Act of God

four p.m. It advertised a baseball card show in one of its function rooms, but there were plenty of vacancies, even so close to the beach on the middle of the three big summer weekends. My room was small and dean, with a double bed, shower rather than tub, and cable TV.
    After unpacking, I got back in the Prelude and started down Route 35, showing the photo I had of Darbra Proft draping herself over Rush Teagle and his guitar. Four guesthouses and two motels later, nobody had recognized her, and I was hungry again.
    I parked the car in front of a motel that had a restaurant next door. The room clerk had never seen Darbra Proft but allowed as how he’d like to have. I asked him about the food at his neighbor, and he told me I’d do better at a seafood place farther south.
    I took his suggestion and was glad I did, at least at first. The lot was nearly full, usually a good sign, and the hostess led me past a blackboard with daily specials in multicolored chalks to a tiny table for two in a corner. The cloth was rough paper, and the centerpiece was a Chinese teacup with half-gnawed crayons in it. The place had fishnets on the walls and fans hanging from the ceiling, but the floor was spectacular, richly grained wood in three-inch and wider planks that someone had lovingly fitted in a pattern of lighter, medium, and darker shades of stain. The people around me were mostly families, typically three generations with what looked like grandma, her daughter and son-in-law, and a raft of screaming kids.
    I glanced at the menu, which had plenty of choices and a fair wine list on the back. When my waitress came over, she asked if I’d like something to drink.
    “Yes, but before I do, can you tell me what kind of wood that is?”
    She looked down with me at the floor. “Huh?”
    “The wood. I was wondering what it was. Cherry, beech?”
    “Oh. I dunno. I never really like noticed it before.”
    I decided not to ask her for a recommendation from the wine list. Which was just as well, since of the twelve listed, they didn’t have the first three I asked for.
    When she brought me number four, an inexpensive char-donnay, it wasn’t very cold. I took it anyway and ordered the bluefish with garlic butter, rice, and a salad. Using the Block paperback to close out some of the din around me, I was actually surprised when my meal arrived. The bluefish was fine, but the salad tasted as though it had been made a week ago and frozen since, and about one in every ten grains of rice wasn’t cooked, nearly costing me a filling on the first mouthful.
    I passed on dessert and left about half the wine in the bottle. Paying the bill, I asked both my waitress and the hostess if they recognized the woman in my photo. Two shakes of the heads.
    I went back out to the Prelude, the cars still whizzing by on Route 35. It was pretty early to head back to my room, so I drove south a little more, paying attention when the road became a divided highway of two lanes south separated from the northbound by a block of tiny cottages.
    After another five miles or so, the road dumped me into a town called Seaside Heights . There were a bunch of motels and tenement apartments squeezed next to each other. Lots of men and women stood on sidewalks and stoops, the men holding cans of beer and the women one and sometimes two babies. Each small side street ran east/west, ending in T-intersections at Ocean Terrace, the avenue along the beach with a raucous boardwalk beyond it. The north/south avenues seemed to specialize in taverns and discos.
    Years ago, I would have stopped in one of the discos, watching the other customers dance, maybe joining in myself. But that was years ago. Even that trip, I might have gone into a tavern to watch the Yankees or Mets in the company of strangers, but in some towns, you never knew what offense a regular might take to an accent from Boston, and I wasn’t in the shape or mood to jam with anyone.
    Driving north on the beach road, I found a parking place, feeding all my quarters into a meter. I used the ramp to the boardwalk at Lincoln Avenue , the Beachcomber Bar & Restaurant a landmark for where I’d left the car. Then I went south to the end of the boardwalk, turned around, and walked back, giving my knee a chance to recover from all the driving that day.
    There were amusement park rides clumped on two piers jutting into the water, many of the attractions with signs that said, “The following people should not ride this