You should probably be on good terms with whoever’s staying down there.”
“Me.” Did Justin sound pleased or just resigned? What he added didn’t tell Rob much on that score: “We’ve been putting up with each other for a long time.”
“So have Biff and I,” Charlie said. “Is there another room on that floor?”
“There is, right across the hall from the one below the tower,” Barber said. “If you need anything, holler and bribe the help. They’re my grandchildren, and they can use the cash.”
Rob started to laugh. Then he realized tlder man meant it. This was an… interesting place all kinds of ways. He wondered if the tab would be similarly… interesting. How much more bad news could the band’s plastic stand? Considering the rates places in Bar Harbor gouged out of customers, he couldn’t begin to guess what Barber would charge. Figuring it was better to know what they were getting into before they got in too deep, he took a deep breath and asked the obvious question.
“You can stay on the house for a while,” Barber answered. “We don’t cook for you unless you bring in the food. Unless you pay off the laundry fairy, you won’t get clean linen-but I already told you that, didn’t I? You’re not costing us much. Technically, we’ve been closed since Labor Day. That’s when the season ends here, pretty much. But it’s okay. You don’t want to be sleeping in your cars in this delightful weather.”
“For nothing?” Rob could hardly believe his ears. “Are you sure, man?”
Justin’s look told him he was an idiot for checking a gift horse’s teeth. Rob didn’t need the look. He’d already realized that for himself. Now he’d given Barber another chance to shaft them.
“I said it. I meant it,” Barber replied. “I usually mean what I say. These days, that means I’m hideously out of place in about ninety-eight percent of the country. In Guilford, I fit in fine. That’s one of the reasons I like it here.”
Dad would fit here, too, Rob thought. His father sure didn’t fit in L.A., no matter how long he’d lived there. L.A. turned the lie into an art form.
But that was beside the point. “Thank you very much, Mr. Barber,” Rob said. His bandmates chorused agreement.
“You’re welcome-and I’m Dick. You may as well get used to it,” the innkeeper said.
“You talked about bringing food in,” Biff said. “Where do we get it to bring in?”
“We’ve got a little grocery and a meat market. Supermarket’s in Dover-Foxcroft, ten, fifteen minutes east. Closest place to buy a meal is Calvin’s Kitchen, down on Water Street. They make a decent breakfast and a halfway decent burger. They do dinner, too, but I wouldn’t. A couple of blocks farther west, there’s a Subway,” Barber said. Rob found himself nodding. If there was going to be anything in a little place like this in Maine, odds were it’d be a Subway. Dick Barber added, “There’s a Rite Aid close to the Subway, too. You can find almost anything there-maybe not the exact style or brand you want, but you can.”
“Yup.” Rob nodded. If you spent a lot of time on the road, that was one of the things you learned. Drugstores weren’t always deep, but they were very wide.
“Anyway, if you’re looking for something that isn’t a breakfast joint or Subway, try Dover-Foxcroft,” Barber said. “There you’ve got the Golden Arches. Not exactly an improvement on Subway, but not the same, anyhow. And there’s a Chinese place. Cantonese, but it’s sort of half Hong Kong and half Maine, if you know what I mean.”
“Sounds like that Mexican place we ate at in… where the hell was it?” Justin looked to Rob.
Rob couldn’t remember. He’d eaten in too many Mexican places in too many towns. But Charlie said, “I know the one you mean. Wasn’t that Madison?”
“Madison!” Rob echoed. Once Charlie put a finger on it, it came back to him, too. “It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what you’d call Mexican, eierehat cheese was so Wisconsin-oh my God!”
They brought their gear out of the SUVs and into the Trebor Mansion Inn. There was a family area, which seemed overrun by cats, and a guest area not much warmer than the snowstorm outside. Barber hadn’t been kidding when he said they weren’t looking for business this time of year. “You’ve got radiators in your rooms,” he told them. “They’ll warm things up-eventually. And you’ve got plenty of blankets. Genuine wool, too. We haven’t sheared any acrylics or skinned any naugas.”
The tower room had a trapdoor and a ladder you could pull up after you. “This is awesome!” Rob exclaimed when he saw the arrangements. “When I was twelve years old, you never would have got me out of here.”
“Well, maybe when you had to take a leak.” Justin was more pragmatic.
If you weren’t twelve years old, the tower wasn’t perfect. You couldn’t stand up straight in it, except right in the middle. The bed wasn’t exactly a bed: it was a mattress and box spring on the floor. If you were six-one like Rob, your feet hung out over the trapdoor space when you lay down on it.
But there was plenty to read. The shelves set into the wall over the mattress held history books, mysteries, bestsellers from about the time Rob was born, and some science fiction. He always checked out the books when he walked into a furniture store or a restaurant that used them as part of the decor; he’d got the habit from his father. Now he had his own odd assortment.
Justin grabbed a fat book about tank battles on the Russian front in World War II. “This should either keep me awake all night or knock me out better than Valium,” he said.
“Which would you rather?” Rob asked. He had a panoramic view up here. At the moment, he had a view of snow swirling this way, that way, and now and then the other way, too. Through it, he could dimly make out the back sides of some of the buildings on Water Street. That tall stack… Did it belong to the water mill?
Closer was snow-covered ground with pines of assorted sizes sticking up out of it at random. Something prowled across it: another Maine Coon. The critter peered up into one of the pines. A red squirrel stared down at it, bushy tail lashing as the squirrel chewed out the cat from a safe distance.
Justin answered him, but he was so busy watching the little drama outside that he had to ask the lead singer to repeat himself. With a snooty sniff, Justin did: “I said it probably doesn’t matter much one way or the other. It sure looks like we aren’t going anywhere for a while.”
“Winter in lovely, charming Guilford, Maine? A new reality show, coming soon to a cable network near you! The other title is Say Hello to the New Ice Age.”
“Hello, new Ice Age,” Justin said obediently.
Rob laughed. Then he looked out at the blowing snow again. “I was just kidding,” he said.
“Oh, sure,” Justin agreed. “But was God?”
“Well, the blame’s gotta stick to somebody. Why not to Him?” Rob answered. Justin said not a word. Outside, the snow kept falling.
XIX
The computer in Colin’s study had a twenty-five-inch monitor-a good size, even these days. All the same, he had trouble taking in the scale of the photoshe flash drive Kelly stuck into one of his USB ports. “I see red and black. Could be just about anything. Maybe a volcano, or maybe a bunch of shots from somebody’s colonoscopy.”
Kelly gave him a severe look. “Back when we first met in Yellowstone, you said the country didn’t get its enemas there. It got’em in Providence.”
He kissed her. “Migawd-you were listening to me! I’m not used to that any more. Nobody who’s raised children is.”
She laughed. He only wished he were joking. One of these days, she might find out for herself. That was part of the reason he’d asked her down to L.A. Not all of it, but part. She said, “You’re looking down at Yellowstone-for all I know, the part of it where the West Thumb used to be-from about forty thousand feet. No telephoto, no zoom. This is pretty much what I saw when I looked out the Learjet’s window.”
“You were dumb to go.”
“I knew you’d say that.” Her look got more severe. She was an adult. She expected to be treated as one. Colin only sighed. He couldn’t do anything about it, especially after the fact.
He studied the picture again. “So it’s… miles from one side here to the other?” He thought about it for a little while and whistled softly. “That’s-something, isn’t it? Reminds me of the spaceprobe photos from… which moon of
