Act of God

more gauges than weight markers.”
    “Do you have to go back?”
    “To the therapist, you mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “No.”
    Nancy played with her ale without drinking any. “You’re sure?”
    “Well, I got the impression the guy would love to see me again, given what they charge. He ‘assessed’ my shoulder and cut a length of red elastic off a roll. It looks like a Bulgarian prince’s cross-sash, but it’s called a ‘Theraband,’ and he showed me a ‘regimen’ of exercises with it to bring back the strength in the joint.”
    “And you have to repeat this ‘regimen’ every day?”
    “Or so.”
    The waitress brought my drink, a wheat beer I’d had there before. If you’ve never had fresh-brewed, think about the last time you went to the trouble of squeezing juice directly from an orange instead of pouring it from a box or bottle, and you’ll have the idea.
    I held up my pint, clinking it against Nancy ’s. “To a new regimen.”
    “Of exercise?”
    “Of everything.”

19

    Assuming you’re not in love with bus travel, there are basically three ways to get from Boston to the Sunrise area in New Jersey . First, you can fly to Newark and rent a car there for the fifty or so additional miles. Problem is, with any kind of luggage, it’s tough to make the subway connections out to our Logan Airport , which means cabbing it through the tunnel and having to allow about an hour for traffic and more time to be sure you’ll check in early enough to make your plane. Given those problems you may as well take Amtrak, which runs from South Station to Newark and then continues on to Philly, D.C., and eventually somewhere in Florida. The problem with the train is that you’ll still burn four to five hours and have to see Hertz or Avis for the rest of the trip, anyway. Accordingly, with luggage, it’s easier just to drive your own car all the way.
    To do that, I got up fairly early on Saturday. After Nancy left, I did the series of exercises with the Theraband tied to my doorknob, feeling vaguely silly and weak as a kitten in the left shoulder. I packed casual clothes and one suit, and the Theraband and the knee brace, then put on a pair of shorts and a polo shirt for the drive. Down at the space behind the condo, I loaded my suitcase into the trunk of the Prelude and headed off for the Mass Pike.
    I took the turnpike west to Sturbridge, the traffic fairly light for the Saturday of July Fourth weekend, then got onto Interstate 84, which cuts diagonally southwest through Connecticut. To avoid construction in Hartford , I took the so-called alternate route, which also had construction on it and added ten miles to the trip. From there it was clear sailing to Brewster , New York , where I picked up 684 south. After half an hour of trees and reservoirs, I maneuvered through the tricky interchanges and terrible drivers that bring you to the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson and one of the grandest water views in the east. About eight miles farther on is the turnoff for the Garden State Parkway , a useful road marred by heavy traffic and countless thirty-five-cent tollbooths. Somebody from Jersey once told me that the roadway paid for itself within its first few years of operation in the ‘sixties, the state skimming pure profit from it ever since.
    I pulled into a convenient rest stop for gasoline and had a hamburger that was barely warm and a Coke that was clearly flat. Back on the road, I passed a lot of exits, some for towns I recognized like Elizabeth and Union, others for ones I didn’t, like Kenilworth and Winfield Park. At the intersection of the New Jersey Turnpike, I stayed on the Parkway, crossing the Raritan River and winding closer to the coast, though I never actually saw any ocean. The cars were bumper-to-bumper, but still doing sixty miles an hour. Gratefully, I took an exit for Sunrise that turned out to be quite a ways from it. After negotiating a couple of traffic rotaries (called “circles” in Jerseyese) and passing three big restaurants, all with plywood across their windows and FOR SALE signs on their doors, I got onto Route 35, which ran north/south along the water.
    A few miles later, Traci Wickmire proved to be right: There was both a Sunrise and a Sunrise Beach , which was not great news from the standpoint of checking motels and hotels. Hitting the one where Darbra Proft had stayed might take a while, so to be sure I had a room for the night, I checked into a chain place at about