He came to the Wing Chong Grocery and stopped across the street from it. The run-down building, immortalized by Steinbeck as Lee Chong’s, was clearly meant to invoke the spirit of old Cannery Row. But it, too, suffered from the effects of being made over. Hudson tried to imagine Mack, the perpetually out-of-work but good-natured ne’erdo-well of Steinbeck’s books, walking in to talk the suspicious proprietor into letting him have a bottle of whiskey on credit. Then a young couple wearing matching Seattle Seahawks jerseys walked out, carrying shopping bags from the nearby Kinkade National Archive store (the Master of Shitty Art for People with Shitty Taste, Marty had once called the popular painter), and Hudson couldn’t muster the strength to keep trying.

Where was it all? Where was the Bear Flag Restaurant bordello and the Palace Flophouse? Where were Dora Flood, and Eddie of the La Ida Café? When had they been replaced by women in flip-flops and men talking on cell phones? When had it all disappeared?

You didn’t come here to see buildings, he reminded himself. And that was true. The buildings were merely part of something larger. Still, they were connections, physical links to another time and other people, long dead, who were very important to him.

Doc’s lab should have been right here, he thought suddenly, sadly. Across from Lee Chong’s. He used to walk over there to get beer.

He turned around. A plywood fence, its surface covered in a mural that was in turn defaced by graffiti (SKINZ RULES! LUV ME DOO) hid from view what he knew was the old Pacific Biological Laboratories of Ed “Doc” Ricketts, Steinbeck’s friend and cohort in adventure. He badly wanted to see it, but the fence effectively blocked his view.

He turned and walked back the way he had come. In front of an El Torrito restaurant he stopped to look at the bronze bust of John Steinbeck. Passersby casually rubbed their hands over it, as if it were some sort of good luck charm. Hudson was tempted to stop a few and ask them if they even knew who Steinbeck was and why his bust was there, surrounded by a Ghirardelli chocolate shop and an As Seen on TV store. But he knew their blank-eyed expressions would only further depress him, and he resisted.

Once he was past the stores and hotels, the street was deserted. The dive shop, closed for the night, was the last establishment before the little park. He started to walk to his car, then turned and walked instead toward the ocean. A set of stairs, half-covered by drifting sand, led down to the beach. To his left was the hotel, its lights illuminating the stretch of sand. To his right, farther on, was a jetty. Beneath the lights that lined it he saw some figures sitting on the low wall.

Several large rocks dotted the beach. He walked to one of them and climbed up on it. The tide was ebbing, the ocean retreating and leaving behind a smooth expanse of sand. Only the longest fingers of water touched the rock when the waves reached for the shore. The top was dry, and Hudson sat without worry.