The rash guards weren’t so bad, Arch decided, wishing he had a vanity mirror to check himself out in. Like a wetsuit, but better because the thin elastic long sleeve top and bottoms held everything in without giving him a feeling of being compressed……..
Arch was on the beach across from Hanalei, kicking sand, and listening to a small battery powered radio belt out House of the Rising Sun, when his life came apart at the seams. Fired from the CIA for cause, again. Unable to pay for the room…….
“Stairway to Heaven?” Arch said, looking intently into Matisse’s eyes. “I don’t like the way you said that. What heaven or what hell are you talking about and what does it have to do with the word Haiku, General DeWare mentioned…..
Arch searched the house. The dog paid close attention, but never moved from his sitting position in the small great room, as if his view of the sandy beach and pounding surf beyond was not to be surrendered. There was nobody in the house.
Arch slept deeply for the first time since the classified file had appeared out of nowhere to give him his life back but also to offer him death once again, in a life controlled by unaccountable serendipity. He awoke next to the woman who lay just like he’d left her many hours before, with Harpo the Dingo lying across her feet…..
