Joyland Read online

  Hoopsie muzik? Hope your good? No love, no do you miss me, just hope your good? And although, judging by the bumps and jags and inkblots, the card had been written while on the move in Renee's car (Wendy didn't have one), they both sounded either stoned or drunk on their asses. The following week I sent four more letters, plus an Erin-photo of me wearing the fur. From Wendy, nothing in reply.

  You start to worry, then you start to get it, then you know. Maybe you don't want to, maybe you think that lovers as well as doctors misdiagnose shit all the time, but in your heart you know.

  Twice I tried calling her. The same grumpy girl answered both times. I imagined her wearing harlequin glasses, an ankle-length granny dress, and no lipstick. Not there, she said the first time. Out with Ren. Not there and not likely to be there in the future, Grumpy Girl said the second time. Moved.

  "Moved where?" I asked, alarmed. This was in the parlor of Maison Shoplaw, where there was a long-distance honor sheet beside the phone. My fingers were holding the big old-fashioned receiver so tightly they had gone numb. Wendy was going to college on a patchwork magic carpet of scholarships, loans, and work-study employment, the same as me. She couldn't afford a place on her own. Not without help, she couldn't.

  "I don't know and don't care," Grumpy Girl said. "I got tired of all the drinking and hen-parties at two in the morning. Some of us actually like to get a little sleep. Strange but true."

  My heart was beating so hard I could feel it pulsing in my temples. "Did Renee go with her?"

  "No, they had a fight. Over that guy. The one who helped Wennie move out." She said Wennie with a kind of bright contempt that made me sick to my stomach. Surely it wasn't the guy part that made me feel that way; I was her guy. If some friend, someone she'd met at work, had pitched in and helped her move her stuff, what was that to me? Of course she could have guy friends. I had made at least one girl friend, hadn't I?

  "Is Renee there? Can I talk to her?"

  "No, she had a date." Some penny must have finally dropped, because all at once Grumpy Girl got interested in the conversation. "Heyyy, is your name Devin?"

  I hung up. It wasn't something I planned, just something I did. I told myself I hadn't heard Grumpy Girl all of a sudden change into Amused Grumpy Girl, as if there was some sort of joke going on and I was part of it. Maybe even the butt of it. As I believe I have said, the mind defends itself as long as it can.

  Three days later, I got the only letter I received from Wendy Keegan that summer. The last letter. It was written on her stationery, which was deckle-edged and featured happy kittens playing with balls of yarn. It was the stationery of a fifth-grade girl, although that thought didn't occur to me until much later. There were three breathless pages, mostly saying how sorry she was, and how she had fought against the attraction but it was just hopeless, and she knew I would be hurt so I probably shouldn't call her or try to see her for a while, and she hoped we could be good friends after the initial shock wore off, and he was a nice guy, he went to Dartmouth, he played lacrosse, she knew I'd like him, maybe she could introduce him to me when the fall semester started, etc. etc. fucking etc.

  That night I plopped myself down on the sand fifty yards or so from Mrs. Shoplaw's Beachside Accommodations, planning to get drunk. At least, I thought, it wouldn't be expensive. In those days, a sixpack was all it took to get me pie-eyed. At some point Tom and Erin joined me, and we watched the waves roll in together: the three Joyland Musketeers.

  "What's wrong?" Erin asked.

  I shrugged, the way you do when it's small shit but annoying shit, all the same. "Girlfriend broke up with me. Sent me a Dear John letter."

  "Which in your case," Tom said, "would be a Dear Dev letter."

  "Show a little compassion," Erin told him. "He's sad and hurt and trying not to show it. Are you too much of a dumbass to see that?"

  "No," Tom said. He put his arm around my shoulders and briefly hugged me against him. "I'm sorry for your pain, pal. I feel it coming off you like a cold wind from Canada or maybe even the Arctic. Can I have one of your beers?"

  "Sure."

  We sat there for quite a while, and under Erin's gentle questioning, I spilled some of it, but not all of it. I was sad. I was hurt. But there was a lot more, and I didn't want them to see it. This was partly because I'd been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness, but mostly because I was dismayed by the depth and strength of my jealousy. I didn't want them to even guess at that lively worm (he was from Dartmouth, oh God yes, he'd probably pledged the best frat and drove a Mustang his folks had given him as a high school graduation present). Nor was jealousy the worst of it. The worst was the horrifying realization--that night it was just starting to sink in--that I had been really and truly rejected for the first time in my life. She was through with me, but I couldn't imagine being through with her.

  Erin also took a beer, and raised the can. "Let's toast the next one to come along. I don't know who she'll be, Dev, only that meeting you will be her lucky day."

  "Hear-hear!" Tom said, raising his own can. And, because he was Tom, he felt compelled to add "Where-where!" and "There-there!"

  I don't think either of them realized, then or all the rest of the summer, how fundamentally the ground under my feet had shifted. How lost I felt. I didn't want them to know. It was more than embarrassing; it seemed shameful. So I made myself smile, raised my own can of suds, and drank.

  At least with them to help me drink the six, I didn't have to wake up the next morning hungover as well as heartbroke. That was good, because when we got to Joyland that morning, I found out from Pop Allen that I was down to wear the fur that afternoon on Joyland Avenue--three fifteen-minute shifts at three, four, and five. I bitched for form's sake (everybody was supposed to bitch about wearing the fur) but I was glad. I liked being mobbed by the kids, and for the next few weeks, playing Howie also had a bitter sort of amusement value. As I made my tail-wagging way down Joyland Avenue, followed by crowds of laughing children, I thought it was no wonder Wendy had dumped me. Her new boyfriend went to Dartmouth and played lacrosse. Her old one was spending the summer in a third-tier amusement park. Where he played a dog.

  Joyland summer.

  I ride-jockeyed. I flashed the shys in the mornings--meaning I restocked them with prizes--and ran some of them in the afternoons. I untangled Devil Wagons by the dozen, learned how to fry dough without burning my fingers off, and worked on my pitch for the Carolina Spin. I danced and sang with the other greenies on the Wiggle-Waggle Village's Story Stage. Several times Fred Dean sent me to scratch the midway, a true sign of trust because it meant picking up the noon or five PM take from the various concessions. I made runs to Heaven's Bay or Wilmington when some piece of machinery broke down and stayed late on Wednesday nights--usually along with Tom, George Preston, and Ronnie Houston--to lube the Whirly Cups and a vicious, neck-snapping ride called the Zipper. Both of those babies drank oil the way camels drink water when they get to the next oasis. And, of course, I wore the fur.

  In spite of all this, I wasn't sleeping for shit. Sometimes I'd lie on my bed, clap my elderly, taped-up headphones over my ears, and listen to my Doors records. (I was particularly partial to such cheerful tunes as "Cars Hiss By My Window," "Riders on the Storm," and--of course--"The End.") When Jim Morrison's voice and Ray Manzarek's mystic, chiming organ weren't enough to sedate me, I'd creep down the outside staircase and walk on the beach. Once or twice I slept on the beach. At least there were no bad dreams when I did manage to get under for a little while. I don't remember dreaming that summer at all.

  I could see bags under my eyes when I shaved in the morning, and sometimes I'd feel lightheaded after a particularly strenuous turn as Howie (birthday parties in the overheated bedlam of Howdy House were the worst), but that was normal; Mr. Easterbrook had told me so. A little rest in the boneyard always put me right again. On the whole, I thought I was representing, as they say nowadays. I learned
different on the first Monday in July, two days before the Glorious Fourth.

  My team--Beagle--reported to Pop Allen's shy first thing, as always, and he gave us our assignments as he laid out the popguns. Usually our early chores involved toting boxes of prizes (MADE IN TAIWAN stamped on most of them) and flashing shys until Early Gate, which was what we called opening. That morning, however, Pop told me that Lane Hardy wanted me. This was a surprise; Lane rarely showed his face outside the boneyard until twenty minutes or so before Early Gate. I started that way, but Pop yelled at me.

  "Nah, nah, he's at the simp-hoister." This was a derogatory term for the Ferris wheel he would have known better than to use if Lane had actually been there. "Beat feet, Jonesy. Got a lot to do today."

  I beat feet, but saw no one at the Spin, which stood tall, still, and silent, waiting for the day's first customers.

  "Over here," a woman called. I turned to my left and saw Rozzie Gold standing outside her star-studded fortunetelling shy, all kitted out in one of her gauzy Madame Fortuna rigs. On her head was an electric blue scarf, the knotted tail of which fell almost to the small of her back. Lane was standing beside her in his usual rig: faded straight-leg jeans and a skin-tight strappy tee-shirt perfect for showing off his fully loaded guns. His derby was tilted at the proper wiseguy angle. Looking at him, you'd believe he didn't have a brain in his head, but he had plenty.

  Both dressed for show, and both wearing bad-news faces. I ran quickly through the last few days, trying to think of anything I'd done that might account for those faces. It crossed my mind that Lane might have orders to lay me off...or even fire me. But at the height of the summer? And wouldn't that be Fred Dean's or Brenda Rafferty's job? Also, why was Rozzie here?

  "Who died, guys?" I asked.

  "Just as long as it isn't you," Rozzie said. She was getting into character for the day and sounded funny: half Brooklyn and half Carpathian Mountains.

  "Huh?"

  "Walk with us, Jonesy," Lane said, and immediately started down the midway, which was largely deserted ninety minutes before Early Gate; no one around but a few members of the janitorial staff--gazoonies, in the Talk, and probably not a green card among them--sweeping up around the concessions: work that should have been done the night before. Rozzie made room for me between them when I caught up. I felt like a crook being escorted to the pokey by a couple of cops.

  "What's this about?"

  "You'll see," Rozzie/Fortuna said ominously, and pretty soon I did. Next to Horror House--the two connected, actually--was Mysterio's Mirror Mansion. Next to the agent's booth was a regular mirror with a sign over it reading SO YOU WON'T FORGET HOW YOU REALLY LOOK. Lane took me by one arm, Rozzie by the other. Now I really did feel like a perp being brought in for booking. They placed me in front of the mirror.

  "What do you see?" Lane asked.

  "Me," I said, and then, because that didn't seem to be the answer they wanted: "Me needing a haircut."

  "Look at your clothes, silly boy," Rozzie said, pronouncing the last two words seely poy.

  I looked. Above my yellow workboots I saw jeans (with the recommended brand of rawhide gloves sticking out of the back pocket), and above my jeans was a blue chambray workshirt, faded but reasonably clean. On my head was an admirably battered Howie dogtop, the finishing touch that means so much.

  "What about them?" I said. I was starting to get a little mad.

  "Kinda hangin on ya, aren't they?" Lane said. "Didn't used to. How much weight you lost?"

  "Jesus, I don't know. Maybe we ought to go see Fat Wally." Fat Wally ran the guess-your-weight joint.

  "Is not funny," Fortuna said. "You can't wear that damn dog costume half the day under the hot summer sun, then swallow two more salt pills and call it a meal. Mourn your lost love all you want, but eat while you do it. Eat, dammit!"

  "Who's been talking to you? Tom?" No, it wouldn't have been him. "Erin. She had no business--"

  "No one has been talking to me," Rozzie said. She drew herself up impressively. "I have the sight."

  "I don't know about the sight, but you've got one hell of a nerve."

  All at once she reverted to Rozzie. "I'm not talking about psychic sight, kiddo, I'm talking about ordinary woman-sight. You think I don't know a lovestruck Romeo when I see one? After all the years I've been gigging palms and peeping the crystal? Hah!" She stepped forward, her considerable breastworks leading the way. "I don't care about your love life; I just don't want to see you taken to the hospital on July Fourth--when it's supposed to hit ninety-five in the shade, by the way--with heat prostration or something worse."

  Lane took off his derby, peered into it, and reset it on his head cocked the other way. "What she won't come right out and say because she has to protect her famous crusty reputation is we all like you, kid. You learn fast, you do what's asked of you, you're honest, you don't make no trouble, and the kids love you like mad when you're wearing the fur. But you'd have to be blind not to see something's wrong with you. Rozzie thinks girl trouble. Maybe she's right. Maybe she ain't."

  Rozzie gave him a haughty dare-you-doubt-me stare.

  "Maybe your parents are getting a divorce. Mine did, and it damn near killed me. Maybe your big brother got arrested for selling dope--"

  "My mother's dead and I'm an only child," I said sulkily.

  "I don't care what you are in the straight world," he said. "This is Joyland. The show. And you're one of us. Which means we got a right to care about you, whether you like it or not. So get something to eat."

  "Get a lot to eat," Rozzie said. "Now, noon, all day. Every day. And try to eat something besides fried chicken where, I tell you what, there's a heart attack in every drumstick. Go in Rock Lobster and tell them you want a take-out of fish and salad. Tell them to make it a double. Get your weight up so you don't look like the Human Skeleton in a ten-in-one." She turned her gaze on Lane. "It's a girl, of course it is. Anybody can see that."

  "Whatever it is, stop fucking pining," Lane said.

  "Such language to use around a lady," Rozzie said. She was sounding like Fortuna again. Soon she'd come out with Ziss is vat za spirits vant, or something equivalent.

  "Ah, blow it out," Lane said, and walked back toward the Spin.

  When he was gone, I looked at Rozzie. She really wasn't much in the mother-figure department, but right then she was what I had. "Roz, does everyone know?"

  She shook her head. "Nah. To most of the old guys, you're just another greenie jack-of-all-trades...although not as green as you were three weeks ago. But many people here like you, and they see something is wrong. Your friend Erin, for one. Your friend Tom for another." She said friend like it rhymed with rent. "I am another friend, and as a friend I tell you that you can't fix your heart. Only time can do that, but you can fix your body. Eat!"

  "You sound like a Jewish mother joke," I said.

  "I am a Jewish mother, and believe me, it's no joke."

  "I'm the joke," I said. "I think about her all the time."

  "That you can't help, at least for now. But you must turn your back on the other thoughts that sometimes come to you."

  I think my mouth dropped open. I'm not sure. I know I stared. People who've been in the business as long as Rozzie Gold had been back then--they are called mitts in the Talk, for their palmistry skills--have their ways of picking your brains so that what they say sounds like the result of telepathy, but usually it's just close observation.

  Not always, though.

  "I don't understand."

  "Give those morbid records a rest, do you understand that?" She looked grimly into my face, then laughed at the surprise she saw there. "Rozzie Gold may be just a Jewish mother and grandmother, but Madame Fortuna sees much."

  So did my landlady, and I found out later--after seeing Rozzie and Mrs. Shoplaw having lunch together in Heaven's Bay on one of Madame Fortuna's rare days off--that they were close friends who had known each other for years. Mrs. Shoplaw dusted my room and vacuumed the floor o
nce a week; she would have seen my records. As for the rest--those famous suicidal ideations that sometimes came to me--might not a woman who had spent most of her life observing human nature and watching for psychological clues (called tells both in the Talk and big-league poker) guess that a sensitive young man, freshly dumped, might entertain thoughts of pills and ropes and riptide undertows?

  "I'll eat," I promised. I had a thousand things to do before Early Gate, but mostly I was just anxious to be away from her before she said something totally outrageous like Her name is Vendy, and you still think of her ven you messturbate.

  "Also, drink big glass of milk before you go to bed." She raised an admonitory finger. "No coffee; milk. Vill help you sleep."

  "Worth a try," I said.

  She went back to Roz again. "The day we met, you asked if I saw a beautiful woman with dark hair in your future. Do you remember that?"

  "Yes."

  "What did I say?"

  "That she was in my past."

  Rozzie gave a single nod, hard and imperious. "So she is. And when you want to call her and beg for a second chance--you will, you will--show a little spine. Have a little self-respect. Also remember that the long-distance is expensive."

  Tell me something I don't know, I thought. "Listen, I really have to get going, Roz. Lots to do."

  "Yes, a busy day for all of us. But before you go, Jonesy--have you met the boy yet? The one with the dog? Or the girl who wears the red hat and carries the doll? I told you about them, too, when we met."

  "Roz, I've met a billion kids in the last--"

  "You haven't, then. Okay. You will." She stuck out her lower lip and blew, stirring the fringe of hair that stuck out from beneath her scarf. Then she seized my wrist. "I see danger for you, Jonesy. Sorrow and danger."

  I thought for a moment she was going to whisper something like Beware the dark stranger! He rides a unicycle! Instead, she let go of me and pointed at Horror House. "Which team turns that unpleasant hole? Not yours, is it?"

  "No, Team Doberman." The Dobies were also responsible for the adjacent attractions: Mysterio's Mirror Mansion and the Wax Museum. Taken together, these three were Joyland's halfhearted nod to the old carny spook-shows.