RON WOLFE

OUR FRIEND ELECTRICITY

I LOVED TORI. TORI LOVED Coney Island. The moral is such an old one, maybe you know it already.

Don't take any wooden nickels.

1

Our first time at Coney, I guessed Tori liked slumming. Anything Tori liked was fine with me. Especially when we got there, it was fine with me. The place did something for her, made her the ballerina of the boardwalk.
Every wisp of a breeze, every movement she made that day played in her summer dress the color of white sand. She whirled and her hair streamed in waves of blonde, bright as glass in the morning sun. She breathed in the salt air as it mingled with the smells of cotton candy and sea weed and spoilage, and her eyes were like fireworks of green and gold sparks.
"See, we are having fun, Brad," she said. "Didn't I tell you? Run, silly, catch me!" I ran, and I caught.
Coney's old parachute drop haunted the beach like a dim metal ghost in the salt haze. The roller coaster was broken. The Wonder Wheel turned its sad, slow revolutions as if it were grinding time to a fine dust. But then, I looked at Tori. She loved it, every bit of it.
We ate "Hygrade Frankfurters" from a stand with painted pictures of sausages and pizza and ice cream cones that looked like freak show attractions, and Tori loved it.
We saw women with white and yellow snakes and tattoos, and men with nipple rings; and some hunched figure in a filthy ski parka; and a straw-haired gift in a nothing bikini, just standing there, hands clasped between her breasts in the way she must have learned singing in church; and the Latina woman with the tragic face, the wet eyes, trying to win a goldfish in a ring-toss game.
Cheers and organ music reached us from the new baseball stadium. I imagined a different crowd there: families, boys with baseball heroes, girls with the clean look of suburban shopping malls. Tori wouldn't go there.
"It's awful," she said the only time she even glanced toward the stadium, where the Brooklyn Cyclones were winning.
The score didn't matter. I don't know baseball. The Cyclones won just being there, Brooklyn's first professional baseball team since the Dodgers left forty-five years ago. They meant change.
"I want the old--the real Coney Island. Don't you?" Tori said, pulling me toward a shooting gallery. I didn't need the reminder of guns.
Old and real is where the fun is all worn out, and marked down, and sold broken with sharp edges to people who can't have anything better. But Tori loved it, and so all I saw was Tori.
"Did you know? I have a talent, Brad. A super secret, psychic talent," she said, making the "s" sounds in "super secret psychic" a conspiratorial whisper.
"You could fool me," I said. We'd met yesterday.
"You tell me the name of the last girl you cared about even a little. I'll tell you how much she really meant to you."
My tongue caught.
"Please?"
"Tori, it was a long time --"
"Just her first name. What could a name hurt? You'll be surprised how good I am."
"Anna," I said.
Tori took a soft breath, as if breathing in "Anna," who had taught me how to thumb wrestle and to sort my laundry colors, and whose cheeks had blushed when she laughed.
"It wasn't all that serious," Tori said, "but, oh! -- she broke your heart. They all break your heart."
I swallowed and tried to smile as if she'd told a joke, and then did smile, I think, at the flattery that beautiful women trampled through my life -- a parade of heartbreakers. I needed Tori's healing touch, yes, almost a mother's touch, tracing my face, as if to check me for a fever.
"It's just a game, Brad, silly," she said. "You try it. Ask me."
"I will. Later," I lied.
We aimed squirt guns into the red-rimmed mouths of plastic clowns, each of us trying to be the first to pop a balloon. Tori brushed my left arm. Crowding me to the right was some withered brown mummy who had shed his ancient wrappings for a pair of red-striped Speedos, and then a kid who looked like he might kill somebody if he lost.
My pistol was sad to the touch. Nearly all the once-shiny black paint had worn off the grip, and the metal beneath was a dull blue- gray, the color of a bad sky. But Tori aimed well, and her laugh was so high and sweet, I swear even the old guy and the kid threw the contest. They wanted her to win like I did. They wanted to see, like I did, what winning would do for her smile. We all got the prize that day.
And then, I asked her.
"His name?" She worked the teddy bear she'd won like a puppet, making the bear's head nod as if in greeting to me. "Skip," she said. "The bear's name is Skip, too."
Skip, I thought, and I'm no more psychic than a sidewalk, but something came to me. I swore I'd never play this game again.
"Skip had money," I said, "lots of money, and he knew how to throw it around."
"Could be," Tori said, and she made the bear say it, too, "He might have been rich. I'm a rich, rich bear. But I was a long, long time ago. How did you know?"
"Skip...," I said. "Skipper, skipper of a yacht, makes him rich Skipper.,'
"The gentleman wins the bear," Tori said, tucking Skip under my right arm, and then taking my left arm herself, a cool touch of possession.
She taught me how to promenade the boardwalk.
Casey would waltz With a strawberry blonde, And the band played on

2

We met cute. Doesn't everybody?
I'd been browsing through the sale shelves and boxes in front of the Strand bookstore, 12th and Broadway, that Friday evening. I was working my way from the one dollar books to the forty-eight-centers.
It was down there among the most sadly forsaken -- the ones you had to stoop to, literally -- that I found the first book I'd ever candied and cudgeled through publication years ago as Brad Vogler, Boy Editor. It was a science-fiction paperback called Crimson Cosmos.
Then: "Yeww!" she said, our moment of introduction.
My line of sight rose from the book's clotted red cover to a surprise glimpse down the neckline of Tori's white shell top (lacy white bra; front catch; first sight of the pendant she always wore, a white disk in a silver mounting), and all in a rush: neck-lips- eyes. Ice blue eyes in this light.
She didn't see me at all; she was leaning toward me, staring at the book cover. I felt like I'd been caught with a dead frog in my hand, just when a barefoot boy finds out nothing matters but girls. "Are you buying that?" she said.
No, I yearned to answer, but I couldn't.
I remembered how it felt to write the letter of acceptance for that book, the first I'd ever bought. My letter told a fifty-five-year- old newspaper sports reporter in Denton, Texas, that he had sold his novel, his first. I believed I had discovered the next Robert Heinlein, if not the next Norman Mailer, and he thought he had uncovered the next John Campbell.
It turned out that all we had found in each other was another paperback book with stock art for the cover: blood oozing down like a sloppy coat of Sherwin Williams, and a couple of flat yellow eyes staring out of the red. But the author had gathered nerve and got married on the strength of that sale, and rounded out his belated brood with two girls adopted from China. He still wrote - - high school football scores and "Merry Christmas" in the family photo card he sent me every year. And I couldn't say no, so I said something crazy.
"I've read it, but I'll buy it for you."
"Really?" she said, or maybe, "Really!" or "Realllly...." or Latin or dolphin talk. I just knew I was being sized up.
I paid with a five-dollar bill. Forgot the change. Some eons of floating time later, I woke up having coffee with her, our fingers almost touching across the little table. Talking. Still talking over empty cups.
She liked white in the summer, red in the winter; oatmeal sprinkled with Red Hots, and she didn't like earrings. Mostly, she asked about me.
I felt so right with her, I didn't try to sound interesting. Maybe I came off coherent.
Listening, Tori withdrew a silver case from her white purse, and a card from the case. The case was inscribed with initials in script, TCS. The card had nothing but her name on it, as if I'd ever forget Tori Christine Slayton.
She added her phone number to the card with a silver pen, slid it to me, and our hands brushed and lingered, mine slightly over hers.
"Can I call you tomorrow?" I said.
"No. Meet me tomorrow."
"Anywhere."
"Brad, silly --" A bit of a smile crossed Tori's face, quick as a butterfly. Then, mock-serious, she said, "You mean that? Anywhere? All right, I dare you."
She took back the card, turned it over to plain white and wrote something tiny on the back. She folded the card twice, so I couldn't see what she'd written, and placed it in my hand, folding my fingers over the hard-edged little package with a squeeze.
"No fair peeking," Tori said. "Read it tomorrow morning. Meet me there. We'll have fun, I promise."
I went strictly by the rules, afraid of breaking the magic spell if I didn't. In the morning, I read the card and caught the subway, a line I'd never ridden before, to a place I'd never been before. But I'd heard of it. Everybody's heard of Coney Island.
Tori was waiting for me in front of the Headless Woman sideshow. ("Still alive. See her living body without a head. Alive!") And that was our first time at Coney.
I'll be with you When the roses bloom again

3

Roses. I sent her white roses on Monday. She called; I called; she called. We had lunch on Wednesday, a quick bite.
She had a small antiques shop on the Upper West Side -- high end, American Federal furniture and some Victorian, she said. She was antiques, and me? B in a way I hadn't told her yet, I was collectibles. The comparison was close enough to make me uncomfortable.
We arranged to meet again Friday after work in front of the Strand. "Dress up for me, won't you?" Tori said. It seemed to be a hint.
Thursday, I laid out the best of my two summer suits, the white one that made me wonder how Tom Wolfe kept his so clean.
Friday, I had the night planned as well as I could. So much about her made thoughts drift away. Her perfume: I fancied it was made of champagne and cinnamon. The way she said my name, the way she played with it, making it sound like an ice cream flavor. The way people watched us, talking when they thought we couldn't hear.
"... Vogue, I'm sure of it." "...stare at her, at least close your mouth ...." "...Grace Kelly ...."
Those same eyes, finding me, blinked and narrowed with itchy 'guesses. He must be...her brother. Her boss. He must be rich, but he sure doesn't look it.
I clean up all right, fair shape for a desk job, and thirty-seven isn't so old. But Tori is twenty-five, twenty, six, close to that, and nobody ever took me to be such great company until she did.
I had this idea of a movie at the Angelika, and then dinner in the Village, candles and spumoni. I was full of love songs, old ones that I must have half-heard sometime and filed away, just in case I ever felt like grinning like a street loon.
Ida, sweet as apple Ci-hi-hi-der

4

Tori had warned me she might be late; she expected some buyers who liked to haggle at the last minute.
Waiting, I made up stories about Brad the Mad. Every now and then, Brad the Mad escaped from the insane asylum, but the police knew where to find him. Whenever he broke loose, Brad the Mad dressed up in a white suit and stood in front of the Strand Bookstore, waiting for the woman who was only a delusion.
Tori arrived moments before I conjured up police sirens. She looked laser bright. Somehow, she'd guessed I would wear white, her color, and her dress was a whipped-cream white linen with a silver chain around the waist, silver bracelets, ornately of antique design; white silk scarf, heels. The moon-white pendant was ivory. It was faintly carved: "Elephas ...."
"I guess you like the look," Tori said. I'd been staring.
I rushed into my dinner-and-a-movie plan as if the combination might amaze her.
"Could we do the movie another time?" she said. "I've missed you, Brad. I just want your attention."
The candles and spumoni part held up, and I caught a break on the waiter. He was gay, and he left us alone.
"So," Tori said, "Mr. Important Book Editor, you still haven't told me enough about your job."
I wished I were a handsome photo on a dust jacket, riding princely over an author's bio full of lies. He flipped crêpes, he topped trees.
"English major from Lincoln, Nebraska, seeks literary career," I said, trying not to shrug. "Braves the big city, finds job as editor with fly-by-night science-fiction and mystery publisher .... "
"Crimson Cosmos," Tori said. She lifted her wineglass, a toast. Her fingernails showed silver edges.
"You've read it?" I said.
"No, but it's my favorite book." And that smile again, fire and innocence.
"The meteoric rise continues," I said, "a career arc that takes our hero from rockets and murders, to cookbooks, and then grade school science texts --"
She questioned with an eyebrow. "You know what I like about you?" Tori said. "You have smart eyes. You haven't found your niche yet, but you will."
"-- Our Friend Electricity, thank you, please hold your applause. And now, I'm at Recollections Publishing. I do price guides for nostalgic babyboomers."
"Like? --"
"Jungle Fever: A Collector's Guide to Tiki."
"Oh, no!"
"Tiki music, tiki dolls, even snow globes. I don't get it, but there were GIs coming home after World War Two, already feeling nostalgic about the South Pacific. And now, their kids are collecting old tiki stuff all over again. But I don't feel nostalgia for much of anything." I caught the mistake. "But I like antiques."
Tori laughed. "Oh, Brad, silly, you do not. I don't blame you. Antiques aren't nostalgia, antiques are investment. You can love an antique and not like it in the least."
I splashed the last of our bottle, a French Chardonnay that Tori had chosen, into our glasses, and raised mine.
"To the brand new," I said, already planning a second bottle I couldn't afford to keep the table and the company.
Her expression drifted, blanked for a moment. Her eyes seemed to mist, but it might have been a trick of the candlelight.
"I have to go," Tori said, half rising. My face must have slid into my lap like slush.
"Oh my, I said that all wrong, didn't I?" She reached across the table to touch my nose, a playful flick. Her finger softly traced a smile across my lips. "Brad, silly. Let me try it again. We should go."
And now, she had neon inside her, excitement that flickered and caught with the words, "Coney Island! We could, still."
My dumb grin seemed to encourage her.
"Tonight. We had such fun the last time, Brad, let's do it, let's go. Now. Can we?"
I may have yammered something about the subways being bad at night. But Tori had the answer: She had a car. She knew ways to Coney Island, and we could be there in no time.
We whisked down the street to her car, if that's what you'd call it, parked at the curb between a red Mustang and some blocky sort of coupe.
Tori's car was a low, sculpted swoop of black metal and polished wood. Street lights played laser tag over the hood. Then, metal gave way to the cherry coach, made tight like an admiral's skiff. It was open-topped, brass- and copper-trimmed, upholstered in leather, and the wheels were wire-rim. The Great Gatsby could have wrestled for the keys to Tori's car with Deckard from Blade Runner.
I set foot on the running board. The car welcomed me like a butler with muscle. The seat had been tailored to me.
"It's a Panhard and Levassor Sport," Tori said, pulling into the street. "1914. Like it?"
"What's it doing outside the museum?"
She drove fast, as I should have guessed she would, and she knew the streets, how to work the lanes, how to keep moving. I must have looked pale as my suit.
"It's some of the original chassis, but then a lot of restoration," Tori said. "Not a faithful restoration at all, though. The engine is something else, and it has protections built into it that aren't even close to the market, some that probably aren't legal. Watch your fingers."
The car seemed to repel other traffic. Even Pakistani cab drivers were afraid to come near it, scared of scratching it.
"Don't worry. It's not mine," Tori said. "I borrowed it from one of my customers -- part of the deal for an eighteenth-century bedroom set he just had to have. I meet some interesting people."
Next thing I knew, we were sailing over the Brooklyn Bridge, the wind whipping Tori's hair like white fire; and then onto the Queens Expressway. We hit 70, 75, 80. Tori's white scarf streamed, it pulled loose, and I turned to see it go soaring like a ghost into the night. I reached as if I should have caught it, Tori laughing, and me laughing; and I pulled off my necktie and let that go, too.
Mermaid Avenue welcomed us with its offers of saltwater taffy, beer, and body-piercing, pawn shops, gun shops. Dim lights shone in old windows above the striped and rusted awnings.
A gaunt woman stopped to watch us from the sidewalk. Her hair was dyed orange, and she wore a black plastic trash bag twisted elegantly across her shoulders like a feather boa. To her, we were the aliens. I was Bug-eyed Brad from Planet Starbucks.
Bug-eyed Brad scans the ruins for life as he knows it, life that bags the trash, that fixes broken windows. But he is the stranger in a strange land of knives and needles. He expects to be eaten.
"...Giuliani saying he wants to make Coney Island 'something very special again,' can you believe it?" Tori said. "It's special the way it is. Special the way it was. Oh, look! --"
We passed the remains of a shabby little candy store. Inside, the shelving and fixtures had been pushed to the center, giving the painters room to work. Already, it had the promise of something the mayor would approve.
But Tori had seen something else, and we turned toward the crawling lights of the old amusement park.
Coney Island was a different world in the dark, too bright and too shadowed. It left me straining to recognize anything I'd seen before. A mist of raindrops fell and passed, cleansing no part of the night.
Tori parked facing the roller coaster. High over us, the big letters read "Cyclone" in a way that chilled me like a cold smile: The letters looked eaten away, so many bulbs were dead. But Tori loved it, and I was high from the car ride. We ran like Mouseketeers into Disneyland.
The roller coaster was shut down again, or still, but Tori coaxed me onto the Wonder Wheel.
"You can see everything from the top," she promised.
At the top, our metal cage groaned and swung over a nightscape more speckled than lit with yellow bulbs and red neon. The rides below us looked tiny and meaningless. We faced toward a jumbled rim that appeared to be housing projects, mostly dark. But the air smelled fresh.
"Feel better up here?" Tori said, holding my arm, leaning tightly against me. I nodded. "I knew you would," she said.
Her pendant seemed almost to glow. An elephant was carved into the ivory, the creature's trunk lifted, and the words read, "Elephas non timet."
Tori smiled as if pleased that I'd noticed. She scooped the pendant lightly in her fingers, holding it toward me. "'The elephant does not fear,'" she said. "It's an ancient saying. The elephant's trunk raised that way means good luck. Long life. Wisdom." "It looks old."
"Not so very, around 1900. A century is nothing to an elephant."
"So! -- all this, and she's an elephant expert, too. What else?"
"Maybe you'll find out," Tori said, as the Ferris wheel descended us into the smells of hot grease and machine oil.
We took the funhouse ride into its hell of plywood demons and painted flames, and Tori loved it. We joined a drunken clot of teenagers on a whirligig called the Calypso. I came off with a spattered stripe of something blue and sticky across my left sleeve.
"Here, this way, this way!" Tori said, pulling me. "Let's see how good you are at Skee-Ball."
The Skee-Ball setup was between a couple other games that had their metal shutters pulled down, scrawled with spray-painted gang signs. We had Skee-Ball to ourselves, just us and the sour yellow glow that spilled over the row of games, and the attendant. He slumped on a dangerously tilted stool at the entrance, head fallen to his chest, asleep or dead.
I fished a quarter to drop in the slot that was nicked and dented from all the wasted coins that had gone through it. Nine balls clacked down the chute. Tori bounced on her toes like a little girl trying to see the top of her birthday cake, and I tried to catch the mood.
We took turns. She rolled a ball, and then I did, and I learned how she played: Anything I scored above a ten was good for a baby hug. The score was eight balls and three little hugs, and I knew how it might feel to hold her.
Tori poised the last ball. She glanced at the pink prize tickets that had curled out of the battered machine as we scored. I dreaded waking the attendant to redeem them.
"Here's the prize I want," she said, turning the hard wooden ball in her hands like it was made of phantom quartz, like it was telling her secrets.
"You'd have to steal it," I said.
"Maybe you'd steal it for me."
She gave me the ball, wrapping my hesitant fingers around it, and cupping her cool hands over mine. "It's old, it's very old," she said. "I think it's old as the park. I think it remembers all the hands that have touched it, just like we're doing. Hundreds, thousands, lives and lives and lives, and every touch leaves something. Every touch tells something."
I may have flinched. Tori's grip tightened. Her breath came warm, close to my face.
"What do you love about a book, Brad? That it can hold lives? Well, so can this, only real ones."
She let go, and I saw the ball; it was the decrepit brown of age and skin oil, nicked, scratched, dented flat in a couple places.
"... he doesn't care," Tori said, eying the big-bellied attendant. He had a Yankees ball cap pulled low. His dark glasses suggested he had been asleep since daylight. He had on a red T-shirt, and a baggy clown's pair of farm overalls with the ragged legs cut off to make shorts.
"Just hold the ball close against your leg, away from him, and we'll walk away. Please, Brad?"
I hadn't stolen since college. Petty shoplifting had been a brief, edgy craze in my sophomore year. You'd ask the check-out clerk what time it was, and in the moment it took her to look at the wall clock behind her, you'd snitch a pack of Dentyne. You'd buy a roll of waxed paper, and she'd never notice that you'd dropped two slim jars of olives down the cardboard tube. You'd try for the cigarettes, even though you didn't smoke —
I was good, and I was caught. A dumb thrill nearly cost my degree. Now, I freak when I've bought something that accidentally sets off the store alarm.
But we passed the attendant. "Shhhhh!" Tori hushed too loudly. He never stirred.
We were outside the Skee-Ball game.
We were steps away; we were gone.
I gave the ball a tiny flick. It smacked my hand like a soft kiss. I don't know what roused him.
The attendant roared a curse behind us. "Oh my, oh my, that bad boy's mad!..." Tori warned lightly, as if in answer to an amusing dare. She kicked off her high heels to run. I had no choice.
We tore, dodging fat men and slow men and blue jeans, belly buttons, baby carriages, we ran kicking trash, our hands clasped. Her excitement shot me like a current, jolting the fear out of me.
This was like another ride to Tori, like the Calypso only faster. But something gripped me. Caught me at the neck. The attendant locked a thick arm around me, holding me back, dragging me down. I lost Tori. He smelled of whiskey and vomit. My knees hit the asphalt, and he was on top of me.
He moved to pin my arms and shoulders. I knew this position from grade school: I was going to take a beating in the face. No teacher was going to pull him off me. He drizzled me with sweat and saliva, trying to capture my right arm. My fist clenched the ball.
I swung at him, catching him hard on the temple with a crack that I only hoped was the ball breaking. But the ball didn't break. He fell beside me, rolling, howling.
I pulled to my feet. He made it to his hands and knees, head down, as if he suddenly had decided to study bugs on the ground. With his left hand, he clasped his head. Blood welled between his fingers. A slow drop. A drop, a drop. A stain.
For a moment, it seemed that blood was falling all around me. A real rain had begun. Tori shook me, and she caught my hand again, led me and ran with me through the rain and the yells that cracked like thunder, and nobody stopped us.
Once we hit the expressway, she slowed below the limit. She let the rain wash me. She swerved off to a gas station, where she pulled up the car's top. She brought me a Coke.
"See, we are having fun, Brad," she said, drenched and muddied and altogether the most beautiful blessing I'd ever imagined.
I found something in my hand. The ball. The damned, wonderful ball. I tossed it to her. She was a good catch, too.
"Yours, I believe," I said.
Wait till the sun shines, Nellie, And the clouds go drifting by.

5

We drove to my apartment in the East Village, listening to cool jazz on the Panhard and Levassor's Bose FM stereo. A parking space was waiting for us. It was that kind of night.
"I have something for you, too," Tori said. She snapped open the glove box, withdrawing some object she kept hidden.
I saw yet another Tori then, one hesitant with a gift, afraid to go through with it, anxious that I wouldn't like it. What she might have done that I wouldn't like, if a street fight didn't count as a problem, I had no wild idea.
"Here --" She showed me the copy of Crimson Cosmos I'd bought her. A smooth bit of cardboard peeked out of the pages. A bookmark.
"Pick a card," Tori said, "any card...."
Withdrawn, it was a Rolodex card. On it, I read the named of a Fifth Avenue publishing house, the first to which I'd applied for a job in New York, and the one to which I still submitted an updated resume every year. The man's name on the card, I could no more approach than the planet Venus. Below the name was a number.
"He's been one of my best clients for years," Tori said. "I've told him about you. He wants you to call."
My wet thumb smudged the ink on the card, only confirming it was real.
"But don't call him, Brad. Make him call you. That way, you have the advantage. And he will call."
I stared at her. She made a cross-eyed face that scattered my dumbfoundedness.
"You were right about Skip," Tori said. "He was rich, and he taught me about winning. So, Brad, silly, are you going to invite a lady in from the rain, or what?"

6

I used to collect bad writing to share with friends, mostly other bottom-feeders in genre book and magazine fiction. Six or eight of us had a regular beer night at Tad's Tap on Bleecker Street. We called it the Pen and Pitcher Club.
"Her globes suspended from her like bells on a Christmas tree, I mean the fair-sized round kind."
Collector's price guides don't produce keepers like that. I quit showing up at Tad's for being a bore. A few others made the climb to better jobs and bigger publishers. Finally, only the washouts kept the faith.
The author of "Her globes suspended..." may have been the best of us, after all. He had the fool's nerve to stick his pan in the stream, hoping for gold, and he dredged up mud. But it looked like gold to him.
And here I am, Tori, dipping my rusty pan into that same flow that can't convey the touch of sunlight, or the smell of chocolate, or the taste of tears, hoping for something that gleams.

7

We dripped and squeaked our way up the two flights of stairs to my apartment. As my key clicked the lock, I suddenly wished the door wouldn't open.
My first apartment in New York was in the meat-packing district. I left my shoes inside the door to keep from tracking livestock blood. My second was next to a coke dealer whose clientele wasn't much on apologies for having pounded the wrong door.
This one, I'd considered a spectacular move up: three rooms, or four if you count the living room and kitchen as separate because of a shelf divider. The neighbors were reasonably quiet. The previous tenant had been entrenched there since the '60s, and must have sat a lot. The lime shag carpet was good as new.
One day, I blinked the carpet to oblivion, just quit seeing it B
Until my door swung open, and I snapped on the light to hit Tori with a sock of green that would have flattened St. Paddy.
But the carpet made no impression. "Where's Skip?" she said. "Remember me? Where am I?"
The toy bear. Skip was in the bedroom closet, top shelf, stuffed far in the back.
I found him quickly, though, and placed him on the dresser. Tori arranged him with the Skee-Ball between his legs. Wet-haired Tori was in my bedroom, wriggling her toes in the shag.
"Let me get you a towel," I offered.
"I'd like to use the room," she said. "I need a little more repair than a towel."
I showed her, like there was some trick to finding the bathroom, and she closed the door. I heard her open the little cupboard where I kept my mismatched towels; heard, then, the familiar creak, cry and rattle from the hot water faucet over the tub. Rustling sounds. I stood there, as she must have expected I would.
"I knew you'd have books," Tori said through the door. "You have wonderful bookcases."
"They're oak. They're what I splurge on."
Sound of the faucets turned off. Sound of body in water.
"Umm, this feels good," she said. "You should do this, too."
I glanced back to the bedroom -- the neckties that hung off the doorknob, the scatter of socks and magazines in the corner, the whole disarray. I began to scoop and hide.
The bathroom door slipped open with a wisp of steam.
The dullest part of me expected to see her step out dressed and dried and ready to leave. The rest of my awful imagination conjured up, I don't know, some Botticelli Venus-in-the-hallway with discreet hands.
Instead, she stood gift-wrapped in my best white towel, still sparkling with droplets of water, as if I had this coming -- as if I knew what to do with it.
"You might try kissing me," Tori said.
I moved to her, my hands finding her warm shoulders, hers finding my face, my neck, my back. The towel fell between us.
We transformed my empire's five steps between bath and bed into another promenade: the lady wearing nothing but her pendant, and her dizzy escort with the ragged knees. Tori made the ceiling light go away. We closed to kiss.
The shag carpet worked its magic on us. A stinging blue snap of static electricity sparked between our lips.
"Our friend electricity," Tori said, rubbing her mouth.
"Our friend electricity," I said, pressing mine to the sore spot on hers.
Our friend electricity joined us and melted us. We soothed. We dared. We tumbled.
Bodies and bed sheets, her hands and her kisses, we danced to the brink of a thousand little deaths. She led me on; she held me back, only to rush again. In a gasp, she called me Skip.
I tried to pretend I hadn't heard. But hard eyes shone on the dresser: Skip watching me. I tried to hide my anger, but it found a way to show.
Skip!
"Brad, I'm sorry...."
Skip!
"Brad, you're hurting...."
Skip!
"Brad! Brad! Brad, silly...Brad...."
She clung to me, bound to my whim and forgiveness, but I was the one then who couldn't let go. I followed her into a soft, singing rhythm, a lullaby whisper.
"He was a long time ago -- ohh! --"
In the wee small hours of later, I woke to find Tori sobbing. I kissed her neck. I kissed a warm tear. "I don't care...," I said. "He doesn't matter."
"It isn't him, it isn't you," she said. "It's nothing. It's me."
"Tori --"
"They all break your heart."
I touched her nose, copying Tori's little gesture from the restaurant. "If the girl thinks my poor heart is broken right now, the girl's not too bright."
"Just hold me."
Before had been only a taste of her. When I slept again, it was the deep fall of the feasted, and it was knowing that no Annas could ever break my heart again.
I slept on the currents of Tori's breath. Above me, her eyes were the sky. "Tell me what it's like to dream about Lincoln, Nebraska," she said. I guess we talked more.
In the morning, Tori was gone. I remembered her voice like music through a heavy wall, the rhythm but not the words, not the sense of it. Not then.
She'd taken Skip and the Skee-Ball. In their place, she'd left a name card folded twice.
I didn't have to read it.

8

"Mr. Vogler, this is Sara in library reference. I found the expression you asked about, and it means what you thought. But it's short for an even older saying -- one that dates back to Pliny the Eider, the Roman author. Also, it became the motto of the Malatesta family, the tyrants of Rimini, Italy, in the Middle Ages. They believed it justified the criminal behavior that kept their family in power. Elephas indus culices non timet. 'The Indian elephant does not fear the mosquito.'" It means, in context, 'does not fear to crush the insect.'"
So, Mr. Vogler, Mr. Important Book Editor, you with the hollow eyes in the mirror, tell me all about yourself.
Sit down and -- no ? All right, then, pace your cage in circles, but tell me.
You like: The color blue, pancakes at midnight, and all you really want is to hold this little card so tightly that the ink bleeds into your fingertips; that's how much you want to hold her, any part of her.
You don't like: Needles, strep throat, Coney Island. Old, happy-creepy Coney Island. Wrecked and rotted Coney island. Tori loves Coney Island.
See these books? This shelf? All these books about New York? You've never read one. You knew these books would tell you all the ways you don't belong,
Which of these books throws the best, do you think? Way to go, sport! Hit the wall, win the lady a bear. Coney Island, pp. 139- 141.
"...by 1904, home to three dazzling parks: Steeplechase with its mechanical horse race; Luna with its elephants, acrobats and a million incandescent lights; and Dreamland, for which the lovely waltz...."
Tell me what it's like to dream about Lincoln, Nebraska, and I'll tell you what it's like to dream of Luna.
"...200,000 people a day. They came for the beach, the parks, the fun rides, the crowd. The biggest attraction of all was electricity."
Our friend electricity.
"... time when a single bulb might have seemed a miracle or a terrible omen of change, Coney Island's electrical glow carried thirty miles out to sea."
Our friend electricity. What is it, really? Hm? Brad? Don't you wonder?
Hey, I just about wrote the book, remember? "Electricity is the flow of electrons --"
Brad, silly. Electricity is light. Light waves.
(Tori's sweet, soft hair, brushing my lidded eyes.)
Elephas non timer, Brad.
(Her lips to my ear.)
Want to ride the waves?

9

It was noon when I began searching for her on the subway platform over Surf Avenue. I stood there, grinning for a moment, as if she might come to meet me, carrying a picnic basket with a calico cloth.
A block west, I joined the boardwalk throng. I let the crowd sweep me to the aquarium, and jostle me back to Astroland, the amusement park, and Sideshows by the Sea. The Human Blockhead had nothing to show me.
I looked for her at Nathan's Famous, where the street corner reeked of wieners and mustard. Two policemen were eating hot dogs, holding their dripping dogs at a distance like medical specimens to keep from staining their blue uniforms. Head down, I hid in the crowd.
Damned and Delighted: A Collectors' Guide to Mermaid Avenue.
Clean people tried to avoid me. They eyed me the way I had stared at losers on the boardwalk. I found a restroom and checked myself in the tin mirror. Uncombed. Unshaven. I looked drunk. I did what I could with cold water.
By evening, I knew where I'd find her, where I'd known all along. Look for mermaids in the drowning depths. Thunder snarled as if to remind me of blood and rain, and the possibility that I might have killed a man -- that the next policeman I saw might be carrying a sketch of me.
Tori stood just under the Skee-Ball sign, wearing the same white dress she had worn our first time at Coney Island. Her ivory pendant gleamed white. To her side, a new attendant watched the games -- watched her. He was a shirtless beanpole with his eyes opened wide like a chicken's. Tori's left hand braced tauntingly against her hip. Her right hand flipped some tiny thing I couldn't see.
She came to me with a crystal smile, a face of such delight, I felt the sting of tears.
"I won," she said, kissing the back of her closed right hand. "Take me on the roller coaster, and you can have the prize."
The Cyclone was running. I don't know how we got there. We waited turn after turn, because Tori wanted the first car.
Finally, the train banged to a stop in front of us, and we climbed on. My hands clenched the safety bar. Tori squeezed against me, tight and warm.
"You don't like roller coasters," she said, a teasing tone that dropped to something else, something like sadness. "You don't like any of this, I know. I'm sorry."
She looked away from me. I felt her tremble as the car jolted forward. It ground its racheta-rakkata way up the first climb.
"Here --" Tori said, coaxing my hand loose from the bar. "What I promised you, the prize I won."
I looked at the object she'd given me. It was a rough wooden disk, with the image of an Indian's head stamped on one side. Around the head, the letters read: "Don't take any wooden nickels." A spatter of rain struck the coin.
"For luck," she said, and her tongue traced my lips. Her body, close against me, told me secrets; she had nothing else under the dress. She kissed me, hard, as we took the fall.
The coaster shook us like a mean dog. It shuddered its timbers, throwing us side to side. Once, it swooped a curve and gave us the same view as from the top of the Wonder Wheel, only better. Someone seemed to have knocked down the buildings like so many blocks. We could see the ocean.
Climb. Fall. Curve. Tori shrieked, and the nickel bit into my hand.
Climb. Fall. My face stretched back. Curve. I had a sense of shooting past a maze of towers, faces in the windows.
The last fall eased into the platform, the end of the ride. But we didn't stop. I saw the crowd, the ride attendants, as smears of surprise.
Climb. Fall. Curve. We screamed over the course again. Darkness triggered the lights, and the "Cyclone" sign crackled on. Tori locked close to me.
"They'll stop us," I said. "They have ways --" She didn't hear me.
Climb. The park washed in light. No one tried to stop us. They had no ways at all.
Fall. The towers again, become a giant's garden of lights. We cut through silver curtains of drizzly rain that whipped and stung our faces, and yet, in some crazy way, made us laugh.
Curve. We soared over the towers. Ant masses of people swarmed far beneath us. The white lights turned my eyes to burning water.
Climb. Fall. Twist. Fracture. Red. Black. Fire. Crystal. Rainbow.
Failing.
In the air, falling.
Casey would waltz
With a strawberry blonde
And the band played on.
He'd glide cross the floor
With the girl he adored
And the band played on.
Calliope music swirled through my head. I was spinning, up and down, and spinning. I clutched a spiraled pole to keep from losing balance.
His brain was so loaded,
It nearly exploded.
The poor girl would shake
With alarm
Tori! "It's all right, Brad." Tori! "I'm here." Tori! "Look at me. Look at me. Brad, silly. Please, while you can."
I tried, but the whole world kept revolving. Horses, lions, bears, swans, ran circles around me.
He'd ne'er leave the girl
With the strawberry curls--
I'd been wrong about the roller coaster. Terribly wrong. We were on a carousel.
Mine was the sterling white stallion, and Tori had mastered a gryphon with a golden head, riding perfectly sidesaddle. But Tori was different.
Her hair was combed up, arranged into heavy waves under a white hat with a silk bow. Her white dress had full sleeves with lace cuffs and flounced shoulders. The satin skirt swam past her feet. The square-shaped neckline, trimmed with brocade roses, showcased her pendant. But the ivory had fallen out of it, leaving just the silver.
A question shaped my mouth, but no words fit the question.
Tori said, "This is what it's like to dream of Luna."
She reached; I took her hand. The carousel toyed with us.
"What was it you said, Brad? 'The girl's not too bright.' She finally learned the secret. She took ninety-seven times to get it right. And you know what? Right feels like dying."
The carousel slowed. I lost her touch. Riders scrambled on and off, bodies and motion between us. I stumbled to the ground, calling for her.
"Tori!...." The crowd swallowed my voice, as it had my last sight of her.
Say this for madness. When madness is all around you, then madness is what you've got. You go with madness.
I accepted my new world of lighted towers, fairy-tale minarets rimmed with stars, Arabian spires circled with lights. I threw myself into a foreign crowd of women who dressed like Tori in long skirts, and some who bound themselves into breathless S-shapes, their waists cinched to nothing; boys in shorts, girls in ruffles, men wearing straw hats and bowlers, stiff collars, bow ties, suspenders, vests, watch chains, canes.
My clothes were something like that. They were like wearing my brother's clothes that I'd never have bought for myself, familiar and wrong all at once. But I seemed to fit with the crowd.
I pushed through knots of laughing strangers, searching for Tori. Someone slapped me on the back, as if I were part of a joke. I called her name, and another voice blended with mine. We sang rounds.
"Tori!"
"Lemonade! Peanuts !"
My throat caught. Sweat streamed my face. No one else seemed to feel as hot as I did. I brought concern to other faces; I may have looked sick. The air wasn't helping.
The salt smell hadn't changed, but it mingled with human and livestock scents that assaulted me, like a circus locker room.
I wandered beneath acrobats, past tumblers and jugglers. Camels and elephants thumped by. Bands played, and midgets frolicked.
Lighted signs grandly promised "THE STREETS OF FIRE!" "TRIP TO THE MOON!" "THE LAUGHING SHOW!" "FIRE AND FLAMES!" "WHIRL THE WHIRL!" "INFANT INCUBATORS!" "LUNA PARK'S WORLD-FAMOUS SHOOT THE CHUTES !"
The crowd pulled me to watch the wrestlers, the bareback riders. Then, like crows, we were off all at once, rushing to the next attraction, gaining heads and legs along the way. We jammed, we stalled, we hurried on. I strained to hear those voices around me that seemed to understand the excitement.
"...were going to hang her, you know." "Hang? They couldn't. Would take a chain...." "...this, instead...." "...thunder and flash, do you think, when they give it to her?"
I pulled a man's sleeve to engage him. "I don't like it, sir, and I won't watch it," he said. His jaw set, and he bulled his way against the rush, but he lost.
We poured into an arena that smelled of dirt and animals, stronger than ever. We overflowed the tiers of seats, molding ourselves into a human wall around the open space.
"It's time, they're coming...." "...murdering elephant, three men she's killed." "They'll make a pretty light of her."
Across the arena, a gray shape lumbered into recognition. The elephant walked passively toward the center, led by two men: one in a red uniform with gold trim and a high cap; the other, a shorter man in a brown tweed suit and derby.
The elephant's massive head came up as if she suddenly had broken the concentration of a deep thought. Her legs froze.
The man in the red uniform said something to her. I sensed it was not a command, but a comfort. His smile belonged in a hospital. He gently touched. He stroked the huge elephant's leathery trunk.
The crowd hushed. "Now, Topsy, now, now, old Topsy girl...," he said, but she backed away with a start that brought people to their feet, as if to run.
"I can't do this to her, Mr. Dundy," the man said to his tweed-suited companion. "I won't let her be --"
"You w-will if you work for m-me," Mr. Dundy ordered, his stammer like nicks in the blade of his voice.
"No, sir, I won't."
The man in the red uniform stood a moment, as if he might defiantly sweep the elephant into his arms like a baby and run with her. What he did, finally, was walk away. In the crowd, some jeered at him.
Mr. Dundy wiped his face with a sharply pressed white handkerchief that he stuffed back into his lapel pocket. He motioned, and a crew of other men took the elephant keeper's place. No shiny red suits masked their business. They had sticks with nails and hooks, and they prodded and baited the elephant into the center of the arena, all the while keeping their distance from her, wounding her in the nip-and-run way of small predators. They roped her to wooden stakes.
And now, yet other men set to work on her, much to the crowd's approval.
"...Thomas Edison's own...." "...in from New Jersey...." "...wires, see what they're doing, they're making what they call connections .... "
Thomas Edison's men attached heavy copper wires and electrodes to chains around the elephant's right front and left rear feet, and scrambled away from her.
And now, all eyes were back to Mr. Dundy. He had taken his place barely apart from the crowd, just far enough into the arena to stand out, but safely away from the elephant. Two women stood next to him tightly, possessively. He had the swagger of a rock star. His left arm wrapped a brunette with pouty, apple-red lips. His right arm —
"Tori!" Her name exploded from my throat, but she didn't hear me.
I fought the wall of backs and shoulders that kept me away from her, edging, squeezing, forcing my way into the arena. Rough hands shoved me forward. I fell through a gap in the wall, landing sideways. Something snapped in my side; I felt a tiny, sudden loss of breath, and feared I'd broken a rib. But I gathered my feet beneath me in practically the same motion.
Thinking better, I would have run the circumference of the arena until it led me to Tori. I wasn't thinking that way. I headed straight across the opening, becoming part of the show. Band music struck up as if to accompany my act.
All around the cobbler's bench, The monkey chased the weasel
In the center, I stopped, helpless. The elephant's gaze held me. I could have touched her. I did.
From a distance, she looked weathered and hard as stone. But her skin was warm, and my hand brushed silky soft hair that was nearly invisible.
"Topsy...."
Her massive front legs bent with a clatter of chains. She knelt as if to offer me a ride. Her eyes held vast secrets.
The crowd cheered. Mr. Dundy laughed his approval. He strode out to meet me, both women in tow.
"First thing we t-tried on her, we soaked her carrots in c-cyanide," he said. "She never f-felt a thing. Why, I'd just about decided she had no f-feelings at all. But y-you have a way with her."
He wanted to shake hands, but I stood there, numb, arms to my sides, looking at Tori. She give me not the slightest sign of recognition.
He saw my obsession. "Lillian," he addressed her, "do you k-know this man?"
She looked me up and down, but not like when I'd offered to buy her Crimson Cosmos. No play, no surprises. Her expression dismissed me.
"Tori, what's wrong?" I tried to take her hand.
"You are!" she said, peeling my fingers off her as if they were leeches. Her mouth pulled down to an expression she'd never worn before. "You're as wrong as I ever seen."
Mr. Dundy reclaimed her, and as he did, a dozen other men materialized from out of the crowd -- dirtied workmen, some of them, and big men with clean, pressed suits and clenched hands.
"I'm a friend of hers," I said, as if somebody had to believe me.
"A f-friend, are you?" he said. "Well, here, f-friend. Take this, and g-get yourself lost."
He flipped something high into the air, where it caught the light, spinning, flashing gold. I caught it with a cold slap into my palm: a gold coin.
"Take...this!" Mr. Dundy cried in sudden recovery of his laughing mood. He hands emerged from his pants pockets with clutches of gold coins that he threw into the crowd, whirling as he let go. He made himself a fountain, spraying gold.
People oooh'ed, and cheered, and feet left the ground, and hands reached high. Bodies collided. Fistfights erupted. Screams. People fell to hands and knees, scrabbling after coins on the ground.
Then, laughter wove and threaded through the riot, somehow congealing into a chant, until it seemed that everyone took it up in one voice. The two women played cheerleader.
The earth may quake
And banks may break
But Skip Dundy
Pays in gold!
Whoops and laughter echoed off the bedazzled towers, until the noise startled Topsy. The elephant roused to her feet. She backed as if to turn and run, straining the ropes that tethered her legs to the ground. One of the heaviest stakes inched free.
Mr. Dundy and his women retreated. His derby jarred loose. His hairpiece slipped. He pulled the big handkerchief from his pocket again, waving it high over his head. The band broke out a drum roll, and the crowd picked up a different cry.
"Bad Topsy!" "Bad Topsy!"
Topsy lifted her enormous head to trumpet her rage and defiance. I ran from her, too. Mr. Dundy whipped the handkerchief down. The park's lights dimmed and flickered.
Billows of white smoke exploded from the elephant's feet. She stiffened in a series of shivers and twitches that tickled most of the crowd.
Topsy seemed to imagine her death was only a funny feeling she could shake off.
Near me, a woman fainted. Someone cursed; someone cried.
In the end, it was like seeing a grand old building implode: that same confusion of wonder and terror, a thrill in the destruction of something huge and irreplaceable.
Topsy was dead on her feet, smoke coiling around her. Then, she seemed to lift. Absurdly, I thought of robot jets firing under her feet, blasting her high into the sheltering night.
She never reached the stars, though. She fell to her right side, her legs locked straight, as if she'd never lived at all. I felt the impact through my feet, and in the pit of my stomach like the sound of a cannon, and in my heart.
The elephant's liquid brown eyes rolled up. The current still surged through her. Her feet charred.
"C-cut the electricity!" Mr. Dundy ordered, but too late. Power hummed through the air. Blue fire crackled and arced around the fallen elephant. It snaked into the crowd. People fell back as if toppled by armies of invisible demons swinging sledge hammers.
The fire enveloped Tori.
A tendril of blue lightning snaked from Tori's eyes, connecting with mine, and I knew. I understood. I shared with her the jungle heat, the rain, the serenity, the sense of time as something soft and slow, like the rain.
And Luna Park went black.

10

I have to tell you. This isn't the place, but you need to know. If I were editing this manuscript, I would mark an "X" here and write in the margin: "author intrusion," meaning the author has barged in like a gatecrasher, spoiling the story. But this can't wait. You'll know why.
There are mermaids in the electric ocean of time. If you glance up from your reading right now, you might see one. She could be that close.
Something in her smile, something in her eyes, makes you trust her.
The deeper she takes you, the more you feel safe with her. When you trust her completely, you're already into the drowning depths.
But that's not what she wants, and that's not why she drowned all those others before you.
How many? Pick a number, any number, say -- ninety-six. She cared all she could for them, and a mermaid's slightest care is more than a king's richest dream. But she didn't care enough to save them with her mermaid magic. They were all wooden nickels.
You, though, you're the one. Maybe not to another soul in the universe, but you have this one great thing going for you: You're the one she's tried so hard to find.
She drowned ninety-six, and then you came along. Or she would have drowned 960, until you came along; or 960 million, looking for you.
Numbers mean nothing to her.
But you do.

11

Luna Park fell to darkness as completely as, moments before, it had been incredibly illuminated. The cries were like those of primitives in the grip of a solar eclipse.
Dizziness took me, but I knew it would be fatal to fall. I would be under panicked feet. Hands clutched at me, feeling for someone familiar, for husband or mother, and shoving the stranger away.
I caught a glint of silver light, of moonglow reflected from something familiar, the silver rim of Tori's hollow pendant -- waiting for its remembrance of Topsy.
"Brad..." Her breath cooled my face. "Brad, silly." She held me. "I have something for you."
I dimly saw her touch a finger to the corner of her eye. She lifted a tear that she touched to my lips, and followed the taste with a kiss, and the blue fire poured into me. And the jungle, and the rain, and the river, and the ocean.
A fly in the water stirs ripples, tiny waves; and the elephant rides. Something shifted. The ground slid beneath me.
"I don't have the words --" Tori said.
"You don't need any."
The elephant's brain is twice the size of a person's. No one knows how much of the universe fits in an elephant's mind, or what becomes of the universe when the elephant dies. But I learned enough when the current ran through me.
I learned mermaids don't wander. They orbit. They swim in elliptical orbits that take them farther and farther away from where they started from where they belong. They always return, though. They have to.
But once upon a time, there was a mermaid who swam out too far in the ocean -- so far, she couldn't get back. She drifted, lost. She hid among people so well, no one knew she was a mermaid. But she began to have bad effects on them.
She belonged in the past, and the past infected her. She made other people long for the past, too. They cherished old pieces of times that never belonged to them, when they should have been thinking of now and tomorrow.
She needed something more than her mermaid magic to get back, and it took her ninety-seven times to find it -- to find me.
"Ride the waves, Brad," she said. I kissed her for all I was worth.
I don't know when Luna's lights came back. But I know this:
When people ran home that night to say what wonders they had seen at Luna Park, it wouldn't be the lights, or the Shoot the Chutes, or that poor, dead Topsy creature they told about. It would be us.
But as the park's electrical power took hold again, Tori changed. She stood away from me. She had Lillian's mean mouth for a moment, but she smiled then, still my Tori.
I seemed to be climbing, higher and higher into a blue rain, away from her. Racheta-rakkata.
She faded, a white figure lost in the light.
What am I, Tori? Ninety-six, and then me, and we all loved you, Tori, and so what? Did I love you the most? The least? The fastest? The blindest? What made me any different?
I never heard the answer, but I read it. Her last gift to a reader. Her face blurred as I left her. Her image doubled, tripled, as if I were seeing her through rippled glass. I read the answer from her lips.
Oh Brad silly I love you
        silly I love you
                love you
          you
          you
          you
          you
          you
          you Climb.
Fall.
Curve.

12

One night, the old Pen and Pitcher Club voted the worst cliche in science fiction. The rose in his hand swept the field. A man goes to sleep; he dreams of a rose; he wakes up with a rose in his hand.
The Cyclone ground to a stop. I got off alone. Nobody cared.
I shambled through the amusement park, side aching, vaguely aware of something digging at my hand. And then, I remembered: Skip's gold coin.
And then, I remembered: Tori's wooden nickel.
I'd come again, always again, to the Skee-Ball emporium. The attendant who'd fought me had taken his place again on the stool. His head slumped to his chest, and he looked almost the same as before, just as dead. The only difference was the bandage under his Yankees cap.
Closer, I saw it wasn't a hospital bandage around his head. It was a rag that he might have tied himself. The spot where I'd hit him was mottled the rust color of dried blood, and the rag was greasy from whatever ointment he'd smeared on.
If he breathed, I couldn't see it. People can die from the delayed effects of a concussion.
I rolled the object in my hand. Wood is warm, metal is cold. But everything felt cold that night. Without looking, I slid the coin onto the glass prize counter beside him, and I walked away.
What's a Skee-Ball worth, anyway?
The city no longer frightened me for being old. One day, I finished the books I'd been afraid to read.
Topsy was a bad elephant, but she had her reasons. The last man she killed had fed her a lighted cigarette.
Skip died of pneumonia by some accounts, but others say it was a hat pin stabbed through his heart by a jilted lover.
Nostalgia isn't selling anymore. People want brand new. New books, new politics, new streets, new meanings, new medicines, new lives. New Coney Island.
But Tori was right about me changing jobs. The last book I candied and cudgeled through publication here made it to the New York Times list. The publisher said he'd called me on the recommendation of a man I'd barely known in the Pen and Pitcher Club.
There! -- I felt the tug, that little slide again, that tells me I don't have to stay here. I have just enough of Tori's mermaid magic in me to go out in the ocean and swim to...I don't know where. But what if I couldn't get back? What if I had to love someone new in order to get back?
I see her a million times a day, in sunlight on blonde hair, in a certain smile, in every white dress, in everything silver.
Sleeping, I search for my Tori through Luna, and Steeplechase, and Dreamland, for which the lovely waltz was written. Meet me in Dreamland, sweet dreamy Dreamland. But the old songs are out of my head.
I have a talent. A super secret psychic talent. You tell me the name of the last one you cared about even a little. I'll tell you how much that meant to you.
It broke your heart. They all break your heart.
--For Jan, life's exception