"So, did you like her? Rhiannon?"
"Yeah. She said she'd come back in two weeks and cook me a decent meal if I wanted. She was critical of the kitchen—like a little countess or something."
Joe laughed. "Her father's a chef, I guess. You lucky drudger! You remember my maxim about what to do when you're really attracted to a woman?"
"Tell her," Max said, and added, "where's my quarter?"
"I'll invest it for you. She's the real thing, Max." Joe paused. "When you see her, tell her Sumoko and Batman are spending a lot of time together."
"Cool," Max said. "Who's Sumoko?"
"She'll explain." Good old Max. Maybe he and Rhiannon would get together. Impossible to predict, Joe thought, but he could keep his fingers crossed.
20
A month after Maxie's call, two years after he had left Portland, Joe made coffee and read the beginning of his novel. He squared the pages and leaned back. It was the best he could do—given what he knew about the story so far. When he finished the first draft, he would start over and add things to better frame the questions that the story answered, and he would take things out that didn't matter. The phone rang.
"Joe?" The voice was husky, like Isabelle's, but it turned up at the corners and had Texas in it.