Sole Survivor

cockroach, Christ's sake, just a lousy cockroach.”
        Joe tried to say that he was sorry. He couldn't speak.
        “You almost broke my nose. You could've broke my nose. For a cockroach? Broke my nose for a cockroach?”
        Sorry not for what he had done to this man, who had no doubt done worse to others, but sorry for himself, sorry for the miserable walking wreckage that he had become and for the dishonour that his inexcusable behaviour brought to the memory of his wife and daughters, Joe nonetheless remained unable to express any regret. Choking on self-loathing as much as on the fetid air, he walked out of the reeking building into an ocean breeze that didn't refresh, a world as foul as the lavatory behind him.
        In spite of the sun, he was shivering, because a cold coil of remorse was unwinding in his chest.
        Halfway back to his beach towel and his cooler of beer, all but oblivious of the sunning multitudes through which he weaved, he remembered the pale-faced man in the red and orange Hawaiian shirt. He didn't halt, didn't even look back, but slogged onward through the sand.
        He was no longer interested in learning who was conducting a surveillance of him-if that was what they were doing. He couldn't imagine why he had ever been intrigued by them. If they were police, they were bumblers, having mistaken him for someone else. They were not genuinely part of his life. He wouldn't even have noticed them if the kid with the ponytail hadn't drawn his attention to them. Soon they would realize their mistake and find their real quarry. In the meantime, to hell with them.
        More people were gravitating to the portion of the beach where Joe had established camp. He considered packing and leaving, but he wasn't ready to go to the cemetery. The incident in the lavatory had opened the stopcock on his supply of adrenaline, cancelling the effects of the lulling surf and the two beers that he had drunk.
        Therefore, onto the beach towel again, one hand into the cooler, extracting not a beer but a half-moon of ice, pressing the ice to his forehead, he gazed out to sea. The grey-green chop seemed to be an infinite array of turning gears in a vast mechanism, and across it, bright silver flickers of sunlight jittered like electric current across a power grid. Waves approached and receded as monotonously as connecting rods pumping back and forth in an engine. The sea was a perpetually labouring machine with no purpose but the continuation of its own existence, romanticized and cherished by countless poets but incapable of knowing human passion, pain, and promise.
        He believed that he must learn to accept the cold mechanics of Creation, because it made no sense to rail at a mindless machine. After all, a clock could not be held responsible for the too-swift passage of time. A loom could not be blamed for weaving the cloth that later was sewn into an executioner's hood. He hoped that if he came to terms with the mechanistic indifference of the universe, with the meaningless nature of life and death, he would find peace.
        Such acceptance would be cold comfort, indeed, and deadening to the heart. But all he wanted now was an end to anguish, nights without nightmares, and release from the need to care.
        Two newcomers arrived and spread a white beach blanket on the sand about twenty feet north of him. One was a stunning redhead in a green thong bikini skimpy enough to make a stripper blush. The other was a brunette, nearly as attractive as her friend.
        The redhead wore her hair in a short, pixie cut. The brunette's hair was long, the better to conceal the communications device that she was no doubt wearing in one ear.
        For women in their twenties, they were too giggly and girlish, high-spirited enough to call attention to themselves even if they had not been stunning. They lazily oiled themselves with tanning lotion, took turns greasing each other's back, touching with languorous pleasure, as if they were in the opening scene of an adult video, drawing the interest of every heterosexual male on the beach.
        The strategy was clear. No one would suspect that he was under surveillance by operatives who concealed so little of themselves and concealed themselves so poorly. They were meant to be as unlikely as the men in the Hawaiian shirts had been obvious. But for thirty dollars' worth of reconnaissance and the libidinous observations of a