Joyland

On the night before our first day at work, the three of us were sitting in the parlor of Maison Shoplaw, getting to know each other and speculating on the summer ahead. As we talked, the moon rose over the Atlantic, as calmly beautiful as the doe my father and I had seen standing on the old railroad tracks.

"It's an amusement park, for God's ·sake," Erin said. "How tough can it be?"

"Easy for you to say," Tom told her. "No one's going to expect you to hose down the Whirly Cups after every brat in Cub Scout Pack 18 loses his lunch halfway through the ride."

'Til pitch in where I have to," she said. "If it includes mopping up vomit as well as snapping pictures, so be it. I need this job. I've got grad school staring me in the face next year, and I'm exactly two steps from broke."

"We all ought to try and get on the same team," Tom said-and, as it turned out, we did. All the work teams at Joyland had doggy names, and ours was Team Beagle.

Just then Emmalina Shoplaw entered the parlor, carrying a tray with five champagne flutes on it Miss Ackerley, a beanpole with huge bespectacled eyes that gave her a Joyce Carol Oatesian look, walked beside her, bottle in hand. Tom Kennedy brightened. "Do I spy French ginger ale? That looks just a leetle too elegant to be supermarket plank."

"Champagne it is," Mrs. Shop law said, "although if you're expecting Moet et Chandan, young Mr. Kennedy, you're in for a disappointment This isn't Cold Duck, but it's not the highpriced spread, either."

"I can't speak for my new co-workers," Tom said, "but as someone who educated his palate on Apple Zapple, I don't think I'll be disappointed."

Mrs. Shoplaw smiled. "I always mark the beginning of summer this way, for good luck. It seems to work. I haven't lost a seasonal hire yet. Each of you take a glass, please." We did as we were told. "Tina, will you pour?"

When the flutes were full, Mrs. Shoplaw raised hers and we raised ours.

"Here is to Erin, Tom, and Devin," she said. "May they have a wonderful summer, and wear the fur only when the temperature is below eighty degrees."

We clinked glasses and drank. Maybe not the high-priced spread, but pretty damned good, and with enough left for us all to have another swallow. This time it was Tom who offered the toast. "Here's to Mrs. Shoplaw, who gives us shelter from the storm!"

"Why, thank you, Tom, that's lovely. It won't get you a discount on the rent, though."

We drank. I set my glass down feeling just the tiniest bit buzzy. "What is this about wearing the fur?" I asked.

Mrs. Shoplaw and Miss Ackerley looked at each other and smiled. It was the librarian who answered, although it wasn't really an answer at all. "You'll find out," she said.

"Don't stay up late, children," Mrs. Shoplaw advised. "You've got an early call. Your career in show business awaits."

* * *

The call was early: seven AM, two hours before the park opened its doors on another summer. The three of us walked down the beach together. Tom talked most of the way. He always talked.

It would have been wearisome if he hadn't been so amusing and relentlessly cheerful. I could see from the way Erin (walking in the surf with her sneakers dangling from the fingers of her left hand) looked at him that she was charmed and fascinated. I envied Tom his ability to do that. He was heavyset and at least three doors down from handsome, but he was energetic and possessed of the gift of gab I sadly lacked. Remember the old joke about the starlet who was so clueless she fucked the writer?

" Man, how much do you think the people who own those places are worth?" he asked, waving an arm at the houses on Beach Row. We were just passing the big green one that looked like a castle, but there was no sign of the woman and the boy in the wheelchair that day. Annie and Mike Ross came later.

"Millions, probably," Erin said. "It ain't the Hamptons, but as my dad would say, it ain't cheeseburgers."

"The amusement park probably brings the property values down a little," I said. I was looking at Joyland's three most distinctive landmarks, silhouetted against the blue morning sky: Thunderball, Delirium Shaker, Carolina Spin.

"Nah, you don't understand the rich-guy mindset," Tom said.

"It's like when they pass bums looking for handouts on the street. They just erase em from their field of vision. Bums?

What bums? And that park, same deal-what park? People who own these houses live, like, on another plane of existence." He stopped, shading his eyes and looking at the green Victorian that was going to play such a large part in my life that fall, after Erin Cook and Tom Kennedy, by then a couple, had gone back to school. "That one's gonna be mine. I'll be expecting to take possession on… mmm… June first, 1987."

''I'll bring the champagne," Erin said, and we all laughed.

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