Dreamland Social Club (15 page)

Babette said, “H.T. told us to come,” and the guy looked down at her. She said, “You’re Mike, right?”

“No,” he said. “Ike.”

“Shit,” Babette said. “Sorry.”

He shrugged and let them in. “H.T.’s in the kitchen.”

“Cool,” Babette said. “Thanks.”

The apartment had an amazing view through huge windows facing the ocean. Jane walked right over to it and looked out at a cruise ship that was making its way into New York Harbor. She imagined its captain’s view, wondered if he could see her tiny figure at the window through binoculars. Babette appeared at her side with two beers, though Jane took one sip and decided it would be her last. Too much booze and she’d probably turn to Babette and say what she was really thinking.

That was the sort of stuff that was better left unsaid. That and things like
I found a set of secret keys inside a mermaid doll.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to say it, though.

Leo was popular. He would definitely be coming.

The party seemed to take some kind of turn just a few minutes later when a big group came in all at once. Suddenly, the room felt electric, charged, and Jane felt buzzed without so much as a second sip of her beer. “Come on,” Babette said. “Let’s say hi to Debbie.”

And so Jane was finally introduced to the bearded girl. Her hair was light brown, so her beard was, too, and it wasn’t coarse-looking at all. Jane couldn’t help but think it was actually sort of, well, pretty. When Babette ducked away to get another beer, Debbie blurted, “My mother’s the bearded lady at the sideshow. I’m thinking about electrolysis, though.”

Jane just nodded.

Debbie said, “You can touch it if you want,” and stroked her beard. “It’s soft.”

“No,” Jane said. “That’s okay.” She really had no interest.

“Oh, come on,” Debbie said, then took Jane’s hand and pulled it toward her face. Jane complied and stroked it for a second, then shrugged. “It’s just a beard,” she said. “My dad used to have one.”

Debbie raised her beer can to toast. “Now you, I like. And your grandmother, for the record, was one cool lady.” Debbie nodded her head approvingly and Jane said, “You knew her?”

“Not really, but I’ve seen her movies and I used to see her around. I asked her for her autograph once and she told me to feck off.”

“
Feck
? Really?”

“Yeah, like in a funny way.”

“Oh, okay.”

They both just looked out at the room for a minute and Jane tried to think of something to say. Then Debbie said, “So are you thinking of joining any clubs or anything?”

“I don’t know,” Jane said, stiffening, then decided how to answer. “I move a lot. With my family. Maybe math club or something, though. What clubs are you in?”

It felt like a dare.

She’d seen Debbie in the hall near Room 222 after school that Wednesday.

“Oh, just the math team and science club.” Babette was almost back. “Some others . . .”

 

Jane hadn’t noticed the music equipment in the corner until Leo was up at the microphone, guitar in hand, with three other guys—one of whom was either Mike or Ike—behind him. The twin who wasn’t in the band approached Leo, said something, and Leo stepped away from the mike.

The twin said, “Give it up for my boy, Leo. And check out my brother rockin’ the bass. Here they are, for your entertainment . . . Cleon!”

A couple of people clapped and woo-hooed, then people started moving forward to watch as the band kicked in with a burst of guitar blare and bass booms. Jane had a weird angle on the stage and saw the seahorse on Leo’s neck, where muscles and veins were shifting as he sang. She saw Venus across the room and thought,
Told you so. It
was
familiar,
then decided not to give Venus another thought.

The song was full-on, fierce, an assault on the ears but not in a bad way. And it was followed by another and another—and the room pulsed and sweat—and then the whole party seemed to inhale and wait when Leo put his guitar down. No one wanted it to be over, least of all Jane. But Mike or Ike—whichever twin wasn’t in the band—handed a chair up to the stage, such as it was, and Leo sat down and picked up a saw.

Yes—Jane had checked again—a saw.

Like from a hardware store.

And with the barest of accompaniment from Mike or Ike—whichever one
was
in the band—on a keyboard set to sound like an old-timey piano, Leo started to play the saw with a violin bow. Jane closed her eyes and listened to the sound—it was uncanny how like a woman it sounded—and recognized the tune somewhere deep in her heart.

Opening her eyes, she watched as each person in the room seemed drawn to Leo and his saw. She could only catch glimpses of him as the crowd moved forward to see what was going on, but he was there, working the saw, which bounced and bent and vibrated in his hands.

And even though it was a wordless melody, even though it was clearly not human, Jane swore she could hear the lyrics. Swore it sounded almost exactly like her mother’s voice, humming her to sleep....

 

She pushed through one room after the next when the band was finished, looking for Leo in the sweaty, drunken crowd—the keys gripped tightly in her hand—but when she found him, he was down the hall, pinned against a wall by Venus. She couldn’t see their faces, but his hands were on the skin between her tiny top and low-rise jeans, their bodies pressed together tight.

Jane’s gut retracted as if from a punch.

She turned away and decided to find Babette and go home, but then she heard Leo call her name. She turned back.

“Hey.” He came closer, then nodded in the general direction of his performance. “What’d you think?”

“Oh.” The moment, the magic, Dreamland was all gone. All she could think about was that shiny red bra, of his hands on Venus’s waist. “You were great.”

“Thanks,” he said, but he looked sort of hurt, like she hadn’t really meant it.

Her body jolted forward from a push, and the keys fell from her hand as she fell into Leo and then recovered with the help of his strong arm.

“Hey,” Leo said, pushing Harvey Claverack in the chest with both hands.

“Mike! Ike!” Leo called out, and immediately the twins and a few other guys were dragging Harvey away, telling him he was out of line, unwelcome.

“She’s not giving you the horse!” Leo snapped as Harvey disappeared through the door.

I’m not?
Jane wanted to say.

“You okay?” Leo said finally.

She worked hard to breathe and nodded, then realized the keys weren’t in her hand or anywhere that she could see. Bending down to look for them, she heard Venus calling from down the hall, “Leo, come out to play,” in a singsong, over and over.

Some kind of inside joke.

“Hey,” Leo said softly, and he took her elbow and helped her up. “What did you lose?”

Right then she saw them and bent to snatch them up. She’d been so mad a few minutes before that she wasn’t going to tell him, after all, but now, well . . . “So you know how your mom said that she and my mom used to break into places after dark and stuff?”

Leo nodded.

“I found these.” Jane opened her hand and Leo took the keys, his fingers briefly brushing hers.

He flipped through them and examined the labels. “Oh. My. Garage.”

Her pulse quickened at the phrase, which she was sure she’d heard before, from her mother’s mouth.
This
was the kind of boy her mother would have hung out with, flirted with.
This
was the kind of boy who spoke her mother’s language. He was exactly the kind of boy—no, he was
the exact boy
—Jane needed. She said, “Do you think any of them still work?”

“From the look in your eyes,” he said, “I’d guess you were going to try to find out?”

Jane nodded and said, “I’d be afraid to do it alone.” Which was true, but of course not exactly why she was asking.

He handed the keys back. “Is that an invitation?”

She nodded. “What are you doing later?”

He smiled again. “Isn’t it already later?”

She shook her head. “Two a.m. Like our mothers did.”

“You’re serious.”

“Very.”

He nodded and said, “You’re on.”

 

“Well, you survived,” Babette said when they cut up to the boardwalk to walk home. She patted Jane on the back of her calf. “I’m proud of you, kid.”

“Thanks,” Jane said.

She was about to tell Babette everything she’d been keeping to herself—about the postcard, about the fact that her mother and Leo’s had been friends, about the keys—but the words that came out were “Is Venus Leo’s girlfriend?”

“I don’t think so.” Babette shook her tiny head and seemed to be walking too hard in order to keep up.

Jane slowed her gait. “I think I saw them kissing.”

“Well, either they were or they weren’t.”

“I couldn’t be sure.”

Babette’s voice was small, like the wind had snatched her up and carried her far away, when she said, “It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

But Jane knew that wasn’t true.

Everything meant something.

I
T WASN’T EASY TO SNEAK OUT of Preemie’s house. Floorboards creaked. Doors whined. The staircase practically whistled “Dixie” when walked down. But Jane tiptoed and stepped on the stairs at their wall edge and opened the doors in slow motion and finally managed to get out undetected. The street was dark, abandoned, so she took off running to meet Leo outside the Anchor.

It was 2:00 a.m. and the bar was still open, still loud. But they weren’t staying. No one even noticed as they moved away and sat on a bench to make a plan. Leo had a backpack hooked on one shoulder, and Jane suddenly regretted not coming more prepared, though she had no idea what she would have brought apart from the keys, which were in her jeans pocket.

“So.” She took them out. “I’m guessing this one has to do with the Parachute Jump. And this one the Thunderbolt. The other two, I have no idea. Bath, no clue. And I guess this one’s either the Wonder Wheel or Wonderland.”

Leo nodded and said, “I say we start with Thunder.”

“But I thought you said it was gone.” She had already accepted that that key might be useless, that they all might be. But she wanted to be sure.

“It’s gone,” Leo said, and they took off down the boardwalk. “But we can still go there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Some stuff is never really gone.” He led Jane down along the side of an abandoned lot that faced the boardwalk and a side street she’d walked down countless times before, right to a padlock on an old chain-link fence and said, “Okay. Try it.”

Jane got the keys out, then took the lock in her hand and inserted the key. Sure enough, the lock turned.

“Unbelievable,” she said, and Leo said, “Well, this may be the only key that does anything. This lot hasn’t changed hands in like thirty years.”

In they went, stomping over tall weeds and cracked bottle glass, eventually taking cover behind a small trailer that looked abandoned. Not that Jane got the impression anyone was there to see them or that anyone who saw them would care, but it felt like taking cover anyway, their backs leaning up against the metal wall.

“There’s nothing here,” Jane said.

“Nothing but ghosts,” Leo said. “This land is owned by a fried chicken mogul. The same chicken mogul that wanted to try to rebuild Steeplechase Park in the eighties.”

“For real?” Jane said. Clearly, this chicken mogul would have to be found, so that her father could pitch his coaster to him, too. She desperately wanted to tell Leo about it all, but she simply couldn’t break her father’s trust.

“Yup.” Leo nodded.

“Why didn’t it happen?”

“Same reason most things here don’t happen. Money. Greed. Ego. Lack of follow-through. But this is where the Thunderbolt used to be.” He unzipped his backpack, pulled out a photo album and a flashlight and then a small blanket. “I was there when they knocked it down. Want to see?”

“Of course.”

He opened the blanket up and they sat. He handed her the album and moved closer, shining the flashlight on the first photo. There was Leo, as a boy, standing on the boardwalk with the Thunderbolt—a long series of track hills and valleys—behind him. The coaster’s support beams had been overgrown by shrubs and weeds and climbing vines, and Jane had to push away an image of Venus’s viney arms around Leo. He said, “That was the day before we heard the mayor was having it ripped down. It was two thousand, so I was like five or six.”

Jane turned the page and saw Leo again, next to what looked like a shack beneath the coaster. “People lived there,” he said.

Uh-oh, I think I hear a train coming.
Jane’s hands formed fists, as if bracing for some kind of impact.