Hearts In Atlantis (12 page)

Bobby started for the door, then looked back at Ted, who was standing on the bottom step of the stairs in his slippers. “Why don't you come out and sit on the porch?” Bobby asked. “It's gonna be hot in the house, I bet.”

Ted smiled. “Perhaps. But I think I'll stay in.”

“You okay?”

“Fine, Bobby. I'm fine.”

As he crossed to the Gerbers' side of Broad Street, Bobby realized he felt sorry for Ted, hiding up in his hot room for no reason. And it
had
to be for no reason, didn't it? Sure it did. Even if there were low men out there, cruising around someplace (
in the west
, he thought,
they draw west
), what could they want of an old retired guy like Ted Brautigan?

•   •   •

At first the quarrel with his mother weighed him down a little (Mrs. Gerber's pudgy, pretty friend Rionda Hewson accused him of being “in a brown study,” whatever that was, then began tickling him up the sides and in the armpits until Bobby laughed in self-defense), but after they had been on the beach a little while he began to feel better, more himself.

Although it was still early in the season, Savin Rock was full speed ahead—the merry-go-round turning, the Wild Mouse roaring, the little kids screaming, tinny rock and roll pouring from the speakers outside the funhouse, the barkers hollering from their booths. Sully-John didn't get the teddy bear he wanted, knocking over only two of the last three milk-bottles (Rionda claimed some of them had special weights in the bottom to keep them from going over unless you whacked them just right), but the guy in the baseball-toss booth awarded him a pretty neat prize anyway—a goofy-looking anteater covered with yellow plush. S-J impulsively gave it to Carol's mom. Anita laughed and hugged him and told him he was the best kid in the world, if he was fifteen years older she'd commit bigamy and marry him. Sully-John blushed until he was purple.

Bobby tried the ringtoss and missed with all three throws. At the Shooting Gallery he had better luck, breaking two plates and winning a small stuffed bear. He gave it to Ian-the-Snot, who had actually been good for a change—hadn't thrown any tantrums, wet his pants, or tried to sock either Sully or Bobby in the nuts. Ian hugged the bear and looked at Bobby as if Bobby were God.

“It's great and he loves it,” Anita said, “but don't you want to take it home to your mother?”

“Nah—she's not much on stuff like that. I'd like to win her a bottle of perfume, though.”

He and Sully-John dared each other to go on the Wild Mouse and finally went together, howling deliriously as their car plunged into each dip, simultaneously sure they were going to live forever and die immediately. They went on the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Krazy Kups. Down to his last fifteen cents, Bobby found himself on the Ferris wheel with Carol. Their car stopped at the top, rocking slightly, making him feel funny in his stomach. To his left the Atlantic stepped shoreward in a series of white-topped waves. The beach was just as white, the ocean an impossible shade of deep blue. Sunlight ran across it like silk. Below them was the midway. Rising up from the speakers came the sound of Freddy Cannon: she comes from Tallahassee, she's got a hi-fi chassis.

“Everything down there looks so little,” Carol said. Her voice was also little—uncharacteristically so.

“Don't be scared, we're safe as can be. The Ferris wheel would be a kiddie-ride if it didn't go so high.”

Carol was in many ways the oldest of the three of them—tough and sure of herself, as on the day she had
made S-J carry her books for swearing—but now her face had almost become a baby's face again: round, a little bit pale, dominated by a pair of alarmed blue eyes. Without thinking Bobby leaned over, put his mouth on hers, and kissed her. When he drew back, her eyes were wider than ever.

“Safe as can be,” he said, and grinned.

“Do it again!” It was her first real kiss, she had gotten it at Savin Rock on the first Saturday of summer vacation, and she hadn't been paying attention. That was what she was thinking, that was why she wanted him to do it again.

“I better not,” Bobby said. Although . . . up here who was there to see and call him a sissy?

“I dare you, and don't say dares go first.”

“Will you tell?”

“No, swear to God. Go on, hurry up! Before we go down!”

So he kissed her again. Her lips were smooth and closed, hot with the sun. Then the wheel began to move and he stopped. For just a moment Carol laid her head against his chest. “Thank you, Bobby,” she said. “That was nice as could be.”

“I thought so, too.”

They drew apart from each other a little, and when their car stopped and the tattooed attendant swung the safety bar up, Bobby got out and ran without looking back at her to where S-J was standing. Yet he knew already that kissing Carol at the top of the Ferris wheel was going to be the best part of the day. It was his first real kiss, too, and Bobby never forgot the feel of her lips pressing on his—dry and smooth and warmed by the sun. It was the kiss by which all
the others of his life would be judged and found wanting.

•   •   •

Around three o'clock, Mrs. Gerber told them to start gathering their things; it was time to go home. Carol gave a token “Aw, Mom,” and then started picking stuff up. Her girlfriends helped; even Ian helped a little (refusing even as he fetched and carried to let go of the sand-matted bear). Bobby had half-expected Carol to tag after him for the rest of the day, and he had been sure she'd tell her girlfriends about kissing on the Ferris wheel (he would know she had when he saw them in a little knot, giggling with their hands over their mouths, looking at him with their merry knowing eyes), but she had done neither. Several times he had caught her looking at him, though, and several times he had caught himself sneaking glances at her. He kept remembering her eyes up there. How big and worried they had been. And he had kissed her, just like that. Bingo.

Bobby and Sully toted most of the beachbags. “Good mules! Giddyap!” Rionda cried, laughing, as they mounted the steps between the beach and the boardwalk. She was lobster red under the cold-cream she had smeared over her face and shoulders, and she moaned to Anita Gerber that she wouldn't sleep a wink that night, that if the sunburn didn't keep her awake, the midway food would.

“Well, you didn't have to eat four wieners and two doughboys,” Mrs. Gerber said, sounding more irritated than Bobby had ever heard her—she was tired, he reckoned. He felt a little dazed by the sun himself. His back prickled with sunburn and he had sand in
his socks. The beachbags with which he was festooned swung and bounced against each other.

“But amusement park food's so
gooood
,” Rionda protested in a sad voice. Bobby laughed. He couldn't help it.

They walked slowly along the midway toward the dirt parking lot, paying no attention to the rides now. The barkers looked at them, then looked past them for fresh blood. Folks loaded down and trudging back to the parking lot were, by and large, lost causes.

At the very end of the midway, on the left, was a skinny man wearing baggy blue Bermuda shorts, a strap-style undershirt, and a bowler hat. The bowler was old and faded, but cocked at a rakish angle. Also, there was a plastic sunflower stuck in the brim. He was a funny guy, and the girls finally got their chance to put their hands over their mouths and giggle.

He looked at them with the air of a man who has been giggled at by experts and smiled back. This made Carol and her friends giggle harder. The man in the bowler hat, still smiling, spread his hands above the makeshift table behind which he was standing—a slab of fiberboard on two bright orange sawhorses. On the fiberboard were three redbacked Bicycle cards. He turned them over with quick, graceful gestures. His fingers were long and perfectly white, Bobby saw—not a bit of sun-color on them.

The card in the middle was the queen of hearts. The man in the bowler picked it up, showed it to them, walked it dextrously back and forth between his fingers. “Find the lady in red,
cherchez la femme rouge
, that's what it's all about and all you have to do,” he said. “It's easy as can beezy, easy-Japaneezy, easy as knitting
kitten-britches.” He beckoned Yvonne Loving. “Come on over here, dollface, and show em how it's done.”

Yvonne, still giggling and blushing to the roots of her black hair, shrank back against Rionda and murmured that she had no more money for games, it was all spent.

“Not a problem,” the man in the bowler hat said. “It's just a demonstration, dollface—I want your mom and her pretty friend to see how easy it is.”

“Neither one's my mom,” Yvonne said, but she stepped forward.

“We really ought to get going if we're going to beat the traffic, Evvie,” Mrs. Gerber said.

“No, wait a minute, this is fun,” Rionda said. “It's three-card monte. Looks easy, just like he says, but if you're not careful you start chasing and go home dead broke.”

The man in the bowler gave her a reproachful look, then a broad and engaging grin. It was the grin of a low man, Bobby thought suddenly. Not one of those Ted was afraid of, but a low man, just the same.

“It's obvious to me,” said the man in the bowler, “that at some point in your past you have been the victim of a scoundrel. Although how anyone could be cruel enough to mistreat such a beautiful classy dame is beyond my ability to comprehend.”

The beautiful classy dame—five-five or so, two hundred pounds or so, shoulders and face slathered with Pond's—laughed happily. “Stow the guff and show the child how it works. And are you really telling me this is legal?”

The man behind the table tossed his head back and also laughed. “At the ends of the midway everything's
legal until they catch you and throw you out . . . as I think you probably know. Now . . . what's your name, dollface?”

“Yvonne,” she said in a voice Bobby could barely hear. Beside him, Sully-John was watching with great interest. “Sometimes folks call me Evvie.”

“Okay, Evvie, look right here, pretty baby. What do you see? Tell me their names—I know you can, a smart kid like you—and point when you tell. Don't be afraid to touch, either. There's nothing crooked here.”

“This one on the end is the jack . . . this one on the other end is the king . . . and this is the queen. She's in the middle.”

“That's it, dollface. In the cards as in life, there is so often a woman between two men. That's their power, and in another five or six years you'll find it out for yourself.” His voice had fallen into a low, almost hypnotic chanting. “Now watch closely and never take your eyes from the cards.” He turned them over so their backs showed. “Now, dollface, where's the queen?”

Yvonne Loving pointed at the red back in the middle.

“Is she right?” the man in the bowler asked the little party gathered around his table.

“So far,” Rionda said, and laughed so hard her uncorseted belly jiggled under her sundress.

Smiling at her laughter, the low man in the bowler hat flicked one corner of the middle card, showing the red queen. “One hundred per cent keerect, sweetheart, so far so good. Now watch! Watch close! It's a race between your eye and my hand! Which will win? That's the question of the day!”

He began to scramble the three cards rapidly about on his plank table, chanting as he did so.

“Up and down, all around, in and out, all about, to and fro, watch em go, now they're back, they're side by side, so tell me, dollface, where's she hide?”

As Yvonne studied the three cards, which were indeed once more lined up side by side, Sully leaned close to Bobby's ear and said, “You don't even have to watch him mix them around. The queen's got a bent corner. Do you see it?”

Bobby nodded, and thought
Good girl
when Yvonne pointed hesitantly to the card on the far left—the one with the bent corner. The man in the bowler turned it over and revealed the queen of hearts.

“Good job!” he said. “You've a sharp eye, dollface, a sharp eye indeed.”

“Thank you,” Yvonne said, blushing and looking almost as happy as Carol had looked when Bobby kissed her.

“If you'd bet me a dime on that go, I'd be giving you back twenty cents right now,” the man in the bowler hat said. “Why, you ask? Because it's Saturday, and I call Saturday Twoferday! Now would one of you ladies like to risk a dime in a race between your young eyes and my tired old hands? You can tell your husbands—lucky fellas they are to have you, too, may I say—that Mr. Herb McQuown, the Monte Man at Savin Rock, paid for your day's parking. Or what about a quarter? Point out the queen of hearts and I give you back fifty cents.”

“Half a rock, yeah!” Sully-John said. “I got a quarter, mister, and you're on.”

“Johnny, it's gambling,” Carol's mother said doubtfully. “I don't really think I should allow—”

“Go on, let the kid learn a lesson,” Rionda said. “Besides, the guy may let him win. Suck the rest of us in.” She made no effort to lower her voice, but the man in the bowler—Mr. McQuown—only looked at her and smiled. Then he returned his attention to S-J.

“Let's see your money, kid—come on, pony up.”

Sully-John handed over his quarter. McQuown raised it into the afternoon sunlight for a moment, one eye closed.

“Yeh, looks like a good 'un to me,” he said, and planked it down on the board to the left of the three-card lineup. He looked in both directions—for cops, maybe—then tipped the cynically smiling Rionda a wink before turning his attention back to Sully-John. “What's your name, fella?”

“John Sullivan.”

McQuown widened his eyes and tipped his bowler to the other side of his head, making the plastic sunflower nod and bend comically. “A name of note! You know what I refer to?”