2

Cope

Becoming a widower over Labor Day weekend hadn't been on Cope's summer bingo card, but here they were. Everyone's spirits had taken a nosedive when Lizbet had a diaper explosion, one that leaked into her car seat and dripped onto the floor. Fitzgibbon had to pull the van off the road at a rest stop so that the baby could be hosed down along with the van and Everly's left leg, which had been caught in the maelstrom of baby shit.

Cope hadn't seen Lizbet's incident as a bad omen at the time, but now, standing in front of the Four Star Hotel, there was no other way to describe it. There were, however, several ways to describe the monstrosity they were seeing. Cope had been promised a magnificent, classy, upscale place to spend the last weekend of summer. What he got instead was a dumpy, outdated roach motel.

"What the actual fuck is this?" Ronan asked, coming to stand beside Jude, who wore a look of horror on his face.

"This wasn't the place listed in the email." Jude shook his head as if that would somehow change the view. It didn't. "Maybe I gave Fitz the wrong address. When we get to the real hotel, we're all going to have a big laugh over this." Jude looked like he was about to get sick. He grabbed his phone and started tapping the screen.

"Motherfucker," Ronan muttered. "This is the Four Star Motel ." He pointed to the neon sign with the No Vacancy sign lit up in gaudy pink neon.

"There is no such place as the Four Star Hotel in Old Orchard Beach," Jude said, his voice a near whisper.

"No big deal," Fitzgibbon said breezily. "We'll just head down the strip and get rooms at another hotel."

"It's the start of Labor Day weekend. There won't be any other available rooms." Jude took a deep breath and looked up at his friends. "Besides, I had to give my credit card number to book the rooms."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Ronan shouted. "You never pay up front. It's how they fuck you."

"Take a breath, Ronan," Jace said, wrapping an arm around Jude. "I'm sure this place has great rooms, and it's right here on the beach. We're gonna have an amazing time here. I've never stayed at a roach motel before." He pulled Jude along toward the main office.

Now that Jude wasn't in imminent danger of dying at the hands of his best friends, Cope had a minute to get a good look at the motel. It was a dull pink, like the color of bubble gum that had lost all its flavor. He imagined the shade had been vibrant and bright when this place was built, probably when Richard Nixon was still in office.

The motel was two stories high, with stairs on either end. He hoped the walls weren't as paper-thin as they looked. The last thing he wanted to deal with was listening to the other happy residents, laughing, fucking, and fighting all weekend long.

"It could be worse," Ten said from behind him, sounding sympathetic.

"Only if it were shut down by the Board of Health," Cope said on a laugh.

"Or if it were blown away by a hurricane," Fitzgibbon added before following his husband into the motel office.

"Maybe it's run by aliens wanting to probe us," Ronan suggested unhelpfully. "It looks like the kind of place that rents rooms by the hour to ladies of the night."

"Don't be such an ignorant asshole! I bet twinks of the night work here too." Ten said on a laugh.

By the time Jude and Jace came out of the motel's office, the other adults were laughing so hard they were doubled over.

"Oh, Jesus!" Jude ran to Cope's side. "Are you okay? Are you choking to death on noxious fumes coming from the meth lab on the second floor?"

Cope was laughing too hard to answer. He shook his head instead.

"Look, everyone gets a cool skeleton key with an actual skeleton!" Jace held up the key chains before handing one to Ronan and one to Jude while keeping the last one for himself. "We're up on the second floor, which means we won't get barfed on by other guests!"

"Is he on drugs?" Ronan whispered. "I mean, you'd have to be on drugs to find anything redeemable in this place, right?"

"Oh, wow!" Aurora squealed when she got out of the van. "It's a pink hotel. Just like Barbie has. We're staying in a bubble gum hotel!"

"I love it!" Everly declared. "Do you think the rooms are pink too? This is the best vacation ever!" She ran to the back of the van to help Fitzgibbon with the luggage.

"I don't care if the rooms are pink. I just hope they're clean." Cope whispered a quick prayer to the goddess in charge of fresh hotel linens. He added a second one to whomever was in charge of creepy-crawlies, asking that the spiders and millipedes and whatever the hell else lived in Maine would vacate the premises for the weekend.

Once all the luggage was unloaded and claimed, Jace parked the van and joined everyone lugging their bags up the stairs. Thankfully, all their rooms were in a row, with Fitz and Jace in room eleven, Ronan and Ten in room twelve, and Jude and Cope, of course, in lucky thirteen.

"Why do I get the feeling we're in a Stephen King book?" Cope asked when Jude unlocked the door and it creaked open.

"All I need is for kid-eating clowns or rabid dogs to show up. At this point, Ronan would have no hesitation to feed me to both of them," Jude grumped miserably.

"Oh good, it's not pink! I don't want to sleep in a pink room!" Wolf declared, rolling his little suitcase over Jude's left foot and into the room. "I want the bed by the glass doors so I can hear the ocean." Wolf dropped his bag and pulled open the sliding doors. A fresh gust of ocean wind blew through the room.

"Okay, it's not that bad," Cope wheeled his and Lizbet's bags into the room and locked the door behind them. Not that it mattered because each room key had looked identical when Jace held them up. He made a mental note to hook the desk chair under the doorknob before they went to bed so that the child-eating clown wouldn't be able to get in to snack on their kids.

The room was bright, thanks to the sliding glass door that led out to the balcony. Past Wolf, Cope could see the glittering Atlantic Ocean and the sandy beach. Looking around, Cope didn't smell any mold or mildew and didn't see any dust or crusty bodily fluids on the duvets covering the beds, but they were a weird mix of 1970s colors, avocado green and harvest gold. He couldn't help but wonder if these were the bedcovers that had been here when the hotel opened.

"What the actual fuck is right," Jude muttered, sinking down onto the bed closest to the door. "Our friends hate me."

Cope sat next to his husband. The mattress was surprisingly firm. "Our friends don't hate you. It's the motel they hate." Cope offered his husband a smile.

"What do we do?" Jude asked, looking distraught.

"Well, for starters, let's go check out the beach. Didn't you say there was a pier with restaurants and shops?" Cope knew everyone would be in a better mood after they ate something. "Then we can spend the afternoon relaxing on the beach."

"That sounds pretty good." Jude headed for the balcony. "Come see the pier!" He waved Cope forward.

"Isn't it cool, Daddy?" Wolf asked when Cope stepped onto the balcony.

Cope looked out over the beach. It was filled with brightly colored umbrellas and beach blankets. Kids and parents bobbed in the waves, and several teenagers were throwing Frisbees. To his left was the aforementioned pier. It reminded Cope of Florida and the Carolinas, where structures like this were common. It extended about five hundred feet into the ocean. He could see people milling about and could smell fried dough. "See, everything's gonna be okay."

"I want to ride the roller coaster just like we did at Fun-A-Rama!" Wolf pointed further down the beach to the amusement park. Cope remembered reading it was the only one in New England right on the beach.

"Let's just hope it's not haunted like Fun-A-Rama," Jude muttered loudly enough for only Cope to hear.

As Jude spoke, a shiver ran through Cope's entire body, giving him goose bumps and making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He hoped to hell this wasn't another bad omen. He wasn't overly fond of the current tally.

Bad Omens, . Cope and Jude, 0.