Dreamland Social Club (31 page)

“Something like that,” Mr. Simmons said. Then he sat and his desk and said, “You can all use the rest of the period to read or catch up. Whatever you want.”

Jane got her book out and pretended to read but was mostly looking over at Leo, who was doing a very good job of not making eye contact with her and who kept touching his seahorse, like the creature itself had an unscratchable itch.

 

All day she looked around for fliers announcing a meeting of the Dreamland Social Club—surely Babette couldn’t stand for things to stay the way they were for long—but none appeared. Jane half feared they never would again—that she had destroyed her mother’s legacy and that her moment as a mermaid would never come to pass.

When she found Cliff Claverack waiting by her locker near day’s end, she thought she might have to disappear into the girls’ room for a good cry. But when he saw her, he waved sort of timidly, so she decided to approach.

“I heard about what you did yesterday,” he said, and his voice actually sounded nice, normal. “Showing my gramps the horse.”

“Yeah, and?”

He stared at the floor, fidgeted. “And, I don’t know, it made my gramps happy.”

“Is this your way of saying thank you?” Jane asked.

“Don’t push your luck, Preemie.” He actually tousled her hair, like she was a child, and then he walked off, leaving her awash in relief. When Cliff Claverack made your day, it was obviously a pretty bad day.

 

Fueled by that interaction, she went down to the museum after school with her list and handed it over to the man at the desk. He’d looked bored by her mere presence, then taken aback when he said, “You have a Claverack horse?”

“I do.”

“Give me a minute, will you? Have a look around.”

In other words, buzz off for a second.

He picked up the phone, dialed a number.

Jane could hear his side of the conversation only in muffled tones as she strolled around the museum. She hadn’t been there since her first day of school, and that seemed somehow wrong; then again, she had practically been living in a Coney Island Museum the whole time. Still, when she came upon a large bell and saw that it was a bell that had been on a pier at Dreamland, she could not resist the urge to ring it, not with anything loud but with a few taps of her fingernails. Just enough to hear a tiny ding. She also couldn’t resist the urge to take out her keychain and see if the Bath key opened any of the museum’s bathhouse lockers. But it was entirely the wrong kind of key.

The guy came into the room just as she moved away from the lockers. “And you said you want to donate it, right? You don’t expect any payment?”

Jane nodded, then he said, “Back in a second.”

Jane walked over to look at the contents of a big glass case by the far window and found the same photo of the Dreamland Social Club that she’d seen in Preemie’s old book. It appeared to be an original print—with scalloped edges and a wrinkle in it—and Jane’s eyes fell again upon the girl in the white dress. She noticed a sort of gash in the print right near her nose and it brought back a memory she really would have preferred to forget.

 

 

Looking out the window of the museum toward the water, Jane squinted and imagined she was looking out of the eyes of the Elephant Hotel, and she thought there were worse things in life than being funny-looking and maybe worse things in life than not having a nose or not having any limbs at all. Like not being loved. Not being able to feel. Not having anything to lose or give away.

The museum guy came back into the room and stopped at Jane’s side. “We’ll take it all,” he said, just like she knew he would. “We’ll send a truck.”

 

At home all the furniture in the living room—even the horse—was covered with sheets and tarps, and Jane had this sinking feeling that something had gone wrong, that the whole thing—inheriting the house—had been a mistake and they had to move out. But then she smelled paint and saw her father up on a ladder with a roller at the far end of the room.

“Whatcha doing, Dad?”

He turned and pulled a face.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re painting.”

“Thought the place could use a little touch-up,” he said. He’d chosen a pale orange color, which Jane thought strange.

“Orange?” she said.

He kept on rolling, and it was actually sort of peachy and lovely. “It’s called Clementine Dreams,” he said. “I took it as a sign.”

Jane went upstairs to change into old clothes and then went back down and picked up a second roller. “You were right,” she said. “About the Anchor.”

“I’m sorry, honey.” He was pouring more paint into the tray.

“No.” She shook her head and got her roller wet. “It’s okay.”

She turned and rolled a tall stripe onto the wall. “So the guy at the museum said they’ll take the horse, and a bunch of Preemie’s stuff, too.”

“Well done,” her father said. “Really. I mean it.”

Marcus came through the front door then with an open letter in his hand. “Columbia,” he said. “In.” He looked around the room and said, “Is that peach?”

“It’s Clementine Dreams,” Jane said, and he took up the third roller.

This time when the house phone rang, Jane’s dad didn’t move an inch. He said, “I think that’s probably for you.”

Jane perched her roller on the tray and approached the phone warily, wondering what Leo could possibly have to say to her now, why he could possibly think that calling their house was a good idea.

She picked up and said, “Hello?”

“Can you meet me?” he said. “Like now?”

“I don’t know.” She twirled the phone’s cord in her fingers. “It’s been sort of a crazy afternoon here.”

“Here too,” he said. “Please. It’s important.”

“Okay,” she said. “Where?”

“I’m at the bar,” he said. “I’m alone.”

“I don’t understand.” It was the thick of happy hour.

“Just knock on the gate when you get here,” he said. “I’ll explain.”

 

Health department notices glued onto the gate to the Anchor announced it had been shut down. There were some numbers and letters and codes listing violations, but Jane already knew what they’d be. She rapped on the gate and it shook and rattled, and then she heard a sort of cranking sound as it started to lift, rolling into itself.

“Can you fit?” Leo said when it was about two feet off the boardwalk. Jane lay down and rolled into the Anchor under the gate. Leo helped her up, then cranked the gate back down and shut.

He said, “Can I get you a drink?”

He had a beer bottle in his hand and Jane said, “I’ll have one of those.” She felt very grown-up here with him, in a bar. Alone. She’d put on jeans and a sort of tank top that had been Birdie’s but looked new, never worn. It was sort of low-cut and, for once, Jane liked that.

Leo went behind the bar and slid open a bin refrigerator, then took the bottle cap off and slid the bottle on a coaster onto the bar in front of Jane. She took a sip and waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. “What are we doing here?” she asked finally.

“He fessed up about not paying the rent, and about the rats, too.”

Jane just waited.

“And did you know you can get shut down for ‘excessive fruit flies’?”

Jane shook her head. He wasn’t drunk, she didn’t think. But there was something sort of off-seeming about Leo. He shook his head and looked around the bar. “I think this might be the Anchor’s last hurrah. You and me right now.”

“I’m really sorry.” She wiped condensation off her beer, then wiped her wet finger on her jeans.

Leo said, “It’s okay. I’m the one who owes you an apology. You can’t help those who don’t help themselves. Isn’t that what they say? I mean, he could’ve done something, you know? Cleaned up?”

Jane just nodded in agreement, and Leo came around and sat on the stool next to her. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this place lately, and I figured out why I’m so messed up about it all.” He sighed. “This was my Trip to the Moon, this place. My Elephant Hotel.”

He shook his head. “I used to build forts behind the bar and pretend we were under attack by some evil foreign navy. I used to pretend I had records of my own, songs I’d written, in the jukebox. I used to build igloos out of the toilet paper supplies in the storeroom.” He paused and seemed sadder for a flash. “I was here on nine-eleven, even though I didn’t really understand what was going on.”

He hung his head now and said, “I’m sure it sounds awful, but I grew up here. At the bar. It’s the one place I remember my parents together and happy.”

“It doesn’t sound awful,” she said. “It sounds fun.”

“I used to think a lot about growing up and being old enough to tend bar and take over from my dad, you know. I guess that ship has sailed. I’ve never even gotten drunk here. It just seems”—he laughed—“
wrong
that I never will.”

She was so happy that they were talking again—and like this—that she had to fight the urge to smile, to dance.

“We could get drunk now,” she said. “We can build a fort out of toilet paper. Whatever you want.”

 

They stocked the jukebox with songs, and almost every time one started Leo would say, “Oh my God, I almost forgot about this song” or “I love this song” or “I hate this song,” but Jane didn’t really recognize any of them, didn’t care. She remembered dancing—that had been her earliest memory—so there must have been music, but she couldn’t remember any songs beyond “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland,” just a feeling. Some of these songs sparked that feeling again. Others, not so much. And then the song that started with “Hey! Ho! Let’s go!” came on and Jane felt a sort of explosion in her brain.
This
was a song she knew. Even though she didn’t know it by name.

They danced in the bar and
on
the bar and had a few more beers and went to the storeroom, but there wasn’t much in the way of toilet paper, and then they sat up on the bar, facing the wall behind it—feet perched on fridges of beer—and looked at all the old postcards and signs on the wall.

“I just can’t believe this wall is going to be gone,” Leo said as they read from old postcards and bar tabs and IOUs, studying pictures of people who’d been to the Anchor—celebrities, the mayor, but also just a woman who’d gone into labor while walking past and tourists who’d gone home to faraway lands with tall enough tales that they’d sent postcards from Peru, Amsterdam, Berlin.

“This is one of my favorites.” Leo pulled a postcard off the wall and read from it. “Everyone has a holy place, a refuge, where their heart is purer, their mind clearer, where they feel close to God or love or truth or whatever it is they happen to worship.”

“I like it,” Jane said. She’d just spotted a stack of postcards advertising the Anchor itself, next to the cash register. “What is it?”

“It’s from some book about a bar, I think.”

Jane studied the attribution on the card—J. R. Moehringer—and read the quote again.

“That’s what this place is for me,” Leo said. “Not just the bar. But Coney. And this wall is a sort of monument.”

“You should talk to the museum,” Jane said, still high on the fact that the museum was going to have its very own Preemie collection. “Maybe they’ll move it.”

“Move
the wall
?”

She shrugged. “They’re coming to get the Claverack horse on Thursday.”

“They are?”

She nodded. “Or they could re-create the wall. Just move the stuff.”

“I don’t know,” Leo said. “I don’t really see the point if the rest of the place is gone.”

Jane didn’t want the place gone either. Because she never wanted to forget this night.

“I heard you have an extra ticket,” he said. “To the presentation?”

She surveyed him, with his tired lollipop eyes and anemone hair, and said reluctantly, “I promised it to Legs.”

“Ah,” Leo said. “Another hot nondate.”