The room was empty.
“If you interrupted your writing to show me this,” he said, “it must be something important.”
“Oh, it is. I promise.” She removed a videotape from her purse, switched on the VCR and TV, and inserted the cassette. He frowned. What was she up to?
“You might want to sit down.” She smiled. “This is gonna knock you out.”
“Okay.” Still frowning, he pulled out a chair and sat.
She pressed PLAY and took the seat beside him.
Snow filled the screen. Then the tube cleared, and the content of the recording appeared.
His eyes widened.
On the screen, he and a black woman—it had to be Rose—were in a bed. The woman sat astride him, her slim, naked back facing the camera, but his face was clearly revealed. Eyes squeezed shut in rapture, his lips moved soundlessly, hands sliding over her legs. Letting her ride him like a cowboy, enjoying every second of it ...
Shit. Oh, shit!
He shut off the TV.
Slowly Linda stood. She was not smiling anymore.
“Baby, I can explain,” he said.
“Isn’t that what husbands always say when they fuck up? ‘Baby, I can explain’? You can do better than that.”
He groped for words. “It’s over with me and that girl. It was never anything to begin with—just sex.”
‘Just sex?”
“There were no real feelings between us—nothing like that. Linda, I swear, she was only an escape from the pressure—the constant pressure, a way out of the stress I get from this goddamned job and my crazy daddy-and it was wrong, all wrong, and you have every right to be pissed, all the right in the world to be absolutely furious. But I’ll never, ever cheat on you again, I promise.”
She stared at him.
He lowered his eyes, gazed at the floor.
“That’s all you can do?” she said. “Stare at the floor like a total sucker? You can’t even look me in the eyes. Some kind of man you are.”
“Linda, I promise—”
“Shut up.”
He shut up.
She unzipped her purse. His heart clutched, because he was certain that she was digging for a gun, knew she would draw it out and blow his guts against the wall without hesitation ... but she only pressed EJECT on the VCR, took out the videotape, and slipped it inside her open bag.
He sighed.
“You thought I was gonna shoot you?” she said, as uncannily aware of his thoughts as ever. “I feel like killing your ass, but it’s not worth it—I’d end up spending the rest of my life in jail. I’d much rather spend the rest of my life without you.”
“What?”
“It’s over, Thomas. I thank your girlfriend for sending me this tape and waking me up at last. You’ll never change. You don’t care about me, and you don’t care about Jason. All you care about is yourself, this restaurant, and your daddy. I don’t have time for you anymore.” She moved to leave.
“Linda, wait.” He touched her arm.
She spun. “Don’t you ever touch me again, you bastard. Do you hear me?”
“Baby, please. Don’t do this.”
“I haven’t done anything to you. You did this to yourself.
You’re the one who slept with that bitch and told the lies. All I’m doing is what any woman with brains would. Divorcing you.”
“Divorcing me? Hey, no, you can’t do that, not after all we’ve been through.”
“I can’t, huh? Watch me.”
With that, she turned and stormed out.
The line moved faster than Jason expected. They reached the ticket booth after they had been waiting for only five minutes.
They gave the tickets to the attendant, slipped through the turnstile, and walked across the wooden floor toward the last empty gondola. After they slid onto the wide seat, another attendant snapped the safety bar in place, rattled it to ensure it was locked, and hurried to the control station at the edge of the platform.
“Man, I’ve got butterflies,” Jason said. “I’ve never ridden one of these before.”
“Are you scared?” she said.
“Me? Please. It’s just a ride.”
“You look scared to me.”
“Well, I’m not.” He tried to smile. He was not genuinely afraid, but he was nervous. “I’m not really scared. I’m excited, I guess.”
“Sure, Jason.”
“Honest. I have butterflies of excitement, not fear.”
“I believe you.” She turned away, a faint smile on her face. Then she glanced at him. “Do you want to hold hands?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” He found her hand and squeezed it. She laughed and patted his hand reassuringly.
Music blasted from the surrounding speakers. The Ferris wheel jerked once, twice, and began to turn. He watched the floor recede slowly underneath them, their gondola creaking slightly on the thick steel pins that connected it to the wheel rims.
“I love this,” she said. “Wait until we get to the top. You won’t believe the view.”
“I can hardly wait.” His stomach trembled as their basket continued to rise.
Michelle scooted closer to him. For him, heaven got no better than that. He draped his arm across her shoulders, loving the feel of her warm body against his. Leaning into him, she sighed contentedly.
The giant wheel kept revolving, their gondola rising higher above the carnival.
“I heard that it’s good luck for a couple to kiss at the top of a Ferris wheel,” she said.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“From some friends. It’s a girl thing.”
“That figures. Girls have rituals for everything.”
“Do you want to do it?”
He looked down. They seemed to be about fifty feet above the ground and steadily ascending. “If I’m conscious by then, yeah.”
“You know, Jason, we’ve never really kissed before. We’ve always just given each other pecks on the cheek.”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“Maybe we should make this one the real thing.”
“A real French kiss?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Hey, that sounds good to me. Sounds great to me.”
“Have you ever kissed a girl on the lips?”
“Nope.”
“Good. That makes two of us.”
“You mean you’ve never kissed a girl on the lips, either?”
“No, dummy. I’ve never kissed a boy on the lips.”
“So this’ll be the first time for both of us,” he said. “Good. That way, you won’t know if I’m no good. Nothing to compare it to, you know?”
“If I feel your tongue halfway down my throat, then I know you’re no good. There are some signs, boy.”
“Oh, well, it was only a thought.”
They continued to rise.
Cool wind blew, gently swinging their gondola.
Above them, the passengers in the highest basket released a chorus of ecstatic screams.
His stomach quivered, not only with the rush of being high above the earth, but in anticipation of the approaching special moment with this special girl.
Finally, they hit the top.
“Here we are.” She leaned back and put her hand on his chest. “Let’s close our eyes and do it at the count of three.”
“All right.” He shut his eyes. They counted together: “One ... two ... three!”
Unsure what to expect, he leaned forward. He met only empty air. Certain that they had done as clumsy adolescent lovers do in a movie and simply misaimed their lips, he opened his eyes. He assumed he would see the same oops-let’s-try-again look on Michelle’s face.
But she was not there.
In fact, the entire carnival was deserted.
The Ferris wheel had stopped, leaving the basket in which he sat at the utmost peak.
That was not the only thing that had stopped. The digits on his wristwatch had frozen at 1:
39, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As if a wizard had cast a powerful spell, a thunderstorm had instantly replaced the sunshine and clear skies. Mallets of thunder pounded the earth, lightning bullwhipped the coal black sky, and a gale shrieked across the carnival, rocking Jason’s gondola like a tugboat in a tempest.
Disbelief had frozen Jason as still as his watch digits. Gripping the cold safety bar, he gaped at the miraculously transformed world. Although Shorty and Brains had told him all about this strange place, seeing it himself for the first time had driven his heart into his throat and squeezed sweat from his pores. He found it hard to believe this was actually happening.
Flashes of lightning enlivened the darkness.
Thunder steamrolled across the day.
Thunderland. The name fit so perfectly.
He needed to get out of his seat and away from the Ferris wheel. The metal wheel was the tallest structure in the area. Staying seated was to risk getting fried by a bolt of lightning.
He leaned sideways, peered over the lip of the gondola.
God, he was high up in the air. His stomach curdled.
He considered waiting there until the storm calmed, but that was a dangerous idea. This wasn’t the normal world, in which all storms eventually ceased. Here, the thunder and lightning might rage forever.
He would have to get down. It was the only sensible choice.
It’s like climbing a tree, he thought. He had spent his childhood clambering up and down the big oak in the backyard. He’d become as agile as a monkey ... though he had fallen out of the tree in March, in a thunderstorm like this one.
Don’t think about that.
He thumbed the latch on the safety bar. He pushed the bar away from him. His heart had already been beating fast. Now it continued to beat fast-but it knocked harder, too.
He didn’t dare look down again.
Slowly he pushed off the seat. He grabbed the nearby rim. Twining his legs around the nearest spoke, he slid down slowly ... slowly ... until his feet touched a crossbeam that braced the spokes.
He paused, panting.
Thunder rolled.
Lightning flared, an ultrabright burst that drove needles of pain into his eyes. He blinked, temporarily blinded.
When his eyesight cleared and he resumed his descent, a tide of wind rushed toward him. It shook the Ferris wheel down to its foundations, rattled it savagely, and he feared the wheel might tear loose from its ground supports and roll like a runaway tire across the carnival. He pressed his face against the cold spoke and held fast with his legs and arms, his muscles throbbing with the effort.
The gale abated.
But the other storm elements continued the onslaught. Before he could gather his bearings, another burst of thunder blasted the sky, and lightning licked a charred cloud that seemed to be only a few feet overhead.
In spite of the turbulent weather conditions, he had to get moving. If he waited for a period of calm, he would likely be either electrocuted or flung away by a gust.
He slid off the spoke, to the crossbeam underneath, then moved across that beam to the next spoke. He continued that method of beam-to-spoke, spoke-to-beam, gradually moving downward. His confidence grew. As long as the day remained dry, he could reach the ground with no problems.
When he was perhaps thirty feet above the carnival, en route from a crossbeam to a spoke, thunder crashed again, harder than ever before. As if the explosion signaled the rupture of some immense, celestial container, a flood of icy rain dropped straight down from the black sky.
The Ferris wheel quickly became slick.
Rain splashed into Jason’s eyes, blurring his vision. His clothes grew as heavy as a suit of lead.
He wanted to choke the Stranger and demand to know why he forced him to endure this. If the bastard wanted him to die, why didn’t he strike him down and save both of them all this trouble?
The rain fell harder. Regardless of the slick metal, he had to continue his descent. The weather would only grow worse.
Carefully he navigated to the next spoke. It was only a couple of feet away, but it seemed ten feet away, for the lightning and veils of rain cast the world into weird, flickering, uncertain perspectives. Twice, his feet skidded an inch or two on the wet beam, and the near-accidents touched off vivid fantasies of him flying off and cracking his skull like a melon on the earth below.
Finally reaching the spoke, he clung to it tightly.
Not much farther to go. Twenty-five feet, maybe less.
Rain showering him, he edged down to the next crossbeam. He reached for the nearby spoke.
Wind wailed, shoved him hard, and threw gritty rain into his eyes. Blinded and knocked off balance, he teetered; then both of his feet slipped off the beam. He lunged for a girder, a cable, a strut, anything that would help him regain his balance, but his hands found no holds. Screaming, he plunged backward, away from the Ferris wheel.
* * *
In the seemingly suspended period of time that marked Jason’s fall, he imagined his body as a big, thick pillow that would strike the ground with only a feather-light thump; He saw himself landing on his back and feeling jubilation as he realized that he’d sustained no injuries whatsoever. His fantasy was hopeless, he knew, like the optimistic yet doomed thoughts of everyone on the brink of a lethal accident, but he imagined it anyway-imagined it so intensely that, in his mind, his miraculous landing had become fact. He experienced it so vividly that his desired outcome seemed inevitable.
Imagining feverishly, he squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the agony of the impact.
Nothing happened.
Heart hammering, he opened his eyes.
He lay on the ground. Puddles bubbled around him.
High above, shadows cloaked the Ferris wheel, pulsating eerily with each discharge of lightning.
He lay there, cold raindrops splattering his face.
He lifted his arm, flexed it. It was okay, not broken.
He wriggled his fingers. They were fine, too.
He did a mental inventory of the remainder of his body, trying to detect any injuries. Nothing hurt. He was in good shape.
And he had fallen from a height of more than twenty feet.
And had not felt the impact.
As if what he had imagined during his fall had become reality.
Trembling, he sat up.
He did not know how this discovery would affect his attempts to solve the mystery of the Stranger; in fact, he was not convinced that it was more than a freak occurrence. But ... if he could create whatever he imagined in this quasi-world, that meant he had some control. No, not control—power. Power. The power to fight back and maybe win this bizarre game the Stranger had made him play.
Excitement coursed through him.
He got to his feet. He searched the concourse, wondering how he should test his newfound ability. Then he saw a large canvas tent, standing a hundred yards ahead.
The huge, colorful banner read: FREAK TOWN.
It was not the idea of a freak show that had hooked his attention. What grabbed him was the open, fluttering flap that formed the tent’s entrance, and the pale-yellow radiance that emanated from within.
Inexplicably, he was drawn to the tent. He did not expect to see any carnival freaks inside. He anticipated something much more extraordinary—although he could not explain why he expected to see anything at all.
Once he reached the entrance, he halted.
The rainfall had ceased. The sky was still black with swollen thunderclouds, but the lightning and thunder had stopped as well. The cool wind that blew sporadically was soft, refreshing.
From his position a couple of feet beyond the doorway, he saw that the pale-yellow incandescence was emitted by rows of lightbulbs. The naked bulbs dangled above the roped-off walkway and the dozen or so stalls behind the ropes.
He stepped inside the chamber.
The motionless air was thick with humidity. It smelled of wet canva
s and sawdust.
“Is anybody here?” he said.
No answer.
It seemed empty, but he could not discard his feeling that something awaited him in there. He strolled down the walkway, peering into each stall he passed. All of the stalls were empty. Except the last one.
On the blanketed platform of the last compartment, Michelle reclined languorously.
“What are you doing in here?” he said.
“Waiting.” She sat up, ran her fingers through her hair.
“Waiting for who?”
“For you.” She smiled.
He approached her. “Hold on, this isn’t making any sense. First of all, do you know where we are?”
“Sure.”
“Where are we?”
“The carnival, silly.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant this place, this world where is it?”
She giggled. “This world? You’re the one who isn’t making any sense, Jason.”
“Okay, forget about that. Tell me how you got here.”
“I walked with you. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, I do. But before I came here, we were riding the Ferris wheel.”
“Yes. About to kiss.” Giggling, she scooted closer to him.
He dragged his hand down his sweaty face. “I’m confused. As a matter of fact, I think I’ve gone crazy. None of this is making any sense at all.”
“Sure, it is.”
“No, it isn’t. I mean, when I first saw you here, you said that you’ve been waiting for me.”
“I have been waiting.” She moved closer until she sat directly in front of him. Her knees pressed against his legs.
“But how did you know I was going to come in here in the first place?”
“Because I know you.”
“What do you mean?”
She picked up his hand, rubbed his fingers. “I know you as well as you know yourself.”
“Come on. I like you, but we’ve only known each other for a couple of months.”
Smiling, she shook her head. “No, longer than that. Much longer.”
“What does that mean?”
Instead of answering, she wrapped her arms around his neck, drew him forward, and kissed him softly on the lips. Her lips were warm and sweet, and he felt a strong urge to forget about everything and go on kissing her forever. He slid his hands down to her waist, then to her hips, while her soft hands kneaded the back of his neck.
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