Under the too-white lights of the Rite Aid, it’s hard to know what time it is, let alone what kind of makeup will look good on me. At a party. Tonight. If tonight ever gets here. A check of my watch reveals that only a minute has passed since I last checked.
Time can be a trickster.
Memory, too.
Can I remember, for example, anyone ever teaching me how to apply makeup?
No.
Of course not.
But my mother. Now there was a woman who knew how to wear makeup. Though why I think that I’m not even sure. Except that I remember jars of goo, cases of tiny squares of shimmering colors, and soft brushes—big and small—wherever we lived. I remember her brushing makeup onto my cheeks and onto my eyelids when I begged. I remember looking in the mirror then and seeing nothing there and being a little bit confused but still feeling pretty. Like her, with her silver-dusted eyelids and ruby red lips. Now I know she was faking.
I pick up a pale shade of fleshy cover-up, some rosy blush, and a lip gloss that looks sort of like the color of my lips but with a bit of sparkle. I grab mascara but skip the rest of the eye stuff, since I don’t know what to do with it anyway, and honestly have no idea how any person can pull off silver eyelids.
I swing by hair products and grab some of those: a pomade that claims to “Energize,” a gel that smooths, a mousse that adds body. I’ve got all my bases covered.
Hands full, I head toward the register, surprised to see Halloween candy, since it’s still only September. I consider buying decorations for the house—paper cutouts of pumpkins with demonic faces carved out of them and of witches with gap teeth on broomsticks—but decide not to. It’s pretty much fright night at Preemie’s house every night. I’ve all but stopped going downstairs after dark to get water lest my eyes fall on that horse, with its glassy eyes and bared teeth.
Shivers.
But the question of the horse is no longer the priority.
Thunder. Jump. Wonder. Bath.
These are the new priorities, as is not making a complete fool of myself at this party.
I recognize a guy from school a few spots ahead of me, already at the checkout counter, and I make the mistake of noticing that he is buying condoms. The thought that some of my classmates are having sex, will maybe be having sex tonight, fills me with dread and makes me a little queasy. I’ve only ever kissed a boy once. In London. So it wasn’t even that long ago but it feels that way, and I have to work to remember his name, the way I’ve been working so hard to remember so many other things.
Martin.
Martin Booth.
It wasn’t an especially good kiss and I didn’t really care that much at the time; I just thought it would be nice to get that out of the way. The first. It was, after all, past due. But now I sort of wish it had been better. Or that I’d waited for someone else.
For, let’s face it, Leo.
There is a problem with the line. An old lady is arguing about the price of a certain kind of toilet paper and the cashier is patiently explaining that the circular the old lady is holding is not the current one and that the sale was for the four-pack not the six-pack of rolls anyway. Nothing in the whole store seems to be moving except for their lips and even those seem so . . . very . . . slow. I hope I never become the kind of person who will keep a girl from party prep on account of the price of t.p.
Because I can’t bear to just wait—it makes time go even more slowly—I double back to the hair products and put back the tub called “Energize,” now that I’ve had ample opportunity to actually notice its exorbitant price. After that, I swing down the aisle that holds stomach remedies, but the queasiness has passed now that the guy from school and his condoms are no longer in the store.
I keep moving.
Movement makes time go faster.
The cashier calls for a manager through the store intercom, so I decide to wander a few more aisles. Maybe I’m forgetting something.
Toothpaste. Check.
Razors. Check.
Shampoo. Conditioner. A-okay.
On my way back to the cashier, eventually, I pass through the Halloween section again, this time noticing the costumes. A pirate. Mickey Mouse. Tinker Bell. And a mermaid. And then I am remembering that I am lying on my big, blue beanbag chair as my mother wraps a sheet around my legs.
We are playing mermaids, and the beanbag is supposed to be a seashell, my favorite place to lounge and watch the ocean go by. When my legs are wrapped and the sheet tied with some kind of scarf to help make a fin at the bottom, my mother wraps her own legs up, too, and lies down on the floor in front of me.
“We’re not like other women,” she sings as she starts to fan herself with a folding fan. “We don’t have to clean an oven.”
I’m giggling and pretending to fan myself, too.
“And we nev-er will grow old. . . .” she sings. “We’ve got the world by the tail!”
My journal is in the next room—the kitchen—and I get up and shuffle over to get it because I want to draw a mermaid in it, but as soon as I turn to bring it back to my shell, my mother says, “Eh-eh-eh. It’ll get wet.”
“But I want to draw a mermaid,” I say. I can’t write a lot of letters yet, only the four that spell my name. So my journal is full of pictures, and I only keep it at all because my mother keeps one and it makes me feel grown-up.
“A self-portrait,” my mother says with a laugh. “Great idea. But you’ll have to do it when you’re above water.” She’s still fanning herself and smiling.
“But we live down here.”
She gets up and shimmies into the kitchen and comes back with a clear plastic Ziploc bag. “Keep it in here to keep it dry,” she says. “And we’ll find a good place to hide it.”
“What about behind that shell?” I say, pointing to an ashtray on the coffee table.
“Let’s look around,” she says, and she uses her arms to pretend to swim around the room. “I bet there’s a submarine around here somewhere or a shipwreck or a . . .”
I am struggling again in Rite Aid now.
With a word.
The word at the end of the memory that is missing.
And in a moment I am on line again and I am afraid to look at my watch.
Part Two
THE KEYS TO CONEY ISLAND
CHAPTER one
IN HER ROOM JANE PUT ON some cover-up, blush, and lip gloss. She put a little goop on her fingers and ran it through her hair, then slipped into Birdie’s burgundy dress. She put some money, her keys, and her lip gloss into a beaded purse she’d found in Birdie’s Bavarian Bar and looked for her father to tell him she was going out. When she couldn’t find him or Marcus, she left a note on the kitchen table, then headed out to meet Babette.
Jane walked away from the boardwalk toward Surf Avenue and turned right, then walked past Nathan’s and the Coney Island Museum and a bunch of stores. She stopped in front of Luna Park Furniture with a seed of excitement, but then all she saw inside were leather couches and ornate end tables and kitchen tables made of something mirrored and something black. It didn’t seem fair that such an ordinary store could bear the name of Luna Park. Then again, she was named Luna, and she wasn’t exactly a dazzling specimen either. She felt more like one than she had in years, though—only wished that it were a different night, a different era, that she were on her way to Luna Park—Electric Eden—and not the projects. She passed a few creepy-looking men and tried to push down her fear by imagining a dazzling world of lights, and shimmering lakes, and ladies in gowns and men with top hats, all on their way to Trip to the Moon or Shoot the Chutes, and suddenly wished her brother had come with her.
There was no sign of Babette in front of the McDonald’s where they’d planned to meet. Big double arches came up out of the ground in front and then disappeared into the building’s roof, and Jane peeked inside to see if the yellow structures, like huge, B-movie spider legs, continued there. The McDonald’s definitely seemed like it was out of ano
ther era, just not the right one. Maybe built in the fifties. Babette pulled on her arm.
“Okay. I think I like.” She twirled a finger. “Turn around.”
Jane complied and Babette said, “A lot of people couldn’t really pull if off, the vintage thing. But for you, it sort of works. It turns you from sort of boring into sort of, I don’t know, edgy.”
Now that was a compliment Jane could get behind. She knew she wasn’t beautiful or pretty or, despite Leo’s claim to the contrary, cute. But edgy had a ring to it. It was how she felt inside, too.
The projects didn’t seem all that different from the other apartment complexes around Coney. All the faces they passed as they wound their way down a few paths between buildings were black, but that was the only difference Jane could see, and she still didn’t really get it. What a “project” even was.
They got in an elevator, then came out an outdoor corridor where Babette rang the doorbell of Apartment 12-09. A gorgeous guy—Babette had been right about that, at least—answered the door and looked at Jane in confusion.
Babette said, “H.T. told us to come,” and the guy looked down at her. She said, “You’re Mike, right?”
“No,” he said. “Ike.”
“Shit,” Babette said. “Sorry.”
He shrugged and let them in. “H.T.’s in the kitchen.”
“Cool,” Babette said. “Thanks.”
The apartment had an amazing view through huge windows facing the ocean. Jane walked right over to it and looked out at a cruise ship that was making its way into New York Harbor. She imagined its captain’s view, wondered if he could see her tiny figure at the window through binoculars. Babette appeared at her side with two beers, though Jane took one sip and decided it would be her last. Too much booze and she’d probably turn to Babette and say what she was really thinking.
What are we doing here?
Why are we the only white people?
Is Leo coming?
That was the sort of stuff that was better left unsaid. That and things like I found a set of secret keys inside a mermaid doll.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to say it, though.
Leo was popular. He would definitely be coming.
Right?
The party seemed to take some kind of turn just a few minutes later when a big group came in all at once. Suddenly, the room felt electric, charged, and Jane felt buzzed without so much as a second sip of her beer. “Come on,” Babette said. “Let’s say hi to Debbie.”
And so Jane was finally introduced to the bearded girl. Her hair was light brown, so her beard was, too, and it wasn’t coarse-looking at all. Jane couldn’t help but think it was actually sort of, well, pretty. When Babette ducked away to get another beer, Debbie blurted, “My mother’s the bearded lady at the sideshow. I’m thinking about electrolysis, though.”
Jane just nodded.
Debbie said, “You can touch it if you want,” and stroked her beard. “It’s soft.”
“No,” Jane said. “That’s okay.” She really had no interest.
“Oh, come on,” Debbie said, then took Jane’s hand and pulled it toward her face. Jane complied and stroked it for a second, then shrugged. “It’s just a beard,” she said. “My dad used to have one.”
Debbie raised her beer can to toast. “Now you, I like. And your grandmother, for the record, was one cool lady.” Debbie nodded her head approvingly and Jane said, “You knew her?”
“Not really, but I’ve seen her movies and I used to see her around. I asked her for her autograph once and she told me to feck off.”
“Feck? Really?”
“Yeah, like in a funny way.”
“Oh, okay.”
They both just looked out at the room for a minute and Jane tried to think of something to say. Then Debbie said, “So are you thinking of joining any clubs or anything?”
“I don’t know,” Jane said, stiffening, then decided how to answer. “I move a lot. With my family. Maybe math club or something, though. What clubs are you in?”
It felt like a dare.
She’d seen Debbie in the hall near Room 222 after school that Wednesday.
“Oh, just the math team and science club.” Babette was almost back. “Some others . . .”
Jane hadn’t noticed the music equipment in the corner until Leo was up at the microphone, guitar in hand, with three other guys—one of whom was either Mike or Ike—behind him. The twin who wasn’t in the band approached Leo, said something, and Leo stepped away from the mike.
The twin said, “Give it up for my boy, Leo. And check out my brother rockin’ the bass. Here they are, for your entertainment . . . Cleon!”
A couple of people clapped and woo-hooed, then people started moving forward to watch as the band kicked in with a burst of guitar blare and bass booms. Jane had a weird angle on the stage and saw the seahorse on Leo’s neck, where muscles and veins were shifting as he sang. She saw Venus across the room and thought, Told you so. It was familiar, then decided not to give Venus another thought.
The song was full-on, fierce, an assault on the ears but not in a bad way. And it was followed by another and another—and the room pulsed and sweat—and then the whole party seemed to inhale and wait when Leo put his guitar down. No one wanted it to be over, least of all Jane. But Mike or Ike—whichever twin wasn’t in the band—handed a chair up to the stage, such as it was, and Leo sat down and picked up a saw.
Yes—Jane had checked again—a saw.
Like from a hardware store.
And with the barest of accompaniment from Mike or Ike—whichever one was in the band—on a keyboard set to sound like an old-timey piano, Leo started to play the saw with a violin bow. Jane closed her eyes and listened to the sound—it was uncanny how like a woman it sounded—and recognized the tune somewhere deep in her heart.
Meet me tonight in Dreamland . . .
Opening her eyes, she watched as each person in the room seemed drawn to Leo and his saw. She could only catch glimpses of him as the crowd moved forward to see what was going on, but he was there, working the saw, which bounced and bent and vibrated in his hands.
And even though it was a wordless melody, even though it was clearly not human, Jane swore she could hear the lyrics. Swore it sounded almost exactly like her mother’s voice, humming her to sleep....
She pushed through one room after the next when the band was finished, looking for Leo in the sweaty, drunken crowd—the keys gripped tightly in her hand—but when she found him, he was down the hall, pinned against a wall by Venus. She couldn’t see their faces, but his hands were on the skin between her tiny top and low-rise jeans, their bodies pressed together tight.
Jane’s gut retracted as if from a punch.
She turned away and decided to find Babette and go home, but then she heard Leo call her name. She turned back.
“Hey.” He came closer, then nodded in the general direction of his performance. “What’d you think?”
“Oh.” The moment, the magic, Dreamland was all gone. All she could think about was that shiny red bra, of his hands on Venus’s waist. “You were great.”
“Thanks,” he said, but he looked sort of hurt, like she hadn’t really meant it.
Her body jolted forward from a push, and the keys fell from her hand as she fell into Leo and then recovered with the help of his strong arm.
“Hey,” Leo said, pushing Harvey Claverack in the chest with both hands.
“Mike! Ike!” Leo called out, and immediately the twins and a few other guys were dragging Harvey away, telling him he was out of line, unwelcome.
“She’s not giving you the horse!” Leo snapped as Harvey disappeared through the door.
I’m not? Jane wanted to say.
“You okay?” Leo said finally.
She worked hard to breathe and nodded, then realized the keys weren’t in her hand or anywhere that she could see. Bending down to look for them, she heard Venus calling from down the hall, “Leo, come
out to play,” in a singsong, over and over.
Some kind of inside joke.
“Hey,” Leo said softly, and he took her elbow and helped her up. “What did you lose?”
Right then she saw them and bent to snatch them up. She’d been so mad a few minutes before that she wasn’t going to tell him, after all, but now, well . . . “So you know how your mom said that she and my mom used to break into places after dark and stuff?”
Leo nodded.
“I found these.” Jane opened her hand and Leo took the keys, his fingers briefly brushing hers.
He flipped through them and examined the labels. “Oh. My. Garage.”
Her pulse quickened at the phrase, which she was sure she’d heard before, from her mother’s mouth. This was the kind of boy her mother would have hung out with, flirted with. This was the kind of boy who spoke her mother’s language. He was exactly the kind of boy—no, he was the exact boy—Jane needed. She said, “Do you think any of them still work?”
“From the look in your eyes,” he said, “I’d guess you were going to try to find out?”
Jane nodded and said, “I’d be afraid to do it alone.” Which was true, but of course not exactly why she was asking.
He handed the keys back. “Is that an invitation?”
She nodded. “What are you doing later?”
He smiled again. “Isn’t it already later?”
She shook her head. “Two a.m. Like our mothers did.”
“You’re serious.”
“Very.”
He nodded and said, “You’re on.”
“Well, you survived,” Babette said when they cut up to the boardwalk to walk home. She patted Jane on the back of her calf. “I’m proud of you, kid.”
“Thanks,” Jane said.
She was about to tell Babette everything she’d been keeping to herself—about the postcard, about the fact that her mother and Leo’s had been friends, about the keys—but the words that came out were “Is Venus Leo’s girlfriend?”
Dreamland Social Club Page 11