Dreamland Social Club (20 page)

“Because I have the horse.”

“Fine,” Harvey said. “Come over after dinner. My grandfather’s always home, and my dad gets home from work at like seven.”

“Fine,” she said.

And that was that.

 

Jane watched Leo closely all day, hoping that he’d validate what she felt, which was that last night had changed things between them. The way they’d sat so close and talked for so long
,
the easy way they had with each other, the charge she was sure had been in the air. It had to mean something. And nothing having to do with Loki or the Anchor could ever change that. It took the better part of the day before she got any indication that maybe he had felt it, too.

“Hey,” he said to her on the way out of the cafeteria after lunch. He had a funny look in his eye, and she feared he was going to say something about the condoms, about her “date” with Legs. How had she gotten herself into such a mess?

“I can’t stop thinking about you.” He ran a hand through his hair, a mess of unwashed black strands. “About you and your mom, I mean. Those games. I swear I dreamed about the Elephant Hotel last night.”

The next bell rang and he said, “Tomorrow afternoon.” He was backing away. “The Wonder stuff.”

She had to consciously act calm when she nodded and said, “Yes. Definitely.”

“Hot date?” someone said, and Jane turned to find Legs towering over her.

“No,” she said.

“Well, I should hope not,” he said, and then he added, “So Friday. I’ll pick you up around seven?”

“I could just meet you there,” Jane said.

“A gentleman such as myself could never allow it.” He headed off down the hall, and the bulletin board he’d been standing in front of revealed a new poster. It said

The flush came before the stall door swung open, but Jane saw it only in the mirror’s reflection. She didn’t see anyone coming out of the stall and got spooked, so she whirled around, looked down, and saw Minnie Polinksy. She was wiping her cheeks and her eyes were bloodshot. She’d been crying.

She looked up at Jane, took her hands away from her face with one more swipe of tears, and sighed loudly. She went down to the far end of the sink counter and pulled a small stool out from underneath. She climbed up, turned on the water, looked at herself in the mirror, and breathed hard, then looked over at Jane’s reflection.

Jane didn’t have anything to say to her and Minnie didn’t seem to want to say anything either, but Jane’s feet wouldn’t move. She thought maybe she should tell Minnie that it wasn’t really a date. She hated that it seemed like she was in some way contributing to the breaking of Minnie’s tiny heart when Jane’s own heart wasn’t really into it. Jane would have stomped on anybody’s heart for Leo; not even Venus shooting daggers at her would make one bit of difference. But not for Legs.

Minnie turned off her water and reached for a paper towel. She said, “He wants to be normal, you know.”

Jane just waited.

“It’s the only reason he wants to be with you and not me.” Paper towels looked like bath towels in Minnie’s small hands. “He thinks being with you will make him more normal.”

Jane’s feet still hadn’t heeded her command to move when Minnie stepped back off the stool and walked out. Looking in the mirror just then, Jane suddenly felt newly determined to go rollerskating with Legs. Not to help him be normal—how could anyone possibly help anyone be that? least of all her?—but to prove that Legs had the right to go out with whomever he wanted . . . and so did she.

 

This time when Jane walked past Room 222, she definitely saw Leo inside. So he
was
a member of the Dreamland Social Club. He had put himself in the picture.

This time, she had half a mind to just open the door and walk in and sit down and see if anyone cared. Minnie was there, though, which was reason enough to stay out. In fact, there were now more reasons to stay away than to go in. Many, many more.

Still, she needed to ask Babette for a homework assignment she’d missed when she’d been with Principal Jackson and the Claveracks. So she walked back up to the door and knocked. The voices inside went silent, and Jane just waited. Babette opened the door and said, “Well, hello, Jane.”

Debbie stood up from a desk at the front of the room and H.T., who’d been sitting atop that desk with his back to the door, spun himself around, a wide white smile on his face. Leo looked up from where he was sitting next to Venus, their heads bent together over some sort of book or album. Minnie just stared and Legs did the same, though with a softer look in his eyes than his ex’s.

“Well, hello, Babette,” Jane mimicked. “Can I get our homework assignment from Pre-Calc?”

Babette looked back over her shoulder into the room; Jane watched a few of the others make and then drop eye contact with Babette, who turned back to Jane and said, “Can I swing by your house in like an hour?”

“Sure,” Jane said, and then Babette all but closed the door in her face.

A
T HOME, MUSIC MADE OF STRINGS and swells emanated from the heating vents in the kitchen. Jane went out into the yard, opened the metal doors to the basement, and called out, “Dad?”

“Yup!”

Once downstairs, Jane saw an old record spinning on the Victrola.

“This Victrola’s in great shape.” Her father turned down the volume. “And you’ll never believe this thing.” He pointed to a weird-looking cylinder and horn on the table. “Hang on.”

He lifted the needle on the Victrola and went back to the cylindrical contraption and started to crank a handle on it. A woman’s high-pitched, garbled voice came from the horn, singing, “
I’ll be your little honey, I will promise that, / Said Nellie as she rolled her dreamy eyes,/It’s a shame to take the money,/Said the bird on Nellie’s hat . . .”

“Crazy, right?” he said.

Jane thought,
Yup, officially
.

“So how did the meeting go?” she asked, but her father was now singing along, cranking with intensity: “
Then to Nellie Willie whispered as they fondly kissed,/I’ll bet that you were never kissed like that.”

“Good! I think!” her father said, and Jane deduced that he was drunk. He sang the rest of the song with the lady on the weird funnel record—
“Well, he don’t know Nellie like I do,/Said the saucy little bird on Nellie’s hat”
—and then he plopped down on an old couch, out of breath.

“There was a picket line.” He waved a hand. “I hadn’t been expecting that. Some woman stopped me and went on and on and on about Loki and said that I was making a deal with the devil.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Dad.”

But he wasn’t listening. “You’d think I was single-handedly responsible for Loki owning the property the Anchor and Wonderland are on, like it’s my fault they might lose their leases. I told her that’s life. If you can’t afford to stay somewhere, then you can’t afford to stay. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s the way of the world.”

Jane felt the thrum of dread. “What did she look like?”

“I don’t know. Crazy. That’s what she looked. Pretty. Like super-sophisticated. But crazy.”

Yes, probably Beth.

“But it’s true that Loki is raising everyone’s rents like crazy,” Jane said. “Shutting people down. You don’t care?”

Her father took his glasses off and said, “A horror made of cardboard, plastic, and appalling colors; a construction of hardened chewing gum and idiotic folklore taken straight out of comic books written for obese Americans.”

“Dad,” Jane whined. “What are you talking about?”

“You were too little to remember. No, wait.” He paused to think. “You weren’t even born yet. But when I worked on Euro Disney, the French people hated what was happening. They called the park ‘a horror made of cardboard.’ And worse. And there were protests from labor unions and problems with the housing requirements needed to support the massive staff the park needed to function.”

“What’s your point?” Jane asked, though she already sort of knew.

“You can’t please all of the people all of the time,” he said, and he started gathering up his documents. “Now I need to go run through my presentation a few times, honey. I’m sorry you’re upset about this, but it’s really nothing new.”

“It’s new to me,” she said weakly.

“I know.” He nodded. “And it’s complicated stuff. Especially if you know the people involved. But there’s really no right thing in a situation like this.”

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t a wrong thing,” she said. Then, “What do you think Mom would make of all this? The Tsunami? The redevelopment?”

“I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes. “I only know that she loved this place and hated it, and she was justified in both of those things. Maybe the development will get rid of some of the hate for the rest of us who are still here.”

“I don’t hate it the way it is.” It felt like a lie. But a white one.

“But you don’t love it either. You love its past and you love its potential, but only if it turns out to be what you want it to be.”

“What’s so wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except that it’s not really love. Love has to exist in the present tense, flaws and all. And anyway, it’s not the way the world really works.”

Jane didn’t have the energy to argue, wasn’t sure he was wrong. “I’m going to see a man about a horse,” she said. “After dinner.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” His eyebrows went up. “I could come with you.”

“I’ll be okay. I just want to decide if we should give it to them or to someone else.”

He said, “I can’t imagine anyone else would want the thing.”

“They’re called museums, Dad.”

“You think it’s worth something?” He seemed genuinely intrigued.

“One of my teachers says it might be worth up to sixty thousand dollars. But that it’s priceless.”

“Nothing is priceless.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“No, I don’t suppose I do.” He started to fiddle with another record. “You, my dear, are priceless.”

Jane rolled her eyes and looked at her watch. “I’ve got a friend coming over.” She got up. “Try not to appear shocked when you discover that she is a goth dwarf.”

“Look around,” her father said. “She’ll fit right in.”

 

Babette wound up the mermaid doll. “So do you think he’s cute, at least?”

“It’s broken,” Jane said, and thought again about telling Babette all about the keys the doll had hidden but wasn’t sure she wanted anyone but Leo to know about them. Not yet. She said, “Do I think
who
is cute?”

They’d already discussed and done the homework assignment Jane had missed. Her postcard for Mr. Simmons would have to wait a little longer.

Babette put the mermaid down on the bed.
“The guy you’re going on a date with.”

Jane really did think Legs was cute—
for a giant
—which she knew was wrong. So she said, “It’s not a date.”

Babette started to whistle “By the Beautiful Sea,” then stopped when Marcus peeked his head into the room. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t know you had company.” He closed the door.

Through a tiny pout, Babette said, “Okay, is your brother gay or something? Because I’m throwing all sorts of mad vibes at him and they’re all just getting deflected big-time.”

“No,” Jane said. “Not gay.”

Babette leaned in. “He doesn’t have some crazy long-distance relationship with some hot Brit chick, does he?”

Jane shook her head. “Nothing like that.”

There was no nice way of saying that her brother was into Rubber Rita. Didn’t Babette see it? Wasn’t it obvious by now?

“Well then, you’ve got to help me out.” Babette started scribbling in her notebook. “Tell him how cool I am. And, I don’t know. I mean, can you give me any insider tips? Stuff he likes?
Anything
.”

“I don’t know, Babette. He’s my
brother
.”

“Fine, don’t help.” Babette crossed her tiny arms.

“Don’t get mad.” Jane just wanted to smooth things over. “People have to grow on him.”

They were quiet for a minute, then Babette climbed up onto the bed, sighed, and said, “You know, Legs is really, really sweet. Way sweeter than Leo. And available, too. You should give him a chance.”

“Thanks,” Jane said, once more fighting the urge to tell her about the keys to Coney Island and the fact that she and Leo were meeting up for secret outings. But Babette wouldn’t understand—or wouldn’t even believe her. And besides, if Babette could keep the goings-on of the Dreamland Social Club a secret, Jane could have her secrets, too. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Babette looked at her watch. “I should probably go home and watch my parents pretend they like each other.”