Justin did notice one thing: houses here didn't have satellite dishes on the roof. It made them seem incomplete, like people without ears. California might have sent men to Mars, but there was no continent-wide entertainment market in this alternate. English was the dominant language of this North America, yes. But the dialects were much more pronounced, and the social differences between states were much wider than in the home timeline. What was funny in California might be offensive in Virginia, and the other way around. (What was funny in Alabama might touch off terrorism in Mississippi, and the other way around.)
Except for the missing dish, the house in front of which Mr. Brooks stopped his car seemed nice enough. The front lawn was neatly trimmed. It didn't have any cars parked on it, which a lot of lawns here did. All the trim had been painted not very long before.
Before Mr. Brooks got out of the car, he looked carefully in all directions. He carried a briefcase in one hand. The other didn't go far from the waistband of his trousers. Did he have a gun there?
He noticed Justin looking at him. "I'm a stranger here," he said. "I'm a stranger, and my stock in trade is small and valuable. That might make me fair game. Why take chances?"
"I didn't say anything," Justin answered. How often did a town like this see strangers? Did they ever come in and not go out again? Once Justin started stephenkinging, he had a hard time stopping.
"Okay." Mr. Brooks went up the walk. Justin followed. The older man rang the bell.
The door opened right away. "Hello, Mr. Brooks," said the man who stood there. He scratched at his almost-white mustache as he eyed Justin. "Who's your accomplice here?"
"My sister's son—his name's Justin Monroe," Mr. Brooks answered. "They're over from Fredericksburg for a bit. I brought him along to see some of this side of the state. Justin, this is Ted Snodgrass."
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Snodgrass." Justin stuck out his hand.
"Pleased to meet you, too, Justin—mighty pleased." Mr. Snodgrass shook hands. He still had a pretty good grip. His accent held the same sort of twang as Mr. Brooks', only more of it. "Are you a collector yourself?"
"Not really," Justin said. "I'm interested, but I don't know a whole lot." This alternate's North American coins and stamps, like the history of the continent, were much more complicated than they were in the home timeline.
"Everybody starts that way. If you are interested, you'll learn." Ted Snodgrass stepped aside. "In the meantime, why don't you come on in?" One of his eyelids went down and then up again. Was that a wink? It sure looked like one. He went on, "Matter of fact, I'm right glad you came."
"How's that?" Mr. Brooks asked. The house wasn't real big, but it looked comfortable, even if it also seemed old-fashioned to Justin. The furniture could have come out of the twentieth century, or maybe the nineteenth. And nobody, but nobody, used maroon velvet upholstery in the home timeline these days. That didn't mean the chair to which Mr. Snodgrass waved Justin felt bad to sit in, though.
"How's that?" Mr. Snodgrass echoed, and he winked again. Justin wondered what in the world was going on. Then Mr. Snodgrass raised his voice a little: "Rebecca! Come out here a minute, would you?"
The girl who stepped into the front room was about Justin's age—maybe a year younger, he thought. She was blond and cute—not gorgeous, but definitely cute—and the last thing he'd expected to meet here. Was she Mr. Snodgrass' granddaughter?
"Beckie, this is the coin dealer I was telling you about, Mr. Randolph Brooks," Ted Snodgrass said. "And this tall young fellow is his nephew, Justin, uh, Monroe. Friends, this is Rebecca Royer. My wife's cousin went out to California to live, and she's back here for the first time in a coon's age. Rebecca here is her grandchild."
"Hello," Justin said. "I'm glad I decided to come along for the ride." Mr. Brooks laughed. So did Mr. Snodgrass.
"Good to meet you," Rebecca—Beckie?—Royer said. Her accent was nothing like Mr. Snodgrass'. She sounded more as if she came from the home timeline, but not quite. Something else was there. Justin tried to figure out what it was.
"Why don't the two of you grab fizzes from the icebox and get to know each other while Mr. Brooks and I break out the skinning knives?" Ted Snodgrass said.
"Oh, I don't aim to skin you—much," Mr. Brooks said. He and Mr. Snodgrass laughed again, this time on a different note.
The icebox was a refrigerator that looked almost the same as the one at Justin's house back in the home timeline, except that one wasn't pink. Fizzes were sodas. "Thanks," he said when she handed him one.
"You're welcome," she said. "Did I hear your uncle say you were from Fredericksburg?"
"That's right." Justin had to remember not to talk about the Civil War battle there. In this timeline, it never happened. Neither did that war. Others, yes. Which reminded him . . . "Are you stuck here in Virginia because of the trouble with Ohio?"
Her mouth twisted. "It sure looks that way. Gran didn't think this would happen when she decided to come back here."
"That must be fun," he said.
She smiled a little. "But of course," she said. Someone from the home timeline would have said Yeah, right or And then you wake up, but it amounted to the same thing. And he worked out what was odd—to his ear—about the way she talked. Ever so slightly, she rolled her r's. California in this alternate had even more connections with the Mexico of which it had once been a part than it did in the home timeline. Spanish had rubbed off on the English the local Californians spoke.
"Good heavens, but you're a thief!" Mr. Snodgrass said to Mr. Brooks. Justin felt alarmed. Rebecca Royer looked alarmed. What was going on in the other room?
Then Mr. Brooks answered, "I thank you for the compliment," and he and Mr. Snodgrass both laughed some more. Whatever was going on, it didn't seem serious.
"Do you want to see the back yard?" Rebecca asked. "That way, they can yell at each other as much as they want." She might have been a mother talking about two little boys.
"Sure." Justin nodded. They went outside. "Nice trees," he said. He meant that. This alternate had missed out on both chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease. Genetic engineering had finally got ahead of both of those in the home timeline. But the resistant trees were still scarce, and hadn't had time to grow tall. Some of the ones Justin could see in the distance were probably older than the Revolution.
"They are, aren't they?" Rebecca Royer sipped her fizz. It was lemon-limey, on the order of Sprite, and called 6+. It wasn't bad, but Justin didn't think it was anything to get excited about. She went on, "Everything is so green here compared to what I'm used to."
"Where in California are you from, Rebecca?" Justin asked. "I know it's a big place."
"Call me Beckie—almost everybody does. I'm from Los Angeles." Beckie made a face, then grinned. "I'm not one of those San Francisco people." Wherever both towns existed, they were rivals.
He tried to think of something else to say. He found one obvious question: "What do you think of Virginia?"
"It's very pretty. Like I said, things are a lot greener than they are back home. The people seem nice." She wrinkled her nose. "They put up with Gran, so they must be nice. But this is an awful small town when you come from the big city."
"I guess," Justin said. Los Angeles here wasn't the enormous sprawl that it was back home. They didn't have so many of the irrigation projects that let the basin fill up with people. But Elizabeth, Virginia, could disappear in it and never get noticed.
"Some things here are different," Beckie said. "Can I tell you something without making you mad?"
"Huh? Sure," Justin said. He'd taken a shower in the morning. He'd brushed his teeth. His fly wasn't open—he glanced down to check. What could she say that might make him angry, then?