Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea

by Jonathan David Kranz

  Ethan looked at the tickets in his hands. “There isn’t enough for the case,” he said.

  “Doesn’t have to be,” Rachel said. “You’re buying a distraction.”

  Outside and a few blocks south of the arcade, under a shelter designated for smokers, Rachel opened up her hands for Ethan, exposing a ruby-red case in a hard shell of clear plastic.

  “Holy shit,” Ethan said. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “This’ll be our secret,” Rachel said.

  “Holy shit.”

  “The first of many.”

  July 25, 2013

  At first, Diana thought I was nuts. But I figured if anyone caught us, so what? “It’s your kingdom,” I said.

  “It’s my father’s,” she said.

  “Same difference.”

  She had the keys, she had the alarm codes—and I can find my way around the park blindfolded. Considering how dark it was, that was a good thing. It was weirder than I expected, Happy World after hours. Without people around, it felt deader than dead—the frozen rides seemed to sulk, a party of wallflowers waiting for someone, anyone, to start dancing.

  “I’m getting kind of creeped out,” Diana said, holding on to my arm. “And I don’t think my dad would be thrilled.”

  “That makes it even better,” I said. A father’s disapproval—it’s the Tabasco sauce of love. A sharp right after the Pharaoh’s Fury and just past the Claw, I found our destination: the Magic Carpet. You lie facedown on a platform, the “carpet,” suspended from an armature swinging out from a rotating column. Once in motion, the carpet rises and falls as the arms turn. I’ve long admired it as a machine, but to be honest, I hadn’t ridden it before. I said as much to Diana, and she said the same was true for her. When she was little, sure, she went on the rides. But she hadn’t been on them for years.

  Because she took them for granted? I asked.

  She said it was something like that. “Maybe it’s more about familiarity. You know, breeding contempt.”

  But I talked her into it, painting a picture for her of how cool it would be in the dark, in the silence, when we had the park all to ourselves.

  Then she asked about the dead man.

  I was impressed. I had thought she kept the nuts and bolts of the park at arm’s length, but she knew about the dead man. The way it’s supposed to work, the rides just won’t run unless the operator keeps a hand—or a foot—on the switch. If the operator takes a powder—or drops dead—the ride comes to a halt. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But I know the work-arounds the tech crews use to test the rides.

  “Don’t worry about the dead. I got that covered,” I said. Once I worked my mojo on the operating podium, twisting the safety key while pressing the power and “sequence launch” buttons, we had thirty seconds to climb on our magic carpet, pull the safety cage over our backs, and lock our belts. Of course, the time pressure just made it that much more exciting. When we settled in, I reached for her hand.

  “What if it breaks down in the middle of the ride?” Diana asked.

  “I guess we’re screwed,” I said. “They’ll find our bones in the morning. Side by side.” I frowned, mocking the despair of the poor soul who might discover such a tragedy. “Very romantic.”

  She laughed, and just then, the ride jolted to life. I had turned off the lights and the sound effects that might’ve attracted attention. So it was just us, suddenly moving in the dark, an invisible hand lifting us from above, giving us a gentle push forward. We rose over the park fence, where we nearly brushed the adjacent motel, catching our reflection in a window blue with television light, then circled past a popcorn stand, a bend of Rock-It Roll-It Coaster track, and bare asphalt paths without their usual crowds. With each revolution, we dropped into the wink of a Sea Town streetlight and kept moving, the speed slewing our carpet out a little to the side, but never pushing us beyond an easy glide, a relaxed slicing of air, the kind of flight you’d make if you could open your arms and rise to the sky. Though the safety bars were between me and Diana, there was just enough space for us to face each other and, with a little effort, kiss.

  The ride dropped into its deceleration pattern, easing us to the ground. I unlocked the cage and helped Diana off the carpet.

  “That was amazing,” she said. “I get it now.”

  “Why people like rides?”

  “Why people like love.”

  I would’ve said it was the ride, but I knew from experience that Diana had the power to make me feel dizzy. A good dizzy. But now I needed to say something smooth, appropriate, in control—and all I could think of was the truth. “It’s like everything falling into place,” I said, pressing myself against her, sliding my hands into her back pockets. “For the first time. Like all the pieces coming together.”

  Diana touched my face, fingertips to my cheeks, then broke away to walk out of the park. “Let’s get out of here,” she said over her shoulder, “before it all falls apart.”

  chapter ten

  claws

  “I never really wanted a car,” Rachel said, watching the grasses on either side of the road sway low and gentle under the brush of advancing headlights. “I just figured it would be another thing to look after.”

  “There’s some truth to that,” said Leonard. It was night, and the darkness sucked at the car as they drove through the marshes. With the windows down, the air tumbled inside, moist and salty. “Sometimes I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth. But then, here we are.”

  “Sometimes it just feels good to move,” Rachel said, holding her hand palm forward out the window, pushing back the air.

  “After a day in the booth?” he asked.

  “After anything. I think that’s the appeal of rides. In the parks, I mean.”

  “What is?”

  “Motion. Motion outside ourselves, not like when you walk or run, but motion you’re inside of.”

  “The spinning, twisting, falling thing?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “Huh,” Leonard said.

  Rachel admired his profile, the way he pursed his lips to put on his serious face. That was Leonard in a nutshell, she thought, the alternating layers of put-on and sincerity that left room for doubt while appealing for trust. Part of her advised distance; another part, the one that had drawn her into Leonard’s car on a clingy summer night, wanted to enjoy the ride.

  “I always thought it was the danger,” Leonard said. “The make-believe risk.”

  The mock screams, the riders’ “I’m not going on THAT thing” even as they’re racing toward it—Leonard was right, Rachel thought. Give us danger, but not really. “As long as it stays make-believe,” she said.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “There’s some monkey bread on the back seat.”

  “You think ahead.”

  “That’s what I do.” He knew back roads Rachel did not recognize, and soon they were off the familiar terrain of shy bungalows and bait shacks and onto narrow, unlit streets she hadn’t seen before, the kind she had suspected were “back there” somewhere with broken porches and small, abandoned sailboats, their masts tilted cockeyed to the stars. In another mile, they had left pavement and were on a dirt road cluttered with pits and bumps, the headlights bouncing like fireflies off the bowing marsh grasses on either side of them. They crossed a low and narrow wooden bridge stained with bait and fish guts, and coasted into a clearing at the edge of the lapping bay. Leonard’s headlights exposed a small knot of black steel cages tangled on the ground.

  “Traps,” Leonard said, stopping the car. He cut the engine, and Rachel let her eyes adjust to the dark, watching distant lights from buoys and electric pylons come into focus. While Rachel had anticipated the moment they’d park, it still felt abrupt, like an invited guest knocking at the door before she had finished dressing.

  “You’ve been here before?” she asked.

  “I used to go crabbing here with my grand
pa.”

  “Did you catch any?”

  “Tons. We filled laundry baskets with them. They’d scramble over each other, trying to get out. We put them in the trunk, and if we kept the radio off, you could hear their claws clicking away.” Leonard clawed the air with his fingers.

  “Creepy.”

  “Funny,” Leonard said. “My grandpa, he had a knack for knowing just where to drop the traps. He said it wasn’t the bait, but where you put it. I suspect he was teaching me some larger lesson, but damned if I know what it is.”

  They watched the lights flicker on the water. Rachel could hear Leonard breathe, and she wondered if he could hear her too. This would have been a natural time for a smoke, but he didn’t reach for his cigarettes and, in fact, hadn’t smoked all evening. She wondered how far he had planned ahead, what he expected or maybe feared. She could have asked the same of herself, but instead she hid behind the monkey bread, taking a few bites, although she wasn’t especially hungry. A buoy clanged in the distance. Leonard’s seat rustled, Rachel stiffened, then she felt something touch her hand. She jerked it back, crabs and claws still very present in her mind.

  “Sorry,” Leonard said. The alarm on his face was pitiable.

  “No,” Rachel said, afraid she had hurt his feelings. She reached for his hand. “I was just startled, that’s all.”

  He laced his fingers with hers and smiled. “Sticky.”

  “Your monkey bread.”

  “Guess I didn’t think things through far enough.”

  “I’m guessing you did,” Rachel said. She thought of the journal she had read, of the author who had always thought things through. Or almost always. “Let me ask you something. Suppose there were someone special in your life…”

  “How do you know there isn’t?” Leonard asked mock indignantly.

  Rachel squeezed his hand. “Real or imagined. It doesn’t matter. Suppose you had the keys to the park and could get in after hours. Would you take her on a ride, just the two of you?”

  “It depends,” Leonard said. He turned his head to the windshield, the black bay with tiny speckles of diamond light.

  “Depends on what?”

  “Lots of things. How likely I’d get caught, for example. The girl, of course.”

  “Let’s just say there’s no chance of getting caught, and the girl’s willing.”

  “I don’t know,” Leonard said. “You have keys or something?”

  “I’m talking hypothetically.”

  “Okay. I guess so, hypothetically.” His head was bowed now, over their locked hands. Rachel couldn’t see his face for all the hair that cascaded over his brow. “I’d just want to be sure there wouldn’t be people around. Prying eyes and all.”

  “Suppose it’s off-season—say, in the winter.”

  “In the cold? I don’t like the cold.”

  “So much for romance,” Rachel said, laughing. “Creature comfort comes first?”

  “Comfort’s got nothing to do with it,” Leonard said defensively. “I’m as romantic as the next guy. More so. I wouldn’t worry about me. I’d worry about the ride.”

  “Why?”

  “The rides can be temperamental.” He looked up, met her eyes. “In the heat, parts can swell or jam. We always have to be careful. There are always these little adjustments the maintenance guys have to make.”

  “Heat wouldn’t be a problem in December,” Rachel said.

  “Cold makes its own problems. The cables get stiff. The chains get sticky. And then there’s ice.”

  “So?”

  “Ice can jam things up. It’s unpredictable. And when you’re running a ride, that’s the last thing you want. No,” he said, unlocking his hand from hers, lifting it up to her cheek, “you don’t want the unpredictable.”

  “Well, we’re safe, then. After all,” Rachel said, leaning into Leonard for a kiss, “we’re just talking hypothetically.” His mouth was hot and tasted of mint and monkey bread. His hair swept over her face, shadowing her, and although it was night, she felt a morning mood, a rising-sun lightness of heart.

  * * *

  Several days and a few car rides later, they were in the Pirate’s Playground booth, where “together” was against the rules. Rachel knew better, but Leonard had made a game of popping up from under the barred window, then tapping at the base of the air conditioner, then scratching at the door, and Rachel, unable to get rid of him and uneager to let him go, thought it safer to invite him inside than have him seen hanging around the park. She opened the door for Leonard’s sly smile, welcoming him and their conspiracy of two. Once inside, he reached for her waist. She squeezed his hands, kissed him quickly on the mouth, then pushed him away, smiling.

  “Stay out of sight,” she said. “I can’t have any trouble.”

  “I’m not making any promises,” he said.

  “Look.” She passed him a memo, printed with the pirate bear arrgh-ing at the top of the page, that “wished to remind” park employees of park policies and park rules about friends and family: the privileges they had and, more important, those they did not. “Ours is a welcoming environment,” the memo intoned, “but it is also a business.” Employees could purchase discounted tickets from the office, but under no circumstances were they to admit anyone to the attractions for free. “Abuse of our policies,” the memo concluded, “would be grounds for dismissal.”

  Leonard shrugged. “Same old, same old,” he said.

  “Look at the bottom of the page.” Beneath Bobby Stone’s name, there was another, Diana Stone.

  “Preparing the succession,” Leonard began. He would have said more, but Rachel had him duck under the counter as a customer approached the glass. She sold a packet of tickets, and Leonard took the liberty of tickling her leg. Rachel gave him a gentle kick. But with a left hand no one could see from the other side of the glass, she tangled her fingers in Leonard’s luxuriant hair. The booth grew warm with silence. Another customer came as Leonard’s hand crawled above her knee. She kicked a little harder—but not much. A line formed at the window, and just as Rachel greeted the closest customer with the least perturbed “can I help you?” she could manage, Leonard planted an electric kiss on her bare calf. Letting Leonard in, Rachel realized, was much easier than getting him out. When the crush subsided and the line cleared, she broke the spell and seized the opportunity, after another quick kiss, to push Leonard out the door. “Good riddance,” she teased over his shoulder.

  “Don’t think,” Leonard said, “that it’ll always be this easy.”

  August 14, 2013

  You know, you spend years thinking about it, dreaming about it, fantasizing about it. It’s the hot mist behind your eyes, the big red door you can’t wait to burst through. But sex isn’t just an event with lots of moving parts. By definition, you have company. You have to go together and when you do, you might feel something you forgot to expect: a heartbeat other than your own.

  I’d say it was Diana’s idea if I hadn’t been thinking about it since we started going together. But while it may have been on my mind, Diana’s the one who made it happen. We were just goofing around after our shift at the Moon Walk, making out in the office before we locked up. “My parents are away,” she said. “A friend’s daughter’s wedding in Cherry Hill. What do you think about that?”

  She was doing that thing with my ear, making me crazy. I managed just enough clear thought to bring up the hour. Wouldn’t they be back soon?

  Nope. Staying at a hotel.

  My hands were under her shirt, surveying the terrain, tourists loving the trip. “So you got the house all to yourself?”

  “Not necessarily,” she said, pulling out my hands. She seemed to be examining my nails. “Maybe I’ll have company.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  I felt like an idiot saying it—I mean, this is something you should never have to say to a girl who wants to sleep with you: “I have to call my parents.”

  She gave
me the look I deserved.

  In my defense, I said they would be expecting me.

  “Improvise.”

  I got out my cell and said I was crashing at Tango’s. Given that this is my last summer before college, the ’rents have been cutting me some slack lately. My father cautioned me not to drink too much. “You have work in the morning.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’m tight with the boss.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” he said.

  We both walk to work—neither of our homes is far from the boardwalk. Hers is much closer to the ocean, right on the bulkhead facing the sea, an enormous pile of shingles, columns, and gaping windows. It wasn’t a long walk, but it felt long, and thinking about what was up ahead made walking difficult. I waddled like a duck—an endless source of amusement for Diana.

  Her house was dark, and we weren’t inclined to turn on the lights. Instead of going to her room, we hung downstairs; with the lights out and the view out the glass doors, it was as if the ocean had joined us in the living room. Diana spread a comforter on the floor and motioned me next to her. This is it, I kept thinking. This is it. But I couldn’t move. And with her hands under her haunches, she seemed as awkward as I was. Afraid to face each other, we both looked toward the ocean, sitting as still as statues.

  “This is silly,” Diana finally said. “It’s us, remember? Us.”

  “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I said. “You better lower your expectations.”

  She lifted her shirt up over her head. She must have removed her bra when she went upstairs for the comforter. I’ve felt her breasts before, but I’ve never seen so much of her skin all at once, never seen anything more beautiful in my life. A word popped into my head that seemed so out of place yet so right: “generous.” She was being generous, and I wanted to drown in her.