e 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