thirty-oneAlone at the edge of a narrow beach that was far from the City, Joey Wooten drank from a screw top bottle of cheap pear wine. There was a party going on in one of the ritzy houses just above the rental cottages that lined the beach. He could hear the sounds of drunken chatter and laughing. The air smelled of barbecue, seawater and twilight. Water snaked through the black, half broken pilings of the old, wooden pier that ran a few yards out into Monterey Bay.
This was one of his old haunts. Not as crowded as Cowell, and the surfing could be easier here for a guy with a f****d up left foot. He’d come back to it all—the ring of the pinball machines in the Skee-Ball parlors along the Esplanade, the chatter from the party, the smell of burning meat, the rock jetty where the surf brok
