ice, if you should see
him." The thought of Sarah reading his words to her children filled Joe
with pleasure. He immediately wrote to Alison, thanking her for
encouraging him to write and deliver the story.

A week later, a square envelope arrived from Madison, Wisconsin. It was
a wedding announcement.

Oh Joe, how nice to hear from you! I was just thinking about you. I am
marrying another Joe, Joe Jurgens, next month. He is a wonderful man
who lost his wife two years ago. He has a fourteen year old son and a
twelve year old daughter, so I have a lot to do. I think of you often.
Keep writing. You have a lot to do, too. Love, Alison.

Well! Joe knocked on his wooden table top and wished her luck. He sent
her a lavish congratulations card.

A month later Joe finished his last school assignment. "We're on our
own, Batman," he said, carrying the packet for Roland out the door. He
kept writing and submitted stories to The Paris Review, Manoa,
Ploughshares, and The New Yorker. Things happened in each of them. He
was making progress, but he wasn't satisfied. The stories were rejected
with form letters, sometimes not even form letters, form scraps.

Fortunately, there was more in the mail than rejection slips. Kate and
Jackson found a house in the Ballard section of Seattle. Mo sent an
invitation to an opening party for her new business. Max sent pictures
of Stone Man watching over the valley. Joe taped the pictures on the
wall near his father's painting.

His steel company stock fell to .50, down by a third of his original
investment. Buy more, he thought. But he was afraid of running out of
money and being forced to sell at a loss. He kicked himself for buying
so much at .75. If he'd bought half as much, he could have picked up
some of these bargain shares. Remember that, he told himself, you don't
have to buy it all at once.

Joe settled more deeply into his routine. One morning in a coffee shop,
he looked up and realized that a young woman was watching him from a
corner table. He had seen her before, sitting in the same corner,
sketching. She was in her late teens, slightly built. Her hair was
shoulder length, a fresh mahogany brushed back from her face. She had
artist's eyes, open and steady, similar in color to her hair but
lighter. She caught him looking and smiled--a knowing smile for someone
so young. Her teeth were so white and her look was so proud and gentle,
so female, that he felt a sharp pain. It was like