ONE OF THESE DAYS I'll beach right here, devoured by fish like a dead whale," he told me on the street in front of the clinic while looking at the neighborhood's sad and faded buildings, the unlit neon signs like monograms on a napkin, the glittery remnants of season's greetings in the windows, and a single dog, this January morning, nosing through the remains of a demolished row house: dust, rubble, wood scraps, and soulless shards of tile.