“Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach,” I said at last, quietly.
The tide rolled in and then out again.
“I feel it in the air; the summer’s out of reach,” added Maldano.
“Empty lake, empty streets—the sun goes down alone.”
“I’m driving by your house—”
And together: “Though I know, you’re not hoome.”
And we moved out, trudging through the sand toward the boardwalk, singing Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer”—trying, as we walked, to ignore the nearby high rises (hotels, mostly), which looked on in perfect silence, stoic, inert, monolithic, like tombstones.
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Unfortunately, by the time we reached the first commercial zone (Cornerstone Plaza of Cocoa Beach), we had no better idea of what had occurred than before, only that the entire suburb had become wild and overgrown—more t
