Chapter 4
My tiny, musty, overstuffed room started closing in on me before I even shut the door, so I jammed my feet into my running shoes and hit the beach. I clamored down the fire exit stairs and out the laundry room door; the better to avoid the lobby and any possibility of running into Jeremy and Thumper. The way I figured it, the ensuing bloodbath would have created unwanted attention for me and unnecessary extra work for whoever it was that would have had to mop up after, so I slunk out the side door undetected and took off.
It took me a minute to get my wobbly, too-many-beers legs under me and get moving, but every time I considered just hurling myself into the sand or stopping to weep histrionically on a park bench, my iron-girded, god-how-humiliating legs urged me forward, carr
