Wild Ride (5 page)

“No.” Mab picked up the fork. “I got knocked down.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I can start on the Fortune-Telling Machine right away.” Mab cut a piece of ice cream–filled waffle and bit into it, the cold high-fat cream flavored with something clean and fresh melting into the hot buttery crunch of the homemade whole-wheat pastry. Not maple nut ice cream this time. “Lemon?” she said to Cindy.

“Lemon balm, poppy seeds, and passionflower.” Cindy put the ice
cream back in the freezer case. “I call it The-Kids-Will-Go-Back-to-School-Soon Lemon because it's very calming. It was popular with mothers the last week the park was open full-time, so I brought it back for Halloween.” She jerked her head to the mother with the two little kids in front of the jukebox. “I just double-dipped her. Two kids under four? Yowza. I double-dipped the guy with the hat, too. I think he comes here to get away from his wife; he's always getting naggy phone calls from somebody named Ursula. I don't know who the new guy is on the end, but he looks familiar. I'll find out before he goes.”

“Yes, you will,” Mab said, bemused again by Cindy's lust to acquire information about people. Things you could build or paint were so much more interesting than human beings. And so much safer.

Until they came to life and ran you down.

Mab scooped up more yellow ice cream. It did make her feel better.

“Now,” Cindy said, “who knocked you down? Because whoever it is gets no ice cream here for life.”

“A big metal-covered robot clown,” Mab said around her mouthful of ice cream and waffle. “But I hallucinated that.”

“You hit your head and hallucinated a robot clown? How did you hit your head?”

“The robot clown knocked me down.”

Cindy frowned at her. “You got a chicken-and-egg thing going on there.”

“I don't care,” Mab said. “I'm going to work on the Fortune-Telling Machine.” She thought about that while Cindy went over to refresh the coffee cup of the guy with the trilby hat and the glasses. The Machine was going to be so beautiful when she'd restored it, once she'd studied it to get it right. Cindy came back, and Mab said, “I'm going to have to do rubbings of all four sides.”

“Of the robot clown?” Cindy said.

“The Fortune-Telling Machine. Forget the robot clown.”

“I don't want to forget the robot clown, the robot clown is exciting.”

“That's because it didn't run into you.”

Cindy shook her head. “Are you kidding? This is a great story to tell people. You can say, ‘I got run down by a robot clown.' All I can say is,
‘My roommate got run down by a robot clown.' It's not the same thing.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “I'm thirty-two years old, and I've never been run down by a robot clown. That never bothered me before, but now—”

Mab put her fork down. “You know what was strange?”

“The robot clown.”

“Besides that. Glenda wasn't surprised when I talked about it. She asked me questions about it like it was real.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“She was busy selling me on the idea that it was a hallucination. Which, of course, it was. But if it wasn't, I'd swear she knew what it really was.”

“Huh. I don't remember any park legends about robot clowns.”

“There are park legends?” Mab frowned. “I researched this park and didn't find any legends.” She thought about it. “Of course, I was looking for photographs of rides.”

“Oh, yeah, we got legends. Like the Devil's Drop is haunted. And if you cheat on your honey here, you die of a heart attack with a mark on your chest. And if you throw a penny in the paddleboat lake, your wish will come true.”

Mab blinked. “The last one's kind of an anticlimax.”

“It doesn't work, either.” Cindy looked around and then leaned across the counter to Mab. “But some stuff does work here. Like Delpha really can tell your fortune.”

“Not mine, she can't,” Mab said, digging into her waffles again. “She's been after me ever since I got here, but I am not going into that booth. Going in there to repaint it was bad enough. She kept looking at me, like she was seeing something I didn't know about.”

“She wants to tell your fortune and you won't let her?” Cindy said, pulling back. “Are you crazy? I'd kill to have her do mine.”

“So go.” Mab forked more waffle.

“I've tried. She won't do me. She says I'm a naturally happy person and I shouldn't mess with fate.”

“Oh.” Mab chewed a little slower as she considered that. “Then why is she so hot to get me in there? I'm a naturally happy person.”

Cindy gave her a you're-kidding-me look.

“No, I am,” Mab said. “I love my work.”

“That's all you do,” Cindy said. “You won't even take time out to smell the robot clown.”

Mab screwed up her face. “Ew.”

“Yeah, that wasn't good. But really, all this great stuff around you that you could be enjoying, and you go to work. I mean, this is probably the longest conversation we've ever had, and you've been living with me for nine months.”

“I don't really have much interesting to say,” Mab said. “Except about my work. Work is great stuff.”

Cindy looked skeptical.

“And I'm not good with people,” Mab said, trying to apologize. “It's not you. I've just found in general that it's better to shut up and work than try to . . . you know.”

“Talk to people?” Cindy said, sounding appalled.

“People are—”
Pain
. “—strange,” Mab said. “Work is safe. You know what's great? I get to start restoring the Fortune-Telling Machine today. I think it's going to be magnificent.” She forked up more waffle. “My life is great.”

“Your work is great,” Cindy said, her cheeriness dialed down a notch to what might have been exasperation on a lesser woman. “You have no life.”

“Hey,” Mab said.

“Sorry,” Cindy said. “I should talk. I live for my ice cream.” She chewed her lip for a moment, looking thoughtful. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“About what?”

“About the
robot clown
,” Cindy said. “You're part of a new legend.”

“Not if I don't tell anybody.” Mab stabbed the last piece of waffle. “Glenda seemed like she wanted to keep it quiet.”

“Glenda gets what she wants. I think she can . . .” Cindy stopped, letting her voice taper off.

“What?” Mab said.

“Nothing,” Cindy said. “You wouldn't believe me anyway. Look, you
have to open yourself to the possibilities in your life, or you won't have any.”

“I wouldn't describe a robot clown I hallucinated as a life possibility.” Mab stopped to think. “I'm not sure what I would describe as a life possibility.”

Cindy leaned in close and whispered, “There's one at the end of the counter.”

Mab turned to look. The guy with the good shoulders looked familiar, but she couldn't remember him. And she'd have remembered him. Not pretty but . . . Long nose, pointed chin, strong hand reaching for his coffee cup—

A yellow iron-gloved hand reaching down to her—

Not that. That was a hallucination.

This guy was not a hallucination. He looked down the counter and caught her watching him and grinned crookedly, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, and she thought,
Hello
.

“You okay?” Cindy said, and Mab tore her eyes away.

“Yeah. I'm just having a strange twenty-four hours. I'll be okay when I get back to work.”

The door opened, and Ashley Willhoite came in, one of the few people Mab could recognize as a regular, mainly because avoiding her was impossible. Pretty, sunny Ashley was sure everybody wanted to talk to her, so she never met a stranger.

Wonder what that's like
, Mab thought as Ashley plopped herself down on the next stool.

Cindy said, “Hi, Ashley! Breakfast?”

“Maple on waffle, please.” Ashley smiled at Mab as Cindy opened the freezer and took out the maple ice cream. “Hi, Mab. Did you hear Ethan Wayne is back in town? I spent a lot of time in high school looking at his picture in the football trophy case. And now he's here for real.” She beamed at them. “Tonight, I'm going to make my fantasies come true. You know, like Katie Holmes used to fantasize about Tom Cruise and then she married him?”

Mab looked at Ashley, perplexed at the idea of pursuing a guy she'd only seen in a photograph. What if he turned out to be boring? Or a serial
killer? Or one of those guys who stuck around the next morning when you just wanted to work?

Ashley caught Mab frowning at her. “You're not dating him or anything, are you?” Then she took in Mab's paint-stained canvas coat and her yellow miner's hat on the counter. “No, you're not.” She cheered up again. “I can't wait to meet him.”

Cindy put Ashley's breakfast in front of her, and Mab got up and headed for the front window and craned her neck to get a sight line down to the park gate. “Oh.”

“What?” Cindy said, coming to stand beside her.

“The FunFun at the gate is gone.”

“Yes, he is,” Cindy said, looking, too. “So he's the robot clown who knocked you down. Bastard.”

“Yes,” Mab said. “I spent a full week making him gorgeous and then he flattens me.”

“What an ingrate,” somebody said from behind them, and Mab turned and saw that the guy with the shoulders had come to look out the window with them.

Close up, he looked like Drunk Dave. Drunk Dave showered and shaved and possibly gainfully employed and dressed in a blue pin-striped shirt instead of something with
BENGALS
written on it, but still . . . “Dave?”

He grinned down at her, and she lost her breath. “I get that a lot.” He held out his hand. “I'm Dave's cousin, Joe. Dave's out of town for a couple of weeks, so I'm house-sitting for him.”

“Dave has a house?” Mab looked down and saw his outstretched hand and took it, trying to look calm, but there was still something about him that disoriented her, something besides his warm, firm grip and the fact that he held her hand a moment too long for just a handshake. She would have sworn he was Drunk Dave, except he was sentient and sober and attractive. And warm. And happy. And near. She felt stirrings. It had been a while since she'd felt stirrings. She'd given up stirrings because they never turned out well and they interfered with her work, but now here they were again.

He was definitely not Drunk Dave.

“So you're Dave's cousin,” Cindy said. “Welcome to Dreamland. You should avoid the Beer Pavilion and just stay here with me where you'll be safe from robot clowns.” She dimpled at him.

“Robot clowns?” he said to Cindy, laughing.

“Mab met one last night.”

And there she was, a Batty Brannigan, her first seventeen years all over again. So much for stirrings. Well, she had work to do anyway.

“Tell me more,” Joe said.

“Tragically, it's not my story,” Cindy said. “It's Mab's.”

He turned and looked at Mab again, and her heart beat faster. “A robot clown?”

“I was joking. He was a hallucination. I hit my head.”
I'm not weird
.

“That's a shame.”

“It's fine now.”

“No, it's a shame it was a hallucination. How many people get run down by robot clowns?”

“Not many?” Mab guessed.

“It would be an experience,” Joe said. “Instead of life as usual.”

“Exactly,” Cindy said.

Mab frowned at her. “I like life as usual.”

“But you don't remember life as usual,” Joe said, his smile warm on her. “At the end of your life, you're not going to remember all the life-as-usual days, but you're going to remember being run down by a robot clown.”

“I wasn't run down by a robot clown.”

“Are you sure?” Joe said, and Mab met his eyes and saw all the light and excitement there, and thought,
No, but I'm positive I'm stunned by you
.

“I like the way you think,” Cindy told him.

“I don't,” Mab said.

Joe smiled into Mab's eyes as if he knew her and spread out his arms. “Embrace the experience, honey.”

Mab realized she wasn't breathing, which was absurd. She took a deep breath, trying to get oxygen back to her brain. Maybe it was the word
embrace
coupled with the stirrings.
I could embrace the experience if you were the experience
.

She picked up her work bag and her miner's hat before the stirrings got out of hand. “I have to go meet somebody.”

“Who?” Cindy said.

“The Fortune-Telling Machine,” Mab said, and went out the door, not looking back at Joe or anything else.

 

E
than woke late, smelling cigarette smoke and feeling hungover, like someone was standing on his chest, the old bullet aching inside him.

He cracked his eyes open and recognized the lines in the curved metal roof above him, lit by sunshine pouring in a narrow window behind him framed in green-and-yellow barkcloth curtains. He'd woken to that same roof, that same window, those same curtains for years, but not in a very long time.

He closed his eyes, put one foot on the floor to anchor himself, and then carefully sat up on the old U-shaped banquette in his mother's Airstream, holding the blanket around him. He rubbed his face, feeling the stubble of his beard, and then opened his eyes and recoiled as he saw Delpha sitting on the banquette on the other side of the table, staring right at him, with her raven on her shoulder, its little black eyes boring into him.

“Dang, Delpha.”

The old woman smiled, and Ethan almost expected the lines on her face to explode, like ice cracking off the Antarctic shelf. “It's good you are back.” The smile was gone so fast, he wondered if he had imagined it. Everyone was acting strange.