It was almost noon, a perfect Saturday at the Beach of the King. On the sand between the beach houses and the spoiled, sparkling water a narrow pavement ran north, full of skaters rollerblading toward Marina del Rey.

Down the street toward the apartment building where my father lived, customers were going in and out of Moose’s Bar, and locals still rumpled from bed moseyed toward the deli in shorts and rubber thongs to pick up beer and bagels, scratching their hairy chests and yawning. Playa del Rey has an all-American shabbiness that feels like home, with its low-key, peeling, hungover twinkle. You can just wander around in it and quietly go to pot.

My father hadn't sounded very good over the phone the past few months. The earthquake knocked him out of bed without hurting him, but afterward L.A. weather turned colder and wetter than usual, and his voice got faint and tired. He’d slip remarks into the conversation like “You know, Judy, I've had a good life,” or “If I can just hang on until my next birthday, the insurance company will pay you and your brother the whole thing.”

He was proud of that policy. After some calling around he hit on a company that would insure his life for $10,000 if he lasted two more years. If he’d died the first year they would have paid $2,000. If he died this year, they'd pay five. His bet was on scoring the full amount.

In back of my dad’s apartment building the Chevy he was too blind to drive anymore was parked crooked in its space, its tires slightly flatter than they were on my last visit. The new brakes must still be good. Two years ago as Dad drove me from the airport the old ones were smoking and screaming, metal on metal, so I financed a quick brake job.

The same faded wad of red towel was stuck to the left front fender, a shade paler now. Maybe another mouse family was nesting inside the engine. Last year the landlord heard squeaking under the hood and found a bunch of baby mice. He scooped them into a paper cup and showed them to me on his way to the dumpster, nudging them around with the eraser at the end of his pencil. They’d looked a lot like the eraser, pink and stubby and small.

I climbed the stairs and knocked at #12.

“It’s open.” Dad’s voice sounded hoarse. The room was dim as always. A green pillowcase was knotted around the hanging lamp to cut the glare, and the curtains were closed. There he was, hoisting himself out of his La-Z-Boy and turning glazed eyes toward the doorway.

“Hi, Dad.” I hugged his bones. He was skinnier than ever under two thick velour sweaters, ragged at the wrists and zipped up to his chin. He had shaved, missing only a few sprouts of stubble, and had selected a crumpled skipper’s cap from the hat collection push-pinned to the wall. As he turned to feel for his chair again, I could see that his belt had skipped a waistband loop and gathered his pants into blousy folds. Was he eating enough?

“Glad you came down.” I looked around. It was hard to believe I’d ever considered staying with him to save money. I could have pulled out the “FIRM QUEEN SIZE” mattress leaning against the wall behind the couch he slept on, but his bed linen was gray, and polyester pills clung to the sheets like wee dirt berries on a dog's behind. My dad was too blind to see grime floating in the sink, or soup dried on the linoleum. Shaggy pieces of Kleenex had drifted to the shag carpet, and his clothes were everywhere because they wouldn’t all fit in the closet.

He probably had more clothes than any poor man ever owned. He’d stayed the same size all his life, and every wife who followed my mother helped him shop for a wardrobe that would make it look as if the two of them belonged together. He must have had 40 pairs of pants. One pair was draped over the top of the closet door, with a pair of used Jockeys dangling from a scrunched-up cuff.

When I was in that room it was hard not to think about the germs on everything. They may be a natural part of life, but I didn’t like thinking about them, or those mites, either, built like miniature army tanks that eat skin flaked off into a mattress.

My dad continued: “My vision’s lousy. I can’t see the computer to work on my invention.” He couldn’t use his flight simulator, either, to hover over the cyber-map of L.A. at the spot where the ashes of his fourth wife Florence were scattered.

“What invention?” I asked. On my last visit he told me about a system of storing thermal energy in molten salts and also sketched a bicycle pedaled by means of a closed circular tube of water instead of a chain and sprockets. His new idea, he told me, was a unique form of solar power that would require less energy to cool skyscrapers. “Spray a lid of mist over every building near the air-conditioning intake. Air going into the system gets pre-chilled by the mist evaporating under the sun, see? So the system uses less fuel. It would save the environment.”

He paused. “How are Sarah and Bill?”

My son’s name is not Bill, and my father did not have Alzheimer’s. My father had an excellent memory, but he lived on the moon and had lived there his whole life, occasionally coming down to earth to store thermal energy in molten salts. “Your grandson’s name is Edward.”

“There’s always too much for me to think about.” He squeezed his eyes closed, scrunching up his wrinkles and shoulders. “Ed! Ed!” He stayed pinched up tight, now pondering something new. “I might be hungry.” He opened his eyes and sat back, saying, “Judy, sometimes I wish you weren’t my daughter.”

Why? Because I corrected him when he called my son Edward ‘Bill’? “Why, Dad?” Did I really want to know why?

“Because then I could date you.” It was tempting just to dump this remark into to my list of Incredible Things My Father Told Me, but this one I confronted. He couldn’t really see me. It was like talking to him over the phone.

“Dad,” I said, selecting my Voice of Quietly Stern Precision. “Fathers shouldn’t say things like that to their daughters.”

“Oh.” He paused and wheezed. His emphysema was acting up. “OK then, what should I say?”

I hadn’t thought that far. “Well, you could say you like me and appreciate me ... or … you think I’m a good person?”

“OK.” He cleared his throat. “I like you, I appreciate you. You’re a good girl.”

“Or you could say you think I’m good company, or nice-looking.”

“And you’re very pretty, very smart, very,” he said smoothly, as if continuing a speech he hadn’t needed cues in the middle of. “I’m happy when you call, and I enjoy your visits.” He paused. “Should I say that I … that your help with the rent is very much appreciated?”