The crapper. The Z-machine. The libes. The gazoo. Boogies. Gooks. Hogans . . . it’s a wonder any of us were ever allowed to hold a paying job. Arnie owns and runs—or did—a carriage-trade seafood boutique in north Jersey and has made a mint selling shad roe, Iranian caviar, and imported Black Sea delicacies the FDA doesn’t know about—all of it delivered in unidentifiable, white panel trucks—to Schlumberger execs for exclusive parties no one hears about, including President Obama, who wouldn’t be invited, since in the high-roller Republicans’ view, chitlins’ and hog-maws wouldn’t be on the menu.

“How can I help, Arnie?” I was watching the Elizabethtown truck motor away down Wilson Lane. Clients’ first target of opportunity when a home sale goes sour—no matter when—is almost always the realtor, whose intentions are almost always good.

“I’m on my way down there now, Frank. Some Italian piece of shit called me up at home. Wants to buy the lot and the house—whatever’s left of it—for five hundred grand. I need some advice. You got any?” More cars whizzing.

“I’m not using any of mine, Arnie,” I said. “What’s the situation down there?”

I, of course, knew. We’d all seen it on CNN, then seen it and seen it and seen it ’til we didn’t care anymore. Nagasaki-by-the-sea—with the Giants and Falcons just a tempting channel click away.

“You’ll get a kick out of it, Frank,” Arnie said, disembodied in his car. “Where is it you live now?”

“Haddam.” Sally had come to the door from the kitchen in her yoga clothes, holding a tea mug to her lips, breathing steam away, looking at me as if she’d heard something distressing and I should possibly hang up.

A loud truck-horn blare cracked the silence where Arnie was. “Ass Hole,” Arnie shouted. “Haddam. Okay. Nice place. Or it was once.” Arnie bumped something against the speaker. “My house—your house—is sixty yards inland now, Frank. On its side—if it had a side. The neighbors are all worse off. The Farlows tried to ride it out in their safe room. They’re goners. The Snedikers made a run for it at the last minute. Ended up in the bay.