Dreamland Social Club (22 page)

“It doesn’t?”

Leo laughed. “Okay, you got me on the bird bit. But I don’t know. You seem like you have, I don’t know, an interesting point of view. I mean, just having lived so many different places.”

“If you say so,” Jane said.

“I heard you gave H.T. some old photo of his idol.”

“I hadn’t known it was his idol.”

“He won’t shut up about it.”

The car swung then, and they both almost dropped their beers. Then they sat there swinging and swinging and swinging. Finally Jane said, “I don’t think this was the Wonder key.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Just too hard to sneak onto at night, don’t you think? And then to operate? It feels different than the others. And your mom said they used to sneak
beers
onto the Wonder Wheel, not that
they
snuck on.”

The ride was over; the beers were empty and the cans put back in the backpack. Leo said, “Next stop, Wonderland.”

 

A water-gun game was open for business when they walked by the games section and they looked at each other, shrugged, and stepped up. Leo paid for the both of them, and the guy barking the booth shouted out to try to scare up some other customers, but none came. “Can’t run the game without three,” he said. “That’s the rule.”

Jane looked around for any takers, but the place was pretty empty. Leo slapped down a few more bills by a different gun and said, “How about we pretend.”

“Fine,” the guy said. He flicked a switch and announced the beginning of the race and then suddenly, Jane’s water gun was alive in her hands. She focused the spray of water on the clown in front of her and then studied its features: the exaggerated arch of the eyebrows, the candy-color red of the stretchy lips, the big ears and red dot on the nose. She realized that in her mind, images of this kind of water-gun clown and of her grandfather had sort of morphed into one another so that her vision of her grandfather was one of a clown.

The balloon over Leo’s clown head burst, and he put his gun down. Jane put her own gun, no longer working, down too.

“What’s it going to be?” Leo said to her. “Inbred panda bear or inbred crocodile?”

“Panda bear,” Jane said, and Leo said, “You heard the lady” to the guy working the booth, who handed over a small white toy.

“Why was the baby bear so spoiled?” Leo asked as they walked away. She could only shrug.

“Because his mother panda’d to his every need.”

Jane groaned and Leo smiled and said, “Admit it. You’ve heard worse.” He took the panda out of Jane’s hands and studied it. “There’s this old dude downtown. Like near Wall Street. He’s like sixty and unemployed and he dresses up as this sad panda to try to make money. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve seen, really. Almost sadder than that orphan film.”

“Does it work?” Jane asked. “Do people give money to a sad panda?”

“I guess,” Leo said. “Sometimes.” He handed the panda back and, somehow, it looked even sadder now.

“People really liked your grandfather,” Leo said out of nowhere as they stopped in front of one of the kiddie rides. “I just mean, don’t let the whole Claverack thing skew your perspective. And my mom said your grandmother was really great. Kooky, but great.”

A mishmash of trucks and fire engines and cars were going round and round. In one fire truck, a little girl’s face went from delight to horror in a matter of seconds when she lost sight of her mother, who was standing outside the gate surrounding the ride, waving and calling out, “I’m over here, Sadie. Over here!”

But it was no use and, finally, the operator stopped the ride and the mom went and got her crying Sadie out of the fire truck. The relief on the little girl’s face was so immediate, so primal, that it made Jane swell up with empathy, not for Sadie but for her own six-year-old self. A self that had no way of comprehending the magnitude of that loss. All these years later, Jane was still struggling to understand, still silently screaming
Mommy
.

They walked the perimeter of the park then, checking the padlocks, but the key didn’t open anything. Jane couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“Listen,” Leo said. “It
has
to be one of the old gates here. It’s the only thing that makes sense. So let’s just figure the locks are long gone and leave it at that.”

“Not very satisfying,” Jane said with a frown.

“Well then, when we’ve figured out the last one we’ll ask my mom and see if she knows for sure. Deal?”

Jane considered this plan, then nodded. “Deal.”

“And anyway, I have an idea,” Leo said when they were about to leave the park. “Someplace we can go. Tonight. Even if it’s not technically the Wonder key. It’ll be great.”

“Okay,” Jane said. “Where?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” He turned his back to the boardwalk, where Venus was hanging out with a few of her friends. “Let’s go back this way for a second.” He walked deeper into the park, toward the Polar Express.

“Everything okay?” Jane said.

“Yeah,” Leo said. “Fine.”

 

They walked home past the Claverack Carousel building, and Jane stopped and watched the horses do their strange frozen gallop. The music was slowing down—the ride, too—and Jane looked at Leo and said, “Do you mind?”

They bought tickets and climbed atop two horses set side by side, then waited for the ride to start again. Jane studied the horse she’d chosen and tried to look for some kind of sign that the one in her living room had been sculpted or painted by the same craftsman. But as she studied the thick paint on its mane and the slightly dulled sheen of the saddle, she could only conclude that the one in the living room was a more spectacular specimen, probably because it hadn’t been ridden in years. Studying the center of the carousel now, the drum that spun it around, she saw paintings of deserts and cacti and Western sunsets and then scenes of cupids and cherubs with arrows poised in tiny angel’s bows. The whole thing needed a facelift, yes, but you could tell that it would be amazing when it was fixed up.

The music started and the horses began to vibrate with power, and then they were moving and their horses were out of sync, Jane’s going up as Leo’s went down. This made conversation sort of tricky, especially with the loud tinkle of some kind of ragtime-piano tune. But Jane didn’t mind. It was enough to just be there, to be next to Leo, though it was true she was hoping to intuit what to do about the horse.

“Check it out,” Leo said. “The brass ring.”

Jane saw it dangling overhead and then it was gone. “What is it?”

“You grab it, you win a prize.”

It was coming back and she stood—feet in stirrups—but couldn’t reach it.

“Close but no cigar,” Leo said.

As Jane sat down she saw her brother whiz by. And then the room was a blur of lightbulbs—a fast-moving kaleidoscope of color—and there he was again, playing some video game by the far wall, and there was the blur of Rita beside him. And then again, and the blur of his arm around her waist.

“Here it comes again,” Leo said, but Jane just said, “You try.”

Leo didn’t grab the brass ring that time, but by the time they’d gotten around to it again, he’d climbed up so that his feet were perched on his horse’s saddle. Jane had been sure he was going to fall, with his one arm hooked around the horse pole, but then his fingers touched the ring and he pulled it and a bell started dinging and he smiled, victorious. Jane said, “Bravo.”

But when the ride finally stopped, the crotchety old operator came over to take the ring and said, “Standing on the horse disqualifies you.”

“But how else are you supposed to reach it?” Leo asked.

The old man shrugged and walked off. Jane and Leo turned to go, but then Jane said, “Hang on a second” and followed the old man. He was taking tickets from a few people who’d climbed aboard and taken seats in a sort of sleigh chair by the ride’s center. “Did you, by any chance, know Preemie Porcelli?”

“Only well enough to know I didn’t want to know him.”

“Do you know why he took the horse?”

“Why does anybody around here do anything?”

They turned to go, but then Jane turned back. “You didn’t happen to know his daughter, did you? Clementine? People called her Tiny?”

“Sorry,” he said. “No.”

But wow, it had felt good to just ask.

 

Her father was coming out the front door of the house with a big black trash bag—full to the top. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“We’ve got to start getting rid of some junk.” He shrugged. “I had some spare time.”

Jane approached the bag, looked inside, and saw the poster for
Is It Human?
and the two-headed squirrel. “I told you I would do it,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I know, but I thought I’d help.”

“You think this is helping?” Her fingers tightened into fists around the straps of her backpack. “Throwing out my grandmother’s stuff?”

“Calm down, Jane.”

She let go of her backpack and grabbed the trash bag and started dragging it back into the house. She used two hands to lift it off the ground and carry it up the stairs and into her room. When she came downstairs to make sure there weren’t any other bags about to meet the same fate, her father was sitting at the kitchen table with his Tsunami sketches. He’d worked on some close-up renderings of different parts of the coaster and had typed up some specs about speed and duration of the ride. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said.

“I know.” She got herself a glass of water from the tap.

“I’m sorry this is all so hard on you.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I guess I didn’t think it through. What coming here would dig up.”

“It’s okay,” Jane said. “I mean it’s
good
. It’s just that . . . well, I’m leading the dig. I mean, if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” he said. “Dig away.”

T
HE FLOORBOARDS WHINED. The stairs whistled “Dixie.” The noir scene replayed itself as Leo stepped out from behind the lamppost, and then they walked and talked until Leo shushed her as they slid down an alleyway behind Wonderland, backs to the wall. He held a finger to his lips to emphasize the point. Jane got it.

He poked his head around the corner of the building and pulled it back.

A metal clang, and then the sound of something being dragged was followed by a slow, scraping hiss.

Leo indicated with a nod of his head that they were about to move, and then he took her hand—a shock of warmth, strength—and led her just a few steps around the corner and through a door. The man dragging the trash bags to the nearby Dumpster didn’t see or hear.

“Quick,” he whispered when they were inside. “Over here.”

They ducked behind something after climbing over a low wall, and Jane saw they were on a bumper-car course. She’d walked past it a few times in the last few weeks, had heard the pounding techno beats and the hum of the electric cars. But now the room was dark, the cars uncharged. She waited and breathed and waited and breathed and felt a sort of tingle lingering on her hand where Leo had held it until just a second or two before.

Jane heard the sound of the door closing, and then the sound of a key in a lock. She had to fight the irrational need to pull her key from her pocket and try the same door.

Leo said, “Okay,” and stood up. “Coast is clear.”

“What are we doing here?” Jane said, dearly hoping Leo didn’t want to ride bumper cars.

“You’ll see.” He headed for the stairs. “Come on.”

When they had reached the black tar roof and sat down on Leo’s small blanket, Jane said, “Are you going to explain?”

She wasn’t complaining about the view—she could see the Wonder Wheel, the Parachute Jump, the Cyclone, the projects, pretty much everything there was to see on Coney—but she’d hoped for more.

“This”—Leo slapped the roof with his palm—“is where the entrance to Luna Park used to be. I still think of it as the heart of Coney Island.”

But why bring her here? It’s not like he knew about her name, her namesake. Unless maybe his mother knew and had told him?

He said, “Which means that the Elephant Hotel was here, too, even before that.” He pulled a bag of peanuts out of his backpack and Jane felt a rush of love—yes, love—for him. “I know it’s not enough to make a bed, but . . .”

He opened it, offered nuts to her.

“I actually don’t like peanuts,” she said, and he laughed and said, “More for me.”

She stuck a hand in the bag, pulled out a peanut, and sniffed it. “But I appreciate the gesture all the same.”

Leo cracked open a nut, popped it into his mouth. “You used to be able to look out of its eyes, they said, and see the ocean.” He produced a small map from his backpack and shined his flashlight on it. “So the way I see it, the entrance to Luna would have been there.” He pointed to his left and then turned around to face the long roof behind them. “And the Helter Skelter would have been over there.” He pointed. “And the Shoot the Chutes just beyond it and then the lagoon.... And right there would’ve been Trip to the Moon.”

Jane felt herself drift away from his words, into her mind’s eye, imagining that Electric Eden, those spires and minarets, the herky-jerky motion of the vessel that would take people to meet the singing Selenites on the moon.

Leo stopped talking, sat, and lay back. Jane did, too. After a quiet moment thinking about all those crazy games, and the mermaids and turtles she’d met on her way to the North Pole, she said, “I’m sort of sad that the Bath key is the only one left.”

“Have you tried it out anywhere?”

“Just every bathroom door I’ve come across anywhere the last few days.” Jane was looking at a cluster of faint stars, trying to decide if they were a constellation she should recognize. “Ever since your mom mentioned the journal, I’ve been wondering if it would say stuff about the keys.”