Occupying barely two of New Hampshire’s paltry dozen and a half miles of coastline, the resort town exuded an open-armed, freewheeling, blue-collar ambience that appealed to denim over sequins, motorcycles over Ferraris, and beer over champagne. Hampton Beach, according to Lester’s description to Sam—who’d never been—was summed up as a “redneck vision of paradise.”

Cheek-by-jowl along a gentle crescent—consisting of Ocean Boulevard, the beach, and the open Atlantic—were uncountable bars, casinos, motels, strip joints, novelty stores, tourist dives, gift shops, arcades, beach supply vendors, souvenir outlets, yogurt and T-shirt shops, and multiple food counters offering gyros, fried dough, pizza, Italian sausage, fudge, ice cream, corn dogs, and seafood that—despite the ocean’s proximity—had been trucked from as far away as the burrito ingredients right next door.

At the height of the season, Lester told Sam, eyes gleaming, near gridlock is a given, parking impossible, noise a continual roar punctuated by muffler-free motorcycles, and crowd control a nightmare for the local constabulary, who have become over time regional experts on DUIs and overdoses.

“It’s sure no place for introverts,” he stressed, “except for right now.” With that, he left where Route 101 petered out, turned south onto Ocean Boulevard, and stopped.

Before them was the flat, gentle curve he’d detailed, with buildings to the right and the beach and ocean to the left. But almost without exception, the entire stretch was deserted, clad in snow, and now that the weather had cleared, under an uninterrupted gray dome of high clouds.

“This is why I love this place,” he said happily.

Sam looked from the desolate view of boarded storefronts and empty parking areas to him, and back again. “Les,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”

“I know. Isn’t it great?”

He put the car back into gear and continued, following Ocean to where it branched to become Ashworth Avenue, a deserted, one-way street paralleling its cousin and heading south. “This is the only way they could make any traffic flow at all,” he explained. “By making the whole place a huge, one-way circle. Kids come here in their convertibles or Harleys just to ‘scoot the loop’ all night long, around and around, up and down, drinking, smoking weed, and screaming their heads off.”

Sammie looked ahead, struck by how remarkably Ashworth Ave differed from Ocean. Here, with no view of the water, the gaunt buildings faced each other across a narrow street whose open daylight was smudged by thousands of crisscrossing electrical and telephone wires. The hotels and rooming houses, often peeling and worn, seemed designed for people paid to cater to the better-heeled strollers just one block over. Sam imagined this street, correctly or not, populated by tired shift workers, waitpeople, ice cream scoopers, strippers taking smoke breaks, and hundreds of others waiting to return to the glitz and bustle a hundred yards to the east.

At the bottom, Lester turned around and showed her Ocean Boulevard from the south, as visually different from Ashworth as she’d just been contemplating—open, airy, clean, and graced by the vast spread of water lapping at the wide, now snow-covered beach.