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 being pierced by a thin hot wire. He smiled back as best he could and left quickly.
The next morning, the young woman looked at him calmly from her usual seat in the corner of the coffee shop. "I did a drawing of you. Would you like it?"
"Sure." Joe rose from his table and walked over. She handed him a pencil drawing that showed him sitting, head forward, looking down. The lines were simplified but intense. His head was like a hatchet about to strike. It embarrassed Joe to realize that this maniacal stranger was him, or her perception of him. There was life in it.
"It isn't very good," she said.
"I like it . . . Thanks. I'll trade; I'll give you some writing." She seemed pleased. She had signed the drawing in one corner. "Rhiannon, that's a beautiful name. I've never heard it before."
"It's Welsh."
"Oh. I'm Joe Burke—Irish." He meant it as a joke, but it sounded in his ears like a warning or an acknowledgment of kinship. "So, you work around here?"
"Club 21, the clothing boutique on the corner. I don't start until ten, but I like to get up early, get out of the apartment." That explained her stylish outfits. She put her sketch book, her pencils, and her CD player into a backpack and waved goodbye.
The next day he gave her four poems, handwritten on heavy stock that he bought in the art store next to the coffee shop. "Awesome," she said, putting them carefully in her pack.
"I'm starting a novel," he said.