“Will not. We can’t send help to anyone at present,” Candy said on the other end of the phone.

“What do you want, son?” Dottie asked the boy in the beret.

“Gotta piss, ma’am,” he said.

We could hear the storm leaning hard on the inn.

I jerked my thumb, directing the boy to the closest washroom.

Candy Barber spoke now as if I worked for her but didn’t follow instructions well. “Look, you tell Dot that I’m probably sending over more victims. The shelter’s full. We’re getting severe power outages. You know, blizzard of seventy-eight out here, people died. You’ve got the room, heat, hot water, food. . . .”

“You’re her mother?” the boy in the beret asked Dottie. “I miss mine.”

Fredo arched and stretched, put the tip of his snout on the boy’s knee.

“Sweet doggie,” the boy said.

“Very sweet,” Dottie said, watching as the boy crouched and roughed up Fredo’s mane.

“You must be a good son,” she said.

The telephone felt lighter in my grip and I realized Candy Barber had hung up on me.

I went through the crowd of guests into the taproom. I squinted out a bubble window—like a porthole on a cruise ship. I saw branches, all gristle and knots, pieces of broken trees flying by. Beyond was the straight edge of ocean-horizon.

“We can feed you and give you tea or coffee,” Dottie said, mingling and speaking loudly to the guests. “Or hell, wine and beer.”

There was a little cheer from most, a groan from Raymond.

“But. I have to charge you for any hard liquor. I’m not the owner, you understand. It’s not my stuff to give. If you steal, I’ll have to pay and if I can’t, I’ll be sent to jail.”

“Hey, but what isn’t jail, really?” asked someone from the rock band.

“You may be right about that. Still. The Cape Head jail has no TV. And the beds are hard as boards, I hear. Nor do they give you a pillow,” said Dottie.

The aqua lobby—with the strange people and the peach- colored light from the fire and wall lamps, and with Dottie seeming readied for a date—became a distorted version of the lobby, to me like a colorized film.

Now Dottie was announcing to the room: “Last spring before the red-tide law there was a huge storm and afterwards a smorgasbord washed up—short lobsters, which’re illegal. Jackknife clams and ocean clams, not so good. But cherrystone and blue clams. I filled up twelve trash bags and I have a freezer full of chowder. I should go warm the restaurant’s stove burners.”

Raymond swept her under his arm and toward me for a whispered conference.

“Clam chowder? Mom, what’re you thinking?” I asked.

“Keep them busy so they don’t steal us blind and rape us.”