing to a low table by a bookcase. The pieces were hand carved and had a warm waxed shine. They were slightly larger than usual and looked as though they were meant to be handled.

"Jackson made those last winter," Kate said. "He just makes this stuff—like knitting or something." Jackson looked embarrassed. "Dad, how long are you going to be in Seattle?"

The question had been floating in the back of Joe's mind. The answer crystallized, "Not long." They waited for him to continue. "I don't know what I'm going to do, really, but I'm feeling jumpy. I'll let you know. You've got my e-mail address; I'll check in every so often." He wanted to keep his uncertainty away from Kate. It wasn't so much that he wanted to shield her, but more that he needed to confront the future unhindered by old patterns of relating and response.

"Stick around," Kate said. "The longer the better."

Jackson smiled neutrally. A good time to leave, Joe thought.

"Very nice to meet you, Jackson," he said. He hugged Kate and left, feeling that they were a good match.

On the way off the hill, he noticed the Caffe Ladro and remembered the woman in the bookstore. The next morning, he thought about checking out of the Edgewater, but he had no plan. He registered for another night and drove back to the Queen Anne district. He had a latte and a bagel in the Caffe Ladro and bought a T-shirt. He was hoping the woman would come in. Her name would be Moira; they would have an animated discussion which would reveal his fate. She didn't show. Must have been busy, probably making a lemon meringue pie.

He went back to the hotel and stared at the ceiling in his room. Filson's was in Seattle, he remembered. He looked for the address in the phone book and found that it was a short bus ride away. He had a wool Filson jacket that he'd worn for 12 years. Every so often he sewed a button tighter. Filson stuff is understated and invincible; it would be like a visit to the temple.

A temple angel, slim with long blonde hair, asked if she could help. "Not just yet," Joe said and wandered down aisles of tin cloth pants, wax impregnated jackets with wool liners, vests, and virgin wool sweaters. He stood a long time in front of the duffel bags and assorted luggage. He was tempted by a carry on bag with a heavy leather handle, but in the end he bought a bag that reminded him of his Air Force AWOL bag—flat bottomed with a humped top and a single massive brass zipper. The canvas twill was doubled around the sides and bottom; the handles and the shoulder strap were made of dark bridle leather; it was the Fort Knox of AWOL bags. While he was at it, he bought a belt made of the same heavy leather. "Might as well have the best," he said to the angel, repeating the Filson motto.

When he was back in his room, he unsnapped the new belt buckle and replaced it with the one he had worn for twenty years. The words he had scratched on it with a Dremel power tool were nearly rubbed away: "Eating a plum, hearing/ the roar of centuries—Kokee." Once a year, the islanders are allowed to pick plums in Kokee, in a park on the rim of a deep canyon. The trees are old with thick limbs. He remembered a young Hawaiian woman on a low limb, stretched out, reaching for plums—brown skin, black hair, dark green leaves, fruit, the ocean gray and blue for thousands of miles in all directions. Echoing silence. It was like being in a shell or a giant's ear.

Joe put on his new belt and went down to the hotel bar. He ordered an ale and watched a boxing match on a large TV. Pit Bull Salvatori was wearing down a fighter named Fanatuua. He was sagging, his body blotchy. The bell rang and Fanatuua collapsed back against a padded corner post. A trainer squirted something into his mouth and rubbed his chest while his manager talked in his ear. Fanatuua nodded once.

The bell rang again, and Pit Bull was on him, lefts, rights, uppercuts, trying to end it. At some point in life, Joe thought, how people lose becomes more interesting than how they win. Fanatuua wouldn't go down, seemed calm, almost as though he weren't there. He was covering up, weaving slowly from side to side. Maybe he was fighting the clock, not the man. Maybe if he made it through eight rounds he would have earned his money. Maybe he was out on his feet. The Philly crowd yelled for a knockout; the referee watched closely.

Fanatuua stepped forward, moved Pit Bull back, threw a combination that did no damage. Maybe he was fighting for his family, Joe thought. Maybe he was married to one of the Samoan women who come to Hawaii to work in the Polynesian Cultural Center and study at the Mormon school in Laie. They walk slowly across the grass, books in their arms, flowers in their dark hair. He ought to make fifteen or twenty thousand from this fight. Maybe he'd give it to his father, the Chief, who was proud of him, who would know what to do with it. His hands dropped. Pit Bull drove him into the ropes with an overhand right. The camera zoomed to Fanatuua's face, sweat, a small cut. His eyes were bright. His mouth was set in a slight smile. He was not afraid.

Pit Bull smashed him four times. The ref jumped in and separated them. TKO. Pit Bull ran around the ring, fists in the air, and hugged Fanatuua. Fanatuua tapped him twice on the back and walked to his corner. Maybe he was thinking that Salvatori won, might be the champ soon, but couldn't knock him out. Maybe he was thinking about home.

Joe leaned back in his chair and remembered his new bag. He pictured himself packing it and realized that he was going to Hawaii. That was why he bought the bag, although he hadn't known it at the time. There were complications: the truck, what to bring, what to do when he got there. But that was where he was going.

3

As the plane banked over Diamond Head, green at that time of year, tears came to Joe's eyes. Hawaii is so beautiful, so far out to sea, that he felt lucky just to be there.

When he stepped from the plane, the light perfume of plumeria and the warm breeze were like old friends. He had credit cards and a few bucks in the market, but he might have been thirty again, driving a cab, hoping for a load to the Kahala and a big tip. He rode the city bus into Waikiki, the Filson bag on his lap, and rented a room for a week on Kuhio Avenue—a concrete block room with a four foot lanai, a tiny refrigerator, and a hot plate.

An hour later he was beneath the banyan tree at the Moana beach bar.
Gilbert was still tending bar. "Gilbert, you haven't changed a bit."
Gilbert was from Honolulu, medium sized with dark hair and dark eyes.
He could have been from anywhere. His square features were
professionally neutral; his smile was quick and ironic, under control.

"Your eyes going," Gilbert said.

Joe ordered a mai tai for old time's sake. Sunset is a three hour show in Waikiki. Joe stayed until the end—the last high smudge of crimson snuffed out in darkness, the Pacific reduced to the sound of waves collapsing along the beach.

On his way back to the hotel, a woman in a mini skirt asked if he wanted a date.

"Not tonight. But if I did . . . "

"I'll be here tomorrow." She had large teeth, a big smile. He didn't want a date, let alone that kind of date, but he felt a rush of warmth; it's hard not to like someone who is willing to hold you, even if only for money. The warmth followed him into bed and softened the sounds of car horns and distant sirens.

In the morning he had a solid hangover. He trudged out of Waikiki to the shopping center and ate breakfast in a coffee shop that served the best Portuguese sausage on the island, made, he was told, by an elderly couple whose identity was secret. He bought a bus pass valid for the rest of November. The Honolulu bus system reaches around the island, across the island, up the ridges, and deep into the separate valley neighborhoods. Workers and students commute by bus. Kids give up their seats to the elderly.

Joe quartered around the city like a hunting dog. Twenty-five years earlier the State bird was said to be the crane. Now, it was an endangered species. The city was quieter. He found himself returning to Makiki, a neighborhood of low rise apartment buildings and condominiums on a steep hillside, half an hour's walk, in different directions, to the university and to the Ala Moana Shopping Center. It was beautiful there at night, the buildings lit above and below each other like modern cliff dwellings. A week after he arrived, he rented a one bedroom apartment on Liholiho Street, telling the realtor that he had a degree from the university—which was true—and that he was retired, which didn't sound right. "Semi-retired," he amended.

It was a bare bones apartment on the third floor with a lanai that faced mauka, toward the mountain. Joe bought a plastic chair, a round cafe table, and an hibachi for the lanai. Batman made himself comfortable on the table. Joe constructed a table in the kitchen/dining room from pine boards and milk crates. He bought a foam camping mattress, sheets, a light comforter, a pillow, and a reading lamp for the bedroom. For the kitchen, he bought a toaster, a tea kettle, a pot for cooking rice, and a wok. He set up a minimalist home: one plate, a bowl and a mug, chopsticks. He splurged on an eight inch chef's knife. After a week of moving the plastic chair in and out, he bought a straight backed wooden chair for inside. He bought an exercise mat which he left spread out in the main room.

It was fun to start over in this way, owning only what he needed for his new life, whatever that was going to be. After some consideration, he bought a compact sound system and a TV for news and sports. He ate rice and fish, bought vegetables at the farmers market, and walked on the beach. The beach belongs to the people in Hawaii; it cannot be owned or sealed off. He bought a few aloha shirts and spent days at the university, the main library downtown, the shopping center, and occasionally, Waikiki. In a month he had a tan, and his pidgin had come back. Kate had learned to talk on the island; she spoke pidgin from deep down. Joe's pidgin was only half way there. If the locals are in doubt, they will ask anything in order to hear you speak—in a few words they know how long you've been around. Joe didn't mind the test. Usually he got points for trying.

Kate wanted him to visit during the holidays, but he decided against it. He was just getting used to the island and he didn't feel like traveling. The day after Christmas, he was at the Moana leaning back with a beer and thinking about Sperandeo's book on stock trading when someone asked, "Caffe Ladro?" The woman he'd seen in Seattle was standing a few feet away, looking at his T-shirt.

"Ah, Moira." he said, standing up. She was trying to place him.

"Winifred," she said.

"I saw you in The Elliot Bay Book Company," he said. "Last month. Moira was a guess."

"Oh, yes . . . something funny . . . you had a projection."

"Very funny," Joe said. "Winifred, my name is Joe, Joe Burke. Why not come sit? Talk story . . . "

"I've given up on men," she said to someone listening in the banyan.

"Very sensible," Joe said.

She hesitated and sat. "I love this tree," she said, placing her sun glasses on the table between them.

"Didn't someone write about it? Or under it?" he offered.

"Stevenson," she said. "Or was it Mark Twain?" Her eyes were intensely brown with radiating streaks of garnet.

"It's a literary banyan," Joe said.

"So, what brings you to Hawaii?"

"I used to live here," Joe said. "I stopped computer programming, and I stopped being married—again. It seemed natural to come back."

"Hawaii gets to you," she said. Winifred lived in Manoa. She was a photographer. Joe would have bet that she was some kind of artist; he found them wherever he went. Her sister lived on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, close to Kate and the Caffe Ladro. Her father, Arthur Soule, was a professor, retired in Vermont.

"Lot of Soules on the Maine coast," Joe said. "And a Coffin clan. The line is: 'For every Soule, there's a Coffin."'

"So my father has told me."

"Win, Winifred . . . what do you prefer to be called?"

"Either works. 'Winny' is what horses do. My father sometimes calls me
Freddy."

"How about Mo?"

"No one calls me Mo."

"Excellent! I shall be the first." She had large features, a wide serious mouth that turned slightly up or down at the corners. Down in this case. "I thought of you as Moira," Joe explained, "mysterious Celt, born for the luck of the Burkes."

"Born to be bad," she said. "You can think of me any way you like, Joe Burke. I must be going. Bye." She twirled her sun glasses, smiled once, and left. He watched to see if she would swing her ass a little for his benefit, but she didn't. Her eyes stayed with him—large and sensitive, clear. She was nearly six feet tall and broad across the shoulders. Her hands were as big as his. Not the happiest of campers, he said to himself.

He went back to thinking about Victor Sperandeo's book. As a teen-ager, Trader Vic made a living playing cards in New York. Then he moved into the big casino on Wall Street. His book was straight exposition, written without pretense. Joe had read other books about the market. There were many different approaches and specialties: day trading, intermediate and long term investing, stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities. Sperandeo was someone he could relate to personally, a maverick.

There were other market gurus who made sense to him—John Train and Warren Buffett, especially. They espoused a long-term strategy: think before you buy, and then, once having bought, continue to buy on dips and hold unless the company changed fundamentally for the worse. Sperandeo was more of a trader. Joe was torn between the two approaches. Discount brokerages had just become available on the Internet; one could trade without having to actually live in New York. On line discussion groups argued about stocks 24 hours a day. He decided to buy a computer.

Three hours later Joe paid the cab fare and carried his new system up to the apartment, one box at a time. He had it working in an hour and went to bed pleased with himself.

The following day he opened an account with a service provider for Internet access. There was an e-mail message from Kate waiting at his old address in Maine. Joe had agreed to pay Kate's mechanic $30 a month to store the truck and had asked him to go over it, change the oil, and do whatever needed doing. Joe replied that the check would be in the mail and wished her a Happy New Year. The Internet is amazing, he thought. The message was in Maine; Kate was in Seattle; he was in Honolulu and could be anywhere.

"Damn, Batman, we're global!"

On impulse, he found a number listed for W. Soule and called her on the old fashioned telephone. After a recorded message and a beep, he said, "Mo, this is Joe Burke. I'm having adventures. Want to have lunch?" He left his number and hung up. When he returned from a walk, the red message light was blinking.

"Joe, thanks for asking, but, no . . . I'm not an adventure." She made an amused sound. "Call me again sometime when you've grown up." Click. Joe called back immediately.

"Hi, I grew up," he said when she answered. "A woman on TV just explained it to me. You have to transcend the grieving child within."

"Hmmm," Mo said.

"Pie," Joe continued, "what's the name of that place on Hausten Street where they have great pie? The place with a fish pond. The Willows. Back in time."

"I'm afraid you'd have to go back in time to eat there; they closed two or three years ago."

"Damn. How about Keo's? Tomorrow, 12:30 or thereabouts?" His best offer. You'd have to be seriously repulsed by someone to turn down Keo's.

"Ulua with black bean sauce—I'm going to regret this," she said.

"Great. No. I mean, we'll have a nice lunch. See you there," Joe bailed before she could change her mind.

4

Joe put down his fork. "Lemon grass," he said with satisfaction. Mo was eating rapidly; she raised her eyebrows.

"So, what have you been up to?" she asked, breaking off a piece of spring roll.

"I bought a computer."

"Ughh."

Joe laughed. "I hate them, really. But they're good tools—I bought it for the Internet, so I can trade stocks."

"I'm remembering," Mo said between bites, "what they say about how to make a small fortune on Wall Street."

"How's that?"

"Well, you start with a large one."

"Ha, ha. That's one method I can't use."

"I should have eaten breakfast," she said. "What is the damned Internet anyway?"

"Mo, I have to warn you—the last ten people that asked me questions like that are lying face down."

"I can take it," she said.

"It's a way of moving information around," Joe said, "that doesn't require a dedicated phone line. The telephone system works like a string stretched between tin cans. Two people monopolize the string until they're done. The Internet is different. Info is coded and split into small packets. Each packet is numbered and addressed; it heads toward its destination by any route that is open; it doesn't have to travel with its sister packets. A program at the receiving end collects the packets and reassembles them correctly. No need to dedicate one string to one conversation at a time." Joe paused for breath. "The Internet is a lot of fat strings with packets zipping through. Each year the strings get fatter and the packets zip faster."

"Where did you learn this stuff?"

"Right up the road at the university. I actually have a degree in it."

"You don't look the type," Mo said.

"You say the nicest things. The Internet is here to stay. Twenty-some years ago, when I was a student, I typed an algebra equation into a computer; it was beamed from an antenna on top of the engineering building to a satellite and then down to an antenna at MIT in Massachusetts. A few seconds later, blak, blak, blak, the answer came out of the printer, back from MIT. That was state of the art, a marvel. Now, my God!" Joe paused. "I'm going to make money on it."

"Is that what you want to do, Joe, make money?"

"Some, anyway."

"What do you really like to do?" Mo took a mouthful of rice. Her eyes were wide open, looking directly at him.

"Uh . . . I like to write about things."

"Aha," she said.

"How do you get by?" he asked.

"I do all right with photography, commercial work. I teach a couple of courses. When I get the chance, I do my own stuff; I have a show every couple of years if I can."

"The only photographer besides Ansel Adams and Cartier-Bresson that I can remember is the Hungarian guy, Kertesz." Mo looked at him sharply. "His pictures of New York are so still," Joe said, "like etchings, but they're awake. There is always something—tracks in the snow, a falling leaf, something that echoes time."

"Wonderful," she agreed. "I love his early Paris shots. You know about
Kertesz? You're full of surprises."

"My father is a painter."

"So you grew up with it?"

"Actually, I was raised by my grandparents. My mother died when I was a kid. Did you ever hear of Franz Griessler, the painter?"

"Yes, I've seen some of his work."

"I met him once. Want to hear about it?"

"Sure. How about dessert?"

"Absolutely." They ordered.

"I used to drive a Charley's cab. A woman flagged me down in the shopping center one day. She was holding a flat package in both hands, wiggling her fingers. She was slim, intense, in her late thirties, with high coloring and black hair pulled into a bun. She was damned good looking—hapa—Asian, French maybe. She lived nearby, just behind The Pagoda, but the package was clumsy to carry. It was a drawing of hers. We got to talking, and she asked if I'd ever modeled."

"Had you?"

"Nope. She talked me into it. The next day I drove her to Franz Griessler's studio, way up the mountain on Round Top Drive, and sat for her drawing class."

"What was he like?"

"Short. Square. Close cut gray hair. Powerful guy. Lili—that was her name—told me afterwards that he was 82. Hard to believe. I was very tense at first. I thought for a few minutes that I couldn't do it, couldn't just sit there with people looking at me. Drops of sweat started to form over my eyebrows. I wanted to run away. But something happened. I began to enjoy listening to the charcoal scratching and the small noises people made as they concentrated. The sweat disappeared. I felt part of a tradition. I felt that I belonged."

The waitress brought dessert and cleared the table.

"At break time, Franz showed me his studio. He was working on a portrait, a seated matron—silver hair, a lot of greens, sage, purple lilac colors. Her hands were partially sketched, folded in her lap. A diagonal grid of pencil lines mapped the unpainted portions of the canvas into large diamonds.

"'Ach, the jewelry. Always the jewelry. I hate it.' Franz said, looking at indications of bracelets and rings. 'Ach.' I asked him what the pencil lines were for.

"'Structure. Composition. Always I start with them."'

Joe stretched and finished his coconut banana dessert. Mo looked thoughtful. "What became of the babe?"

"I saw her across the street, a few weeks later. I don't think she noticed me. Every so often I look at the mountain and remember that studio, especially at night. You can see a couple of lights way up there. You know what I keep seeing?" He answered his own question. "Those diagonal pencil lines."

"Mmm . . . " Mo pushed her plate away. "Thank you, Joe. It was a nice lunch." As they left the restaurant she put a hand on his arm. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going, right?" She was looking at him as though he were a sixth grader.

"Right," he said, and they went in different directions on Kapahulu
Avenue.

Joe took the long way home, around the zoo and through Waikiki. He didn't know what to make of Mo. She was a good listener. She didn't seem to be involved with anyone. It was a shame to let that body of hers go to waste.

Joe had started the day at 4 a.m. to catch the market opening on the East Coast; by the time he got back he was tired and already anticipating the next day's trading. Precious metals were hot. He was making money. He had made the acquaintance in cyberspace of Claude Ogier, a knowledgeable gold bug from Quebec who issued a constant stream of communications about the latest mining developments. Claude was preparing to launch a newsletter, working into it. Joe was up $3000 in six weeks by following his advice.

Southwest Precious Metals was attracting a lot of interest. They claimed an area of desert basin that was filled to a depth of 400 meters with material eroded from an adjacent range—a mountainous area that had been mined for gold in the last century. The deposit, known as 'desert dirt,' contained gold, silver, and platinum in small concentrations. Small, that is, by the ounce. By the square kilometer, Southwest was sitting on the find of the decade. The problem lay in the extraction. There's a lot of gold in the Pacific, too, in the salt water, but no one has figured out how to extract it economically.

Arguments raged on the Internet. Gold and platinum are rarely found in the same deposit. Conventional fire assay methods are ineffective on desert dirt. The samples could have been fraudulently salted. A prestigious independent auditor was engaged to evaluate the deposit. Various explanations were advanced to counter the objections. Seasoned investors said that these companies were scams nineteen times out of twenty, so why bother at all? Optimists brought up investor resistance to heap leaching, an extraction method that had made fortunes in the 80's. Several mutual funds bought big positions after sending their mining aces to investigate first hand. The price was beginning to rise on larger volume.

The day after Joe had lunch with Mo, he bought 1500 shares of SPM at $4.75. The next morning, the price was $5.75 bid / $5.94 asked. A press release announced that an experimental extraction technique had yielded results that were higher than expected. Tests were continuing with larger samples. Joe jumped on the ask and bought 1500 more shares. "Damn it, Batman! We've got a live one." The price spiked to $6.75 before profit taking knocked it down. It closed at $6.25 after heavy trading.

For several months the price continued to move up, as larger samples processed with the new technique yielded consistently higher results. He bought 1500 more shares at $10.50. When the price rose over $11, Claude shocked the online bulls by selling most of his shares. "But Claude," Joe wrote, "if the extraction method is as cheap as most people think it will be, shares will go to $100, easy." ($450,000 to him.)

"Don't worry, mon ami," Claude answered. "I still have a position if that comes to be. I have my original investment returned with a profit. And my heart keeps the normal beat."

Joe thought about buying more but held back. One detail bothered him. The CEO, a thirty year mining pro, claimed to have a degree from an obscure college in the Northwest. Several investors had tried unsuccessfully to verify this. Joe e-mailed the company to inquire but received no answer. Kate had an academic friend in Seattle who checked and was unable to find a record of graduation. The closest any one could come was to determine that he had gone to school there for at least three years. The college had gone through many changes over the years. Degree requirements were different. Records had been moved many times. They failed to pin it down.

Joe didn't care whether or not someone had a degree. It is what one can do that matters. But he cared if someone lied about it; lying is a bad sign. SPM stock broke above $14 and began to correct. The short sellers piled on, selling borrowed stock, driving the price down in order to frighten investors into dumping their shares. The price held in the $10 range for a few weeks and then quickly fell to $8 and then $7. The short position grew larger by the day. The bulls argued that all those borrowed shares had to be bought back sooner or later and that the upcoming positive mining audit would trigger a massive short squeeze that would quickly put the price over $20. The company continued to release good news.

When the audit report was finally released, it verified only the original assay results, a year old, and made no mention of the extraction yields. The company made bland assurances about ongoing efforts to improve the extraction technique, but there were no hard numbers and they were running out of development capital.

Trading in SPM was suspended. When it resumed, the stock cratered to below $3 in seconds. Joe waited for a bounce, clamped his jaw, and sold out at $3.25, just below the high of the day. Over the next few months, the price dropped to a nickel and the company went bankrupt.

Joe was in shock. He had lost $17,160 plus commissions, half his savings. As he thought it over, he realized the mistakes he'd made. He'd broken the primary law of diversity. You should never have all your eggs in one basket. Secondly, he had wavered between the attitudes of the trader and the long term investor, ignoring the safeguards of each approach. If you are trading, you must wait for good entry points and you must exit immediately if the price moves against you. Gains more than compensate for losses, if the losses are strictly limited. Furthermore, Victor Sperandeo had cautioned never to give back more than half your profits—they are too hard to come by. At one point Joe had been $32,000 ahead. It hurt to remember.

If you are a long term investor, on the other hand, you must know that the company is sound. Joe failed to follow through on his investigation of the CEO. He had been too cheap to go to the annual shareholder's meeting where he would not have found the qualities he looked for in management.

He had been neither trader nor investor. He had been a loser. Not only that, he had spent months staring into his monitor, living on the Internet, reading the Wall St. Journal every day and Barrons every weekend, and dreaming about how he would invest $450,000. He asked himself how he could have been so stupid, so inept.

He went to a Korean bar. Gorgeous women paraded continuously past his table. When he tired of sitting with one, the next slid in against him and put her hand on his leg. "Buy me drink? You want pu-pu's?" The music was loud, hypnotic, non-stop. They danced. They accepted MasterCard. Joe staggered home with further losses.

He was in deepest day-after shambles when the phone rang.

"Ugh, hlo?"

"Hi, Joe."

"Max! How ya doin', buddy?"

"Fine. I'm at the airport."

"Great! Come on over, or are you just flying through?"

"I thought I'd stay a couple of days. Kate told me you were here."

Half an hour later, there he was. "Max, you look terrific . . . growing up, man, getting stronger."

"Thanks, you don't look so great," Max said.

"Nah, long night, never mind. A walk, rice and eggs, it will all be history." Max put his pack down in a corner. "That's not the lightest looking pack."

"It has everything I own in it. Carried it all over New Zealand."

"Yeah? Both islands? What do they call them?"

"North and South," Max said, smiling.

"Right, right. Always wanted to go there, supposed to be a great place."

"The Kiwi's, man . . . awesome!" Max was short with wide shoulders and large dark brown eyes. He had filled out since his school days, but he had the same earnest expression. Max had gotten through the University of Vermont, studying this and that, anthropology mostly, but he'd gone walkabout instead of buckling down to graduate school. Joe had been glad at the time, and now he could see why: Max was calmer, more sure of himself after a couple of years of knocking around.

"Let's go get some breakfast."

"Lunch," Max said.

At the coffee shop on King Street, Joe asked, "Remember that week we spent on Kauai? That was a good time."

"Yeah, the Na Pali coast," Max said.

"Some place," Joe said. "The whole damn island should be a world park."

"I remember that story you told us about the leper who wouldn't go to the colony."

"Koolau," Joe said. "He defeated the British Navy. They couldn't get him. He warned them, too. One sick guy with a rifle against marines and cannon—he killed, what? . . . three of them before they gave up? He wasn't doing anything, just he and his lover in the valley."

"Yeah," Max said.

"One of the great love stories," Joe said. "Made for Hollywood. She stayed with him until he died and never caught leprosy. A few years later, she climbed back over the pali and started all over again, lived a long life. If I were a drinking man, I'd propose a toast to her—and all women like her."

"Women," Max said, just like a grown up, holding out his coffee mug.
They clinked mugs.

"So, what next?" Joe asked.

"I've been thinking . . . look at this." Max reached into his pocket and pulled out a little wooden box, deep red with a dramatic black grain. He removed a rubber band, placed the box on the table, and lifted off the top. The box was rectangular with an oval center; a thin piece of stone lay in the oval, tawny and flaked. "It's an arrowhead. Found it in Vermont." Joe put the arrowhead in his palm and looked at the indentations near the base and at the rounded but definite point. The slight weight of it shocked him. Whoever made it had felt the same weight; it had been in his or her palm as well.

"I carried it around in my wallet, and then when I was in New Zealand I made the box out of Kauri wood."

"Beautiful wood," Joe said. "The oval is perfect for the arrowhead."

Max nodded. "I'm going to make things," he said. "That's what I want to do. Furniture, maybe."

"Good idea!" Joe put the arrowhead back in its box.

"I'm going to stop and see Kate when I get to the mainland," Max said.

"Check out her new boyfriend, Jackson. He's into working with his hands. Nice guy." Joe had an idea. "Look, Max, why don't you take the truck?"

"Truck?"

"My truck. It's at Kate's, at Kate's mechanic's. I'm not using it. I don't know how long I'm going to be here on the island." Max was starting to look excited. "It's registered and the insurance is good for another six or seven months. Here." Joe found the registration in his wallet and gave it to him. "Just take this. That way all you have to do is put gas in it and go. When it expires, I'll send you a bill of sale. Or you can mail it to me and I'll sign it over to you. It's got a bed in the back, too."

"Really?"

"Sure. Keep the tools. Just leave my clothes at Kate's." Max sat back and considered. He stretched his arm forward and slowly slid the arrowhead across the table.

"Swap," he said.

"Oh, Max, I can't."

Max shook his head. "That's the deal."

"Well . . . O.K." Joe put the top on the box, wrapped the rubber band around it, and put it in his pocket. They walked to Waikiki and hung out for another day before Max caught a plane to Seattle.

At the airport, Joe thought of Mo and asked Max if he'd ever had a professor at Vermont named Soule.

"Soule . . . Sounds familiar. An old guy? Yeah, Soule. He gave a couple of guest lectures in an economics class. I remember now—he was steamed about the Romans. They had tax laws that screwed everything up. Then the currency collapsed. He was interesting about that."

"His daughter lives here. I met her by accident." Max's flight was announced for boarding. "There it is," Joe said. "Sorry to see you go. But you're headed in the right direction. That's a joke. You'll see a cookie fortune taped to the dash in the truck; that's what it says. But you are, actually. Listen, that truck has two gas tanks—there's a switch—you'll see it."

"O.K. Joe, thanks. Take care of yourself, man."

"You too, Max." And he was gone. That's the way it is with kids, Joe thought.

"Damn it, Batman, " he said when he got home much later that day. "You and me. They don't have a chance." That night he dreamt of a campfire and coyotes calling in the night.

5

Two girls with clear Asian faces and long black hair were waiting at a bus stop on King Street. One was about fourteen, carrying school books; the other was several years older, heavier. Joe stopped at Coco's, ordered coffee, and tried to describe the girls in a notebook. They were so beautiful, so similar, sisters maybe . . . yet different. The older was a woman, really. Hours went by like minutes as he searched for the right words.

He wandered into Waikiki and sat on a bench by the beach. A woman with smooth brown skin walked into the water. Her body was like a torpedo in a blue one piece suit. She went out a few yards, waited, and dove quietly under a three-footer, bobbing up on the other side. The locals live in the water, Joe thought, they don't fight it. He remembered a story in The Advertiser about a sampan that sank in the Pacific. A fisherman, rescued twenty-four hours later, was asked by a reporter, "What did you do all that time out there with no life jacket?"

"Wen' sleep when I got tired," he said. He was one of those big laughing Hawaiians who float like buoys, heads up out of the water.

Joe strolled through the zoo. The gorilla was famous. He sat near the front of his cage mugging at tourists, carrying on, drawing them closer as they took pictures. Locals grinned from the sides. When enough people had gathered, the gorilla would sneak one hand behind and below him and without warning blast the tourists with a shit ball that hit the bars and scattered for maximum effect. He would leap to his feet mightily pleased, as the crowd screamed and the locals bent over laughing.

The elephants were patient and knowing. Joe trusted elephants. And dolphins. Sometimes he walked all the way to the Kahala to watch the dolphins zoom around their salt water pool. They came right to him at the edge of the pool, wiggling, excited as puppies.

He walked up Kapahulu Avenue and stopped at Zippy's where he had a bowl of saimin and worked on the description of the two girls. At home, in the mail, there was a card from Mo announcing a show of her photographs. The print on the card was deeply silvered. It showed the base of a banyan tree by a bus stop: high roots radiated out and sank below the sidewalk; a man was asleep, cradled between two roots, a lunch box by his waist, one arm stretched out along the top of a root, fingers dangling, the angles of his knees and elbows blending with the bends in the roots.

"Not bad, Batman," Joe said. "Next Friday."

The days before Mo's opening passed quickly. On Friday, Joe walked down Ward Avenue to a gallery and camera shop, and, for once, he wasn't early. Empty wine bottles, a few pupus on bare trays, a glass punch bowl, paper cups and napkins were scattered across white tables. Conversation hummed and collided around the room. A blues guitar kept time in the background. Mo was smiling down at a bearded professorial type.

"How do you do?" A young Japanese man shook Joe's hand.

"Thanks for the invitation," Joe said, flashing the card.

"Are you a friend of Winifred's?"

"Yes. Joe Burke."

"Wendell Sasaki."

"Nice place you have here," Joe said. A well-dressed couple entered, and Wendell excused himself. Joe drifted along a wall of Mo's photographs. There were several of old sugar mill buildings and one taken of the sky through the branches of a koa tree. There was a large one of the city at night, lights running high up the ridges. His favorite showed two young women walking toward the camera on Kalakaua Avenue. The light was gray, pre-dawn. One had her arm around the other's shoulders. They were bent forward laughing. Their bodies and clothes were used and tired, but their faces were innocent, flooded with relief; the night was over.

Most of the subjects were conventional; it was the detail and the light on them that was interesting. They were all black and white but one—a close-up of bamboo stalks and leaves. "What do you think?" Mo asked from behind him.

"I like it." Joe turned partially. "How come it's the only one in color?"

"I have problems with color," Mo said. "It's always off. But in this case, there are really only two colors, bamboo and that tender green. They're both off in the same way, so the relationship works. And the color is so much of the story . . . " Wendell Sasaki called her over to confer with the well-dressed couple.

Joe stood in front of the picture of the young hookers, if that's what they were. Looking at them seemed more helpful than talking to anyone. Mo worked the crowd. After a time, Joe thanked the owner, waved at Mo, and left. All artists love light, he thought, walking up Ward Avenue. Mo was no exception.

The next day, he called. "Mo? Nice show."

"Thanks."

"You have won the Joe Burke award—excellence in photography."

"Why, never did I dream," she said in a Southern drawl.

"Lunch!"

"Joe, honey . . . " She dropped the drawl. "I'm busy today, let's see . . . How about Tuesday? I want to check something out on the windward side. We could eat over there."

"Good deal."

On Tuesday, she picked him up by the sandbox on the lower level of the shopping center. As they drove toward the pali, Joe said, "I'm sentimental about that sandbox. Kate used to play there." He was surprised to see pain flicker on Mo's face. "What's the matter?"

"I had a child, once. He died—when he was two—from a condition my husband forgot to tell me ran in his family. His nerves didn't work."

"How awful."

"I don't think about it much," Mo said. They were silent for a few minutes. "So, what have you been doing?"

"Losing money. I got completely involved in the market. I made a major mistake, but I learned a lot."

"I'll show you where I took the bamboo picture," she said, turning onto the old pali road. She turned again and stopped by a weathered concrete bridge. They got out and walked to the other end of the bridge where a tall grove had grown from the bank below. Mo put her elbows on the side wall of the bridge, and leaned out, midway up the grove. Joe leaned out beside her. A breeze stirred and they were enveloped by melodious knocking, a hundred percussionists set free.

"Wow!" Joe said. "A bamboo orchestra. I've never heard that before." They listened for a few minutes and then drove through the pali tunnel, emerging high over Kaneohe Bay—planes of pure light green, turquoise, dark blue. "Just another day in paradise," he said.

"Kailua isn't paradise, exactly. I've got to stop a moment in town and then we'll go over to Kaneohe."

"Sure." They wound down off the pali, and Joe waited while Mo accomplished her errand. She drove along Oneawa Street past the Racquet Club. Joe pointed. "See that hedge? I planted it!" A tall oleander hedge curved along the club drive. "A hundred small bushes," Joe said, "took me almost all day."

"Your roots in Hawaii?"

"Yok. I used to live there with Sally and Kate. I was the manager."

"How old is Kate?"

"Twenty-seven. Hard to believe. Where are we going?"

"Tops."

"That's pretty exciting. We can eat breakfast again."

"I hope she's there—a picture I'm thinking about." Mo pulled into the Tops parking lot and they sat at the counter. Joe didn't need to look at the over-sized plastic menu; he'd read it dozens of times in the Ala Moana Tops. A tall woman wearing a cook's apron stood in front of the grill. Her black hair, gathered behind her head, was held by a tortoise shell comb. Her face was long and utterly calm. Eggs, homefries, and burgers sizzled in front of her. She dropped slices of bread into an industrial toaster, flipped and scrambled, stirred and buttered, served and cleaned with untroubled movements of her arms and hands. Occasionally she turned or moved a step sideways without changing expression. She was like a reflection of herself in a still pond.

"Something else," Joe said.

"How am I going to get a picture of that?" Mo asked.

"I don't know."

Mo swiveled on her stool. "I've got to stop staring."

"You could ask her to model."

"I suppose so, but then . . . You mean in some other setting?"

"Yeah," Joe said, "naked in a waterfall—I'll help."

Mo ignored him. "Part of it is the contrast with the grill. But there's all this other clutter."

Joe shook his head. "How can she be so busy and so serene at the same time?"

"I don't think I can catch it," Mo said. "But I'm going to try."

"Jade Willow Lady," Joe said on the way back over the pali. "That's what I'd call her. I have to admit, Mo, I like looking at things. Why don't we go over to Kauai some time? Day trip. Catch an early plane, drive around, look at things, and be back by dinner? Mo pursed her lips and considered.

" I have a client over there; I could write it off. It would be nice to see the canyon. I have to go to the mainland next week. How about the week after, say Friday? That would give me time to get something done before we went."

"Sounds good. Closest flight to seven o'clock, two weeks from Friday?"

"Which airline?" Mo asked.

"I don't know—Aloha?"

"O.K. It's easier for my books if I get my own ticket," she said.

"Great. If I don't hear from you I'll see you at the terminal. Good luck with Jade Willow Lady." Mo dropped him off at the shopping center and drove into traffic without looking back.

He took the escalator to the upper level and walked into Shirokya, drawn by Japanese muzak and pretty packaging. The Japanese were incapable of bad design, he thought. It was in their genes or something. Or maybe it was just that they cared. He almost bought a porcelain doll to keep Batman company on the lanai, but he decided that might be pushy. He called Aloha and bought a ticket for the 7:10 flight to Kauai. He and Mo hadn't agreed on a return time, but the 5:45 seemed most likely.

It was nearing pupu hour at The Chart House. He walked over in time to get a table by the open windows, ordered a Glenlivet, and stretched out to enjoy the view of masts in the marina. The trade wind kept up an aluminum chatter, not as nice as the spirit of the bamboo grove, but pleasant in its own way.

At the next table, three boat owners in their thirties were drinking, talking story, and laughing loudly. As the first group of well dressed office women came through the door, one of the men leaned back in his chair. A grin spread his mustache across his red face. "Bogeys, three o'clock," he announced.

The squadron adjusted for combat. Most would become prisoners of war, Joe thought. He'd been one himself, not unhappily. Perhaps it was the habit of being coupled that was pushing him in Mo's direction. She wasn't as natural as Sally, his first wife, or as cheerful as Ingrid; she was more independent, focused, more like him in some ways. Too bad about her child—that explained some of the seriousness in her face. She wasn't bowled over by the great Joe Burke, but she was interested. He pulled back on the stick and began to climb.

6

If a globe is turned in just the right way, nothing can be seen but the Pacific and the far off edges of continents. The Hawaiian Islands are specks in the middle of this immensity. Kauai is a hundred miles from Oahu, practically next door. The Aloha Airlines jet climbed and then descended into Lihue before Joe had time to finish a glass of juice. Green sugar cane and red earth swept past lowering wings. A bump, a screech of tires, and they were down, taxiing to the small terminal.

Mo put away a small day planner in which she had been making notes.
"Canyon first?" she asked.

"Banana pancakes? Hard to explore on an empty stomach."

"I brought some fruit," she said. They rented a Toyota sedan, and Joe drove into Lihue.

"Too early for saimin," he said. "Too bad. There's a great place—Hamura's—biz people from Honolulu have been known to fly over for lunch to cure their hangovers." He parked by Kenny's. "O.K., this won't take long." They ordered breakfast.

"When I lived here," Joe said, "there was only one traffic light on the island, and it wasn't on a highway; it was in the middle of a cane field, for the trucks."

"It's changing fast," Mo said. "Too beautiful not to be discovered."

"If they stop the sugar subsidies, it's all over." Joe pushed his empty plate away. Mo was wearing a black sweatshirt, tan jeans, and running shoes. He had on his Filson bush jacket, Levis, and his all purpose Clarks shoes. They looked good together, he thought, Mr. and Ms. Competent.

"Did you notice the Kentucky Fried Chicken place on the way in to
Lihue?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I helped landscape it. Me and Whistling Ed Swaney. He was a sheriff in L.A.; he quit after the Watts riots. He had a whistling show on a radio station over there, fifteen minutes a week."

"Really?"

"Yup. He was a mighty muscle man—thirty years older than I was. I could barely keep up with him. The good thing about Whistling Ed was that he didn't talk much."

"Giving you free rein . . . "

"Yok. No. I didn't talk either, so we got along well. Anyway, we went from one posh house to the next, cutting grass and trimming trees. The owners treated him with great respect. I finally figured out why—he was always sweating. I gave it a name: Swaney's Law. If you're sweating, they can't shit on you."

They drove down to Nawiliwili Harbor and along a back road through cane fields that followed a line of mountains. Narrow green valleys cut into the mountains, mysteriously shaded. There was a sense of two cultures, of a border at the edge of the sugar cane that was crossed cautiously, if at all.

They came to the Poipu resort district and then headed up to the canyon rim where Joe had picked plums. They stood at the lookout, above a three thousand foot drop and ten miles of rugged red and gold walls flecked with green. Mountain goats, bits of white, chased each other up and down vertical slopes. "Incredible," Mo said, focusing her camera.

"It looks like they're playing tag," Joe said. "So free."

They drove to the end of the road and peered into the mist obscuring Kalalau valley where Koolau, the leper, remained buried. Clouds swirled and lifted, revealing glimpses of tree tops, steep ridges, and once, a small curve of beach far below. "I almost like it better this way," Mo said, "when you can't see it all at once. Brrrrr!" They piled into the car and drove back down to the sunny fields on the leeward side. They passed through road cuts, hundreds of yards of flaming bougainvillea on both sides, and by small plantation houses painted green, corrugated roofs rusted to the same red tones as the soil. "Stop!" Mo commanded from time to time. Joe stretched while she took pictures.

They drove through the built up area between Lihue and Kapaa and parked outside a medical complex. "Five minutes, ten maybe," Mo said. "The client," she explained when she returned. "Rob Wilcox. He's a fan, buys my stuff for his clinic and for his own collection."

"Great," Joe said. "Is there a Mrs. Wilcox?"

"No." She flushed slightly. They parked by the beach in Anahola, ate bananas and an orange, and decided to stretch their legs. Mo walked strangely on the sand, holding her shoes in one hand. Her pelvis tipped back; she shifted her weight stiffly from one leg to the other in an exaggerated prance that said, "You should be so lucky as to even look at me." But no one else was on the beach. She didn't seem conscious of the change. Joe looked away. Three-footers curled peacefully along the beach as far as he could see.

They sat on the soft sand, and Mo took off her sweatshirt. Joe lay back with his head on his shoes and admired her breasts, high and shapely beneath a gray T-shirt. Steady, he said to himself, the woman barely likes you. Who was she, anyway? She took good pictures; he knew that. He fell asleep for a moment.

Mo took over the driving. They were well around the island, past
Kilauea, when Joe asked, "The Tahiti Nui, do you know it? In Hanalei?"

"A restaurant, bar?"

"Yup. With a porch. I want to have a beer on the porch." Mo looked at her watch. "Plenty of time," Joe said. "Which flight are you on?"

"Four-thirty," she said.

"Mine is quarter to six . . . We still have time. Maybe I can get on the early one." They drove over a stream that curved through sparkling green rice paddies. Shortly afterwards, they stopped by the Tahiti Nui.

They sat on a wooden porch and looked across the humpy patched blacktop road to a steep hillside, densely green and silent. "Happiness," Joe said, touching Mo's glass with his. "By some accounts, Hawaii is the most isolated land mass in the world. Kauai is the farthest out of the inhabited islands, and here we are at the end of the road. It stops right over there, can't make it around the Na Pali coast." He drank his beer and waved at the view. "Isn't it great, Mo? End of the road. Can't go any farther. How relaxing can you get? Nowhere to go but back—when we feel like it."

"At three o'clock," Mo said. She took a picture of the road and one of an orange cat curled on an old sofa next to the table.

"I had a cat like that once—'Jeremy,'" Joe said.

She turned and took one of him. "Joe Burke, at the end of the road," she offered in explanation.

"A long way from where I started."

"You were from Woodstock, right?" Joe nodded. "Were you at the festival?"

"No. I was running a laundromat that year. I leased it from an old friend whose wife was sick of cleaning it. I couldn't get away. It was no big deal. There had been little festivals for years—'Soundouts,' we called them—music all night, sleep in a field. I had no idea it was going to be so huge. And anyway, it wasn't actually in Woodstock; it was about forty miles away. Did you go?"

"I couldn't," Mo said. "I was in Vienna in a convent school. My father was on sabbatical. It was awful. My sister Beth was already in college. I wish I could have heard Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner."

"A major moment," Joe said. "When Hendrix died, the hot radio station in Honolulu scheduled that piece for twelve noon. They asked everyone to open their windows and crank up the volume. That was when I was driving a cab; you could hear Hendrix blasting all over the city."

Mo looked at her watch again. "It's that time, Joe."

"Damn shame," he said. They said goodbye to the cat, and Mo drove them back to Lihue where Joe had no trouble changing his flight.

"Fun day," he said as they parted in Honolulu.

"Bye, Joe." She smiled.

"I'll call you."

She lifted a hand in acknowledgment. Thanks for the warmth and commitment, he thought.

He had given up chasing women some time after Sally and before Ingrid. A kind woman had taken him in hand after a heartbreak and explained: "Joe, you can't earn love. Love is free. Someone loves you or they don't . . . God knows why." She had been so sad and so earnest that he knew it was true. Shortly thereafter a flashbulb went off. If you can't earn love, then, if someone doesn't love you, there's nothing you can do about it. What a liberation!

He wasn't going to run after Mo. A relationship might be around the corner. Or not. He wasn't all that sure he wanted one, anyway. He'd call her in a couple of weeks.

7

Joe was going to run out of money—in less than a year. He began reading the Sunday classifieds, an experience that made him sweat and put a knot in his stomach.

On a Monday, two weeks after the trip to Kauai, he followed up an ad for a programming job at a downtown insurance company. The offices were bright and modern; the staff was energetic. He left depressed. He could have done the work in his sleep, but he couldn't pretend to want to be "on board." The woman who interviewed him was too decent; Joe couldn't bring himself to try and con her. He knew that if he were hired, six to twelve months later he would be out on the street again, unable to keep his head down and his mouth shut.

The next morning as he was taking a shower, replaying the scene at the insurance company, he bent over for the soap. Something split in his back. It was like being hit by an ax. He managed to get out of the bathroom and lower himself to the floor. He lay still for half an hour, getting his breath.

On his side, drawing his knees up, he pushed himself along the floor a few inches at a time. He made it to his mattress and slid under the comforter. Changing positions was painful, he could sleep for only a few minutes at a time.

By evening he was too thirsty to stay where he was. He pushed himself to the front of the kitchen sink and got to his knees, gasping. Holding on with one hand, he reached for his mug with the other and filled it with water. He drank and then refilled it and placed it on the floor. He opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out an old pie plate. He lowered himself to the floor and rested before he pushed himself back to the bed, dragging along the water and the pie plate. He was able to pee into the plate while he lay on one side. He made it through the night, moving as little as possible.

Music would be nice, he thought in the morning. Forget it. It was all he could do to lie still and not panic. "It's all right, Batman," he called to the lanai. He thought about crawling to the telephone and knocking it to the floor with the broom, but who would he call? When the pie plate filled, he inched along the floor, dragging it into the bathroom, spilling some, but managing to reach up and pour most of it into the toilet. He shoved himself into the kitchen for more water. Holding to the chair by the table, he was able to reach a bunch of bananas. Two bananas and water got him through the second day.

On the third day, hanging on to the bedroom door frame, he pulled himself slowly to his feet. He was able to limp to the bathroom, supporting himself with the sponge mop. He took aspirin and shuffled back to his mattress with bread and a piece of cheddar cheese. He ate like a king, wishing that he'd turned on the radio.

The pain was less intense in the morning. Aspirin had helped him sleep for four or five hours. He was able to stand up slowly, turn on the radio, and reassure Batman. He leaned against a wall and stared at a shaft of sunlight falling on the carpet. He remained there motionless, without words. Pain had emptied him completely.

The disk jockey played a Cyril Pahinui cut. Familiar notes cascaded into the sunlight, ringing and humble, celebrating and accepting the only life we know. It's all right, Joe thought, as his isolation broke down. "For thine is the kingdom," he said to a presence in the sunshine. Thankful tears rolled down his cheeks. Three days later he made it down the hill to the store and back.

He exercised regularly and began to feel stronger. His walks were longer. From time to time he drank too much, but he was generally under control. Fortunately, he had a little time before he ran out of money. He had no idea what to do, but he knew that he wasn't going to program computers for an insurance company. The back pain hell was a clear warning not to repeat his old patterns. In the past, he would drift around trying to write things, run out of money, and then abandon the writing in a rush to join a work group, pay bills, and pretend he was like the others in the group. It never worked out. He had to find another way.

Late one morning, he was at the Wailana Coffee Shoppe when a young woman sat down across from him. She was blonde, lightly tanned; her face was composed, nearly immobilized, with eye shadow, liner, and rich red lipstick. She had an air of sadness that was at cross purpose to her youth and to the perfection of her makeup. She ate breakfast and left, untroubled by Joe's attention.

For the thousandth time he wished he could draw, but words were his best tools. It was more than the woman's appearance that he wanted to capture; he wanted to know how he felt about her. Writing was a way of finding out. For the rest of the day, as he walked in the city, he fiddled with words, starting over and over.

The next morning he returned to the Wailana. The beauty wasn't there, but he could remember her well enough to keep writing. A woman sat next to him at the counter. He paid no attention until she asked him to pass the ketchup. She was having home fries with her eggs. "Nothing like home fries," Joe said.

"Stick to your ribs," she said, blushing slightly. She had nice ribs, large breasts pushed against a white blouse. "What'cha doing, if you don't mind my asking? You look so intense."

"I was trying to describe someone."

"Are you a writer?"

"No," Joe said.

"My name is Alison, Alison Carl. Have you been here long? In Hawaii, I mean."

"About six months . . . I used to live here." She had short sandy colored hair, a blunt nose and a wide mouth. No makeup. She chewed toast with a satisfied expression.

"I'm doing post graduate work at the East-West Center. I saw the Dalai
Lama yesterday."

Joe sat straighter. "No kidding? What was he like?"

"Cute. Like a little rock." She was compact, a high energy type.
"What's your name?"

"Joe Burke." He took evasive action. "Alison, I'm too old for you." She looked downcast for a moment and then raised her eyebrows hopefully.

"Can you walk?"

"I can."

"There," she said winningly, taking a large forkful of potatoes. "What you mean, I think, is that you think I'm too young for you. It's a compliment, really. Men have trouble saying what they think, sometimes." She seemed pleased, like a teen-ager.

"What are you studying?" Joe asked.

"Buddhism. I have a doctorate in comparative religion. I was a pastor for a while and then I worked at a seminary. I was canned."

"Fired?"

"Yup. They were hypocrites," she said sadly. "What do you do?"

"Nothing right now. I used to program computers, design software. When I lived here I did a lot of stuff: drove a cab, delivered newspapers, managed a tennis club . . . I ended up going to the university." Alison sipped coffee.

"Let's get this over with," she said, "I'm forty-four. How old are you,
Joe?" She noted his surprise with equanimity.

"Fifty-three."

"You see," she said. "You're one too: a younger—than—you—looker."

"Alison," he said more firmly, "it has been nice to meet you, but I must be going. Much to do."

"Goodbye, Joe. Thank you for talking to me." He didn't want to wait for change, so he left a large tip and walked up Ala Moana Boulevard, relieved, but with the odd feeling that he was walking toward her rather than away.

At 4:00 that afternoon, the phone rang.

"Hi, Joe, it's Alison. I was bad this morning; I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me."

"What do you mean?"

"You were busy and I bothered you. I've been lonely, I guess. I didn't realize. I don't meet people like you very often." That was flattering. Joe made a soothing noise. "How about dinner, Joe? Dutch treat?"

He was surprised. "Uh, when?"

"Tonight, of course. I want to be high in the air and look at the city lights. I've never been to the Top of the I. Come on, Joe . . . You can tell me stories about the ancient old days. I will wear a skirt. We'll be normal for a couple of hours."

"A long stretch," Joe said, but then he felt bad. "Why not? O.K." They agreed to meet at 6:30. He ironed a pair of pants and an aloha shirt, mumbling to himself about what a pain in the ass it was, but by the time he stepped off the elevator he was feeling better; it was nice to be liked.

Joe was overly punctual and used to waiting for women. He forgave them; it was a genetic condition associated with the willingness to walk slowly in front of onrushing traffic and also—somehow—with the inability to have money ready at checkout counters. Alison was waiting for him.

"You're supposed to be late," he said. She smiled prettily. She was wearing a teal colored silk tunic over a chino skirt. Her hair was brushed back; a small opal swung from each ear; something glittered around her eyes. "You look terrific."

"Thank you." They sat at a table with a view of the mountains. "I don't drink much," she said as he ordered a Glenlivet and water. "I do know about Glenlivet. I'm Scots and Swedish."

"Single malt—wonderful stuff," he said.

"I'll have a glass of Chardonnay. So, Joe, tell me about when you used to live here."

"I was married and Kate, our daughter, was young. I've been married twice." Alison did not appear surprised. "Sally and I were happy to be out of Woodstock."

"Woodstock, the Woodstock?"

"Yes, a small town. It was so great to be in Honolulu where we didn't know anyone. My feet didn't feel the pavement for a year. But we had a hard time. Food stamps and all that, even welfare for a while. Things settled down when I started driving a Charley's cab and Sally cleaned houses. Cleaning houses isn't bad work—cash—anybody gives you a hard time you just go somewhere else. Here's looking at you." They touched glasses.

"Sally had a couple of steady gigs where she liked the people and knew what she was supposed to do every week." His mind was moving back. "Some amazing things did happen . . . "

"Oh, good," Alison said.

"One afternoon I went over to Kahala to pick up Sally at a cleaning job. She was disturbed. Sally was a sweetheart, but she didn't talk much; after six years of marriage I knew I had to ask if I wanted to know what was going on.

"She described a scene between her boss, heiress to the Cannon towel fortune, and her boss's daughter. The daughter told her mother that a nice man had come into her room during the night, had sat on her bed and talked to her. The mother explained that dreams sometimes seemed real. The daughter said that it wasn't a dream. They argued. There were tears, and the daughter ran upstairs."

Joe paused. "Sally thought that the mother had handled it badly."

"What did you think?" Alison asked.

"What did I know? Anyway, time flew by. I got nervous; I thought maybe I would never do anything but drive a cab. I got a job managing a tennis club on the other side of the pali—a good job—a house, a truck, a pool in which Kate could learn to swim, acres for her to run around in.

"Sally operated the snack bar; Kate went to kindergarten. Mornings, I walked into Kailua to drink coffee and write."

"Just like this morning," Alison said.

"Yes. I was trying to understand Honolulu . . . as though it could be grasped and set, presented, like a pearl." Joe sipped his whiskey. "I became friendly with a regular at the Rob Roy Coffee Shop, an ex-machinist who had fled Chicago to start over in Hawaii. 'You gotta meet Mike,' he told me one day. 'You guys would get along.' I asked him about Mike. 'Mike's the cat burglar. You know, the one they're always writing about in the paper."'

"I didn't want any trouble with the law, but, as usual with me, curiosity won out. Several nights later Mike and I were seated at a table in Crazy Horse, a topless bar that catered to Marines. He was short and stocky, intense. After a couple of beers, I said, 'So, I heard you were the cat burglar. That right?'.

"'Guess so,' he said. I asked him how that had happened.

"'It's so damned easy,' he said. He had been adopted by a well-to-do couple. The relationship hadn't worked out as they had hoped. He told me about robbing Aku over and over. Aku was a radio personality. Mike said he couldn't stand him. Mike had never been caught, even though the cops, by this time, knew. The island is small; word gets around.

"'One time,' Mike said, 'I was going along an upstairs hallway and I looked through a door: a little girl was sitting up in bed watching me. I didn't want to scare her—you know how they are, big eyes and all—so I went in and sat on her bed. I told her not to worry; I was just doing my job, looking for things at night. I told her that her job was to get a good sleep, have good dreams, and be ready to have a great day when she woke up. She settled back down and smiled, you know . . . I patted the bed and left. Some kind of bird let go with a giant scrawk, and I got the hell out of there, down over the lanai in back.'

"'You're not going to believe this, Mike,' I said. I told him about the six foot bird cage in the atrium of that Kahala beach house and the little girl who stuck to her story."

Alison bounced in her chair and clapped. "Good for her!"

"That was twenty years ago," Joe said. "Mike got caught. The girl probably has her own children now."

"You must tell her," Alison said. "She should know. The truth is important." Alison had a point. Joe had felt guilty about that before.

"The house is still there," he said. "Maybe I'll see what happened to them."

"If they've moved, maybe you could find out where and send a letter."

"Aha," Joe said as dinner arrived. He had gone crazy and ordered steak.
Alison bent over her scampi and inhaled deeply. "Garlic," she sighed.

"Garlic!" They touched glasses again. Dark ruby light circled and glanced through his Cabernet Sauvignon. By dessert, Alison had told him that she was from a small town near Madison, Wisconsin, that her father had been an inventor, that her mother was still alive, aging and in need of care.

"My father was hurt in an accident at work. I had to take care of him when I wasn't in school. My mother always had other jobs. He was strict. I couldn't go out like the other girls. I was taken in by our church; they gave me a scholarship."

"So you went from home to the church life—and you never got married?"

"Never met anyone willing, Joe. Anyone right, that is." She bent over the table and lowered her voice. "I'm a virgin—can you imagine?"

"What!?" A head turned in their direction and Joe lowered his voice to match hers. "How on earth?"

"I believe in the sacrament of marriage, Joe. Technically, I'm not a virgin because of something that happened a long time ago. But, actually, I am one." He blinked several times as she continued, "I had a boyfriend for five years. He was divorced. He was afraid of commitment, Joe." Joe took a large swallow of wine. "We used to fool around. Nothing below the waist," she added.

"Gurmpph." He cleared his throat. No one seemed to be paying any attention. Alison was still leaning forward. His eyes were fixed on her swelling breast and the curve of black lace that rose and disappeared behind her blue-green blouse. "Coffee," Joe said. "We must have coffee."

It had grown dark gradually, and Alison had her wish to look at city lights. Honolulu lies on a narrow plain between the mountains and the Pacific. Sharp ridges descend toward the water. The ridge faces have been developed; at night they are like jeweled fingers, reaching high, separated by vast darknesses. "Beautiful." Joe swept his hand toward the window.

"Even nicer than I hoped," Alison said. "I didn't mean to embarrass you, Joe."

"I'm not embarrassed. It seems like a waste, that's all."

"That's sweet." They had coffee and took a cab to her apartment, not far from the university. "Was it so bad being normal?" she asked.

"No," he admitted. She leaned over and kissed him quickly on the cheek.
He felt like Uncle, thanked for a birthday present.

"There," she said and got out. "Night, Joe."

"Goodnight, Alison." The cab driver remained silent. "Oh, yeah," Joe said. "Liholiho Street."

8

The young beauty with the makeup was not at the Wailana the next morning. Joe ate a waffle and stared across the counter at the seat where she had been. As he reached for his notebook, he realized why she was sad. She was a perfect twenty-two, frozen in time; she would never be younger, more beautiful, or more beautifully made up to answer a man's fantasy. And it wasn't enough. We must begin again, he said to himself, identifying with her—begin again without shame. Sometimes you have to start over, even go backwards, in order to go forward in a different direction.

He wrote the words down and nodded. It was a poem. He imagined someone reading his words, someone he didn't know. It was a good feeling. Lost mail—that's what a poem is, he decided. He made up his mind to submit it to the university literary publication. He had tried before to be published, without success, but he'd not put much effort into it. He'd written for himself, really.

He walked home, prepared the lost mail, and left a message for Mo,
"Let's have lunch."

An e-mail from Kate was waiting for him.

"Dad, the big step! Jackson and I have decided to get married. We've rented a house on San Juan Island to be a central gathering place, the week of Sept. 14-21. The ceremony will be Saturday, outside at the county park, followed by a dinner at the yacht club. I'm hoping everyone will come—Mom, of course, and Ingrid and Maxie. The island is beautiful. I'm making a packet with maps, ferry schedules, and info on places to stay. More later. I wanted to tell you right away. Love, Kate."

"Big news, Batman!" It was a good marriage, but nothing would ever be the same. Sally and Ingrid on the same island? Yikes. He didn't have anything to wear.

Joe reeled around the apartment and then e-mailed back, "Congratulations! I'll be there. More congratulations. Love, Dad." He pulled an electric broom from the back of his closet and began pushing it back and forth across the carpet. Jackson was a good fellow. Kate was happy. He had never met Jackson's parents. He was going to have to be respectable. Where was San Juan Island, anyway? Reservations? The last dust crumb had disappeared into the electric broom when Joe stopped pacing. He put the vacuum cleaner away and decided that the sensible thing to do was to take a walk.

The phone rang.

"Hi, Joe."

"Uh, hey there." It was Alison.

"I enjoyed dinner last night."

"So did I."

"Joe, would you come exploring with me? I'm going to rent a car and see some of the island."

"Well, sure," he said, "but I've got a lot to do."

"Me, too. It will be fun, Joe. I'm thinking about the end of the week, maybe Friday or Saturday."

"Saturday would be good," he said, pushing it ahead.

"I'll pick you up at ten. How do I get to your place?" He gave directions and then suggested that she meet him at Tops instead.

"That way I can get some writing done early, and it won't matter if you get held up."

"Tops—near the Ilikai?"

"Yes."

"O.K. Ten o'clock. Joe, have you written down the story about the girl and the cat burglar?"

"No."

"It's your responsibility,"Alison said.

"Mmm. My daughter's getting married! I just heard."

"Wonderful! You can tell me all about it, Saturday. What kind of car do you like to drive?"

"Something heavy . . . with a machine gun."

"Oh, Joe."

"If they're out of those, get the kind with the bumper tires lashed around."

"O.K.—if they have them," she said. "See you Saturday."

Joe put a new notebook in his back pocket, and left for the second walk of the day. He found the San Juan Islands in an atlas at the main library. They were small, off the northernmost coast of Washington. He strolled to the Columbia Inn and ate a Reuben sandwich. It would be good to see everyone and to meet Jackson's family. All he had to do was show up in shape and not drink too much. He would buy an outfit that could travel in the Filson bag. A camera. The Edgewater, he thought. Stay there Thursday, stay on the island Friday and Saturday nights, and then go back to the Edgewater on Sunday—that would break up the trip. He made a list, and then he began to write about Mike and the little girl.

The message light was blinking when he got home. "Joe, are you there?" It was Mo. "No? I'm afraid lunch will have to wait. My sister has talked me into going on a retreat with her. I'm going to combine the trip with work, and then we're both going to Vermont for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. I won't be back until Labor Day." She paused. "Maybe we can get together then. Bye." Damn. Joe had been hoping that she would be a buffer against Alison's attention. He made tea, sat at the computer, and began to enter the cat burglar story.

The next days were filled with writing and shopping. His money was draining away, but Kate's wedding was important. How could he skimp? The San Juan Islands would probably be cool in September. He bought a silk and wool blend jacket—olive, gray, and brown in a quiet weave. A pair of lightweight wool pants, neutral gray green, a silvery tan Italian dress shirt, and a dark brown tie complemented the jacket. He bought an Olympus camera that had a sliding lens cover and would fit in a pocket. His shoes had been re-soled twice and were ragged. He bought another pair, the same style, trusty Clarks. The outfit was expensive, but he wanted to dress honestly.

"I want to feel like myself," he told Alison on Saturday.

"I'm sure your daughter will be proud of you," Alison said.

"The clothes should last—if I don't climb a tree or fall into a vat of red wine." They were headed out of town toward Nanakuli. It was raining on and off; the weather was likely to be better on the leeward side.

"How's your course?" Joe asked.

"Interesting. Zen is so different in its practice—from Christianity, I mean. It makes me want to go to Japan and visit the monasteries, find a teacher. You need a teacher to learn what counts, to become one yourself."

Alison was so positive that Joe found it hard to imagine her having had job troubles. "Why did you get fired, if you don't mind my asking?"

"It was troubling. I did my undergraduate work at a bible college, but I'm well educated, Joe. I have a masters in communication from Columbia and a PhD. The students were trained to go out and do the Lord's work, but they were only getting one point of view in their education. The books in the curriculum dealt with science from a fundamentalist point of view, presenting arguments as though they were objective and unbiased. The students graduated thinking that they were educated when they really weren't. It made them confident and more able to face the work, but I didn't like it. The Lord is not afraid of different points of view, Joe."

Joe had not met any one on such comfortable terms with the Lord. She was absolutely unaffected. "It's funny," she said, "what triggered the final blow up was an editing job I did on an article for the school publication. The writer—one of the trustees—insisted on capitalizing the word 'bible' in places where it was not appropriate."

"Good heavens," Joe said.

Alison giggled. "Really. In the light of eternity, what difference does it make?"

"I think they lost a good person," Joe said.

"I did my best," she said. "I brought lunch."

"Great!" They drove up a narrow rocky valley and ate by the side of the road in the company of two horses. Alison had packed a bottle of wine to wash down sandwiches of red peppers, goat cheese, and watercress. "You went to a lot of trouble," Joe said. "Terrific sandwiches."

"I should have brought glasses for the wine."

"We're roughing it," Joe said, pouring more into his paper cup. "I wrote the cat burglar story," he remembered.

"Oh, good!"

"Yeah, I took it to the house in Kahala. An old guy answered the door and told me that the family had sold him the house and moved to California. He was nice. He gave me their address, so I sent the story. You were right; it was my responsibility. It felt good to drop the letter in the mail. Hope it gets to her." Alison clapped her hands. The horses ears picked up. "I used to work with someone who lived around here," Joe said. "The horses reminded me. Her name was Lovena. Her family took care of horses."

"Where did you work?"

"In a warehouse. She was slim, like a boy, with short black hair and brown skin. She was strong—beautiful, really. I was falling in love with her, but I was married." Alison sighed.

"Lovena was great, very shy and quiet, hard working. Sometimes she talked to me when the orders were packed and shipped. She talked about horses and barracuda and manta rays. I guess there's one time of year when mantas come into shallow water to mate or lay eggs or something. People can step on them by accident and get hurt." Joe paused, remembering. "When Lovena said 'manta' or 'barracuda,' the words weren't just names; they were respectful. A 'bar-ra-cu-da' was important, important as any life."

"What happened to her?"

"Don't know. I quit. I hated to say goodbye. In fact, the last day there, I asked if I could come see her. She was feeling bad, too. She looked me in the eye and said, 'Yeah—and you bring your wife and that pretty little girl with you."'

"Good for her," Alison said.

"Mmm."

"It looks like the rain might be stopping. Let's find a beach," Alison suggested.

"Yes." Joe corked the wine and called to the horses. "Say hi to Lovena for me, will you?"

Alison drove out to the highway, and they spent the afternoon poking around, reaching the end of the road and turning back. Neither was in a hurry to return to the city. At the end of the day, they were standing in a beach park as the sun slipped toward the horizon.

"I think a front just went through," Joe said. "Wow!" A dark cloud layer caught fire, lit from below by the setting sun. Purple and crimson flares rolled across the bottom of the ragged sky. Two hundred yards away, a painted flagpole split the clouds with a brilliant white line. It was like a crack in the universe, a glimpse of the beyond.

Alison moved closer and they stared at the energy that seemed to pour through the crack.

"Too much," Joe said.

"Oh, Joe." They walked to the rental car in the parking lot and got in. He reached for her. It was spontaneous and all wrong. Alison was not the right woman. They hugged, their bodies twisting awkwardly in the small seats as they tried to get closer. As they clung to each other, ordinary as cloth, as dogs in a parking lot, Joe was unexpectedly transported with relief. He was a tiny speck in a universe of stars and specks and emptiness. Nothing kept happening to him like a tap in the head, like shells falling away. He could have howled with laughter or cried in utter gratitude—if it mattered.

"Would you drive?" Alison asked.

"Sure." They rode in silence back to Honolulu. Joe stopped by his building and got out of the car. Alison opened her door and came around to the driver's side. Joe put his arms around her, and she settled her head against his chest. They stood for a moment. "Bye," Joe said. She turned her face up. He took her shoulders in his hands, kissed her quietly, and turned away.

"Bye, Joe."

He waved and walked slowly inside. Something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones . . . The Dylan line echoed in his mind as he climbed the stairs. It was true. Something was happening. It didn't feel like love, exactly. Or sex, exactly. He was still shocked by the freedom and relief that had overwhelmed him in the parking lot.

Three days later, Alison cooked dinner for them in her apartment. They were sitting on her couch when Joe tried to describe what he had felt during their hug by the beach.

"Sounds like what the zen people call 'little satori,"' she said.

"I don't know," he said. "I think I've been messed up." His eyes were fixed on the front of her blouse.

"Help yourself," she said comfortably.

He undid four buttons, slid down on the couch, and laid his hand on her breast. His mind began to sign off as her nipple responded. Slow spasms moved up his body, stopping his breath and tightening his stomach muscles. Alison tuned right in, moving with him, sighing. In a few minutes they were lying on her bed, marriage considerations and the below-the-waist rule suspended. She came easily and gratefully. They were like two thirsty people sharing a glass of water.

Alison got up some time later. Joe was lying with his eyes closed, arms outstretched, when he felt a washcloth gently but firmly applied. He jumped. "Just cleaning up," she said cheerfully. "Go back to sleep." Joe pictured his apartment. He rolled over on his side.

"Alison . . . " he said.

"Yes?"

"You take to this like a duck to water."

"It must be the Swedish," she said seriously.

"Alison, that was wonderful, but I have to go home."

"Oh." She was disappointed. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"O.K., Joe."

He dressed, hugged her, and stepped outside. Widely separated streetlights cast circles of blue light; hedges and trees were dark green in the shadows. He was only forty minutes from home and he wanted to walk in the cool air. Alison was going to make up for lost time. She was in love with him and linking fast. He didn't want to hurt her.

"Complications," he told Batman, on duty at his post on the lanai.
"Nothing we can't handle." But he wasn't so sure.

9

The following Saturday, Joe was on Alison's couch again. Her need to be coupled was stronger than his need to be alone. She must have known that a future together was unlikely, but she didn't care. She was in love. Joe couldn't bring himself to disappoint her. Besides, he enjoyed her company and the small mole below her left ear and her smell which reminded him of a field after rain.

They began eating dinner together every other night, but Joe continued to go home afterwards, often in the early hours of the morning. It was a compromise. He wanted to wake up in his own bed, stick to his habits, take his notebook to a coffee shop and keep at his writing.

The weeks sped by as he wrote a longer story based on Mike, the cat burglar. It was not successful. When he strayed from the facts as he remembered them, he felt false and uncertain. He had the uneasy feeling that he didn't know what he was doing. One afternoon toward the end of August, he and Alison rode the Nuuanu bus to the end of the line and walked to the bamboo grove that Mo had shown him. They stood on the bridge and listened to the rhythmic hypnotic knocking.

"It's so romantic, Joe." Alison leaned against him.

"Yes."

She said, "You know I've got to go home."

"Mmm."

"My flight is Wednesday."

He sighed. "So soon?"

"Are you going to stay in Honolulu, Joe?"

He sensed the proposal behind the question. It was tempting to follow her, to merge lives, to be a normal husband and give up his frustrating search for something he didn't understand. He spoke slowly. The words formed themselves. "For the time being," he said. "This damn story I'm writing isn't any good."

"You mustn't give up." She looked at him seriously, a hint of tear in each eye.

"I can't," he said. "I think it's who I am." He meant: I'm not going to come with you and be your man.

"Oh, Joe." Her tears came and she put her arms around him. They held each other as the bamboo played. "Won't you be lonely?"

"Yes." He squeezed her. "I'll miss you."

On Wednesday, a version of Aloha Oe poured down from invisible airport speakers. Joe placed a pikake and ginger lei around Alison's neck. "I love that song," he said, pulling away. "Even Muzak can't ruin it. Did you know it was written by Queen Liliuokalani? Can you imagine any of our politicians leaving anything as good?"

"Joe, will you come see me in Wisconsin? You'd like it. Madison is very cultural." Alison was going to try until the end.

He hesitated.

She bit her lower lip. "Don't say no, Joe. Just don't say no."

He hung his head. "Take care, Alison." It had been a good time. Sex had continued between them as straightforward and trusting as the rest of their relationship. But Alison needed to be in Wisconsin taking care of her mother, and she needed a husband, not his part time attention. "You aren't sorry, are you?" he asked.

"Oh, no. You are my lover man. And . . . " She smiled because it was a joke between them, "In the light of eternity, what difference does it make?" She threw her arms around him, then turned quickly and left for her departure gate. He went directly to the Moana.

"I need a drink, Gilbert."

"You in the right place."

For the first time since he'd landed in Hawaii, Joe was lonely. Alison had given him something, and he missed it already. What was it? Her directness. It was how to be, a gift. He watched the young and the not so young prowl along the beach, bodies glistening with tanning oil. None were for him. Morgan was coming through for a night, he remembered. And Mo was due back soon. He could talk to them, anyway. He trudged home anesthetized, wished Batman a good sleep, and lowered himself onto his mattress.

The next day his poem was returned in the mail, rejected without comment. The day after that, he reached Mo on the phone.

"Hi, there."

"Oh. Hello, Joe."

"Welcome back. How was your trip?"

"Exhausting. Got some good shots of the boundary waters area, though.
And my parents' anniversary—what a scene."

"Alcohol consumed?"

"Lord! It was touching, really, my folks and their old friends toasting each other and their fallen comrades."

"Ah," Joe said.

"What's new with you?" she asked.

"Oh, you know—rejection and solitude." Alison's face flashed before him; he apologized silently.

"Why don't I believe you?" Mo asked.

"It's chromosomal; you can't help it. Anyway, I was rejected. By Manoa. They didn't like my poem. They didn't even say they didn't like it, just sent it back."

"Builds character," Mo said.

"Listen, Mo, now that you feel sorry for me, how about dinner next week? An old friend of mine is coming with his new lady; I think it would be a good time."

"Hmmm . . . what day? I'm free Thursday and Friday."

"Good, they're coming Thursday."

"Fine," Mo said. "Give me a call. If I'm out, leave a message telling me where to meet you."

"Will do."

The following Thursday, the lei stands at the airport were busy. Joe made it to the arrival gate just in time. There was Morgan with a new haircut, looking somewhat larger than life in a short sleeved shirt, wearing chinos rather than jeans, striding along with a small blonde woman. She saw Joe approach and flashed a thousand watt smile. "Aloha," Joe said, hanging leis around their necks.

"Aloha," Morgan said. "Edie, this is Joe."

"Edie Rowantree," she said through the dazzle, extending her hand.

"Joe Burke. How was the flight?"

"I hate flying," she said. "We encountered turbulence in the middle of the ocean. I asked Morgan if there was any hope. 'There is always hope,"' she imitated.

"Baggage claim," Morgan said. A short time later they were in a cab speeding toward Waikiki.

"I thought we might have dinner with a friend of mine, if you aren't too tired."

"Oh, good," Edie said. "We spent last night in San Francisco to break up the flight. We aren't tired, are we Morgan?"

"Certainly not. Where are we?"

"Passing the old cannery," Joe said. "That's where Alphonse showed me the right way to drive a fork lift."

Morgan explained, "Joe was too—what was it—delicate?"

"Careful," Joe said.

"Maybe you could write a story about it," Edie said. She made it sound completely possible, like—why not have it done by dark?

"Maybe I will. Good choice, the Moana, by the way."

"A friend told me that they have windows that actually open," Edie said. "I want to hear surf. Then we're going to the other islands."

"Some of the other islands," Morgan said.

"Molokai, and Kauai, and Maui." They swept up to the front of the hotel and arranged to meet at the banyan bar in an hour and a half. Joe called Mo.

"The eagle has landed. Can you make it, 6:30 at the Moana? I'll probably be there a bit before."

"See you there."

He went over to the International Marketplace and lost himself in wandering groups of tourists. A balding caricaturist with rimless glasses bantered with a line of haoles waiting to be drawn.

"Hobby? What do you do on weekends?"

"Golf." A few pen strokes and a driver curled around the subject's neck, the ball untouched on the tee.

"Tennis." A racquet appeared with strings burst by an opponent's serve. Two or three minutes and he was done, asking each person's name, titling the drawing beneath its over-sized head, signing it and wrapping it in clear plastic. He was magician and entertainer, eyes blue and shrewd, working hard, keeping the crowd alive. It was six o'clock before Joe realized it. He scooted back to the Moana.

"Glenlivet and water, please, Gilbert."

Joe raised his glass in Gilbert's direction. "Here's to friends."

"Oh, you have some?"

"Yok, Gilbert." Mo appeared. "See?"

"See what?" she asked.

"Sorry, I was talking to Gilbert. You are my friend, aren't you?"

"How long have you been here?"

"Two minutes."

"Very pretty friend," Gilbert said. "Too good for you. May I get you a drink?"

"Lillet on the rocks, please." Mo was wearing linen slacks and an open weave cotton sweater. She rarely used make up; touches of eye shadow made her seem especially dressed up. Morgan and Edie walked down the wide back steps of the hotel and across the courtyard beneath the banyan tree. Joe waved.

"More friends," he said. They moved to a table. "Did your window open?"

"Oh, yes," Edie said, nodding. "It was very satisfying." Her face was open and cheerful; her eyebrows curved; her cheeks curved; her mouth curved widely around and up at the corners. Beneath the curves she had a strong head.

"So, Morgan . . . Waikiki, Diamond Head . . . " Joe stretched out his arm.

"Yes," Morgan said in his most approving manner.

"What do you do here?" Edie asked Mo.

"I have a small photography business."

"How wonderful," Edie said. "I am talent-less." One corner of Morgan's mouth twitched. Mo sipped her Lillet.

"Me too," Joe said. "I paid twenty-five cents for biology drawings in high school. My worms looked like accordions."

"I understand you are a builder and a writer," Mo said, turning to
Morgan.

"I suppose so," he said.

"Damned good one," Joe said.

"What is your book about?"

"Houses of the Hudson Valley." Mo smiled broadly. That's Morgan, Joe thought. He states the title of his book, a simple fact, and manages to imply that the universe is a lunatic misunderstanding, that we are all waiting at the wrong bus stop.

"Have you been working on it long?" Mo asked.

"Nine years."

"I could eat a mahi-mahi," Edie said.

They ended up at the restaurant, John Dominis, at a table with too many glasses, sea bass, snapper, and mahi-mahi, salads, desserts . . . No one wanted to stop. Morgan told a long story that began with a knock on his door one winter afternoon. A Jehovah's Witness had wandered up the mountain to proselytize. Morgan was so glad to see someone that he invited him in and had a conversation about the Bible.

"Given their assumptions," Morgan said, "I thought I might discuss their conclusions." The following week the witness returned with help. Pots of tea, hours later, the witness and his help left, baffled, promising to return with an elder. By spring, much of the church's energy was directed at rebutting the doctrinal challenge from the mountains. Morgan was invited to headquarters where an informal truce was reached. "They are an efficient organization in many ways," Morgan said grandly.

"Poor bastards," Joe said. "Morgan is difficult in debate, Mo. He got out of the draft by writing so many complicated letters questioning selective service procedures that they finally figured it would be easier to classify him, 1Y."

"A successful campaign," Morgan said.

"Better than mine," Joe said.

"Could have been worse," Morgan reminded him.

"True." Joe explained to Edie and Mo that he'd enlisted in the Air Force and decided, midway through his hitch, that war was wrong, that people shouldn't kill each other. "Vietnam was heating up. The colonel at my courts-martial listened to my speech, smiled at two lieutenants who were doing on-the-job legal training, and said, 'Airman Burke, you may persist in your attitude and I will sentence you to one year at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a bad conduct discharge, or, you can keep your mouth shut, serve the rest of your enlistment, and I will sentence you to thirty days in the stockade, a five hundred dollar fine, and reduction in rank to Airman Basic. What will it be?'

"He raised the gavel, the son of a bitch. I was twenty; I was stubborn; I had no idea what a federal pen was like. I opened my mouth for another statement of principle, and a voice sounded in my head—that's only happened to me twice. It said: 'you asshole, people kill each other. They have always killed each other. What do you think you're doing?' The voice saved me. 'Thirty days,' I said. The colonel smacked his gavel and read the sentence for the record.

"'Yes, sir.' I said. 'My car is at the BX; I'll just park it behind the barracks.' Two AP's took me by the elbows and marched me to the stockade."

"A near thing," Edie said. "It was a senseless war."

"It sure was," Joe said. "And it was the poor boys from Kentucky who died in it."

"And the Vietnamese," Mo added. They were silent.

"It wasn't so bad in the stockade," Joe said. "We got to watch TV for an hour each afternoon—Perry Mason. The guys were always yelling for longer sentences at the end of the show. One of the guys was doing ninety days for swearing at an officer's wife. Stockwell, his name was. He was a bag boy, and she used to give him a hard time at the commissary. He called her a bitch one afternoon and she complained to her husband. Ninety days! They add it to the end of your hitch, too."

"So you had to serve thirty extra days?" Mo asked.

"Twenty-five. I got five days off for good behavior. It cooled me down.
I got through the rest of my hitch without any problems."

They settled the bill. Joe put half on his credit card, and Morgan asked what he was doing for money. "Nothing," Joe said.

"You can't spend more than you earn, forever, you know."

"Good point. I'm not quite broke; I'll figure something out."

"Morgan says you're a computer expert," Edie said helpfully.

"Was, Edie. The technology changes every couple of years and I'm sick of learning languages. It was something I did just to get by. I've given it up."

"Oh, good!" she said.

He drew them a map of Lihue showing the way to Hamura's Saimin. "Don't miss it!" They made their way back to the Moana and said goodbye. Mo dropped Joe off at Liholiho Street. Just before they parted, he thought he saw her hesitate. He went to bed and dreamed that she was naked, turning away from him in bed to another man. He touched the base of her back where it curved toward him and rubbed a few small farewell circles.

10

Morgan was right, of course. Sooner or later he was going to run out of money. Things weren't going well. He wasn't satisfied with the cat burglar story, and he was lonely. He decided to write a story about Alphonse and the cannery.

Alphonse was a slim, dark, middle aged Filipino with a thin straight mustache. He had watched Joe stack empty pallets with a yellow Hyster and then he'd motioned Joe out of the seat. The forklift engine roared; his hands blurred; pallets leaped into perfect piles, ten feet high. Alphonse cut the engine and climbed down, eyes bright. He was somewhere between ten and a hundred times faster than Joe. The cannery whistle blew. Coffee break. Alphonse smiled, nodded, and turned for the cafeteria. Joe followed.

Alphonse was Joe's trainer. Wherever they went in the cannery, people called to him. He lifted a hand, smiled, and kept going. He was universally popular, but he rarely spoke to anyone; he focused on the work—how to do it better, how to do it faster. Joe was in a welfare job training program. He hated the whistle that told them when they could stop and when they must start. He hated the gray industrial paint and the numbing future—less work for someone else's profit.

Alphonse had no future. Not only that, he was twenty years older than Joe. He worked Joe into the ground every day, and when he waved with a small smile and walked away at the end of the shift, his head was high and he seemed untouched. Alphonse had his own standards, his own integrity, and somehow he was stronger than the whole gray clanking cannery. Stronger than profit, stronger than loss, Joe wrote.

But the story wasn't any good. It was true, as far as it went, but it wasn't—a story. What is a story, anyway?

Joe realized that he didn't know.

When Maxie was about fifteen, Joe used to quiz him on "Joe's Maxims."

Joe: "Women?"

Maxie: "Uh, women, women . . . All women are pear shaped!"

Joe (handing Maxie a quarter): "Very good, very good. And now, for a dollar, grand prize—an educated man?"

Maxie: "Damn. An educated man—umm—knows what he doesn't know."

Joe: "Right!"

Joe's position was that educated people know at least one subject well enough so that they realize (by comparison) when they don't know another. This was heavy for fifteen, but Max was game. "The idea is to know when you don't know what you're doing; then you can go ask someone or buy a good book and find out," Joe explained. Maxie nodded agreement, winnings crumpled firmly in one hand.

So, go find out what a story is, Joe told himself. He began reading books on fiction, but they weren't much help. For a change of pace, he looked up Arthur Soule on the Internet and discovered that a book he'd written on Roman taxation was still available. Joe ordered it, and when it arrived he found it interesting and clearly written. There was a small picture of Soule on the book jacket—patrician with a large jaw and thinning hair. Mo was a chip off the old block.

A few days before Kate's wedding, the phone rang as he was heading out the door.

"Hi, Joe."

"Mornin', Mo . . . That's a snappy opening," he said. "Maybe we should have a radio program."

"But it would have to be in the morning," she said. "When I work."

"Me, too. Good point."

"O.K., that's settled, no show. I was wondering if you might want to come over for lunch."

"Sure."

"I have an ulterior motive—two, actually. Leaky faucets."

"Say no more. I was born to plumb."

"See you around noon, then?"

"Yup. Wait a minute, where?" She gave him directions to a small street on the Ewa side of Manoa Valley. "No problem," he said putting the phone down. "Trouble in Gotham, Batman. Lady needs help." He rubbed his hands together. This was a test, no doubt about it, a dragon to slay.

He had left his slayer channel-lock pliers in his truck, however, along with the rest of his tools. They now belonged to Maxie and were somewhere in New England. He walked to the shopping center and bought a toolkit cased in aluminum with foam cut out for each individual tool. It looked like a briefcase. He went to Sears for a package of faucet washers and some thread sealer.

"Joe Burke, executive plumber," he announced at Mo's door.

"Well, come right in." She looked rested. He took off his shoes and advanced into a clean living room furnished with a long couch, an armchair, a wooden rocking chair, a gray rug, several expensively framed photographs, and two floor lamps. Orchids hung by a large window. Lush greenery rose steeply behind the house.

"Nice, mighty nice." The house was small, built above and behind a separate garage that fronted the street. Steps led up to a porch and the door through which he'd entered. The air was cool and quiet. The house seemed to breathe in a wooded space just large enough for it and for the walls of vegetation on either side that separated it from its neighbors. A sense of privacy lay in the living room like an expensive gift.

Mo led him into a neatly organized kitchen. "I know who he is." Joe pointed at a photograph of her father that hung above a table.

"Ah yes. My father. Do I look so much like him?"

"Very similar in the eyes and mouth." What else was there?

"Professor Soule," she said.

"I read his book," Joe confessed. "Pretty good writer." An expression both arrogant and helpless flashed across her face. "Clear," Joe added.

"Yes. He's a worker." Her expression neutralized. Joe put a hand behind his ear.

"I don't hear any dripping . . . "

"Let me show you. The kitchen doesn't drip all the time; the bathroom is the worst." Joe leaned over the bathroom sink, thumped it, and listened to its heartbeat.

"Operation iss required." He opened the aluminum case.

"Snazzo, so shiny," she said staring at the tools. "I'll fix the salad."

Joe shut the water off and began dismantling a faucet, eventually reaching the washer, held by a brass screw. He replaced both washers in the bathroom and both in the kitchen.

"As new," he said, washing his hands.

"Wonderful." She carried a dark salad bowl one step down into a dining room that had a tile floor and large windows. "I eat in the kitchen, usually, but when I have company it's nice to be out here. Should we have more light? It's sprinkling again." She switched on a paper globe suspended over the table.

"I don't know . . . I like the natural light." She switched it off and lit a sage colored candle. "There, that's better. We had this end of the porch extended and made into a dining room. When it's clear, you can see across the valley."

"Who we?"

"It was Thurston, really. It was Thurston's house. We lived together for eight years. He ran off with his secretary to Texas."

"Oh."

"Ran isn't the right word. Thurston didn't run anywhere; he was rather deliberate, actually. He gave me a deal on the house."

"That was good," Joe said.

"I didn't want him to go . . . Men just can't keep their thing in their pants," she said angrily.

Joe remembered that silence was golden. Mo reached for a baguette of French bread and broke it sharply. Joe took a piece and investigated the cheese.

"Chevre?"

"Yes."

"Finest kind. Yummy salad." Fresh olive oil, Manoa lettuce, avocado, scallions, a hint of lime or maybe Meyer lemon—delicious with the crusty bread. "Vino?" She nodded and he poured them each a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from a half empty bottle. "Here's to your cozy place," he toasted. Mo raised her glass and sipped.

"I had fun last week with your friends," she said. "Quite a character, that Morgan."

"I had a card from them in Kauai. They found Hamura's." Mo listened as she chewed salad. "Yeah, we go way back," Joe said. "What did you think of Edie?"

"Dynamite," Mo said.

"She got me thinking about writing a story. I tried, but I'm not satisfied." He told Mo about Alphonse. "I've been reading about fiction. I'm not really getting it."

"Schools can be useful," she suggested. "Sometimes it's good to be around others doing the same kind of work. I like to go to a seminar once in a while—the trouble is, it costs so much. Have you heard of Goddard, in Vermont?"

"I have."

"They offer MFA programs—non-resident, or close to it."

"It's an idea. I'll think about it."

Time slipped by. Mo told stories about summers on Nantucket where her grandmother had a twelve room "cottage" on the water. So that's where she developed her beach strut, Joe thought. Mo's father had slyly dominated the family even though her mother had all the money. Mo was ambivalent toward her father. She was proud of his intellect and accomplishments, but she had an inside view of what he had taken from every one around him and the price he himself had paid for academic success. She was looking for a way to be like him without being like him, Joe decided.

Mo tried her new espresso machine. She was having dinner guests the following evening. Joe visited the bathroom and noticed that she had left open the door to her bedroom. The bed was freshly made with lilac purple sheets. A huge white flower by Georgia O'Keeffe waited on the wall.

He thought it would be nice to listen to music, but he didn't say anything. He was tuning into Mo's way of inhabiting her space, her large eyes, quiet, cat-like. He talked about Kate and Max and then fell silent.

"So how's your love life?" she asked suddenly. Her eyebrows were raised. She bent forward, making herself smaller.

"Nothing to write home about—if I had a home."

"You're a good looking man, Joe Burke. Just the right amount of gray in your mustache. Aristocrat. Rebel. How did your nose get that crook in it, by the way. I've been meaning to ask."

"Oh, that," Joe said, "the rebounding wars—in high school." She had surprised him. He thought she was moving away from him, and now he sensed the outlines of an offer, the second one in two months. He and Mo could be lovers; he would ride shotgun, do things her way, and she would do her best for him in time left over from her busy life. The lilac sheets beckoned, but as suddenly as it had come, the offer, if it had been one, was gone, swept off the table with the crumbs she brushed with one hand into the other.

She stood and said, "The ladies better watch it. O.K., I still have work to do today. I've got some orders I'm trying to get out by the weekend." Again he was surprised, but he went on as though nothing had happened. She drove him home, his tool case on his lap.

"I'll call you when I get back from the wedding," he said with his hand on her car door.

"Have fun," she said and pulled away with a thoughtful frown. Joe walked up the stairs to his apartment. What did she want? What did he want? He didn't know, he had to admit. Probably that was why the offer vanished. He'd paid attention to the plumbing and flunked passion.

Joe slung the aluminum case across the room onto the mattress. The tools, in their foam cushion, didn't even rattle. "I kept my Goddamned Thing in my Goddamned Pants, Batman!" Batman maintained a dignified silence.

The next day Joe went to a bookstore and wrote down the addresses of several graduate schools that offered non-resident programs. At home, he hunted around on the Internet and found a writers group that discussed the pros and cons of different programs. Montpelier, also in Vermont, was well regarded.

He polished up his non-story, wrote a long letter explaining why an ex-computer programmer wanted to write fiction, signed a check, threw in some poems for good measure, and officially applied to Montpelier.

He walked to the Moana and watched the sunset. It had been a year since he arrived in Hawaii. Had he really left Maine? Or was this just an extended visit that was coming to an end? Joe liked Maine. Portland was a comfortable little city . . . the Standard Bakery, fresh ale at Gritty's, lattes at a dozen different coffee shops. He remembered the small Hispanic/Indian man who pushed a shopping cart down the street in all seasons, accepting Joe's returnable bottles with a grateful smile, always saluting as though Joe were a superior.

Should he go back to Maine? Or to Woodstock? He had many old friends in Woodstock. Daisy. Morgan had passed along her best wishes. Joe looked down the beach at the lights circling the base of Diamond Head. Did he want to go back east? It felt better to sit under the banyan tree and watch it get dark. It seemed a more forward direction, whatever happened. He decided to say goodbye to Maine and to Woodstock, but he couldn't. No wonder we say, "See you," he thought. Anything but goodbye. "Aloha" is a much better word—hello and goodbye, gladness and grief, love, all of it.

11

The lobby of the Edgewater Hotel was busy. "My home away from home,"
Joe said, checking in.

"We try," the desk clerk said, returning Joe's credit card.

Joe walked to the Elliot Bay Book Company and asked a woman at the cash register if he could buy a gift certificate. "For a wedding present," he added.

"We can do that. How much for?"

"A thousand dollars." This would leave him seriously low, but to hell with it.

She struggled with the computer. "I lied. We can't do that; the computer won't take it."

"Two for five hundred each?"

"That'll work," she said.

"O.K., one for Kate Burke and one for Jackson, umm, Arendal. Jackson Arendal." He would explain that he wasn't trying to tell them how to split it.

He walked back to the hotel and began writing a story in the bar where he had watched Fanatuua earn his money. Across the room, a sturdy woman seated in a wheelchair studied him through thick glasses. Two hours flew by like minutes; she was gone when he got up from the table.

In the morning, he put on jeans and his best aloha shirt, walked to the pier next to the hotel, and boarded the Victoria Clipper. The San Juan Islands are a three hour trip from Seattle, north out of Puget Sound, across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, and nearly to Vancouver Island in Canada. The catamaran hummed along while passengers sunned themselves, took pictures, and moved about the cabins. The captain announced the islands as Washington's "banana belt," free of the rain shadow cast by the Olympic Mountains.

Friday Harbor is sheltered by low pine covered ridges. Joe walked up Spring Street and checked in at the Friday Harbor Inn where Kate had made reservations. The house she had rented was in Eagle Cove, a few miles from town. He went down toward the ferry to look for a cab and was hailed from across the street. It was Max.

"Yo, Max!" They decided to have an ale in a brew pub on the corner.
They sat by a window looking out on the sidewalk.

"Here's to Kate," Joe said, raising his glass.

"Kate." Max was cheerful.

"Is your mom here?"

"She's supposed to show up later," Max said.

"Good deal," Joe said, "haven't seen her for a couple of years." He wasn't that anxious to see Ingrid, but in Max's presence he lapsed into old habits. The years might have been weeks, and he might have been just away on a business trip.

"Wait til you see what I bought," Max said. He handed Joe a photograph of a farm at the base of a mountain. "It's near Londonderry, in Vermont. Eight acres at the far corner of this farm." He pointed with his finger. "Just at the end of this highest field, a piece that runs up the hill. One of my friends from school owns the farm. My father came up from Boston and liked it; he gave me the down payment. I made a tent platform and moved out there last month."

"It's going to get cold," Joe said.

"I'll move into an apartment or a room for the winter. There's a town road that ends at the farm. I have a right of way from there."

"Can you get in with the truck?"

"Yep. It will take a while to get anything built, but it's a start. And then—look at this." He handed Joe another picture. At the top of a clearing, a long log projected out from under a ledge. It was supported by two shorter logs lashed together in an X. Standing upright on the end of the log was a prehistoric figure with straight arms and large rocks for hands. The hands extended out and below its feet. "Stone Man," Max said proudly.

"It looks like a balancing toy," Joe said. "A balancing giant."

"Yep. He's come down out of the mountains to see what man has done." Joe looked closely. Stone Man was made of small diameter logs and had a strong narrow head.

"How did you fasten the head? Is that a rock?"

"It's a piece of slate. I split the end of the log, stuck his head part way down the split, and lashed it—like a tomahawk."

"Something else, Max! Giacometti goes to Indonesia."

"And Vermont," Max said. "He sways in the wind. The idea came to me when I first saw the clearing. I knew I had to do it."

"Must have been fun getting it up."

"I built the perch first, got it solid, and then I made a temporary walkway out of two by sixes, H shaped. We pulled Stone Man out to the end with a come-along, a couple of inches at a time. It was awesome. Bunch of guys helped. We had a few brews."

"I'll bet. I like this, Max."

"It'll be cool to see him in winter and then in spring. Deer will come.
Chickadees . . . "

"I'd love to have one of these pictures."

"I have a bunch of them at home. I'll send you one when I get back."

"Been a long time since I've seen Kate's mom," Joe said. "She's married now. I've never met her husband."

"I got here yesterday," Max said. "Lot of people around, but I haven't seen Sally. Jackson's folks rented a house, too. Jackson's cool."

"I'm glad they're getting married," Joe said.

"Me, too. So, want to come out with me?"

Max drove out of town, through open country, and along a dirt road to a house at the top of a heathery field that sloped broadly down to the water. Hedges enclosed a back lawn where a long table was covered with a white cloth. Several chairs were positioned on the grass by an aluminum keg. Kate was in the kitchen preparing the buffet, directing a small army of friends.

"Dad! Oh, good!" She gave him a hug. "Nice shirt!" She introduced him to Audrey, Jonathan, Monica . . . Names blurred together.

"A great event, Kate." He cut a piece of cheddar and broke off the end of a loaf of French bread. He pointed at a quart mason jar. "What's this?"

"Pear and ginger chutney."

"Yumm." He walked out on the front porch. Jackson was throwing a Frisbee to a border collie—honey colored, white at the throat—scrambling and leaping against a background of blue gray water, boats, and a distant wooded shore. Joe could remember nothing in his life as assured and as photogenic. He was happy for Kate and Jackson. This weekend was a parent's reward; he accepted it gratefully. Yet it was hard to relax. He had social duties, and, besides, he was increasingly something other or more than a parent.

Jackson rubbed the dog's head and threw the Frisbee as far as he could.
He came over and shook hands. "Congratulations," Joe said.

"Thank you. How was your trip?"

"Fine, that's some ferry! Fast."

"Did you come on the Clipper?"

"Yes."

"She's a hummer," Jackson said. "We drove to Anacortes and took the car ferry."

"Are your folks here, Jackson?"

"They'll be over later. Have you met . . . " There was more frisbee throwing. Joe wandered around the house to the back lawn. Kate's old boyfriend was standing by the keg.

"Hey, Rolf."

"Hello, Joe."

"A great event. Nice to see you. How's the history going?"

"It progresses," Rolf said. "I have written several papers on the early Scandinavian settlers in the northwest. You might be surprised to learn that only twenty years after the first settlement . . . "

"Rolf, you fine driver, you." Audrey, or Monica, came up and put her hand on Rolf's arm. "Cindy and Jake are at the ferry." Rolf nodded. "And Kate needs a jar of capers."

"A Mediterranean condiment. I'm on my way. Small or large? The capers .
. . The jar, I mean."

"Better get large," Audrey Monica said.

"Well, I shall look forward to hearing about the settlers later," Joe said, drawing a beer. It was delicious, much like the ale at the brew pub. Jackson came by, filled a paper cup, and told him that it was from the brew pub.

"Good stuff, no?"

"Wicked good," Joe said in Maine speak. "Ono," he added in pidgin.

"Hello, there." It was Sally, happy and more tired than he remembered. She swept up and threw her arms around him, then turned and introduced a stout man waiting at her side. "Gino, this is Joe."

"Hi, Gino. You are the second Gino I've known. Congratulations on your marriage, by the way," They shook hands.

"Thank you. It has been, what, six years now?" Gino turned to Sally. She was rangy and athletic. Gino came only to her ear, but he was solidly built and did not seem smaller. His eyes were dark and rather impenetrable.

"Going for seven," Sally said.

"Can you believe our little girl is getting married?" Joe asked her.

"It's time," she said.

"Maybe you'll be a grandfather, Joe, ha, ha."

"Ha, Gino. I hope so."

"Ha. Come Joe, help me with the wine." He led Joe to his car, and they carried two cases into the house. "One red, one white. Special. I brought them from Denver."

"Kate tells me you have a wine store."

"Small, yes. But we do all right. People in this country are discovering wine."

"Hey Joe, is this one of your father's?" Max was standing in front of an oil painting at the far end of the living room. Gino and Joe went over.

"For sure," Joe said. He hadn't seen it before.

"Wedding present!" Kate called from the kitchen. "We brought it over to make the house seem more like home." It was a Deer Isle scene. An apple tree in full bloom, crowded by woods behind it, leaned over the edge of a field and a stock car that was missing its hood and engine. The car's wheels were twisted strangely in the grass. A large yellow 90 was painted on a blue door. White blossoms lay scattered on the wreck. "'Memorial Day' is the name of the painting," Kate said coming closer. "You like it?"

"Pretty good," Max said.

"I think he's getting better," Joe said. "Is he coming, Kate, by the way?"

"No. He said he wanted to but he wasn't feeling up to the trip."

"Very artistic," Gino said. "And this too." He held up a knight from
Jackson's chess set which was laid out on a table beneath the painting.
He spun the piece slowly between his thumb and forefinger.

"Jackson made those," Joe said.

"Very nice. Do you play chess, Joe?"

"Yes, but . . . "

"How about a game?"

Joe didn't want to play. He had been too well taught, and he wanted to drink and drift around. "On the porch, yes?" Gino picked up the board and carried it to an outside table. Joe followed reluctantly. "Wine, Joe! Wine for chess! The Merlot." He rubbed his hands together cheerfully. Joe gave up and fetched a bottle and two glasses from the kitchen.

"Corkscrew," Joe said to himself, but before he could move, Gino held up an elegantly curved pocket knife and corkscrew. He had the cork out by the time Joe sat down.

"Families," he toasted. Joe nodded. The wine was soft and bursting with flavor.

"Oh, boy," Joe said.

"A small estate, a good year," Gino said. He held out his fists, a pawn hidden in each. Joe pointed, received white, and opened pawn to king's four. Gino took a sip of wine and began a Sicilian defense. Monica or Jesse was taking her turn throwing the frisbee for the dog. About ten moves into a slowly developing game, Gino reached forward, drove his bishop through Joe's position, and leaned back. Joe was shocked. He didn't want to look at Gino. He didn't need to; the real man was on the board. He cleared his throat and breathed deeply. Gino had taken his knight. It was a forced exchange; he had no choice but to take Gino's bishop and wreck his own defense. Gino gathered for attack, and Joe went into full retreat, playing for time, hoping for a mistake. Twenty moves later he conceded.

"Ah, nice game, Joe." Gino tossed off the rest of his wine.

"We must have another," Joe said, "after I have a brain transplant and read a few books."

"Ha, ha. Very artistic," Gino repeated, holding up a bishop. Joe retreated to the kitchen for a piece of bread.

"Jesus Christ," he said to Sally in a low voice.

"You lasted longer than most," she said. "I thought I saw him think a couple of times." Rolf appeared and clunked a jar down on the counter.

"Capers," he said. "What for?"

"Crab cakes," Kate said. More people arrived. Kate's friends continued to pile food and dishes on the table in the back yard. One couple brought an enormous smoked salmon. Jackson's parents showed up. Joe was happy to see two more people over fifty.

"Hi, I'm Joe, father of the bride," he said extending his hand.

"I'm Gunnar. This is Bonnie." Gunnar Arendal was wide shouldered, a few inches shorter than Joe. He had a high forehead, blue eyes, a strong nose, and a trim blonde mustache. His hair was swept back, gray at the temples. Bonnie was spare, compact, and deeply tanned. Her hair was dark and short. Fine lines crisscrossed her face. A handsome builder and a power elf.

"Jackson tells me you're a builder, down in the bay area."

"Yes."

"I did a little of that when I was a kid. I couldn't pick up a bundle of shingles now."

"They aren't getting any lighter," Gunnar said mildly.

"What do you do?" Bonnie asked.

"Used to program computers. Gave it up. Now I'm learning how to write."

"Oh, what kind of writing?"

"Stories."

"Bonnie couldn't live without her mysteries," Gunnar said.

"It's true," she said.

"Hi, Dad, Mom. You've met Joe." Jackson put an arm around each of them.

"Hello, dear," Bonnie said.

"The food is mostly out," Jackson said. "Beer, wine, hard stuff—help yourselves.

Joe could see where Jackson got his energy and talent. People make more sense when you've met their parents. Jackson and Kate would have problems, Joe thought. Who doesn't? But they were a good match and off to a fine start. What more could a parent ask?

He staked out a position by the keg and had a sociable time. He kept expecting to see Ingrid, but she didn't appear. Finally, a couple of hours after dark, he hitched a ride into town and went to bed. He slept restlessly and dreamed that a group of beautiful young people were enjoying themselves on a lawn. He was watching through thick glass; he couldn't hear them.

12

Joe slept late at the Friday Harbor Inn. He walked down the hill and ate pancakes in the midst of an argument about a town construction project. Money. Politics. It was comfortably familiar. He went back to bed and didn't wake up until noon.

His new clothes had survived nicely, folded at the bottom of the Filson bag. The shirt was in its original box. He removed the pins, dressed, and tied his tie several times before he got it right. He took a bus to the county park. The bus sped through shady woods, up and down hills, and past horses grazing in uneven fields. It stopped at a resort by a narrow harbor choked with pleasure boats. Three women boarded. As the bus left the harbor, they told the driver about a tourist who had died of a heart attack pedaling his bicycle up that very hill an hour earlier. "He was in his fifties," one said.

"Too soon," another said cheerfully.

"Grover and Henry are playing golf, but they're walking," said the third.

The driver stopped at the turnoff to the park. Joe skipped out gratefully. The grim reaper was sure to stay with the interested audience. There was a parking lot and a grassy area by the water. Jackson and several friends were carrying folding tables and chairs up a rocky path. Joe took two chairs and followed them to a clearing on a bluff above the water. Chairs were arranged in the traditional bride and groom groups, a center aisle leading towards the edge of the bluff. Rows of champagne glasses covered most of a table set up beside the chairs. Coolers waited auspiciously on the ground behind the tables.

"You guys have thought of everything," Joe said to Jackson.

"Kate could run NATO," he said.

"Probably run it better," Joe said. "Gorgeous view."

"We were camping out here last year, and we thought it would be the perfect place to get married."

They returned for the last of the chairs. A musician arrived carrying a guitar case and a battery powered amp. He unpacked and began plunking away at Bach and Vivaldi. A minister with a neatly trimmed beard stood by a large madrone oak. He was well dressed, quiet, and non-denominational to the point of disappearance. Joe, who was finding himself increasingly fond of people over fifty, engaged him in conversation. He looked as though he'd been created whole that morning in the image of the Northwest, but he admitted to being from Vermont. That was as far as Joe could get. The minister evaded all questions about his youth, as though he had left a bad record behind—or maybe just an uncouth one.

"Hi, stranger!" Joe turned to the familiar voice.

"Ingrid," he said, opening his arms. She advanced and held him tightly for a moment before backing away with a satisfied smile. "You are looking well," Joe said, "and don't tell me it's because of your happy sex life."

"It's the Mediterranean diet."

"Olive oil," he said. Ingrid had lost a few pounds, although she didn't need to. Her thick blonde hair was cut short and away from her even features. Her expression was practical and good-natured, dominated by eyes the color of transparent jade.

"You don't look so bad yourself," she said.

"Ah, well."

"More serious," she said, "more gray in your mustache, thinner."

"Time's getting shorter."

"Tell me about it. I'm so happy for Kate."

"Yes, this is a good thing. It is so nice for her to have you and Max here. Did you see Maxie's giant sculpture?"

"He showed me the picture. I love it. I haven't been over to Vermont to see his land, yet. So, what have you been up to?"

Joe straightened. "This and that. I'm pretty well settled in Hawaii. I miss Portland sometimes, but . . . I've been writing a lot."

"Good," Ingrid said. "You always wanted to."

"And you?" Joe asked.

"Same old," she said cheerfully. "Selling quite a bit. I'm down to teaching one class."

Joe bent over and looked at her earrings. A tiny woman swung from a trapeze on one ear; an elephant waited patiently under the other. "Pretty good," he said. "A circus."

"A golden circus," Ingrid said. "I made a series. The clown is my favorite, but he's too sad for a wedding."

The chairs were filling. Joe took his seat next to Sally in the front row. Ingrid sat behind them with Max. A bridesmaid, six months pregnant, wearing a light blue flowered dress, stood prettily on the bluff, her hands clasped around lace and a bouquet of white roses. After some minutes of suspense, Kate and Jackson walked down the aisle. Kate was lovely in white; Jackson wore a smashing gray suit. Sally wiped away a tear. The minister smiled gravely. Vows were exchanged. Spectacular rings, made by Jackson and a friend, were pushed on. Kate and Jackson kissed. Cameras flashed. Simple and touching. A rainbow or a pod of breaching orcas would have been too much.

They moved to the champagne table and drank toasts before departing in a convoy for the yacht club in Friday Harbor. Designated cleaners stayed behind; they would join them later.

In the club, a long table took up most of the main room. Vases of flowers were regularly spaced along the white tablecloth. Places were set for at least sixty people, name cards at each setting. In a corner of the room, band instruments waited by empty stools.

Joe repaired to the bar in the next room. A short intense woman pouted when he ordered Glenlivet. "That's so easy."

"Are you bored? Want to practice something complicated?"

"No, that's all right." She put the whiskey in front of him with a quick smile. One Scotch and then wine. If he didn't go back to the hard stuff after dinner, he'd survive.

Roasted yellow pepper soup was followed by a salad of spinach and scallops, salmon with a thyme sauce, and risotto with wild mushrooms. Wine servers patrolled vigilantly. Joe had a conversation about education with a teacher Kate had met on a vacation in Tibet. There were sentimental toasts, and then the band began to play. He remembered that he could dance, and he took a turn around the floor with the mother of the bride. Sally and he moved easily together out of old habit.

Time went backwards and then into slow motion as the band worked through hits of the 60's and 70's. Joe danced with anyone available, and when no one was available he danced alone. Occasionally, he went outside on a long porch to cool off in a fine drizzle that was drifting in from the harbor.

A group gathered around the wedding cake on a table at the far end of the room. Sally and Ingrid stood together looking mellow and nostalgic. Gunnar and Bonnie were talking with friends. Max was taking pictures. It was time to go, Joe realized. He had told Kate earlier that he would fade away at the appropriate time. He walked through the bar and said to the woman who had served him the Scotch, "Your little girl only gets married once." He went out the door and down the steps.

"Are you from around here? Seattle?"

Joe turned and looked back up at the bartender who had followed him onto the porch. "Hawaii."

"Uh—what do you do?" She was urgent. He remembered that she had been watching him dance.

"I'm a poet," he said. The words fell through the air like a sentence.

"Oh, a good one, I'm sure."

"There are only a couple of us," Joe said, drunkenly. "I've got to go now." A musician on break, watching from a corner of the porch, drew on his cigarette. The glow lit his face, a witness, someone Joe would never know. "I've got to go," Joe said. He turned and walked into the dark and the rain, leaving the younger generation and most of his life behind.

13

Joe was thirsty the next day, fuzzy, but not totaled. Dancing had worked off a lot of the booze. He caught the Clipper back to Seattle and sat silently for three hours while images and conversations flowed through his mind. The wedding had been a great success—well organized, yes—but mostly because Kate and Jackson were a good match and because they and their friends all had the same attitude: let's have a good time; let's do it right. It was a relief after the weddings he'd been to that were dominated by ancient family feuds and personal problems. On the other hand, no flying plates, no loud exits, no sobbing? He wondered if maybe he hadn't missed something. It was too bad that his father and Ann hadn't been there. Probably, he should call and see how they were. Kate would check in, no doubt; she and his father had a warm and easy relationship.

The Clipper docked mid-afternoon, and he checked in at his home away from home. His mind was too busy for sleep, so he took his notebook down to the bar and sipped a beer by the window.

"The writer," a voice said in a husky contralto. Joe looked up. The woman in a wheelchair who had watched him on Thursday was rolling slowly by.

"Hi," Joe said. Her face was sad and intense. Her eyes were large, brown, and circular behind round glasses. Her hair was light brown, shoulder length. Her coloring was warm, slightly flushed, whether from makeup or not he couldn't tell. She wore a light cotton blouse with bark colored buttons down the front. Her lap was covered by a blanket with a Southwestern motif.

She stopped. "I saw you in here the other night. What are you writing, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Oh, nothing," he said, closing the notebook. "Just notes. My daughter got married this weekend."

"Ah."

"Want a beer or something?" He felt like talking. She turned towards the table, and he moved a chair out of the way.

"Thank you." The bartender came over. "The usual," she said. He brought her a glistening martini. "I like a vodka martini about this time. Was it a nice wedding?"

"Very. Out on the San Juan's"

"Lovely. Here's to their happiness." It was what Joe had spent the last two days doing. He drank the last of his beer and ordered another.

"I was working on a story the other night," he offered.

"Have you been writing long?"

"No. Well—depends. I've always kept notebooks. I've written some poems, and now I'm trying to write stories."

"I used to," she said.

"Write stories?"

"Yes."

"Wait a sec, I'm Joe Burke. What's your name?"

"Call me Isabelle," she said wryly.

"Isabelle! Call me Ishmael. My God, I spent a whole winter reading Moby Dick. I was working in San Francisco. Read a couple of pages every night sitting in a circle of lamp light with my back to a heater."

"Nice town—great book," Isabelle said, "although no one can really say why." She seemed quite experienced, in her early forties, maybe.

"You want to know the trouble I'm having?" Joe asked. She looked amused. "Writing," he added.

"Sure."

"I can't make the jump into fiction. I use something from real life, and then, if I leave anything out, I feel like a liar—like I haven't told the truth."

"Quilt," she said, looking across the gray water. "Patchwork quilt."

"What do you mean?"

"The story is the quilt. Made of patches: this person's face, that person's love, a cat you knew . . . You make up the quilt—the design—but the strength of it, its integrity, comes from the patches." She finished her martini.

Joe's eyes opened wide. "I have to think about that."

"The quilt's the thing," she said offhandedly. "You have to care about it." She swiveled her chair and held her arm in the air. "Another round," she said. "On me."

He agreed and considered what she'd said. "A patchwork quilt. I can see it. What do you do now? Are you writing?"

"Not much. I've been working on songs."

"Oh great," Joe said. "I wish I could play an instrument."

"I have a keyboard that I take with me."

"Take with you? Do you travel a lot?"