Falling sunlight purples the beach, leaving only a faint glow, an echo of grander days, when cabanas and blue-striped umbrellas basked like elephants at a wallow. Great-Uncle Merrick ruled that beach once, a silver cocktail shaker his sceptre, tanned body gleaming. Strode with the careless assurance of one whose living depended on work not his own: the work of loom-fixers, slasher tenders, all gone now. Those who tended Uncle Merrick are gone as well, and now he walks uneasy, bent back peeling in red strips. No one left to fill his glass, to rub in the sunscreen, just so.