Dreamland Social Club (32 page)

“You know it’s not like that”—she looked at him meaningfully, tried to communicate it all through her eyes—“
at all
. He’s writing a story for
The Siren
.”

“Right.”

“Wait,” she said. “You want to go to the presentation?”

He nodded.

“To protest?”

“Not my style.” He’d just taken darts from the board on the wall and handed three of them to her. “Information is power, right? I’m just following your lead.” He indicated a line on the floor and nodded at the board.

“No funny business?” She threw a dart and missed the red-and-green board entirely. Her dart hit the wall and fell with a thump to the floor.

Leo held up two fingers with a dart in his hand. “Scout’s honor.” He threw and hit the bull’s-eye, then flashed a smile at Jane.

And flirt. Oh, the woman flirted like a pro
.

She said, “You don’t strike me as the Boy Scout type.”

He froze and looked at her then, and smiled this sort of debonair smile, and she thought maybe
this
was it—finally!—the moment in which he’d kiss her, but then a scurrying sound—undeniable
scurrying
—behind the bar made them both freeze, and then Leo grabbed her hand, headed for the back door, and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Wait.” She ran to the bar and grabbed an Anchor postcard before running with him, out into the night.

A
SMALL GROUP OF PROTESTERS marched around the Aquarium parking lot the next night. They held oak-tag signs with marker scrawl that read “Save Coney,” “Down with Loki,” and “The Future of Coney Island is OURS.” There were maybe thirty of them, chanting in a call-and-response—“What do we want?” “Loki gone!” “When do we want it?” “NOW!”—and for no reason she could explain they made Jane sad. Maybe because thirty people didn’t seem like a lot. Not enough to save Coney. And what did that even mean anyway? She was less sure than ever.

She kept her head down and followed her father and brother inside and then out again to a tent that had been put up out where the Aquarium faced the boardwalk. It was full of round tables, all covered with white linens and set with white china and too many forks and spoons and glasses. The silver hot trays on the buffet table along one wall still wore their lids, but the tent held a not unpleasant mix of smells. Jane’s father stopped to chat and slap backs and shake hands on their way to their table—and introduced Jane and her brother to a few people—but once they found their seats their dad left them to their own devices.

After those silver lids were lifted away by white-gloved, tuxedoed waiters, they filled up plates with Swedish meatballs and lasagna and three kinds of chicken and more. Back at their table Jane and Marcus revived an old game they used to play when dragged to their father’s work functions. They acted like they were involved in a very deep conversation, but they were really saying nonsensical things like “Pudding has a bad reputation” and “It’s funny you say that, because I’ve always found it to be the case that letters, when put together, make words.”

Marcus said, “The truth of the matter is that ice is quite cold,” and Jane said, “It’s also frequently the case that fire is hot.” Then Legs slid into the seat next to her and the game ended.

Jane looked around the room and saw Leo, wearing a dark gray suit with a white shirt and a skinny tie—looking much older than he really was; sophisticated, even. He looked over at her and straightened his lapels with raised eyebrows. She gave a thumbs-up for the suit across the room and he tilted his chin at her—she was wearing a gray sleeveless dress—and gave a thumbs-up back.

Lights dimmed and silverware clattered and coughs rose and voices quieted, then everyone took seats. A large screen at one end of the room projected the Loki Equities logo and then: THE FUTURE OF CONEY ISLAND HAS ARRIVED.

Jane had been prepared to hate everything about the Loki presentation. Every idea. Every graphic. Every ride.

But she didn’t.

As image upon image appeared on that screen, she saw a vision of a place where she might like to spend some time. A place that had a circus tent, water parks, playgrounds, nice restaurants, and more. She saw some grandeur in the new amusement park design, which obviously drew inspiration from the spirals and minarets and crescent moons of the past, and the Tsunami looked amazing in full-color renderings.

For the first time in a long time, when she imagined what it would feel like to ride it, she touched up against a feeling that had more in common with excitement than dread. The feeling of a surfer riding the wave of a lifetime. She got choked up just thinking about how proud she was of her father.

If it hadn’t been for the shopping mall built out onto a pier and the complete absence of the Anchor and Wonderland, she might have fallen for the proposal hook, line, and sinker. It was certainly closer to the old Coney she loved than what was here now.

Leo would probably never understand the way she felt about it all now that she’d really seen the whole scale of the Loki plan, and she’d probably never tell him. Even if Jane saw only gray, the world
was
black and white and this entire situation was out of her hands. When the lights came up, Leo wasn’t in his seat. It wouldn’t surprise Jane at all if he’d bailed, if he’d joined the protesters outside.

 

After the presentation, Legs led Jane to a tank for tiny seahorses in a darkened corridor, claiming he wanted her help with his story. Jane didn’t really think she’d be much help and had never helped Legs with a story before, but then he said, “You’re really pretty, you know,” and Jane knew it wasn’t about the story at all.

“Thanks,” she said as she watched seahorses gallop slowly through the water, using their curly tails to maneuver. They were yellow, with round black eyes, and so very tiny and beautiful. She wished she could shrink herself and dive in and escape all this awkwardness.

She cleared her throat and said, “Okay, so what are you going to lead with?”

“That.” He bent down on a knee like he had that day so long ago, and he had a funny look in his eyes and then a second later, he was leaning in as if to kiss her. He said, “That was my lead. That you’re really pretty.”

“Legs—” she said, putting up a hand.

“Sorry.” Sadness seemed to shrink his face to a normal size. “But why not? I mean”—he backed off—“we get along great. We spend all this time together.”

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I can’t explain. I’m just happy with the way things are, with us being friends.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t need friends.”

She said, “But I do.”

“Jane,” he said. “Give me a break.”

It was only then that Jane realized she actually had friends. A bunch of them. Real ones. Maybe for the first time ever. Because even if things never got better for the Dreamland Social Club, she still had Babette and Legs and H.T. and, well, Leo.

Legs said, “Have you ever thought that maybe you are to him what I am to you?”

She took a second to try to parse the words but was still confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Leo. I mean, he must just see you as a friend. Because wouldn’t something have happened by now?”

“I’ve got to go,” Jane said, looking into the tank and saying a silent farewell to the yellow seahorses. “I’m sure your story will be great.”

 

She stepped out into the Aquarium courtyard for some air and saw Leo standing by the penguin environment. She clicked over in her heels and he turned. “This is where Dreamland used to be, you know.”

She shook her head.

“This penguin palace might have been the Helter Skelter or Midget City or Hell Gate. Preemie’s little incubator might have been right here for all we know.”

Jane sighed. “You hated it.”

“No.” Leo stood up straighter, shook his head. He looked so grown-up in that suit, but so sad, too, which was maybe par for the course. Jane wondered whether all of this had made her more grown-up and more sad, too. “I didn’t hate it. I wanted to. But no.”

“And the Tsunami?”

“If the goal is to scare the crap out of people, I’d say your father pretty much hit the nail on the head.”

They stood there in front of fake icebergs and shimmering black water lit from below—a few people walked by, laughing and talking—and then Leo said, “You and I have some unfinished business.”

She thought back to the peanuts and the rooftop and the way she was sure he’d been about to kiss her that night, would have if it hadn’t been for the situation with Legs. She thought about the night at the Anchor, about the scurrying and what it might have interrupted, and said, “We do?”

“We do.” He turned to face her and said, “The Bath key.”

“I actually asked your mom about it,” Jane said, and she pulled the key from her purse. “But she wouldn’t tell me anything except that my mother had a thing for secrets.”

Leo was nodding. “She said the same thing when I asked her.”

“You asked her?”

“Yeah.” He took the key from Jane and studied it closely. “And I’ve been thinking that when people have secrets they sometimes leave clues.”

“True,” Jane said. “My mother wrote a note in an old book of mine that said that mermaids were good at keeping secrets, and I did find the keys inside a mermaid. But beyond that, I don’t know. ‘Bath.’ It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, obviously, there’s not exactly a perfect trail of bread crumbs,” Leo said. “But maybe there’s still a crumb or two out there.”

“Maybe,” Jane said, but she wasn’t convinced.

T
HE FLIERS WERE BACK in the morning and in numbers that indicated great urgency. Jane stopped to read one that said,

Jane hurried upstairs and found most of the rest of the club already assembled.

“I think we should cancel the mermaid funeral,” Babette said after the meeting was called to order. “I mean, what’s the point anyway?”

“Fine by me,” Venus said.

Minnie said, “Me, too.”

H.T. said simply, “But Little B, you were so excited.” And Jane suddenly wondered what it meant that Babette
let
H.T call her that.

“I just mean, did you see all those suits last night?” She turned to Jane and said, “No offense.”

Jane said, “You were there? I didn’t see you.”

“People rarely see me when I don’t want to be seen,” she said, then turned back to the group. “All those suits are going to be there on parade day, probably in some ridiculously swank viewing trailer they park in front of Nathan’s or something, and the whole thing, putting on a show for them, just makes me feel sort of dirty.”

“Seriously,” Jane said to Babette, “don’t be like this.” She
really
didn’t want it to be canceled, especially not now that she had the mermaid costume figured out.

“I’m not being
like
anything.” Babette threw her hands up. “There’s just no point.”

“Of course there is,” Jane said, and felt a certain power in being able to speak with at least a tiny bit of authority to Babette for once. “There’s even
more
of a point.”

She looked over at Leo, who seemed to be egging her on with his eyes. She said, “It’s a mermaid
funeral
on Coney Island just as all these old businesses are getting shut down.”

Rita smacked her gum. “So it’s like this metaphor, you mean?”

“Exactly,” Jane said. “That was the whole seed of the idea!”

“I don’t know,” Venus said. “It seems like it’s the wrong message to be sending. Almost like we support what’s going on.”

“Yeah, like we’re glorifying it or something,” Babette said.

Jane shook her head. “But if it’s this awesome and really sad and beautiful thing, people will get it. They’ll feel it. That it’s about mourning the past.”

Leo’s silence, by this point, felt conspicuous. All faces had turned to his, and Babette said, “I know you’re mad at Jane because of what she said about the rats, but this is something different and you should share some thoughts.”

“I think she has a really good point,” he said, smiling at Jane. “And it was true, by the way. About my dad not paying his rent and not dealing with the rodent situation.”

“Really?” Venus said. “Sucks.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sucks. But, well, we have to do something, right? We can’t just
not
do the parade.”

“All right, then,” Babette said. “If everyone agrees.”

Marcus walked into the room then and all heads turned. “Sorry, I just saw the fliers,” he said, and Babette shot Rita a look.

“Don’t look at me,” Rita said. “I didn’t invite him.”

Then eyes went to Jane and she said, “It wasn’t me.”

Babette started banging on her desk and they all joined in.
“Gooble gobble, Gooble gobble. We accept her. We accept her.”

“Her?” Marcus said.

“Don’t worry about it,” H.T. said, and Marcus took a seat next to Rita, who promptly leaned over and kissed him on the mouth.

Babette looked for a moment like she’d been struck by a stun gun, but then she said, “Welcome, Marcus.”

“Thanks,” he said. “So what is this club anyway?”

Babette rolled her eyes. “Rita can explain, but in the spirit of the club, I’m just going to say that I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk. It’s cool. I’m happy for you. There. I said it.”

“Really?” Rita said.

“Really,” Babette said, then she looked at Minnie and cleared her throat dramatically, and Minnie stood up. “Fine,” she said. “Jane, it was me who filled your locker with condoms. I’m sorry. I was hurt.” She looked sheepishly at Legs, then back at Jane to say, “And I took it out on you.”

“What about the doll in the noose?” Jane dared.