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the Philadelphia “O” than Judy’s choppy Maine rhythms. The man behind it was early forties, barrel-chested and big-boned, with reddish brown hair and a shambling walk. He wore denim coveralls streaked with paint over a blue T-shirt with breast pocket and old hiking boots. He held a paint bucket and brush in his right hand, and the smile on his face nearly reached the sideburns.
    I said, “A golden oldie.”
    “Oldie? You’re not a Mainer, right?”
    “Right. Boston.”
    “Well, mister, up here you’re going to realize something right off. This is current stuff. The Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers, Cream. The stations are called The Mountain, Ocean, The Blimp—and speaking of blimps? If Led Zeppelin got their act together, they could be the Grateful Dead of Maine, touring one little town after another, from Kittery to Fort Kent, packing them in at every stop, then just heading south and starting all over again.”
    “Like painting the Brooklyn Bridge.”
    He looked down at his bucket. “Huh?”
    “The crew that paints the Brooklyn Bridge. By the time they finish, it’s time to start painting at the beginning again.”
    He cocked his head but kept the smile. “I think I’m going to like you. I’d shake but—”
    “John Cuddy.”
    “Ralph Paine. You’re the one Gil Lacouture’s office called about?”
    “I am.”
    “Well, we’ve got two rooms with a private bath and a telephone both. Gil said be sure to give you one. No problem since we just lost the bugs.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “The bugs. The black flies. Little bitty things, look like fruit flies with a thyroid condition. They bite you, spit some kind of stuff in the bite, and you bleed a drop like a picture of the Savior on the cross. Then you get yourself a welt the size of a nickel lasts about a week. You still might see one or two if you go into the woods, but we’ve got stuff for that, you decide to. That’s how come we’ve got the rooms.”
    “Because the flies are gone?”
    “No, no. Because nobody can really predict in advance when they’ll arrive or when they leave. See, they arrive sometime in early May, usually, but we don’t get rid of them till the darning needles come out.”
    “The darning needles.”
    “That’s what we called them back in Philly, anyway. Up here, they’re dragonflies.”
    “The dragonflies come out and eat the black flies.”
    “You bet. Like the Battle of Britain in reverse. Instead of rooting for the little planes against the big planes, you pull for those dragonflies to down about a hundred black flies every minute.”
    Paine seemed to notice my gear for the first time. “Tell you what you do. You just set those things here, and I’ll get into my innkeeper outfit and be right back out. Wife’s over watching the store, so I’m kind of on my own for now.”
    I told Paine not to hurry. I took an old oval-back chair, the next two rock anthems that came over the radio supporting my host’s view on music mix.
    Paine reappeared in a pair of clean, creased brown pants and a long-sleeved oxford shirt over the blue T. I signed the middle of a page in a leather-bound register, then got led up a wide, carpeted staircase.
    Over his shoulder, Paine said, “We’ll put you on the second floor. Got some bigger rooms on the third, but they’re not really opened up yet, and besides, they’re more for families, what with the bunk beds, and all.”
    We turned right and stopped at what I thought would be a rear room.
    Paine said, “This one’s probably the one you’ll want, but there’s another I can show you, too.”
    He opened the door without using a key and ushered me into a broad room with a four-poster mahogany bed and matching dresser and nightstand. An internal doorway previewed a shower-and-vanity bathroom with no tub but lots of towels. At the back of the room was a window overlooking the lake. I could see the square dock and chairs at the water’s edge below, just the hint of houses