"We try," the desk clerk said, returning Joe's credit card.
Joe walked to the Elliot Bay Book Company and asked a woman at the cash register if he could buy a gift certificate. "For a wedding present," he added.
"We can do that. How much for?"
"A thousand dollars." This would leave him seriously low, but to hell with it.
She struggled with the computer. "I lied. We can't do that; the computer won't take it."
"Two for five hundred each?"
"That'll work," she said.
"O.K., one for Kate Burke and one for Jackson, umm, Arendal. Jackson Arendal." He would explain that he wasn't trying to tell them how to split it.
He walked back to the hotel and began writing a story in the bar where he had watched Fanatuua earn his money. Across the room, a sturdy woman seated in a wheelchair studied him through thick glasses. Two hours flew by like minutes; she was gone when he got up from the table.
In the morning, he put on jeans and his best aloha shirt, walked to the pier next to the hotel, and boarded the Victoria Clipper. The San Juan Islands are a three hour trip from Seattle, north out of Puget Sound, across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, and nearly to Vancouver Island in Canada. The catamaran hummed along while passengers sunned themselves, took pictures, and moved about the cabins. The captain announced the islands as Washington's "banana belt," free of the rain shadow cast by the Olympic Mountains.