The Second Day Summary

Norman Paperman is awakened on his second day as owner of the Gull Reef Club not by pounding fists but by a head-splitting stench that makes him imagine a huge, rotting whale on the nearby beach. He rushes out of his cottage in the same clothes from the day before, wearing mud-clotted sandals to discover that the guests are in an uproar about the smell. Paperman then realizes that the water truck he's summoned from Anatone—Lorna's brother—is resting on a garbage barge and the wind happens to be blowing in the wrong direction. He learns from Anatone that at least 10 more truckloads of water at $50 each will need to be delivered to fill the cistern of the resort. Reeling from this latest trauma, Paperman is assailed by an elderly couple who dresses him down for...