nearly half a bottle of Rosie's nameless wine that he'd produced from a cooler in the back seat and brought into the restaurant with him – he turned to her and said, 'Now it's time to keep my promise. Next stop, Coney Island!'
It sounded like fun, now that dinner had been such a treat. She had heard of Coney Island ever since she'd been a little girl, but she'd never been there. 'Isn't it sort of- you know, dangerous?' she asked, as they made their way along the quiet sidewalk toward the car. Brooklyn was different from her own neighborhood; now that it was night she heard the faint sound of crickets, and the city seemed far away. She found that it made her think of Jeremy.
'Dangerous?' he was saying. 'You mean lots of blacks and Puerto Ricans?'
'Well… yes, I guess so.'
He smiled reassuringly. 'There's nothing to worry about. There are lots of people there, people of all types, but they're all just interested in having a good time, you'll see. Besides, I keep telling you – tonight's a special night. I'd never put my little girl in any danger!' The smile widened. 'Or myself, either! Just between the two of us, I intend to live forever!'
He snapped on the headlights and spun the steering wheel, and they set out through the darkened streets. Rosie had insisted that she wear her seat belt and shoulder harness and wore his as well; like, other old people he was an awkward, hesitant driver who tended to go too slow. He was so short he had to crane his neck to see over the wheel, and he kept peering back and forth at every cross street, proceeding with extreme caution as if unsure of the way.
'Are you looking for signs?' she asked.
'What? Signs?' He darted her a nervous glance.
'For Coney Island.'
'Oh!' He laughed. 'No, no, not really, I just want to get us there safe and sound. You can't be too careful, that's what I always say.' He patted the dashboard. 'Never was fond of these contraptions.'
She soon saw that she'd been wrong; he did know the way, even in the darkness through the back streets of Brooklyn. Once she even saw him looking up through the windshield rather than at the road, as if he was navigating by the stars. Within a few minutes they were rolling down Shore Parkway, the water on their right with the lights of tankers reflected in it, a warm wind rushing through the open windows. Faster traffic passed them by. Behind them, across the water, she saw Staten Island and the glowing form of the Statue of Liberty; ahead stretched the Verrazano Bridge, a spiderweb of cables and lights. The highway passed beneath the nearest arch, an immense gateway, and as the little car moved through it, she felt the bridge pass over her like a wave. It was like entering a new country or, on a certain midnight, a new year, feeling the change wash through her every cell; she felt invigorated now, as if breathing cleaner air – as if her cares, her loneliness, her poverty were in that other world behind her.
In the distance ahead of them, across Gravesend Bay, gleamed the lights of the amusement park. One tall structure, shaped like a palm tree, stood out above the others.
'The parachute jump,' said Rosie. 'I think we'll pass it up. There's so much else to do.'
She was looking toward the lights, enjoying the pleasures of expectation, when the car passed a group of running shapes on the stretch of grass to their right – late-night joggers? fleeing fugitives? It was impossible to tell, they'd gone by so fast, but somehow the vision had been unnerving, those heaving brutish shapes. ..
Moments later she felt a little bump beneath the car. Looking back, straining against the constricting web of her shoulder harness, she could see the dark, humped form of some small animal dead behind them on the highway. Rosie appeared not to notice. They hadn't killed it, she told herself, it had obviously been dead a long time. Still, her mood of expectancy was dimmed.
It was dimmed even more when, after Rosie had pulled into a commercial parking lot on Neptune Avenue near the boardwalk and they'd gotten out, she heard the roll of distant thunder.
'Maybe we'd better stay close to the car,' she said, eyeing the sky uncertainly. It looked clear enough now, though, the half moon almost supernaturally bright, and she could see stars up there she never saw in Manhattan's hazy skies.
Rosie, she saw, was shaking his head and smiling, not even bothering to glance up.
'Don't worry,' he said, 'I heard the report. The rain'll hold off for a while yet. We'll have time to do one or two things, I promise you.' He reflected a moment. 'In fact, we'll have time to do three things, three delights: the ferris wheel, the beach, and' – he cocked his head -'and a surprise.'
Ahead of them ran the dark length of the boardwalk, dividing the beach from the amusement area. The ferris wheel rose gaudily in the distance, twirling like a great jeweled pinwheel. As they drew closer, the crowds increased – young people mostly, brown and black and white, a few in beards and yarmulkes, couples and groups of boys and, even on a Saturday night, many families with children in strollers or carriages. The air was filled with a cacophony of music and voices: disco piped from a dodgem-car emporium near Nathan's, salsa from an all-night cuchifrito stand, rock songs sounding hard and tinny from hand-held radios, calliope music from a carousel on the next block, screams from the roller coaster rumbling overhead with cyclone outlined in colored lights on its side, the cries of food vendors selling pizza, Italian sausages, clams on the half shell, saltwater taffy, cotton candy, buttered corn on the cob. Young men in colorful booths hawked games of skill and chance, as if this were some electrified Arabian bazaar. Carol heard the whoop of an occasional siren, maniacal laughter from a loudspeaker outside the funhouse, wild animal sounds from the safari ride, the buzz and grate and clank and rattle of a hundred attractions that, all around them now, were flashing with lights, constantly in motion – a whole new world of movement, of strange, gargantuan machine shapes whirling and spinning and bobbing and dipping like a factory gone mad.
An area devoted entirely to kiddie rides reminded her of the children's section at Voorhis, fond parents grinning at offspring who rode miniature fire engines round and round in endless circles, and racing cars, dune buggies, helicopters, pony carts, old-time autos, boats that churned slowly through a shallow ring of water, spaceships that echoed the huge silver Moon Rocket looming beside the boardwalk, a scale-model kiddie roller coaster (That’s the only kind they'll ever get me on, thought Carol), a half-sized Tilt-a-Whirl, a serpentine caterpillar ride with wide eyes and broad grin, a beleaguered-looking merry-go-round, music issuing from it, with mirrored panels and peeling paint and horses that looked somehow gaunt and starved.
'I'm dizzy,' said Carol, 'this place is like a dream,' instinctively drawing closer to Rosie as he threaded his way through the crowd. She felt particularly vulnerable in her white dress, which stood out from all the clothes around her and which she feared would be stained by ice cream or mustard or a spilled glass of orangeade. Food and drink were everywhere, carried in every hand, forever underfoot; the smell of fried things and spices and the sugar smell of cotton candy hung in the air. She thought of her period again and wondered if her headache would come back. The wine they'd had at dinner was already making her sleepy.
'We'll try the ferris wheel first,' said Rosie, turning to her and raising his voice to make himself heard. 'Maybe it'll help us get our bearings.' He nodded toward the immense structure now ahead of them, a hundred fifty feet of steel and light bulbs called the Wonder Wheel. The seats were enclosed within metal cages lined with wire screening; the outer cages had the better view, while an inner ring of cages slipped back and forth, swinging wildly on short metal tracks.
Carol looked around and lost sight of Rosie, then saw his diminutive form by the ticket booth. He returned to her bearing two yellow tickets. 'Come,' he said, 'we'll take an outside car. You're not scared, are you?'
Carol hesitated. 'Well, I've been on ferris wheels before, at county fairs… but never anything this big.'
He chuckled. 'Don't worry,' he said, ushering her into a waiting car, 'it's no more dangerous than going up in an elevator.'
The car was large. Haifa dozen people were already inside, seated on two small wooden benches. She and Rosie took their seats on the third, Carol making sure the seat was clean before sitting down. An attendant slid the door shut, enclosing them all within the wire cage.
There was a sudden vibration; the great wheel began to turn. The car gave a lurch and was airborne. On the bench behind them a couple began talking urgently in Spanish; on the farther seat a small, nervous child asked its parents, 'When's it gonna stop?'
The car did stop, halfway up the side of the circle, while down below two more cars were filled. Just outside the cage glowed a row of bare light bulbs, with thousands more ringing the wheel, illuminating the thick iron cogs, the peeling turquoise paint, the rusting chicken wire that stretched like a spiderweb between the metal braces, as if warning that, up close, the material world was but an insubstantial thing, with gaps yawning wide.
Carol turned and looked behind her, at the grotesque illuminated facade of Spook-a-Rama, with its strange
