Sole Survivor

faces.
        A few minutes later, when he finished his first beer, he turned, opened the lid of the cooler, put away the empty can, and looked nonchalantly back along the strand. Two men in Hawaiian shirts were standing in the shadow of the lifeguard tower.
        The taller of the two, in a predominantly green shirt and white cotton slacks, was studying Joe through a pair of binoculars. Alert to the possibility that he'd been spotted, he calmly turned with the binoculars to the south, as if interested not in Joe but in a group of bikini-clad teenagers.
        The shorter man wore a shirt that was mostly red and orange. His tan slacks were rolled at the cuffs. He was barefoot in the sand, holding his shoes and socks in his left hand.
        In his right hand, held down at his side, was another object, which might be a small radio or a CD player. It might also be a walkie-talkie.
        The tall guy was cancerously tanned, with sun-bleached blond hair, but the smaller man was pale, a stranger to beaches.
        Popping the tab on another beer and inhaling the fragrant foamy mist that sprayed from the can, Joe turned to the sea once more.
        Although neither of the men looked as if he'd left home this morning with the intention of going to the shore, they appeared no more out of place than Joe did. The kids had said that the watchers stank of cop, but even though he'd been a crime reporter for fourteen years, Joe couldn't catch the scent.
        Anyway, there was no reason for the police to be interested in him. With the murder rate soaring, rape almost as common as romance, and robbery so prevalent that half the populace seemed to be stealing from the other half, the cops would not waste time harassing him for drinking an alcoholic beverage on a public beach.
        High on silent pinions, shining white, three sea gulls flew northward from the distant pier, at first paralleling the shoreline. Then they soared over the shimmering bay and wheeled across the sky.
        Eventually Joe glanced back toward the lifeguard tower. The two men were no longer there.
        He faced the sea again.
        Incoming breakers broke, spilling shatters of foam on the sand. He watched the waves as a willing subject might watch a hypnotist's pendant swinging on a silver chain.
        This time, however, the tides did not mesmerize, and he was unable to guide his troubled mind into calmer currents. Like the effect of a planet on its moon, the calendar pulled Joe into its orbit, and he couldn't stop his thoughts from revolving around the date: August 15, August 15, August 15. This first anniversary of the crash had an overwhelming gravity that crushed him down into memories of his loss.
        When the remains of his wife and children had been conveyed to him, after the investigation of the crash and the meticulous cataloguing of both the organic and inorganic debris, Joe was given only fragments of their bodies. The sealed caskets were the size usually reserved for the burial of infants. He received them as if he were taking possession of the sacred bones of saints nestled in reliquaries.
        Although he understood the devastating effects of the airliner's impact, and though he knew that an unsparing fire had flashed through the debris, how strange it had seemed to Joe that Michelle's and the girls' physical remains should be so small. They had been such enormous presences in his life.
        Without them, the world seemed to be an alien place. He didn't feel as if he belonged here until he was at least two hours out of bed. Some days the planet turned twenty-four hours without rotating Joe into an accommodation with life. Clearly this was one of them.
        After he finished the second Coors, he put the empty can in the cooler. He wasn't ready to drive to the cemetery yet, but he needed to visit the nearest public restroom.
        Joe rose to his feet, turned, and glimpsed the tall blond guy in the green Hawaiian shirt. The man, without binoculars for the moment, was not south near the lifeguard tower but north, about sixty feet away, sitting alone in the sand. To screen himself from Joe, he had taken a position beyond two young couples on blankets and a Mexican family that had staked their territory with folding chairs and two big yellow-striped beach umbrellas.
        Casually Joe scanned the surrounding beach. The shorter of the two possible cops, the one wearing the predominantly red