Dreamland Social Club(14)

He was human.

He drank water.

And just thinking hard about the seahorse wasn’t going to help her figure it out. She waited a minute to make sure he was, in fact, alone, and then walked over. This close up, she noted the sharp line of his lips, the ski jump at the end of his long nose. His hair, as black as Babette could ever hope for, seemed to be constantly in motion, like the soft tentacles of a sea anemone.

“Hey,” she said, and he said “Hey” back. The blue of his eyes swirled, like his irises had been tattooed to look like a lollipop. She looked out toward the ocean, counted ten people standing way out on a cross-shaped pier, and considered what to say. The sea was a dark gray that morning, and calm. With a strange sort of calm in her heart she said, “Where did you get the seahorse tattoo? The design, I mean.”

“It’s from an old postcard,” he said. “You gonna explain what you meant? When you said you’d seen it?”

“It’s just really familiar. Sort of like I dreamed it.”

He looked at her funny, then shrugged a shoulder. “I can look for it if you want.”

Maybe it was a postcard from somewhere she had lived. That would explain it. “Do you know where the postcard is from?”

“I’m pretty sure Florida.”

Jane had never been to Florida, and she said so.

“Well, I’ll look for it anyway.”

She said, “Thanks,” and was suddenly lost at sea in their conversation, afraid it was over.

“So Preemie Porcelli was really your grandfather?” He gave her this look, sideways and suspicious, like the whole story was too unlikely to believe, and maybe she’d have felt the same way if she’d been an outsider considering Preemie Porcelli on the one hand and Jane Dryden on the other.

“He was.” Jane eyed the bench, pocked with flattened bits of gray gum and some bird crap, too. The paint was so chipped it was barely there and the wood looked soft, worn from the wind and the water. She decided to sit anyway, close enough that no one would sit between them but not much closer than that.

“What was that like?” His eyes lit with actual curiosity.

Jane knew the truth would disappoint. She practically sighed when she said, “I never met him.”

“You never met your own grandfather?” Tattoo Boy crossed and then uncrossed his ankles, legs stretched out.

Jane shook her head, and when she thought she saw him look at her knee, she tried to cover it with her gray skirt, then felt dumb for doing that. “My parents moved abroad before I was born.”

His eyebrows climbed up to meet his hair. “So you’ve never even lived in America before?”

His accent was sort of crazy: befaw.

“Twice.” She shook her head. “When I was like seven. In Michigan and California.” She remembered that period right after her mom died only by the apartments they’d lived in while their father worked on some bridge or building, remembered missing being around amusement parks all the time, missing getting to go on rides for free, missing her mom. “It was a long time ago.”

Tattoo Boy nodded and then smiled and said, “I knew Preemie.” He turned to her. “I mean I played his game a few times—the water gun game—and got yelled at by him a few times. And I used to see him all over the place, you know. On his bike. I think he’s the only person I’ve ever seen smoking and riding a bike at the same time.”

“He did that?” Jane almost laughed.

“It was a sight to behold.” He looked back out toward the water. “My dad used to tell me stories about him, too. He’d always be placing weird bets at the Anchor, like how he could eat three pieces of Wonder Bread in a minute or smoke a whole cigarette in forty-five seconds.”

“Really?” Jane felt a sort of thrill in knowing that she’d walked past a bar Preemie had been to, even if it was a dump. “I wish I’d known him,” she said after a moment. “Or at least I thought I did until I met the Claveracks.”

Tattoo Boy nudged her with an elbow and said, “It’ll blow over.” Then he raised his eyebrows. “Is it true that he had a ton of great old Coney stuff in the attic? That’s what my dad said.”

Jane nodded. “Yeah. I’ve only made a dent, but there’s all these old films and books and”—Jane wasn’t sure she should be talking about this, considering the situation with the carousel horse, but she wanted to impress—“he’s got a big demon face that I think used to be at Dreamland.”

“The one from Hell Gate?” Tattoo Boy asked.

Jane nodded.

His eyes went wide, and he let out a plummeting whistle. “Holy shit.”

The surf had picked up—a storm must have been churning off the coast—and Jane tried to picture the submarine that she’d read was shipwrecked somewhere off the coast of Coney. She imagined swimming down to it with Tattoo Boy, and hiding out there while they told each other their life stories, why they both felt like they’d always known each other.

“I’m Jane,” she said, “but you already knew that.” And for the first time in a long time, it felt wrong to use her middle name.

“Leo,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

Then he smiled and said, “I think.”