gle malt--wonderful stuff," he said.

"I'll have a glass of Chardonnay. So, Joe, tell me about when you used
to live here."

"I was married and Kate, our daughter, was young. I've been married
twice." Alison did not appear surprised. "Sally and I were happy to be
out of Woodstock."

"Woodstock, the Woodstock?"

"Yes, a small town. It was so great to be in Honolulu where we didn't
know anyone. My feet didn't feel the pavement for a year. But we had a
hard time. Food stamps and all that, even welfare for a while. Things
settled down when I started driving a Charley's cab and Sally cleaned
houses. Cleaning houses isn't bad work--cash--anybody gives you a hard
time you just go somewhere else. Here's looking at you." They touched
glasses.

"Sally had a couple of steady gigs where she liked the people and knew
what she was supposed to do every week." His mind was moving back.
"Some amazing things did happen . . . "

"Oh, good," Alison said.

"One afternoon I went over to Kahala to pick up Sally at a cleaning
job. She was disturbed. Sally was a sweetheart, but she didn't talk
much; after six years of marriage I knew I had to ask if I wanted to
know what was going on.

"She described a scene between her boss, heiress to the Cannon towel
fortune, and her boss's daughter. The daughter told her mother that a
nice man had come into her room during the night, had sat on her bed
and talked to her. The mother explained that dreams sometimes seemed
real. The daughter said that it wasn't a dream. They argued. There were
tears, and the daughter ran upstairs."

Joe paused. "Sally thought that the mother had handled it badly."

"What did you think?" Alison asked.

"What did I know? Anyway, time flew by. I got nervous; I thought maybe
I would never do anything but drive a cab. I got a job managing a
tennis club on the other side of the pali--a good job--a house, a
truck, a pool in which Kate could learn to swim, acres for her to run
around in.

"Sally operated the snack bar; Kate went to kindergarten. Mornings, I
walked into Kailua to drink coffee and write."

"Just like this morning," Alison said.

"Yes. I was trying to understand Honolulu . . . as though it could be
grasped and set, presented, like a pearl." Joe sipped his whiskey. "I
became friendly with a regular at the Rob Roy Coffee Shop, an
ex-machinist who had fled Chicago to start over in Hawaii. 'You gotta
meet Mike,' he told me one day. 'You guys would get alon