Dreamland Social Club(5)
“No, actually,” she said, studying the curves of the seahorse again and feeling a kind of vertigo in her heart. “I have.”
“Come on,” her father said, appearing with a small brown bag in his hand, and Marcus on his heels. “Let’s keep moving. And stay close.”
They passed a small fenced-in amusement park called WONDERLAND—its entrance marked by a big sign featuring Alice herself and the Mad Hatter. The hat-wearing troll—Was that what he was? A troll?—was pouring tea as if to light the letters of the sign with neon green liquid. Jane watched the whirl and twirl of lights on the rides behind them. It was a crammed array of kiddie rides (planes, trains, ladybugs, elephants) and ticket booths and bigger rides like bumper cars and pirate ships—all the sort of rides Jane knew could be folded up and rolled up onto a truck in a matter of minutes. Not real rides—permanent rides—like her dad used to build. Still, people didn’t seem to mind. She could feel the collective buzz, like a mosquito by her ear, of families having fun.
Past Wonderland, there appeared to be a gap in boardwalk amusements, but then Jane spotted the banner hanging in front of a lot splattered with paint. SHOOT THE FREAK, it read, and a few people with guns were firing paint pellets into a sort of obstacle course of trash. There, a target—a real live person wearing padded gear and mask, all of which gave him the look of an intergalactic umpire—swayed back and forth, halfheartedly moving his painty shield, which looked like the top of a trash can.
“What on earth?” her father said. And Marcus said simply, “Cool.” Which was pretty much how Marcus reacted to everything, a fact that infuriated his sister no end.
A massive blue Ferris wheel with lit pink letters reading WONDER WHEEL at its center came into view when she turned to follow her father again, its red lights blinking in a pattern extending from the heart of the wheel to its outer edges. For a second, she thought about suggesting they go on it. But they didn’t do that kind of thing anymore.
They walked on, and then Jane heard a clack and cascading screams and turned and saw an old white roller coaster.
The Cyclone.
Marcus had made her watch an old B movie, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, right after they’d learned about Preemie’s house. In it a frozen carnivorous dinosaur is thawed by an atomic explosion at the North Pole and starts to travel south, leaving a path of destruction along the Atlantic coast. The mayhem culminates at the fictional Manhattan Beach amusement park, a standin for Coney, where the beast is injected with a radioactive isotope and dies a fiery death among the hills and valleys of the Cyclone.
Had there maybe been a seahorse in that movie?
No, she didn’t think so.
A car started clanking up the coaster’s first climb and then went plummeting, and Jane could almost feel her own stomach drop.
They walked maybe one more block, and then her father stopped and turned around to head back in the direction from which they’d come. Jane looked farther down the boardwalk, not wanting to turn around, and saw the crowds thin out. There were no lights, no more amusements, no nothing. “That’s it?” she said with some irritation.
This was Coney Island.
A place that was supposedly famous.
A tourist destination.
There had to be more.
“Yes,” her father said. “I’m pretty sure that’s it. I was only ever here a few times with your mother, but there was never much going on. Less so, even, back then.”
“What a shithole,” Marcus said.
“Watch it,” her father said, then: “If I remember correctly, it’s this way.”
Back in the thick of the amusements again after a few minutes of walking, her father turned off the boardwalk and led them down a wide street with cars parked perpendicularly down a center aisle, past some delis and a big Coney Island Gift Shop with an assortment of Coney T-shirts in the windows. They were heading toward a sign for Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, and Jane, who was starving, thought, Hot dogs? We’re celebrating with hot dogs? She studied the long lines trailing out the restaurant doors, and saw people standing around eating dogs and thick crinkly fries, and desperately hoped her father had other plans.
He did. They crossed the street away from Nathan’s. Jane heard the rumbling clack of a subway train and figured they were leaving Coney for dinner. The station had big arched windows and looked newer, shinier, than everything around it, almost like it was promising you that there were nicer places at the other end of the line. But her father turned away from the station and turned down a different street and approached a creamy stucco building. The name, Mancuso’s, stretched across the threshold in tiles by their feet, and the wooden front doors featured stained glass that highlighted the letter M.
Inside they waited as a hostess seated another party: a laughing family of four. It was a busy restaurant and sort of fancy—high ceilings, big windows with rich-looking drapes, linen tablecloths, fancy dishes—but all Jane could see was a huge octopus clinging to the ceiling beams. When it was their turn to be led to a table, Jane had to be careful not to trip and fall. What was it made of? Had it ever actually been alive?
“This place is sort of famous,” her father said, and Jane looked away from the octopus and said, “What for?”
“I don’t know.” The hostess handed them menus as they sat down. “Just being here, maybe. And surviving.”