And yet when I came away from that oceanic dunescape it was into a sleepy San Francisco neighborhood, a fact I confirmed by inquiring of a passing bicyclist, a woolen-clad long-haired and beaded hippie of a type I had seen in Life magazine but rarely outside those pages, certainly not in my parents’ Alhambra. “San Fran, my man,” he said when I asked where I was, and then he was gone, flitting out in a slow undulating loop spun broadside to the sea’s wind.

I found my grandmother’s car soon after stumbling out of the dunes, either by luck or providence or from some dim remembrance of where I had parked it, neatly and inconspicuously at the curb just a few dozen meters away. The vehicle was unmolested and apparently undamaged, the keys yet there on the floor just under the driver’s seat, where my grandmother was in the habit of keeping them and where I, even in my alcohol- and drug-induced haze, had apparently left them in turn. I must have passed out again there in the car, for I awoke a few hours later, hungry and thirsty beyond all reason, the sky the color of dead flesh and a faint perspiration of greasy rain hovering in the air. A search confirmed what I already suspected would be true, that my wallet was nowhere to be found in the vehicle, and so, without money or identification of any kind, I concluded that I had little choice but to drive back to Newcastle, a decision almost immediately rendered impossible when I turned on the ignition and realized that the vehicle’s fuel gauge was nearly touching the E. I could hardly get to Berkeley, let alone all the way across the Sacramento Valley and up into the foothills of Placer County.

I sat there weighing my options and feeling the heavy tide of guilt and shame wash over me, but at last I walked to a pay phone and called my grandmother collect, hoping that she would pick up but also that she would not.

“Gran?” I said, my voice croaking. “It’s John.”

“Oh honey,” she said, “you scared the hell out of me. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re in big trouble, boy-o,” she said. “You scared an old lady half to death.”

“I know I did. I’m sorry, Gran. I don’t even know . . .” I trailed off then. What more could I say? There was nothing I could tell her.

“Where are you?”

“San Francisco,” I said.

“Not so far,” she said. “You can be home in a few hours.”

“I don’t have any money,” I said. “My wallet’s gone. I guess it got stolen.”

“Well, we can deal with that when you get here.”