and powdered sugar from the dented counter, said good night to the girl who’d been working the stand with her, and let herself out the side door and into Jake’s arms. She stood on her toes for a lingering kiss, her book under one arm: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.
“Want to get another six on our way out of town?” Jake asked me over her shoulder.
The thought turned my stomach, so naturally I said, “We better.”
“I’ll pay,” Nancy said, and led the way to the curb, just about skipping to be free and with her guy, to be eighteen and in love, on a night where it was still seventy degrees at nearly 11:00 P.M. The wind crazed her curly hair, blowing it around her face like seagrass.
We were waiting for a break in traffic when it all began to go wrong.
Nancy smacked herself on the butt—a provocative thing to do, a little out of character, but then she was in high spirits—and fumbled in a pocket for her cash. She frowned. She searched her other pockets. Then she searched them again.
“Shhhhhoooot . . .” she said. “I must’ve left my money at the stand.”
She led us back to Funhouse Funnel Cakes. Her co-worker had shut off the last lights and locked up, but Nancy let herself in and pulled the dangling cord. A fluorescent tube came flickering on with a wasplike buzz. Nancy searched under the counters, checked her pockets again, and looked in her hardcover to see if she’d been using her money as a bookmark. I saw her check the book myself. I’m sure of it.
“What the heck?” Nancy said. “I had a fifty-dollar bill. Fifty dollars! It was so new it looked like no one had ever spent it before. What the frickenfrack did I do with it?” She really did talk that way, like a brainy girl genius in a young-adult novel.
As she spoke, I flashed to a memory of the carousel operator helping her up onto a horse, his hand on her waist and a big smile on those juicy lips of his. Then I remembered catching a glimpse of him as we were spun past on our steeds. He hadn’t been smiling then—and he’d been poking some fingers into his front pocket.
“Huh,” I said aloud.
“What?” Jake asked.
I looked at Jake’s narrow, handsome face, his set chin and mild eyes, and was struck with a sudden premonition of disaster. I shook my head, didn’t want to say anything.
“Spill it,” Jake said.
I knew better than to reply—but there’s something irresistible about lighting a fuse and waiting for it to sizzle down to the charge, just to hear a loud bang. And there was always something exciting about winding up a Renshaw, for much the same reason. It was why I went into the bouncy house with Geri and why I decided to give Jake a straight answer.
“The operator on the carousel. He might’ve been putting something in his pocket after he helped Nan—”
I didn’t get any further.
“That motherfucker,” Jake said, and turned on his heel.
“Jake, no,” Nancy said.
She grabbed his wrist, but he pulled free and started out along the dark pier.
“Jake!” Nancy called, but he didn’t look back.
I trotted to keep up with him.
“Jake,” I said, my stomach queer with booze and nerves. “I didn’t see anything. Not really. He might’ve been reaching into his pocket to adjust his balls.”
“That motherfucker,” Jake repeated. “Had his hands all over her.”
The Wild Wheel was dark, its stampeding creatures frozen in midleap. A heavy red velvet rope had been hung across the steps, and the sign that dangled from it said SHH! THE HORSES ARE SLEEPING! DON’T DISTURB THEM!
At the center of the carousel was an inner ring lined with mirrored panels. A glow showed around one of those panels, and from somewhere on the other side you could hear swanky horns and a tinny, crooning voice: Pat Boone, “I Almost Lost My Mind.” Someone was at home in the secret cabinet at the heart of the Wild Wheel.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Hey, pal!”
“Jake! Forget it!” Nancy said. She was frightened now, scared of what Jake might do. “For all I know, I put my money down for a moment and the wind grabbed it.”
None of us believed that.
Geri was the first to step over the red velvet rope. If she was going, I had to follow, although by then I was scared, too. Scared and, if I’m honest, jittery with excitement. I didn’t know where