Out of Time (15 page)

Simon looked at her briefly and then focused on the edge of the table. “I doubt it’s anything worth pursuing, but regardless, we are out of our element here. Vulnerable. I’d rather not risk more than we absolutely must in order to return home safely.”

Elizabeth was still puzzled by his reaction, but that did make some sense.

“If circumstances were different, perhaps,” he continued. “For now, we’re better off not borrowing trouble. Not to mention that you seem to find enough on your own.”

Elizabeth had to laugh at that. She did have a knack for stepping in it. She looked across the table and wanted to argue the point further, but the sincere concern on his face brought her up short. She relented, for now.

“All right,” she said. “But we’ve still got the day off. We might as well make the best of it and do something.”

“Well,” he said. “We could go to a movie, I suppose.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows in surprise.

The corners of his mouth twitched and he added, “Yes, I do go to the movies on occasion.”

She grinned and tried to picture him with a bucket of popcorn and a thirty ounce soda. Somehow, the image wouldn’t gel. “That would be fun, I guess,” she said with calculated indifference.

He eyed her suspiciously.

She leaned forward and hunched her shoulders with barely contained excitement. “We’re in 1929. Think of all the things we could see. A movie would be interesting, but what about… I don’t know, the Ziegfeld Follies, or is Houdini alive? Wouldn’t that be amazing? What about the Hippodrome? Wait a minute, that’s not here anymore more, is it? I can’t remember. But there are tons of things.”

She didn’t want to do anything extravagant. They didn’t have much money to spare and what little they did, she was secreting away to pay off the pawn ticket for his grandfather’s ring. But there had to be something on the cheap side they could do.

Suddenly, an idea came to her. “Oh, I know!”

“Yes?”

“Coney Island!”

She loved amusement parks, and a chance to see Coney Island as it was meant to be was thrilling. “Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see it in its heyday? You know, before it got all kitschy and gross.”

“I’m not sure I’m—”

“This is living history. How many people get a chance to see that?”

“Be that as it may—”

“Haven’t you always wanted to go to Coney Island?”

“I think I can safely answer that with a resounding no.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “It’s too good to pass up. And it’ll be fun. Roller coasters, strange freaky side show things.”

“As appealing as that sounds, which by the way, is not at all, I don’t—”

“Okay. You don’t have to go,” she said quickly.

“Thank you.” He watched her for a moment, then picked up the paper again. “I understand there are free concerts in Central Park.”

“I’m sure you’ll have a good time, but I’m going to Coney Island.”

“Elizabeth,” he ground out.

“Simon,” she mimicked. “Really, you don’t have to go,” she said, as she coyly played with the collar of her dress. “I think it would be fun and educational. A double whammy. But, if you want to mope, I mean, stay around here, you’re perfectly welcome to.”

Simon put the paper down and sighed. “I’m not really the amusement park type.”

“You didn’t strike me as the piano player in a speakeasy type either, but…” she said with what she hoped was a dangerously engaging smile.

“Lord help me.”

The early afternoon train was packed with people heading out to the island. Back to front, side to side, two to a seat, people crowded into the subways and the elevated train to Brooklyn. The crowd jostled with every bump and turn as the train moved steadily toward the Nickel Empire, where five cents bought everything from a red-hot to a turn at the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Simon gripped the overhead handhold, and Elizabeth gripped Simon. Unable to reach a pole or a handgrip, she’d tried standing on her own for the first few minutes. The shimmying of the car nearly knocked her off her feet and would have if Simon hadn’t caught her. She smiled bashfully and wound her fingers into the fabric of his jacket. He kept an arm loosely around her waist.

She looked up at him with a questioning glance.

He looked away shyly and then lifted his chin in poor imitation of indignation. “Purely for safety reasons.”

Elizabeth slipped her hand onto his shoulder. “Safety first, I always say.”

The car was stifling, or would have been if either had been paying the least bit of attention to anything but the other. The tiny windows let in only the barest warm breeze, and the mass of bodies filled the car with an unrelenting heat.

Elizabeth felt a single drip of sweat inch down her back with torturous slowness. It started to tickle, and she arched her back to help it along. In the close quarters, her tiny movement forced her hips up against Simon. She thought she heard him groan, but the bustle of conversation and the thrumming of the train made it impossible to tell.

“Sorry.”

He shook his head. “What?” he asked loudly.

She started to push herself up on her tiptoes to move closer to his ear, when the car abruptly lurched. She threw her arms around him to steady herself and felt his hand press firmly against her back. She was only inches from his face now. The sharp rise and fall of his chest pressed against hers. His lips were so tantalizingly close. Full and masculine, seemingly waiting to be kissed. She looked up into his eyes. They were dark and intense. They lingered with hers before dipping down to her mouth, then back again. An unspoken question hovered between them. Her heart was about to answer when the car jerked violently and started its swift deceleration.

Once again, their moment was gone and reality crashed back in. People shouldered for the door, each having to be the first one out. Simon glared at a large sweaty man and his wife who shoved their way past them.

Elizabeth reluctantly eased her arms down from his shoulders. That was the second time she’d been in his arms, not that she was counting. Okay, she was counting. And each time to have someone ruin it when they were so close. Not that there was anything to ruin. Was there?

The crowd pushed up against her and when the doors opened she was swept away with them. She lost sight of Simon the moment her feet hit the platform. She struggled back to him, but it was no use. Caught in the tide, she edged her way to a large stanchion. Wriggling her shoulders and giving a few people a good elbow in the ribs, she managed to grab hold of the pillar. She stepped up onto the lip and scanned the crowd for Simon.

He was being swept along as she had been, but was fighting it all the way.

“Simon! Over here! Simon!”

His head jerked around, and he saw her. His expression both frustrated and relieved. He forced his way through the crowd, which was finally thinning.

“What the devil?” he ground out.

“Pretty enthusiastic bunch, aren’t they?”

“Ill-mannered, rude—”

“They’re not that bad. And anyway,” she said with a gleam in her eye, “we’re here.”

His face was flat. “Hooray.”

“Oh, come on sourpuss. This is gonna be fun. You’re gonna love it. Trust me,” she said and held out her hand.

He looked at her hand suspiciously. Finally, he took it and sighed. “All right, I’ll come, but I’m not going to enjoy it.”

But he did enjoy it. Walking among the throng, holding Elizabeth’s hand, he felt like he belonged. He wasn’t apart from life now, but a part of it. He glanced down at her hand resting in his. It really was so small, his fingers seemed to engulf it completely. And he liked the feeling. The constant, subtle reminder that he wasn’t alone.

Surf Avenue swarmed with tens of thousands of people. Cars tried vainly to weave their way between the pedestrians. Simon pulled Elizabeth onto the crowded sidewalk, and she gawked at the scene.

Barkers sang out their outrageous promises of the fantastic to lure the unsuspecting to their attractions. The roaring sound of the roller coasters rumbled like thunder, and the smell of garlic and cooking meat drifted through the crowd, tempting each passerby.

“This is amazing!” Elizabeth cried.

“It is quite a spectacle,” he admitted.

They paid the quarter admission price and stepped inside Luna Park. A large, artificial beach and long, rectangular pool rested just inside the gate. He could smell the salty air rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean, barely a block away. Bright, white towers topped with intricate spires and lattice work reached for the sky in the distance. Elizabeth turned around in a circle, taking it all in. People swarmed around her, excitedly buzzing about the afternoon’s pleasures. Eclectic architecture ringed the outer perimeter, a series of snapshots of faraway lands, transporting each visitor to places they’d only dreamed of.

After the constant browns and grays of the city, the pristine white buildings and red shingled roofs were another world. She wasn’t the only one gawking at the splendor of the park, Simon realized. There was an electricity in the air. People who had never traveled more than a few miles from their homes were suddenly thrust into a replica of an ancient Egyptian tomb or a jungle oasis filled with headhunting natives, anything the imagination could conjure.

The frantic strains of a ragtime band seemed to catch Elizabeth’s attention, but before she reached the bandstand, another spectacle pulled her away. There in the middle of the park sat a huge lagoon. She ran to the railing and leaned over to look down into the murky, deep, green water.

Simon, who’d been trailing behind, finally caught up with her. She moved around the park with exhausting enthusiasm, reminding him how young she really was. As she leaned against the rail, a gentle breeze blew the hem of her skirt, and he caught a glimpse of her legs and the black garters that hugged her thighs. He felt his pulse race and forced himself to look away. Perhaps, not quite so young after all.

“Wow. Look at that,” she said, pointing to the far end of the lagoon.

A boat, large enough to hold six people, slid down a wide flume more than one hundred feet long before it plunged into the lake. A crowd standing on platforms around the Shoot-the-Chutes applauded as each boat took its turn on the giant slide and splashed down into the lagoon.

The hairs on the back of Simon’s neck prickled with anxiety. It was all too eerily reminiscent of his nightmare. It was an unreasonable fear, he knew, but as he watched Elizabeth lean farther over the railing, a cold panic washed over him. He gripped her arm tightly and pulled her away from the edge.

She looked at him in surprise and he let go. “I…This looks interesting,” he said too casually and gestured to another attraction a safe distance from the water.

If she noticed the strain in his voice, she chose to ignore it and happily continued her giddy exploration of the park. He grumbled good-naturedly as she dragged him from one end of it to the other. He pointed out the egregious historical and cultural inaccuracies of each exhibit they visited: the ridiculous errors of confusing the Fourth and Eighteenth Dynasties of Ancient Egypt, the headhunters of Borneo sporting Central African headdresses. It certainly wasn’t the way he’d choose to spend an afternoon. But she met each new discovery with such unremitting avidity, he found himself actually having a good time.

After a rather nauseating spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl, Elizabeth was ready for something a bit more sedate and forced Simon to choose their next destination.

He balked. She cajoled. He relented.

He suggested the cyclorama, not mentioning that the short line was the main appeal. Cylcoramas were shown in cylindrical rooms with the crowd seated in the middle. A large, movable painted canvas was stretched around the circle with sound and lighting effects used to heighten the drama. The Battle of the Marne was a spectacular recreation of one of WWI’s epic battles. Despite the antiquated effects, it was frighteningly effective, perhaps too much so. The costly battle was still fresh in the minds of the world. When the lights went on, the small crowd was quiet and reflective. The somber zeitgeist cast a pall on the day. Simon had the absurd feeling that things had somehow taken a turn for the worse. When they left Luna Park and headed back down toward the Bowery, he knew he was right.

THE ALL-MONKEY ORCHESTRA at the Hippodrome was too good for Elizabeth to pass up, and after the depressing show at the cyclorama Simon hoped something fun and silly would lift her mood.

The performance consisted of fifty trained monkeys dressed in band uniforms playing miniature instruments. It was certainly silly, but not the fun he’d been hoping for. This was a different time, he reminded himself, with different sets of morals. The notion of animal protection was still in its infancy. It wasn’t as though the creatures were being overtly abused, but the sight of them subjugated in such a ridiculous farce set Elizabeth even more firmly in her dark mood. The SPCA was hardly a blip on the radar, no one was going to look after them, and with so many shows throughout the day, there was no way they were treated properly.

Simon took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. When the show ended, he led her silently out of the amphitheater. They tried a few more exhibits, but she found each one more disturbing than its predecessor. He’d purposefully tried to steer her away from Wagner’s World Circus Side Show, but the crowd had surged and she’d gone with them. The final straw had been when Wagner brought out Pipo and Zipo, two microcephalics, or Pinheads, as they were more commonly and brutishly known.

The crowd gasped in shock as the pair walked across the makeshift stage. Children hid behind their mothers, only to be encouraged to gawk at the poor couple.

It was more than Elizabeth could bear, and she hurriedly slipped through the crowd. She didn’t stop walking until she reached the edge of the Boardwalk. Black waves lumbered ashore in the distance, a dull roar in the background of the night. Simon came up behind her, but she didn’t turn around.

“God, this place is awful. I’m sorry I made you come,” she said. The sand close to the walkway glistened like pyrite.