me.”
Thanks a bunch, he thought. Should he make like a dutiful son? Or go back to his place, screw himself silly, and then sleep for about a week? He knew what he wanted to do. He also knew he’d hurt his mother’s feelings if he did it. Mom wouldn’t say anything, but she’d find plenty of other ways to rub his nose in what was going on. She always did.
With a sigh he couldn’t quite swallow, he said, “Chicken sounds good. I haven’t eaten much home cooking lately.” That had the added virtue of being true. He appealed to Susan one more time: “If it’s okay with you.”
“It’s fine. I already told you,” she said quickly. She wasn’t going to play the villain, whisking Bryce away from Barbara so she could work her carnal wiles on him. Damn! I sure wish she would, he thought as they started off toward the parking structure.
Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles still hadn’t seen Greenville and the haunting, romantic shores of Moosehead Lake. By now, Rob was as near certain as made no difference that the band never would get there. He wasn’t nearly so sure about whether they would ever get out of Guilford.
It wasn’t where he’d expected to end up, which meant as close to nothing as didn’t matter. By the time the locals finally cleared the smashed Hummer and the flipped and jackknifed eighteen-wheeler from Route 6, he and Justin and Biff and Charlie-and a lot of other people trapped by the wreck-were glad to get into Guilford. That was definitely preferable to freezing to death in the snow, the other main choice.
The longer he stayed, the odder and more interesting Guilford seemed. For a town of just over 1,500 people, it had a lot going on. The Piscataquis River ran through it. Once upon a time, every Maine town with a stream had had water-powered mills and factories. Guilford still did. No one seemed to have bothered to tell the locals water mills were hopelessly outdated. This nineteenth-century anachronism remained a going concern a lifetime after most of the others had closed down.
And there was the Trebor Mansion Inn, where the band currently resided. You took a diagonal right-not a straight right, or you’d end up somewhere else-by the Shell station near the eastern end of town, went past the slough and the high school on the other side of the street, climbed a hill, hung a left into a long driveway whose outlet you barely noticed from the street, and there you were. The Trebor, by God, Mansion Inn.
Charlie stared at it in something approaching awe when he and his bandmates got out of their SUVs. “Wow!” he said-not the usual stoner’s slurred Wow! but one that showed he really meant it. He proceeded to explain why: “If this place doesn’t have an ‘H. P. Lovecraft slept here’ plaque, somedy dropped the ball somewhere. Of course, old H.P. spent most of his time down in Providence, but he should’ve made a side trip for this.”
“No, dude.” Biff shook his head. “H. P. Lovecraft started in Chicago, but they were working out of San Francisco when they made their records.”
Confusion and argument followed. Charlie had never heard of H. P. Lovecraft the band. Biff didn’t know about the writer from whom the band took its name. Rob vaguely knew about both. Justin, by all appearance, knew neither. “How come you know about this band?” he demanded of Biff. “They’re way older than you are, and they never got big.” That was an understatement, and a healthy one, too.
“My dad got me into them, believe it or else,” Biff answered, suitably shamefaced at the admission. “He told me he lost his cherry with ‘White Ship’ on the stereo.”
“You’d remember that, all right,” Rob agreed. He didn’t think of creepy horror writers or San Francisco psychedelia when he looked at the Trebor Mansion Inn. He remembered a couple of enormous pseudo-Victorian office buildings he’d seen in the San Fernando Valley the last time the band played there. Steep roofs, funky shingles, a tower or two… Yeah, this place had the look, all right.
But there was a difference. L.A. had buildings that looked like anything and everything that had ever been under the sun. And they were all phonies, run up by modern-day real-estate guys and construction crews to make some client happy, or at least willing to spend money. Roman, Spanish, Victorian, half-timbered Tudor, the odd hot dog or donut… You name it, Socal imitated it.
Whatever the Trebor Mansion Inn was, Rob was convinced it was no imitation. It had been sitting here since sometime in the 1800s. It was older than some-all? — of the snow-covered pines around it. That steeply pitched roof was no architect’s whimsy. It helped keep snow from piling up there.
A cat gave the newcomers a once-over. It was very large and very furry: both assets in weather like this. There was a name for that breed, a name Rob was still groping for when Justin said, “That’s a Maine Coon!”
Rob thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “D’oh!” he said, as if he’d escaped from a Simpsons episode and magically acquired a third dimension. If you were in Maine and met a big, fuzzy feline, what else would it be? Rob had a bad habit of answering his own rhetorical questions, even when he didn’t ask them out loud. If you met a big, fuzzy feline around here, it was liable to be a lynx.
A man came out of the inn. He was a generation older than the guys from Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles, with a full head of graying brown hair. He wore a thick wool sweater over a shirt whose collar protected his neck from the scratchy stuff and a pair of black jeans. The sweater looked warm, but not warm enough for this weather. But Rob knew he was a wuss about cold.
“Hello, gentlemen,” the fellow said. “If one of you is about to give birth, I may be able to offer you a manger.”
A pregnant pause followed. After a couple of beats, Justin said, “Somebody at the gas station told us you might be able to put us up for a while.”
“Um, that’s what he just said, Justin,” Rob pointed out.
Justin worked it through. He looked comically astonished when he finished. “You’re right!” he exclaimed. He made as if to tug his curly forelock to the… innkeeper? “Sorry about that. I not to be stupid all the time.”
“An admirable ambition,” the older man said, fog gusting from his mouth at every word. “About as much as anyone can hope for, too, the world being what it is. I’m Dick Barber, at your service.” He stuck out his hand.
One by one, the guys in the band shook it and gave their names. Rob, who was last, added, “Put us all together and we’re Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles.”
“Are you?” The name didn’t faze Barber. “And here I thought that was a plastic band, even without an Ono.”
“Not plastic. Us,” Biff said proudly.
“When the Word was made flesh two thousand years ago, they started a religion about it. In our capitalist times, we incarnate the Sale Catalogue instead,” Barber said.
“Wow!” Charlie repeated, in the same tone he’d used when he got his first good look at the Trebor Mansion Inn. “Who would’ve thought we’d run into a dude who was crazy the right way here?”
“ You just washed up on these shores. I got here not too long after you were born,” Barber said. Sure as hell, he didn’t talk as if he’d lived in Maine his whole life. Ayuh might never have crossed his lips. He went on, “You will have to bear in mind that this isn’t exactly our high season.”
“No, huh?” Rob did his best to sound like a dry martini. That was the best way to deal with his father. He suspected it was the right approach with this guy, too.
Dick Barber smiled fractionally. “Not so you’d notice. But we will do our best to accommodate you-assuming the snow lets up sooner or later. If it doesn’t, well, welcome to Guilford.”
He did remind Rob of Dad, enough to make him ask, “Were you ever a cop before you got the, uh, Mansion Inn?”
“A cop? No.” Barber shook his head. “But I did spend twelve years in the Navy. Maybe that’s what you’re noticing.”
“I bet it is,” Rob said. “My father was in the Navy.”
“And he’s a police officer now?”
“That’s right.”
Charlie broke in: “Did H. P. Lovecraft ever visit this place?”
“He’s in the tower.” Barber pointed up to it. Bob and his bandmates all goggled at him. That small smile came and went again. The older man condescended to explain: “In paperback. I’ve got a few shelves of books for guests who stay up there.”
“Dibs!” Rob said before any of the other Californians could beat him to the punch.
“You do need to know the tower has no plumbing fixtures,” Dick Barber said. “Those are off the room below.
