Dreamland Social Club(57)

Jane nodded. “I feel like my life is like that lately.”

His voice was quiet, calm. “I don’t know. But it seems like maybe that’s a good thing, right?”

Jane nodded again, couldn’t find words, heard Leo’s saw song in her head. “How’d you learn to play the saw?”

Leo tilted his head at the question. “I saw this old dude playing a saw on the boardwalk once. I asked him if he’d teach me and he said, ‘The saw finds you; the saw teaches you.’ ”

Jane furrowed her brow.

Leo said, “I thought it sounded crazy, too, but then I saw a saw in the basement at the bar like a day later and I took it home and started experimenting and that was it. I was hooked.”

“I’d like to be hooked on something,” she said, and for a second she thought she might actually say it: Actually I am.

I’m hooked on you.

But then Leo said, “You, my dear, are hooked on Coney.” He tapped her sneakers and said, “You’ve got sand in your shoes.”

“Sand in my shoes?”

“It’s an expression.” Leo looked around and nodded approvingly and said, “I think Luna was my favorite.”

Just hearing him say that other L word, Luna, made Jane wish she went by that name, had the courage to tell him it was hers.

She said, “Mine too.”

There was a charge in the air then, like the buzz of a phantom carnival ride, and Jane felt pretty sure Leo was going to kiss her. Then he said, “I heard you’re going out with Legs Malstead this weekend,” and the charge dissipated.

Jane said, “It’s not a date,” and Leo said, “He thinks it is.”

“Are you and Venus going?” she dared.

“I’m going,” he said, then quickly added, “Wait. What do you mean me and Venus?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You’re together, right?”

“No,” he said, and he shook his head. “She wants us to be, but, well, no.”

Relief was like a crashing wave followed by a series of gentle ripples.

“So when you canceled the other night . . .” Jane sort of wished she could shut up, but her mouth wouldn’t listen. “She said she hung out with you that night.”

“She wanted to talk.” He smiled. “Actually, she wants to do more than talk. That’s the problem. And I don’t know, I just don’t think you should ever have to talk. In quotes. It just shouldn’t be that hard, you know?”

He looked her right in the eyes then and she said, “I think I do.” Then she looked away and just nodded in the dark and wished things were different.

Then Leo said, “Legs is cool” and nodded, too—solemnly, slowly.

“It’s not a date,” Jane said again.





That night she sat down with the Dreamland Social Club questionnaire in the dimly lit living room, on Preemie’s dusty old couch. She didn’t overthink it. She just started filling it out with the first answers that came to mind, whether they were right or not.





What’s your earliest memory?

Dancing. In my mother’s arms.

What sound makes you happy?

Leo’s saw. How it sounds like my mother humming.

What was the last dream you had that you remember?

Driving through the countryside toward a burning Ferris wheel. Name one thing you want to do before you die.

Fall in love with someone who loves me back.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

There is no answer.

What’s the best thing about being you?





She paused there and thought about writing again, There is no answer.

But she didn’t.

She looked around the room, at that Claverack horse—which looked sort of possessed in the golden glow of the table lamp on the end table—and at the pewter Siamese squirrel and the poster for Is It Human? back on the wall, and she wondered whether this was it. Whether all of this was the best thing. The whole carny thing, but not just that, being here.

She picked up Birdie’s diary then, and started to read. It started years before Birdie had gotten married, years before she’d met Preemie, and she only wrote in it every few months, if that. Then Jane found an entry that read “I met someone today. Frank, his name is. He was one of those preemie babies in Dreamland. He saw me riding a carousel horse in Steeplechase and said that when he did he realized it was time to settle down and get married. I asked him how the horse felt about that, whether it had a good dowry, and he laughed and said that he’d build a stable to last a lifetime for that horse if I’d just go on one date with him. What a character. I guess I like characters.”

The next entry wasn’t for another bunch of months. “We’re getting married,” read a clearly dashed-off entry. “I got cast in a picture. More soon . . .”

There was a card shoved into the pages of the journal right there, and Jane picked it up and studied it. It had a picture of a bird on the front, and on the inside, someone had written, “Birdie, I told you I’d always love you . . . and the horse you rode in on.—Frankie”

So was that it? Was that the horse she’d been riding at Steeplechase the day they’d first met? Was Preemie—it was almost laughable to think about—a sentimental softie? And at the outset none of this had really had anything to do with Claverack at all?