He and Randy are enduring some kind of a forced march up the beach in Pacifica; Randy’s not sure why. Over and over again, Randy is surprised by Avi’s physical vigor. Avi looks like he is wasting away from some vague disease invented as a plot device by a screenwriter. He is kind of tall, but this just makes him seem more perilously drawn out. His slender body is a tenuous link between huge feet and a huge head; he has the profile of a lump of silly putty that has been drawn apart until the middle part is just a tendril. But he can stomp up a beach like a Marine. It is January, after all, and according to the Weather Channel there is this flume of water vapor originating in a tropical storm about halfway between Nippon and New Guinea and jetting directly across the Pacific and taking a violent left turn just about here. The waves thrashing the beach, not that far away, are so big that Randy has to look slightly upwards to see their crests.