Page 76 of Road Trip with a Vampire

“I can’t wait,” he said sincerely.

“Neither can I,” I said. And meant it.

When I got back toour room, Peter was waiting for me in the bedroom, perched on the edge of the bed, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.

If he wanted to hit the road at a reasonable hour andnottake another tumble before we left, it was the wrong move. My eyes trailed over his washboard abs as I remembered what they had felt like beneath my fingertips the night before.

“When I woke up, you were gone,” he said, sounding petulant.

I patted my stomach. “The quasi-human was hungry,” I explained. “I was only gone for forty-five minutes.”

“Mm,” Peter said, not sounding mollified in the slightest. “Do you have my map?”

The impatience in his voice surprised me. “I do. Why?”

“There’s something I need to see.”

I reached into my bag and fished it out. He took it from my hands before I could even hold it out to him and spread it open on the bed. His towel slid down his body just enough to show his hipbones and the V that arrowed down from his waist. My eyes lingered on the newly exposed expanse of skin, but Peter was clearly in no mood for sex.

His fingers moved with purpose along the same interstates mine had over breakfast. Except whereas mine had stopped in Chicago, his took a slight detour north of the Windy City, not stopping until he reached a small town in Michigan along the Lake Michigan coast.

“There,” Peter said. He grabbed a pen from the nightstand and circled a town called South Harbor, about a hundred miles northwest of Chicago, with so much force he tore a hole in the paper in the process.

He set the pen to the side, then looked at me, eyes bright.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I was watching television while waiting for you to come back. A commercial for Michigan tourism came on.” He was smiling now, so big it nearly split his face in two. “Could we visit South Harbor next, after the bowling alley? It’s not on our itinerary—when I saw it in my journal, I eliminated it because it’s a detour, but—”

“Of course,” I said. “But what’s so important there?”

Peter pulled his journal from his duffel bag, then riffled through its pages until he found what he was looking for.

It was a detailed pencil sketch of a cottage. I wasn’t familiarwith architectural designs, but given the level of detail included, it looked like something a construction team might use to build a home.

“South Harbor is where I lived when I was still human,” he said, eyes shining. “I remembered that, clear as day, when I saw the ad on television.”

“Peter,” I breathed. This was tremendous. “Are you serious?”

He nodded, then pointed at the drawing in his journal. “I lived in this house. I designed it.” He took both of my hands in his. “I think it would be good for me to see it.”

Seventeen

From page 24 ofThe Boston Globe, June 14, 1952

Winners Again! Lady Hawks Bowl Their Way to Victory

Mr.Charles Jones, staff reporter forThe Boston Globe

Winners again! The Lady Hawks Bowling League—one of the first women-only bowling leagues on the Eastern Seaboard—beat all fifteen competitors at the Fifth Annual Ladies’ Bowling Invitational in Lowell, Mass. Leading the charge was the Lady Hawks’ founder and star bowler, Ms.Grizelda Watson of Groton, Mass.

“If a lady can cook a ham, she can throw a bowling ball,” Ms.Watson said, beaming confidently from ear to ear as she held the team’s trophy aloft. She had just bowled a perfect game, which according to her teammates is something she does every time.

Peter spent the drive tothe bowling alley staring at the pages of his journal and nearly vibrating out of his seat. I knew he wanted to skip the bowling alley altogether and go straight to South Harbor. But given how close we were to the alley, it seemed foolish not to go there first.

When we pulled up in front of the dingy, squat brick building that housed Gary’s Bowl-A-Rama, though, I began having second thoughts. It had probably seen better days—forty years ago. I doubted it had been updated in at least that long.

“I can’t believe you’ve been here,” I admitted. The idea of Peter willingly walking into this place was almost as hard to imagine as the thought of him going into that chicken restaurant.