Chapter 20: The Beached Comb

Rodney adjusted his sunglasses.
It was close to four in the afternoon, and the beach was hot. His feet hurt. His face sweat. His eyes squint. He stared, sat, and thought awhile, adjusting his sunglasses.
Tomorrow would be Wednesday, then Thursday, at least Friday would come around soon. He remembered an onion he'd left in the fridge to cool at the apartment. Winter would be coming for dinner, and she had soft olive oily skin and a round buttocks. She loved Rodney and onions and the way a penny sounds when it lands on the floor of a high-school gymnasium.
[Pause here for three long seconds]
[Resume]
There was a shy dog snuffling a rock on the beach, and the waves sounded like half-eaten TV static between channels Good and Evil, with the sky on high and the Earth round and firm and full of holes. After all, Rodney thought, it wasn't until makind that so many things appeared to be formed into right angles, and that was only how human eyeballs saw them. What if the carefully constructed "right angles" of a modern cube-shaped room appeared to a higher intelligence as some weird sort of neo-cubist painting, all slanted and bent at the wrong places.
Art made Rodney uncomfortable because he didn't understand how it worked or what its purpose was. If the purpose of art was good, then it was good that good things seemed better than bad but if it was bad that was bad because bad things seemed worse than the good.
All this thinking made Rodney's sunglasses fall off again, and they needed some adjusting.
His sad dreams melted away into a memory of future laments......
[huge chrome title card]

I named my child Winter, after the lost season that was never heard from again. We pretended to eat ice cream through our sweating lips and eyes dreched with salt. We can never go hungry again!
Indeed, I said, there are many in this world who have naught enough to eat, and go hungry every day, and as a result they develop health problems.
Then, elsewise, there are people like you or I, who have too many things to eat, and gorge ourselves every day, and as a result we develop health problems.
We take medication for every ailment, and we develop complex medical conditions that require surgery and it's all very expensive but it's worth it, my child.
Because WE'RE worth it, and we can afford it. The good lawrd looks after us and sends us money and doctors. Winter froze and asked, why are we worth it? What is so special about our lives? Why must the ancient ones endure humiliating medical procedures in cold hospitals with dark hallways and technological equipment?
Why do we need to pave every inch of the Earth? Why do large department stores that sell houshold items and cleaning products need enormous parking lots that heat up like charcoal briquettes? Why are these things more important than laughter and love and fine feelings?