“Thanks for the beer. Maybe I?ll come back and try the shrimp,” I said as I got into the car.
“You do that, hear?” he said. “Be sure to introduce yourself again. I?m bad on names.” And he
vanished back inside.
41 RELICS
I started back toward Dunetown but when I got to the boulevard I went east instead of going back
toward town. I really didn?t have anything to do after I left Skeeler?s, but I had to put some distance
between me and Dunetown. I needed a little time to myself, away from Stick, Dutch, and the
hooligans. Away from Doe. Away from them all. I was tired of trying to make some sense out of a lot
of disparate jigsaw pieces, pieces like Harry Raines, Chief, and Stoney Titan. Like Donleavy and his
sweaty banking friend, Seaborn. Like Chevos and Nance, a badluck horse named Disaway, and a
black gangster I didn?t even know whom everybody called Nose, but not to his face. I suddenly had
the feeling that using people had become a way of life for me and I didn?t like the feeling and I
needed some room to deal with that. I needed to get back to my safe places again, at least for a little
while.
When I got to the Strip I headed south, putting the tall hotels that plundered the beach behind me. I
drove south with the ocean to my left, not sure where I was going. I just smelled the sea air and kept
driving. Finally I passed a decrepit old sign peering out from behind the weeds that told me I had
reached someplace called East Beach. It was desolate. Progress had yet to discover it.
I parked my car in a deserted public lot. Weeds grew up through the cracks in the macadam, and small
dunes of sand had been collected by the wind along its curbs. I sat looking out at the Atlantic for a
while. The sea here was calm, a mere ripple in the bright sunlight, and the beach was broad and clean.
It revived memories long buried, the good times of youth that age often taints with melancholy.
My mind was far from Dunetown. It was at a place called Beach Haven, a village on the Jersey coast
where I had spent several summers living on a houseboat with the family of my best friend in
grammar school. I couldn?t remember his name but I did remember that his father was Norwegian and
spoke with a marvellous accent and wore very thick glasses and that the family was not in the least
modest and that he had a sister of high school age who thought nothing at all of taking a shower in
front of us. Sitting there in the hot sedan with sweat dripping off my chin, I also recalled that I had
spent a good part of that summer trying to hide a persistent erection.
After a while I got out and took off shoes, socks, jacket, and tie and put them in the trunk. I slammed
it shut, then opened it again, dropped my beeper in with them, and went down to the beach.
I rolled my pants legs to the knee and walked barefoot with the sand squeaking underfoot. I must have
walked at least a mile when I came upon a small settlement of summer cottages, protected by walls of
