Dreamland Social Club(67)

“Mothball?” Jane crinkled her nose. It didn’t make sense.

“It means that Loki’s pissed their first plan got vetoed, and now they’re going to shut down the Anchor and Wonderland even if they can’t replace them. Just to prove a point.”

Jane shook her head. Still didn’t get it.

Babette rolled her turquoise eyes and said, “The point being that they can just let the land sit there. Gathering moths. Unless the new plan they’re presenting on Thursday gets approved.”

“Oh!”

So the news of the presentation was out. And Loki had obviously timed this power play for maximum impact. Jane’s father had neglected to mention the mothballing, to warn her. Had he known this was going to happen?

Leo shook his head. “My dad said that’s it. The jig is up. Six weeks and he’s shut down. And Wonderland only has two, so they might not even bother opening up again next weekend.”

The park was open now. You could hear a few of the rides whirring and tinkling.

“Let me get this straight,” Legs said. “This is supposed to force the city to approve the new plan?”

Leo said, “Yes.”

“Do you think it will work?” Rita asked. Rita, like Coney, just looked better, happier, now that winter was over with. Her skin seemed to thrive on a particular kind of sun.

“No idea,” Leo said, and then they watched a few more people stop and point at the STORE FOR LEASE signs.

Moving over to the plastic tables in front of the bar, they took seats, and Leo’s dad came out to say hi and to clean their table.

“We’re really sorry, Mr. LaRocca,” Babette said, and everyone muttered their regrets, too.

“Crazy days,” he said, and then his sinewy arms ran a cloth around—he was wearing a shirt this time—and rearranged some condiments. Jane tried to glimpse Leo’s future in his father’s form, tried to imagine what he might look like in a bunch of years, what kind of man he might become. She still wasn’t sure she agreed with what her father had said about how loving someone’s potential wasn’t really love. She was sure, though, that she loved Leo just as he was right then, even if he didn’t feel the same way.

Finally, Mr. LaRocca took the ashtray away and said, “I’ll send over some sodas.”

“I’ll help.” Leo sprung up out of his chair.

H.T. took the seat next to Jane. He had his legs on but was wearing shorts, so the metal joints glinted in the sun. She watched the people around them do double takes and gawk and elbow friends and found herself staring at one woman who was staring intently at H.T.

Look at me, she thought, trying to will the woman to turn her head. I dare you.

And when she did, Jane just stared at her, like she was the freak, until finally, the woman looked away, whispered something to her friend.

“I wonder what they’ll do with that,” Babette said.

She pointed over to the neon sign at Wonderland, and Jane wondered whether Alice and the Mad Hatter and their fluorescent blue teapot would suffer the same fate as the Hell Gate demon and the Claverack horse, locked away in some old man’s dusty old house. It didn’t seem right.

Mothballing.

A funny word.

Preemie had been doing his own variation of it for years.

Leo’s dad was back with sodas, and then Leo reappeared with a clipboard. He said, “Petition to save the Anchor.”

Babette signed the hastily drawn-up document. So did Rita. And Minnie and Venus and H.T. But when the clipboard came around to the other side of the table, to where Jane was sitting, she hesitated.

Leo said, “What do you say, Looky Lou?”

It was the first time he’d called her that in months, and she felt like it meant something, she just wasn’t sure what.

She studied the statement at the top of the petition, scrawled in Leo’s handwriting: We, the undersigned, object to the amusement park and mall planned by Loki Equities and want a fair renegotiation of leases for establishments including the Anchor. She looked up and said, “I don’t think I can.”

“Figures.” Leo slid the clipboard away.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jane snapped.

“I’m just not surprised is all.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” she said. Maybe he was right about the sass. “We knew this was coming.”

“Yeah, I guess we did.” He shook his head.

“And it wouldn’t look good for me to have my name on that if my father’s project goes ahead. It’s that simple. So what’s your problem?”

“My problem is that I’m wasting time talking to you when I could be getting signatures.” He pushed the clipboard toward Legs. “What about you, Legs?”

Legs looked at Jane, then back at Leo and said, “Sorry, man.”

Leo said, “Whatever.”

The woman who’d been staring at H.T. got up and gave him one last stare and he smiled at her—big, white, happy teeth—and said, “Have a nice day.”

She hurried away, and H.T. turned to Jane. “I saw you giving her the evil eye. What was that about?”

Jane shrugged. “I just think it’s rude.”

“It’s normal.”

“Still.”

Debbie slid into a seat then and said, “Sorry I’m late.” She’d bleached her facial hair over the winter and it was an improvement, yes, but it was still a lot of hair.