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Show 365 "That didn't bother you before." "I don't want to talk about it." He slept that night on the back porch of a beach house whose front step was littered with a week's folded newspapers, and had troubled dreams in which burglars came to the door and saw the newspapers and went around and around the house looking for him, once nearly stepping on his head. In the morning he trudged down the beach a half mile to the nearest rest-room, which had spray-painted names on the walls and smelled of urine and dead fish. He stood under a cold rope of water from the only shower that worked, in a concrete enclosure that made him worry about athlete's foot, and afterwards shaved at a filthy sink that had no mirror and no hot water. He put on his same navy-blue suit and walked barefoot through the sand back to his car, holding his shoes and socks so they didn't fill up and ignoring the stares of some hairy young people standing around an orange tent on the beach as he walked past them. He had eaten a double-burger last night, and he was down to three dollars and some change, and he was nearly out of gas. He ate breakfast in a coffee shop on the pier and watched cars and pedestrians and motorcycles pass back and forth dimly in the glass that covered the pastry shelves behind the counter. He drank a third cup of coffee while watching the time, and at nine-fifteen he went to the pay phone next to the newspaper racks. No, no one had called, she said. She was on her way out of the house right now. Probably wouldn't be back till evening. Call her tomorrow. She sounded distracted. "Urn," he said. "What?" "Listen, I hate to ask this, but I phoned my parents this morning and |