Dreamland Social Club(29)

Spotting the sign for the restrooms, she excused herself, then walked toward the back of the bar, where a cracked wooden door decorated with a wooden mermaid—a fisherman for the men’s room—hung on a dusty hinge. Inside, Jane examined three locks on the door, none of which inspired confidence. She opted to lock them all because the toilet was far away, on the opposite side of the long narrow room. The mirror was fogged with age, the toilet seat cracked, and water trickled in a trail of drops—like ants marching—down the pipe below the sink. Tiptoeing across the room, she made a mental note to hose her shoes down later. So far the Anchor was living up to expectations.

When she was done she looked for soap but found none, so she rinsed her hands and patted them dry with a coarse paper towel. She went back out to join Leo and saw he’d gotten them Cokes.

As soon as she sat down Leo spun away from her on his stool. There was an old man whose face looked like a baked potato sitting on the next stool down. “Hey,” Leo said to him, “tell my friend here why you come to the Anchor.”

“What’s so great about the Anchor?” Mr. Potato-head barked back.

“Yeah,” Leo said, laughing. “What’s so great about the Anchor?”

“The beer’s cold, the women are loose, and no one ever gets kicked out.” He raised his beer and then drank heartily.

Leo’s father walked by then with a big bin of ice and said, “How’s my boy?” but he wasn’t looking for an answer.

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” Leo said. “But it’s just a great, low-key place. If they keep jacking up the rent, though, my father’s done for.”

Leo’s father bounced a quarter on the bar and it landed in one of his patrons’ beer mugs; people cheered. Jane had no idea how much rent on a place like this would be but had to hope for Leo’s sake that his father could keep paying it.

“Your father, I trust, has a respectable job?” Leo turned to Jane, toying with a quarter in his own hand on the bar.

She knew she should come clean and tell him that her father was a roller coaster designer, but then he’d want to know more—people always did—and she didn’t trust herself to not tell him that it was her secret wish that her father design a new ride for Coney.

“He’s a structural engineer,” she said. “But he’s unemployed.”

It wasn’t a lie.

After a moment’s silence, Leo said, “I heard about your mom.”

Jane just nodded and studied the wall behind the bar until her eyes landed in a most unexpected place. It took her a minute to process what she was looking at, to jolt her body awake into the tingling state of discovery. “I found the seahorse,” she said, and pointed.

He followed the line of her finger and said, “Holy shit.” He got up and went around behind the bar and pulled the postcard off the wall, then handed it to Jane. On the front, a woman was kissing a toy seahorse underwater, the same seahorse that was inked into Leo’s skin, the same seahorse Jane had seen in her dream. The type said “Wish you were here . . . in Weeki Wachee!”

Weeki Wachee.

It actually did sound vaguely familiar.

Leo lifted her hand so that he could see the flip side of the photo and said, “It’s to my mom from somebody named Tiny.”

“Tiny’s my mom!” Jane nearly shouted. “Clementine.” Then she turned it over and saw that it had been addressed to Beth Mancuso.

“Like the restaurant?” she said, turning to Leo, who nodded and said, “Family business.” He looked around. “The other family business.”

Returning to the card, Jane read: Dear Beth: It’s not the same here without you. Do you think my mother ever regretted keeping me from my true calling here in the tanks? LYLAS, Tiny.

There were tiny drawings surrounding the writing. A mermaid smoking a cigarette while sitting on top of some kind of little round submarine. A curled ocean wave. A lobster drinking a cup of tea. She felt like she might cry.

Leo said, “I got a tattoo based on a postcard that your mother sent to my mother.”

She could barely process it. “What does LYLAS mean?”

“Don’t know. So wait.” He got back on his stool. “Was your mother a mermaid, too?”

“What do you mean was she a mermaid?” For a second she felt like this was going to be some cruel joke.

He pointed to the swimmer on the card. “They call them mermaids. The swimmers. My mom went to some camp there when she was like fourteen. Mermaid camp.”

Jane wanted to strangle him. “Why didn’t you say so?”

He matched her in intensity when he said, “I didn’t know it mattered!”

“Can we go talk to her?” Jane asked, and Leo said, “Yes,” and got up. Jane thought the excitement might kill her, but then he said, “No, wait. Shit. She’s in the city this afternoon. Until late. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“But tomorrow. After school? She’s usually at the club by four.”

“The club?” As in Dreamland Social? No, it wouldn’t make sense.

“My mother runs the lounge upstairs at Mancuso’s. The Coral Room. With mermaids like these.” He indicated the card again. “Swimmers.”