"Throw 'em on the floor if you don't like 'em there."

"Come on, Henry. That's not the point. I said I'd do my own laundry and you agreed."

Henry shrugged. "Hey, so I'm a liar. What can I say?"

"Would you quit? I don't need a mother."

"You need a keeper. I've said so for months.

You don't have a clue how to take care of yourself.

You eat junk. Get beat up. Place gets blown to bits. I told you to get a dog, but you refuse. So now you got me, and if you ask me, it serves you right."

How irksome. I felt like one of those ducklings inexplicably bonded to a mother cat. My parents had been killed in a car wreck when I was five. In the absence of real family, I'd simply done without. Now, apparently, old dependencies had surfaced. I knew what that meant. This man was eighty-two. Who knew how long he'd live? Just about the time I let myself get attached to him, he'd drop dead. Ha, ha, the joke's on you, again.

"I don't want a parent. I want you as a friend."

"I am a friend."

"Well, then, cut the nonsense. It's making me nuts."

Henry's smile was benign as he checked his watch. "You've got time for a run before dinner if you quit mouthing off."

That stopped me. I'd really hoped to get a run in before dark. It was almost four-thirty, and a glance at the kitchen window showed I didn't have long. I abandoned my complaints and changed into jogging sweats.

The beach that day was odd. The passing storm clouds had stained the horizon a sepia shade. The mountains were a drab brown, the sky a poisonous-looking tincture of iodine. Maybe Los Angeles was burning to the ground, sending up this mirage of copper-colored smoke turning umber at the edge. I ran along the bike path that borders the sand.

The Santa Teresa coastline actually runs east and west. On a map, it looks like the ragged terrain takes a sudden left turn, heading briefly out to sea before the currents force it back. The islands were visible, hovering offshore, the channel dotted with oil rigs that sparkled with light. It's worrisome, but true, that the oil rigs have taken on an eerie beauty of their own, as natural to the eye now as orbiting satellites.