"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."