lot of time
together."

"Cool," Max said. "Who's Sumoko?"

"She'll explain." Good old Max. Maybe he and Rhiannon would get
together. Impossible to predict, Joe thought, but he could keep his
fingers crossed.

20

A month after Maxie's call, two years after he had left Portland, Joe
made coffee and read the beginning of his novel. He squared the pages
and leaned back. It was the best he could do--given what he knew about
the story so far. When he finished the first draft, he would start over
and add things to better frame the questions that the story answered,
and he would take things out that didn't matter. The phone rang.

"Joe?" The voice was husky, like Isabelle's, but it turned up at the
corners and had Texas in it.

"Daisy?"

"Yes. I'm in San Francisco . . . Wes died in July."

"I know," Joe said. "I'm sorry. I just heard. I was going to write."

"I'll be in Honolulu tomorrow. I wondered . . . "

"When will you be here?"

"In the afternoon. I'm on my way to Auckland to visit Adam--my son
Adam. I thought I would break up the trip and maybe get to see you."

She was staying at the Moana on Morgan's recommendation. They agreed to
meet at five. Joe was in a mild state of shock when he put down the
phone. There was no unfinished business between them. He had offered
her everything he had, and she had chosen Wes. It had been clean and
terrible, honest and final. Now, thirty years later, here they were
again. Here, where? Deep down, he knew. His face was still buried in
her hair, his lips by her ear.

"Do you know how many of us there are in the world?"

"Not very many," she said, would always say.

Joe worked the rest of the day, out of habit, but he did not sleep
well.

He was half an hour early at the Moana, wearing his best blue aloha
shirt, his mustache trimmed, his fingers drumming on the bar. Gilbert
brought him a Glenlivet and left him alone. At five minutes to five,
Daisy walked out of the hotel and down the wide steps. He knew her
first by her walk, tall and careful, and then, as she approached, by
her face which was fuller, more deeply lined, but still good humored
and direct. They embraced beneath the banyan. She fit in his arms and
against his shoulder as comfortably as ever. Joe could think of nothing
to say that wasn't sappy, so he said nothing.

She stepped back and looked closely at him. They exchanged compliments,
sat at a round table, and began to catch up. She told him