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.