Dreamland Social Club(68)

Babette had brought a bunch of old photos so that they could try to get inspiration from the kinds of things people had done in the past—like dress up as sushi or make a procession for King Nemo or craft huge monsters from the deep. Hundreds of thousands of people came to the parade, apparently. It was a big deal. No one at the table, however, seemed particularly inspired.

“Well, whatever we do,” Babette said with some annoyance, “I think it should have music. I want people to hear and see us.”

“Well, sign me up for music,” Leo said. “I’m going to try to get some signatures.”

Jane watched him walk away, to a table where a few tourist types had just sat down, and she thought of the sound of his saw playing the Dreamland song. How sad it had been.

“What about some kind of funeral procession?” she said.

Babette looked like she’d just smelled day-old fish. “A funeral for who?”

Jane was looking up at the STORE FOR LEASE sign that would be the Anchor’s death knell. “I don’t know,” she said. “For Coney Island?”

But that wasn’t quite right.

“No, wait!” She sat forward in her chair. “It’s for a mermaid. It’s a mermaid funeral.”

She could picture the scene then instantly—more vividly than she could picture even her own mother’s funeral, which had been reduced to a series of flashes: Muddy ground. Hugs from strangers. Big cars. White lilies tossed onto a black coffin.

“We’ll make a big funeral bier and someone will dress up as a mermaid and we’ll all push it down the parade route.” She was getting excited. “And the music can be like a dirge or some kind of old sad sea shanty or something, and we’ll all wear black.”

“I don’t know,” Babette said, but her eyes seemed to light up.

Jane said wryly, “You’re already in costume.”

Venus said, “It’s not much of a stretch for you either. Some of your clothes are so old they should be dead.” Jane had been visiting vintage and secondhand shops all winter, assembling a wardrobe sort of inspired by Birdie’s old clothes. Today she was wearing a blue-and-white gingham dress with short cap sleeves and a mildy frilly old-fashioned collar.

“Not nice,” Babette said.

“I’m kidding,” Venus said, then added brightly, “Gooble gobble!”

“A mermaid funeral,” Babette said again—trying it on for size—and Rita said, “It’s pretty good.”

Legs agreed, as did H.T. and Debbie.

Venus and Minnie just shrugged, but for some reason Jane didn’t even care anymore. It wasn’t like Leo had picked Jane over Venus. It wasn’t as though she’d done anything with Legs but become his friend. And she was a member of the D.S.C. now, so they were just going to have to get over it.

“I can make the mermaid tail and fin out of some of my grandmother’s old costumes,” she said in an attempt to cinch the deal.

“Nobody has any better ideas?” Minnie said, sort of desperately, and everyone shook their heads. When Leo walked by their table, Babette said, “Feel like writing a funeral dirge?”

“Always,” he said, and then he approached another group.

Petition to save the Anchor.

Petition to save the Anchor.

The phrase lodged itself securely on a loop in Jane’s head.





Jane and Legs—the only two people who were famished—headed over to Nathan’s after the group split up to find that hundreds of other people were also craving hot dogs on opening day. Jane would have been happy to redirect to pizza or anything, really, but Legs was determined to get a hot dog—or four, as the case may be—and so they waited and waited and waited and pushed and shoved and finally ordered five dogs and three orders of fries. When Legs announced the order, it became obvious to Jane that everyone on line was staring at him.

At them.

People had, she realized, probably been doing it the whole time, and every other time they’d been out together—as friends, just friends—but Jane hadn’t actually noticed. Now that she had—now that she and H.T. had talked about it, the staring—she couldn’t not notice. She didn’t like it.

Legs acted like he didn’t notice—trying to make light conversation about the weather—but Jane could tell he did, and that he sensed the change in her. They finally sat down with hot dogs at a table outside and he said, “Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“You know.” He looked off to his right, and Jane followed his gaze and saw a bunch of guys in baseball caps avert their eyes and then laugh. “The staring.”

She suddenly wasn’t interested in her hot dog. “It’s weird,” she said. “I never noticed it before today for some reason.”

Leo walked by them then, though he didn’t see them, and neither of them called out to him as he stopped people on the street to get signatures.

“You know, it’s funny.” Legs was already on his second dog; Jane was still spreading mustard on hers, squeezing it out of the small, soft paper cup she’d filled at the condiment pumps. “For a while there I thought you were going to end up with Leo.”

Jane stared at her dog, covered in off-white kraut and golden-brown mustard. It suddenly looked like horribly fake food, like it would be wrong to eat it. Someone named Nathan got rich because of this? “Why would you think that?” she said steadily.