Four young soldiers in short-sleeved khaki, from Fort Dix, sauntered up, rolled their quarters at her, and tried their luck. They didn’t talk. They only threw the darts. One at a time, each man in turn, until the last one was nudged by his friend just as he let go, and the dart landed on the counter, not an inch from her thumb.

  “Hey!” she said, snatching the hand away.

  The soldier laughed, his buddies slapped his back, and they moved on down to the wheel of fortune.

  Kelly looked at the dart, at the frayed plastic feathers, and took a deep breath as she glanced out at the horizon. With the way her luck had been running lately, there was probably a prize-winning hurricane brewing there, just waiting for her, the worst in a decade. First she nearly loses an ear, then nearly gets punctured. She should have accepted Mike’s invitation to have breakfast with him someplace instead of going straight home after waking again at dawn.

  It had been there, at the house on Cockleshell Lane, that she’d seen the start of a truly bad day.

  Her father was still out on the road, stuck someplace in North Carolina with his briefcase and samples, her mother was still in bed suffering a party the night before, and her sister was god knew where with god knew who doing she damned well knew what and was probably still at it.

  Then, when she’d started out for work, the car had overheated before she’d even gotten out of the driveway and she had to walk; some idiot in an overloaded station wagon had almost run her down outside the Summerview Diner; and when she finally got here, ten minutes late, already sweating and praying for a shower, Jimmy Opal had left the keys with the softball guy and a scribbled note that told her he’d be gone for the day, and though the afternoon was still hers, she couldn’t leave until her replacement showed up, a girl whose name she didn’t even know.

  There was a blister forming on her left heel.

  And counting the four soldiers, she’d had less than a dozen customers since starting up at ten.

  Not even Mike had showed his face, and it was already past noon.

  “Hello, are you there?”

  She started, catching her hand before it traveled to her throat, and had to lean away slightly to focus on the bearded face that poked around the partition separating her stand from the wheel’s.

  “Oh, hi, Frankie,” she said, smiling wanly, letting it fade.

  “Hi yourself.”

  A yawn surprised her, but she didn’t bother lifting her hand.

  “Bored, huh?” His beard, like his hair, was light and cropped short, and all of it matched the unpleasant thatch of chest hair he exposed with a tight Hawaiian shirt opened to his belt. He was in his late twenties or early thirties; she had stopped guessing when he had started taking his breaks the same time as hers.

  “Tell me.”

  “You wanna get married? I got the honeymoon suite at the Maya just for tonight.”

  She giggled in spite of herself; the Maya was painted purple and not known for its family appeal. “I’m underage, Frankie.”

  “I’m overage, so what?”

  She looked away, at the drifting crowd.

  “Better yet, why don’t we trade,” he said, his lips barely moving to help cover a lisp and to keep an unlit cigarillo from falling out. “I think I’ve made a whole buck, maybe two, since I opened. At this rate I couldn’t sell a blind man if I gave him the numbers.”

  She pulled the dart from the counter, held it up, and sighted along its squat body. “You cheat, that’s why.”

  “Who, me?” His eyebrows lifted. “I run an honest wheel, lady. Honest.”

  A doubtful look; he shrugged, shifted, and shook his head at the people who didn’t look back.

  “To tell you the truth, cross my heart and hope to die, I think it’s the invasion of the zombies, Kelly. Television zombies. I bet I’d make a million if I added commercials to the pitch.”

  A little girl pushing a doll in a toy carriage stepped up to the counter. She held a quarter in her left fist and she stared at the balloons.

  “Hey, kid,” Frankie stage-whispered. “You’d do a lot better over here. I got candy, not stupid anteaters.”

  Kelly pointed; he vanished.

  The wheel clattered to his pitch, but no one looked over.

  I can’t stand this much longer, she told herself then. It was truly a seriously bad day when a guy like Frankie Junston could make her smile instead of making her skin crawl.

  The little girl slowly put the quarter down, and Kelly leaned over and smiled.

  “Go for the red ones, honey,” she said quietly, pointing the fatter ones out. “They break easier. But don’t tell my boss, okay? He’ll skin me alive.”

  The girl picked up the first dart, leaned over and said something to her doll, straightened, and threw. The balloon broke, and she didn’t smile.

  “We have a winner, folks!” Kelly called out automatically, holding up a striped ticket. “Two more and it’s the grand prize, right here at Balloon Heaven!”

  The second balloon broke, and Kelly applauded and laughed. She wished Jimmy was here because he hated to lose his stock, especially to kids, and she did everything she could to make sure they won.

  The third dart missed.

  “A winner, we got another winner!” she called, applauding louder and whistling. Then she slid off the stool and leaned over the counter. “Okay, honey, you can have any one of those dolls over there, okay? Just pick one and it’s yours. How about the one in the wedding dress, the white one? It looks just like you, don’t you think?”

  The little girl walked away, pushing the carriage before her.

  Kelly couldn’t move for a moment, and by the time she’d swung onto the counter to look for the girl, the crowd had hidden her as if she hadn’t been there at all.

  “I’ll be damned,” she said, sitting on the edge and swinging her legs. It was the first time that had ever happened, and she wasn’t sure what to do. She wanted to chase after her and give her the prize, but she didn’t dare leave the stand unattended. If she did, that’s for sure when Jimmy would show up and fire her on the spot.

  The pay stunk, less than minimum wage since he had his people working slightly less than full time. But she needed it, every dime, because without it there’d be no college in the fall. The scholarship she’d won was small, and if she wanted to eat, she had to add to her savings. Her mother wouldn’t do it, not even when she was sober, and her father… she grunted his face away and stared instead at the Ferris wheel at Harragan’s, watching it swing up, swing away, cages rocking over the surf.

  And suddenly thought of Devin and felt herself blushing.

  And just as quickly felt someone watching.

  A waist-high, triple metal railing ranged along the far edge of the boardwalk, breaking only for the steps that led down to the beach. In front of it, and bolted to the boards, were long wooden benches whose slotted backs could be shifted so those resting could watch either the beach or the strollers. She usually saw mothers there, massaging their feet and feeding the toddlers, and guys trying to decide which moves should be made on which girls passing by.

  Now a man sat alone, opposite Balloon Heaven. She couldn’t tell if he was really staring at her or not because the crowd kept interfering, letting her see him for only a brief second at a time. But she could feel him—just sitting, not moving, here when the flow parted, gone when it closed.

  Behind dark lenses that reflected nothing but dark.

  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been the object of such attention, though it had taken her an entire season to get used to the fact that some men just liked to watch, without mayhem on their minds. But it didn’t stop her from working up a good case of nerves, and she even considered asking Frankie if he would talk to the guy, ask him to turn the other way or move on down the boards, out of her sight.

  The crowd closed; he was gone.

  She leaned over to see if Mike was talking to Stump down at the pier.

  The crowd parted; he was gone.

  The bench was empty.

  “Can I try, Kelly?”

  “God!” she said loudly, nearly falling off the counter. She looked down and saw Angie Riccaro gazing innocently back, her hair damp and stringing to her shoulders, leaving glistening beads of water that shimmered when she moved.

  Angie pointed at the darts.

  “You’re nuts,” Kelly said without moving. “It’s all a gyp, don’t you know that by now? God, doesn’t your brother tell you anything?”

  “I don’t care, I wanna try.”

  “Angie, you’re wasting your money.”

  “So?”

  She shrugged, swung her legs around with a feigned groan, and hopped to the floor. “You with Tony or what?” Picking up the darts, the points hot to burning. She stared at the crowd. “I thought he was working today.”

  Angie placed her quarter firmly on the counter, waited until Kelly had dropped it in the cash box, then held her first dart close to her cheek, the tip of her tongue poking between her lips. “He’s mowing the lawn and goofing off. Mrs. Kueller brought me down. She’s over there, trying to make out with the lifeguard.”

  Kelly nodded without speaking. There was something about Angie she didn’t trust, something sneaky, the way she looked at people just a bit sideways, measuring them, deciding how far she could go before trouble. Like the way she’d hung around those first couple of nights after Julie’s death, playing with her toy horses, then blabbing to her parents that the big kids were going to the dark pier, to find out why Julie had been the only one there the day it burned down.

  The dart missed and bounced off the wall.

  “Nuts.”

  Mr. Riccaro had stormed into the rec room and laid down the law to all of them. She was stupid, he’d said, furious at them, disgusted at Julie. No one deserves to die, don’t get me wrong, but she was stupid being there. You all know it, so drop it. Now.

  Angie pouted and glared at the balloons.

  “Try again, you can still win a doll.”

  “A doll? Who wants a stupid doll?” Angie said with a sneer. “I want a poster.” She scanned the shelves of prizes and sneered again. “So how come you don’t have any posters, huh?”

  “Ask the boss.”

  “Everybody else on the boardwalk has posters, y’know. I got posters all over my walls. I’m gonna start on the ceiling next, if my mother’ll let me.”

  Kelly wasn’t surprised, though she suspected it would be the girl’s father who made the decision. From everything she’d seen, Mr. Riccaro would jump off the roof dressed like Superman if his daughter begged him hard enough. Her own father hadn’t been home on her last birthday, and though he had called from St. Louis and talked to her for an hour, somehow, when she blew out the candles, it wasn’t the same.

  “I like cowboys best,” the little girl said, testing her throw and aim without letting go. “Lots of guns and things, and horses. Lots of horses.”

  Kelly looked over her head at the faces that never once glanced in her direction.

  “I’m gonna marry a cowboy when I grow up.”

  Then she threw her second dart and broke a balloon.

  “A winner! We got another winner! Always a winner at Opal’s Balloon Heaven!”

  “You sound like a jerk,” Angie said, giggling.

  “It’s the rule,” she told her. “You break a balloon, I gotta shout.”

  Angie cocked a hip and closed one eye. “Suppose I lose?”

  “You’re out a quarter.”

  “It’s a gyp.”

  Kelly shrugged. “That’s not my problem. I already told you, remember? Throw, kid.”

  “Mrs. Kueller lets me swim without my tube, you know that?”

  Kelly smiled: that’s nice.

  Angie lined up her shot again, her lower lip turned over, her tongue sticking out. She took a breath and held it, narrowed her eyes and stared at the balloons. Then she lowered her arm and looked over her shoulder. Kelly followed her gaze and saw nothing out of the ordinary or anyone she knew. When Angie didn’t look back, she realized that the crowd had somehow slowed down. The rushed strolling was gone, the chatter was more quiet, which made the music and the rumble-roar from the rides all the more grating.

  The fan blew on her legs; a headache lurked behind her eyes. She felt a sudden chill and rubbed her arm, for no reason at all thinking about Tony’s dream. “You gonna stand there all day or what?”

  Angie turned and threw in a single swift move, and Kelly gasped when she felt a stabbing at her shoulder.

  “For god’s sake, Angie!”

  But Angie was gone.

  And the dart dangled from her shoulder, its shadow running blood.

  FIVE

  I am an idiot, thought Devin as he stood naked in the kitchen with hands firmly on his hips and wondered what in god’s name he could put in his stomach that wouldn’t taste like straw and gag him. He yawned. His jaw cracked. He snarled at the sink and at the cupboards above it. The alarm had wakened him just after eight, and he had promptly rolled over, slapped it off, and had fallen back to sleep.

  Now it was near twelve-thirty, and he still felt as if he hadn’t slept at all.

  The noise outside didn’t help—overlapping shouts and shrieks of games announced that he wasn’t the only one still home; so, apparently, were all his summer neighbors and all their screaming children. They must have decided to have lunch here instead of at the beach for some goddamned reason, and the kids were taking out their disappointment on him.

  He hoped they drowned the next time they went swimming.

  “I do not deserve this, you know,” he complained to the house as he postponed a decision by stumbling into the small bathroom, the tiles cold and gritty on his soles. He shouted when the shower gave him only cold water; he glared helplessly when the sink’s faucet spent more time gurgling than running; and afterward he nodded a why the hell not? when he opened the refrigerator and wrinkled his nose at the stench of sour milk. For three days he’d been telling himself it was high time to clean out the old, go shopping for the new, and generally get his act together before ptomaine left him lying on the floor, the body not to be found until winter. But like calling Viceroy back, there was always something else to do, something more important; going to the market never felt as if it counted.

  With a grimace he poured the milk down the drain and told himself he’d have to wait for his food, fitting punishment for his sloth, then dressed, combed his hair, and stood away from the bathroom mirror. Head tilted, chin up, searching for a hint of wattle or jowl, for the grey hairs and the bald spots, for the wrinkles that were already there in fine lines about his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

  Too much sun, too much wind. A woman he’d known once remarked that the result made him look rugged, especially in autumn when everything but his shirts were worn out denim and slightly ragged.

  “Rugged,” he said aloud, testing the word and watching his face. “Rugged.”

  Then he stuck his tongue out at the reflection and walked into the front room, where he opened the draperies and turned away from the sun.

  It was afternoon already, the first time in months he had unintentionally overslept, and he was beginning to think maybe Gayle was right—his body knew him better than he did, and it was going to give him the rest he needed whether he wanted it or not. In fact, he admitted as he fetched the newspaper from the stoop, he did feel okay. Not half bad at all, thanks to the cold shower.

  He glanced at the headlines, saw nothing that interested him, and tossed the paper onto the couch. Sunlight warmed the room; the sound of distant surf rose and subsided, and with a deep breath that cleared his lungs of last night’s smoke and sleeping, he decided, without argument or trace of guilt, to take the day off. The whole day, not just the part he’d slept through—every last minute and second of it. And that meant no cameras, no framing shots, no nothing. Today he was going to be a tourist.

  He stretched and forced a yawn.

  A brief moment, then, when something nudged the decision, a glimmering of something he was supposed to do. Something… then he looked at the phone machine.

  “Tourist,” he muttered; the glimmering was gone. “Who are you kidding, pal?”

  No, not a tourist.

  Today he was going to find out who had played at being a ghost.

  And despite the distaste of memory, that too somehow buoyed his spirits, sending him into the bedroom for scuffed, un-tooled boots to keep the sand away from his feet, jeans that fit better than anything tailored, and a bright shirt with long sleeves he folded neatly to his biceps. A pair of sunglasses. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Wallet and keys.

  At the door he automatically reached for the camera bag, realized what he was doing and stood for a moment, staring at it, frowning when that something he should be doing wouldn’t give him a name. It’ll come, he told himself then, and opened the door, nodding contentedly at the salt air and a steady strong breeze that made his eyes flutter closed as he took a series of deep breaths. White clouds lazy in the sky. A dragonfly poised at the top of the dunes.

  Gulls gliding and hovering. The block finally quiet, touched with peace.

  Indecision made him rub his palms together while he tried to figure out just how to play detective. Easier said than done. Talking to the kids would be a waste of time; he was certain neither Tony nor Kelly had done it, and even this was beyond the pale of one of Mike’s outrageous pranks. What, then?

  He stared at the newspaper.

  Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have a word with Marty Kilmer, the only policeman on the local force who was an Oceantide native. It sounded right; he really didn’t know. But probably there wasn’t a thing the man could do for him. Still, he might be able to point him in the right direction, if there was a direction to follow at all.

  Forgoing the Jeep because he still felt somewhat stiff from being in bed so long, he hurried to the corner and strolled up to Summer Road. When the breeze shifted, he could hear music from the boardwalk, racing engines, the voices of bathers in concert with the sea.

  A police car siren, shrill and oddly out of place.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26