Chapter 3 No.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.