And I was back in the twisted mockery of old Chicago. The vision was gone, and although I didn’t quite know where it had come from or what it meant, I knew it had unlocked a door somewhere deep inside me. It was a door that could come swinging open at any time, and, not knowing what was behind it, I wasn’t so sure I liked it unlocked.
The orange car was gone. I climbed out through the broken window of my car and slipped away down an alley so narrow that I had to walk sideways. The alley opened into another street and up ahead there was a little tavern, its neon sign flickering red. A wave intersecting a spiral. The ride symbol. And as I looked at the symbol on the back of my hand, it began to glow. I slowly approached the tavern and pushed open the door.
A bell jingled, and as I let the door close behind me the dangerous sounds of the city became distant, like a low rumble of thunder—far enough away to know you were safe, but close enough to keep you on edge.
The place smelled of spilled beer and polished wood. It was deserted except for the bartender, who wiped down the bar with a rag.
“Hello, Blake,” he said, with a broad smile. “Rough night out there?”
“How come you know my name?”
The smile never left his face. “I know all my customers.”
I looked the place over, peering under tables, behind the bar, but I couldn’t find a turnstile.
“Can I help you find something, sir?”
It seemed bizarre to me, this middle-aged man calling me “sir.” I didn’t feel like a sir. “I’m looking for the next ride.”
“A ride?” He put down his rag, then pulled out an old-fashioned black telephone, with a circular dial, and left it on the counter. “If it’s a ride you need, I could call you a taxi. But around here, I can’t vouch for the drivers.”
Out of curiosity, I picked up the receiver, wondering if it actually reached out of this place, like some landline to sanity. Instead of a dial tone, all I heard in the receiver was calliope music. I hung up quickly.
“Never mind.”
The bartender pulled out a glass and deftly filled it with what appeared at first to be beer. Then he poured in some of that red cherry-flavored stuff—grenadine, I think it’s called—and topped it off with a cherry. He slid it down the bar toward me, not spilling a single drop.
“Compliments of the lady,” he said, and nodded toward a tall-backed booth deep in the recesses of the pub.
I tasted my drink. Ginger ale and cherry syrup. A Shirley Temple. It was the kind of drink served to little kids too young to be humiliated by it.
I walked deeper into the bar to see what I had already suspected. The girl in the booth was Cassandra. She wore a flowing orange gown and a wide-brimmed hat, looking like something right out of a painting. Her copper hair flowed over her shoulders in a perfect fall. Smooth attitude poured from her like a scent. All the wires of everything I was feeling suddenly crossed at the sight of her, and I was at a loss.
“Was that you in the orange car, trying to kill me?”
“Do you want it to be?”
If I had chased her and cornered her, I might have acted differently. I might have demanded more answers right away, pushing until I got them. But she wasn’t cornered. I didn’t think she could be cornered in any situation. She just tried to kill you! I reminded myself, but the way she was looking at me now defused all my defenses. It was the same way she’d looked at me back at the ball-toss booth. As if she was drawn to me. As if she was somehow intrigued by me.
Who do you think you are? I said to myself. Look at you, standing here with your zits and your Shirley Temple. You look like an idiot, and she knows it.
Well, I didn’t have to be. I wouldn’t be.
I suavely slipped into the booth, pretending it didn’t hurt when I smashed my knee on the way in. “Thanks for the Shirley Temple. But couldn’t you at least have gotten me a root beer?” I tried to match her mysterious grin, but I had no idea whether I looked mysterious or dorky. I tried to focus on her eyes, but whenever I did, I couldn’t hear a word she said.
Better get used to it, I thought. There’ll be Cassandras everywhere once you get to college. If any girl there is ever going to give you the time of day, you’d better work up some major charisma. Fast.
For an instant I thought of Maggie, with whom I never had to work up anything but my own clunky self. But seeing Cassandra right in front of me kind of blew all other thoughts to smithereens.
“Enjoying yourself?” she asked.
I didn’t care to answer that one, because my answer wouldn’t exactly be suave and charismatic. “It looks like you sure are.”
She shrugged. “I pass the time well.”
“Is that what you call it—passing the time? Luring people onto rides and watching them die?”
“They don’t die,” she said. “Not exactly.”
“Exactly what happens to them, then?”
“You’re in no position to ask questions.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
She considered that, then said, “If you lose your life on a ride, the park just . . . absorbs you. Simple as that.” She stirred her drink, then touched the tip of my nose with her straw. “There are worse things.”
I didn’t know if I was more taken or terrified by her. “Who are you?” I finally asked.
She looked into me with those strange icy-hot eyes. “Who am I? The sum of your dreams; the thrills you refuse to grasp; the unknown you fear.”
“Gee, thanks for the haiku, but a picture ID would have been enough.”
She wrinkled her nose, annoyed that I was no longer falling for the mysterious-woman act. Score one for me.
She sighed, looking down into her drink. “If this amusement park were flesh, then you could say I’m its soul.”