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Beach disappeared into a collection of rock ledges and boulders, and the road rose up some and curved to the right. Then I came upon a large, Victorian-style hotel, called the Lafayette House. Local legend has it that the Marquis de Lafayette stopped there for a quick drink in 1825 during his famed tour of the United States. Once Betsy Tyler, a selectman in her mid-seventies and a descendant of the Reverend Bonus Tyler, told me that if the Marquis de Lafayette had stopped at every watering hole that claimed him in this country, then no doubt he died of cirrhosis of the liver.
    Most of the original tavern was either burned or torn down, and the current Lafayette House was built in 1902 in the old, Victorian-hotel style. It's near the border of Tyler and North Tyler, and even when business is slow, it always does well from those middle-aged people who want to spend a week at the beach but who don't want to rent a room next to a mill worker from Manchester. Across Atlantic Avenue from the hotel was a tiny parking lot with a sign that said PRIVATE PARKING FOR LAFAYETTE HOUSE ONLY. I turned into the lot and went to the north end, passing the parked BMWs, Porsches, Volvos and Mercedes-Benzes. One Mercedes caught my eye. A red convertible, with its top up. A good decision, for by now the rain had started, big fat raindrops that splattered on the Range Rover's windshield, or windscreen, if you want to be entirely accurate.
    At the north end of the lot there was a low stonewall and a place where some of the rocks had fallen free. There was a path there, wide enough for a bicycle or a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I took the dirt path as it went down and to the right, past two homemade "No Trespassing" signs, and my house came into view. It's a two-story cottage that's never been painted and which has a dirt crawl space for a cellar. The lawn is just some faded green tufts of grass that have managed to poke through the rocky soil. The lawn rises up to a steep rocky ledge that hides my home from Atlantic Avenue. In the time I've lived here only a few people have clambered up the steep ledge and tried to come down to visit me, but my brusque manner quickly induced them to leave. I have no doubt they were helped along by my "No Trespassing" signs and the habit I have of answering the door with a 12-gauge shotgun in my hands.
    But today was the exception. Standing in the open shed that serves as my garage was Felix Tinios of North Tyler. He politely moved to one side as I pulled the Range Rover in. Thunder was rumbling as I got out and stepped onto the packed-dirt floor. Felix's dark skin had been made even darker by his tanning marathon over the summer, and his thick black hair looked like it had just been caught in the rain. He wore a padded leather windbreaker and open-necked white shirt, and had on baggy light gray trousers and matching light gray leather shoes.  
    I closed and locked the Range Rover's door and said, "Where's the gold chain around the neck, Felix? Are your standards slipping?"
    He laughed and I only wondered for a moment why he was wearing a jacket in this weather.
    "Carrying, right?"
    His smile was wide and even. "Very good, Lewis. Someone's trained you well."
    "Problems?"
    He shrugged, opened his hands. "Every day, someone's got problems. Today just happens to be mine, I guess. Listen, can I come in for a minute? I got something to ask you." I hesitated for a moment, since I felt grubby and my wet and sand-encrusted shorts were riding up some, making it feel like I was wearing a jockstrap made out of soggy sandpaper. But Felix's face looked earnest, which was an odd description for Felix, since earnest isn't a word that comes to my mind when I think of Felix. Direct, maybe, or even deadly. But not earnest.
    But he had sent me flowers every week I was in the Cambridge Hospital, and had visited a half dozen times and sent cards and chocolates. Once he had sent something extraordinarily thoughtful which still made me feel