This time, however, the tides did not mesmerize, and he was unable to guide his troubled mind into calmer currents. Like the effect of a planet on its moon, the calendar pulled Joe into its orbit, and he couldn’t stop his thoughts from revolving around the date:
August 15, August 15, August 15. This first anniversary of the crash had an overwhelming gravity that crushed him down into memories of his loss.
When the remains of his wife and children had been conveyed to him, after the investigation of the crash and the meticulous cataloguing of both the organic and inorganic debris, Joe was given only fragments of their bodies. The sealed caskets were the size usually reserved for the burial of infants. He received them as if he were taking possession of the sacred bones of saints nestled in reliquaries.
Although he understood the devastating effects of the airliner’s impact, and though he knew that an unsparing fire had flashed through the debris, how strange it had seemed to Joe that Michelle’s and the girls’ physical remains should be so small. They had been such enormous presences in his life.
Without them, the world seemed to be an alien place. He didn’t feel as if he belonged here until he was at least two hours out of bed. Some days the planet turned twenty-four hours without rotating Joe into an accommodation with life. Clearly this was one of them.
After he finished the second Coors, he put the empty can in the cooler. He wasn’t ready to drive to the cemetery yet, but he needed to visit the nearest public restroom.
Joe rose to his feet, turned, and glimpsed the tall blond guy in the green Hawaiian shirt. The man, without binoculars for the moment, was not south near the lifeguard tower but north, about sixty feet away, sitting alone in the sand. To screen himself from Joe, he had taken a position beyond two young couples on blankets and a Mexican family that had staked their territory with folding chairs and two big yellow-striped beach umbrellas.
Casually Joe scanned the surrounding beach. The shorter of the two possible cops, the one wearing the predominantly red shirt, was not in sight.
The guy in the green shirt studiously avoided looking directly at Joe. He cupped one hand to his right ear, as if were wearing a bad hearing aid and needed to block the music from the sun-bathers’ radios in order to focus on something else that he wanted to hear.
At this distance, Joe could not be certain, but he thought the man’s lips were moving. He appeared to be engaged in a conversation with his missing companion.
Leaving his towel and cooler, Joe walked south toward the public restrooms. He didn’t need to glance back to know that the guy in the green Hawaiian shirt was watching him.
On reconsideration, he decided that getting soused on the sand probably was still against the law, even these days. After all, a society with such an enlightened tolerance of corruption and savagery needed to bear down hard on minor offences to convince itself that it still had standards.
Nearer the pier, the crowds had grown since Joe’s arrival. In the amusement centre, the roller coaster clattered. Riders squealed.
He took off his sunglasses as he entered the busy public restrooms.
The men’s lavatory stank of urine and disinfectant. In the middle of the floor between the toilet stalls and the sinks, a large cockroach, half crushed but still alive, hitched around and around in a circle, having lost all sense of direction and purpose. Everyone avoided it—some with amusement, some with disgust or indifference.
After he had used a urinal, as he washed his hands, Joe studied the other men in the mirror, seeking a conspirator. He settled on a long-haired fourteen-year-old in swim trunks and sandals.
When the boy went to the paper-towel dispenser, Joe followed, took a few towels immediately after him, and said, “Outside, there might be a couple of cop types hanging out, waiting for me.”
The boy met his eyes but didn’t say anything, just kept drying his hands on the paper towels.
Joe said, “I’ll give you twenty Blicks to reconnoitre for me, then come back and tell me where they are.”