Dreamland Social Club (27 page)

Babette signed the hastily drawn-up document. So did Rita. And Minnie and Venus and H.T. But when the clipboard came around to the other side of the table, to where Jane was sitting, she hesitated.

Leo said, “What do you say, Looky Lou?”

It was the first time he’d called her that in months, and she felt like it meant something, she just wasn’t sure what.

She studied the statement at the top of the petition, scrawled in Leo’s handwriting:
We, the undersigned, object to the amusement park and mall planned by Loki Equities and want a fair renegotiation of leases for establishments including the Anchor.
She looked up and said, “I don’t think I can.”

“Figures.” Leo slid the clipboard away.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jane snapped.

“I’m just not surprised is all.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” she said. Maybe he was right about the sass. “We knew this was coming.”

“Yeah, I guess
we
did.” He shook his head.

“And it wouldn’t look good for me to have my name on that if my father’s project goes ahead. It’s that simple. So what’s your problem?”

“My
problem
is that I’m wasting time talking to you when I could be getting signatures.” He pushed the clipboard toward Legs. “What about you, Legs?”

Legs looked at Jane, then back at Leo and said, “Sorry, man.”

Leo said, “Whatever.”

The woman who’d been staring at H.T. got up and gave him one last stare and he smiled at her—big, white, happy teeth—and said, “Have a nice day.”

She hurried away, and H.T. turned to Jane. “I saw you giving her the evil eye. What was that about?”

Jane shrugged. “I just think it’s rude.”

“It’s normal.”

“Still.”

Debbie slid into a seat then and said, “Sorry I’m late.” She’d bleached her facial hair over the winter and it was an improvement, yes, but it was still a lot of hair.

 

Babette had brought a bunch of old photos so that they could try to get inspiration from the kinds of things people had done in the past—like dress up as sushi or make a procession for King Nemo or craft huge monsters from the deep. Hundreds of thousands of people came to the parade, apparently. It was a big deal. No one at the table, however, seemed particularly inspired.

“Well, whatever we do,” Babette said with some annoyance, “I think it should have music. I want people to hear
and
see us.”

“Well, sign me up for music,” Leo said. “I’m going to try to get some signatures.”

Jane watched him walk away, to a table where a few tourist types had just sat down, and she thought of the sound of his saw playing the Dreamland song. How sad it had been.

“What about some kind of funeral procession?” she said.

Babette looked like she’d just smelled day-old fish. “A funeral for who?”

Jane was looking up at the STORE FOR LEASE sign that would be the Anchor’s death knell. “I don’t know,” she said. “For Coney Island?”

But that wasn’t
quite
right.

“No, wait!” She sat forward in her chair. “It’s for a mermaid. It’s a mermaid funeral.”

She could picture the scene then instantly—more vividly than she could picture even her own mother’s funeral, which had been reduced to a series of flashes:
Muddy ground. Hugs from strangers. Big cars. White lilies tossed onto a black coffin.

“We’ll make a big funeral bier and someone will dress up as a mermaid and we’ll all push it down the parade route.” She was getting excited. “And the music can be like a dirge or some kind of old sad sea shanty or something, and we’ll all wear black.”

“I don’t know,” Babette said, but her eyes seemed to light up.

Jane said wryly, “You’re already in costume.”

Venus said, “It’s not much of a stretch for you either. Some of your clothes are so old they
should
be dead.” Jane had been visiting vintage and secondhand shops all winter, assembling a wardrobe sort of inspired by Birdie’s old clothes. Today she was wearing a blue-and-white gingham dress with short cap sleeves and a mildy frilly old-fashioned collar.

“Not nice,” Babette said.

“I’m kidding,” Venus said, then added brightly, “Gooble gobble!”

“A mermaid funeral,” Babette said again—trying it on for size—and Rita said, “It’s pretty good.”

Legs agreed, as did H.T. and Debbie.

Venus and Minnie just shrugged, but for some reason Jane didn’t even care anymore. It wasn’t like Leo had picked Jane over Venus. It wasn’t as though she’d done anything with Legs but become his friend. And she was a member of the D.S.C. now, so they were just going to have to get over it.

“I can make the mermaid tail and fin out of some of my grandmother’s old costumes,” she said in an attempt to cinch the deal.

“Nobody has any better ideas?” Minnie said, sort of desperately, and everyone shook their heads. When Leo walked by their table, Babette said, “Feel like writing a funeral dirge?”

“Always,” he said, and then he approached another group.

The phrase lodged itself securely on a loop in Jane’s head.

 

Jane and Legs—the only two people who were famished—headed over to Nathan’s after the group split up to find that hundreds of other people were also craving hot dogs on opening day. Jane would have been happy to redirect to pizza or anything, really, but Legs was determined to get a hot dog—or four, as the case may be—and so they waited and waited and waited and pushed and shoved and finally ordered five dogs and three orders of fries. When Legs announced the order, it became obvious to Jane that everyone on line was staring at him.

At them.

People had, she realized, probably been doing it the whole time, and every other time they’d been out together—as friends, just friends—but Jane hadn’t actually noticed. Now that she had—now that she and H.T. had talked about it, the staring—she couldn’t
not
notice. She didn’t like it.

Legs acted like he didn’t notice—trying to make light conversation about the weather—but Jane could tell he did, and that he sensed the change in her. They finally sat down with hot dogs at a table outside and he said, “Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“You know.” He looked off to his right, and Jane followed his gaze and saw a bunch of guys in baseball caps avert their eyes and then laugh. “The staring.”

She suddenly wasn’t interested in her hot dog. “It’s weird,” she said. “I never noticed it before today for some reason.”

Leo walked by them then, though he didn’t see them, and neither of them called out to him as he stopped people on the street to get signatures.

“You know, it’s funny.” Legs was already on his second dog; Jane was still spreading mustard on hers, squeezing it out of the small, soft paper cup she’d filled at the condiment pumps. “For a while there I thought you were going to end up with Leo.”

Jane stared at her dog, covered in off-white kraut and golden-brown mustard. It suddenly looked like horribly fake food, like it would be wrong to eat it. Someone named Nathan got rich because of
this
? “Why would you think that?” she said steadily.

“Just a sense I got, and I mean, there’s some history, right?”

“Right,” Jane said. “Our mothers were friends.”

As if that explained it all.

“I heard that. And I thought you were going to go for him, but then I guess the whole Tsunami thing happened.” Legs chewed a bit, moved onto his third dog. “People stare at him, too, but it’s different.”

“How is it different?” Jane was pretty sure she already knew.

Legs swallowed, and Jane watched his Adam’s apple—like the size of a baseball—travel down his neck. “They look at me because they’re grateful they’re not me. They look at him because they want to
be
him.”

Jane said, “I bet there are people out there who’d want to be you.”

“Name one good reason why anyone would want to be seven and a half feet tall.” Before she could say anything he added, “And the reason can’t be basketball.”

She was stumped for a second, but then she said, “I think some of the, you know, little people. Minnie. Babette. I think they sometimes wish they were you.”

“They wish they were taller,” he said. “Not
this
tall.”

“Well, there are good things about it, right? I mean, you can always see if you go to a concert.”

Legs let out a loud “Ha” before continuing. “I have to stand in the very last row or at the back edge of a crowd or I piss people off.”

She felt her own pout.

“You’re sweet.” Legs started to gather his trash. “And it’s not the worst thing in the world, no. But it’s not that great either.”

“Dude,” someone said as Legs stood up. “You play basketball?”

“No,” Jane snapped. “He doesn’t.”

She was angry—had been angry the whole time, she realized—and finally felt the need to ask Legs, “Why didn’t you sign the petition?”

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

“What did
you
want to do?” Her whole body seemed to tighten.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal either way.” Legs threw his trash into a large bin. “It’s not like a stupid petition is going to change anything.”

He was right. But Jane wanted to smack him anyway.

 

Peach Fuzz had a new Mets shirt but the same tire belly and the same old lines. “Check-check-check it out,” he said into the mike. “Shoot the Freak in the freakin’ head.”

Jane had half a mind to slap down ten bucks and let rip. She’d pretend the Freak was Leo again and she’d nail him.

He deserved it.

Not for trying to save his father’s bar or trying to stop Loki from building a shopping mall, but for just not getting it. Not getting that none of it—Loki, the Anchor, the Tsunami, nothing—had anything to do with them, not really. For not getting that they had had something that was worth pursuing that fall and that they owed it to themselves to follow through and see what it really was.

The more time that had passed, the more knishes they’d shared during their truce, the more sure Jane had become that he’d wanted to kiss her that night on the roof of the bumper car building, when they’d gone to Luna Park and the Elephant Hotel in their minds.

The more time that had passed the surer she was that she was the one who’d screwed it up, by not realizing she’d agreed to a date with Legs, by not telling Leo about the Tsunami sooner.

But he hadn’t helped.

She watched as a few shooters splattered orange and green paint on the trash can the Freak had ducked behind and then found herself, once more, staring at the Mad Hatter and his teapot. She was suddenly very, very thirsty, like there was a webby moths’ nest in her throat. And when she walked by the carousel house and saw the sign that said that the ride had been removed, to be restored, and would be back next year, she knew what she had to do.

I
THINK WE SHOULD GIVE THE HORSE BACK,” she said at dinner that night. The three of them were eating sausage-and-pepper sandwiches made with sausages Marcus had cooked out back on the grill, and from her seat at the table Jane could see the horse, frozen in its gallop to nowhere. She was surer than ever of what was right.

“What?” Marcus said, chewing. “No way. Why?”

“I thought you said you didn’t care.” Jane took another bite.

Marcus wiped his mouth and put his sandwich down. “I thought you said Birdie was on it the first time Preemie met her.”

“She was?” their dad said, and Jane nodded, then turned to Marcus. “I repeat,” she said. “I thought you didn’t care.”

“Children,” their father said. He had already devoured his own sandwich and was picking at a salad Jane had made.

“Harvey gave me a black eye,” Marcus said, then he popped the last bit of his bread into his mouth.

“You
neighed
at him,” Jane said between bites.

“Have they been bothering you again, Jane?” her father asked. “Is that what’s going on?”

“No, actually.” They’d stopped—right after she talked to their father and grandfather. She almost hadn’t realized it at the time. “But I’ve been thinking.” She glanced into the living room again. “It just doesn’t belong here.”

“But it was
beloved
by your
beloved
grandparents,” Marcus said with a hand to his heart for drama.

“Yeah,” Jane said. “And they’re gone.”

“Keep talking,” her father said.

Jane wiped her own mouth and hands with a napkin. “Well, I mean it had sentimental value to them but now they’re not here anymore, and it has sentimental value to me but I’m not sure the value I have trumps the value that Grandpa Claverack has.”

“But he’s going to sell it,” her brother said.

“And that’s his prerogative.”

“But that means it has
no
sentimental value to him, so none is less than whatever you have,” Marcus said.

“Yeah, but I don’t know. Maybe he’ll be sentimental once he has it. Maybe he’ll get it and then realize he doesn’t even want to sell it. Anyway, it’s just dumb for us to keep it.” She was about to say, “We’re mothballing,” but instead she just looked at her father and said, “We have no good reason to keep it is all.”

“This seems like an unexpected change of opinion.”

“I don’t know,” Jane said. “Maybe I’m just sick of looking at it there, sick of thinking about it. Call it, I don’t know”—a cool breeze tickled the kitchen curtains—“Call it spring cleaning. You said we had to clean out the house, Dad, and we haven’t even really started.”

“Well, now that you’ve brought it up”—he put his plate in the sink, then came back to the table—“I think we should talk about what my job means for us, for the house. Because if all goes well this week with the presentation, the Tsunami will be built. Which means I’d want to be here. I’d need to be here. I just wanted to see how you felt about that.”