We turn into a corkscrew up. It's a new sort of a junkyard. I can't decide now if it was a gardening or an auto lot.

I'm with my father, and he goes somewhere, and I another direction. He knows what he's doing, but so do I. That's my story.

I stop along an open corridor. Gramby, the Rhodesian I see on the beach where Scoob and I go, runs up to me. He is quite friendly, and I've never seen him that way, towards human nor animal. While I pet him, here comes Scoobie, prancing. He cuts me off from Gramby.

(Here they both are during a regular Saturday at the beach.)

Now I must rush about to stabilize. I have been away, or my belongings have been stored. I have to gather them again. I drive about. I stop and my stepdad Clarence tells me the water in my bed will never be warm enough to sleep on by tonight.

I must agree this is so. I have struggled with waterbeds and heaters. However, mine isn't a waterbed. I open a cabinet and find the headboard, the railings of an old oak bedstead (maybe the one I had thirty years ago).

Back flitting across town. I approach an intersection in dim light. I turn here, right, reconsider, no, wait, maybe not. I have signaled and there is an auto following close behind. I make the turn, then, to avoid collision with the following auto, and there is another in the other lane waiting to enter the intersection I am trying now to vacate. I am turning right, and so when the other vehicle moves, I just catch the edge of it, because my momentum and indecision have carried me into the opposite lane.

We all dismount and drift at odd intervals across the double road I have just left and enter a bar. Nobody says anything, until the bartender speaks. Mumbling something official. I say, oh, yes, of course, it's all my fault.

Tomorrow, he says. I ask, you mean we come back tomorrow? Right here? Yes, of course, he answers, as if I should know how a citizen deals with a traffic accident. (Is there a bar then on every block in this city?)

I hear some commentary about the dark sulky one who drove the ride following me. They hold him partly responsible for following too close. In the bar they are all familiar with the conditions of the accident. I begin to warm to the idea of guilt lifting from my shoulders. The eternal gradient from immediate shock and sorrow to self-preservation we are all familiar with.

Nobody checks for damages, which I assume is slight. We all go our separate ways.