Coney Island 5

Brad left a Valentine's Day gift for me under the bumper cars.  A red music box, filled with a necklace and other things he'd probably found at the bottom of his pockets.  The necklace had 3 lockets attached to the chain, with room for six photos.  I wore it into the tunnel, where he'd tried to wrap it around his fingers while we kissed.

Outside the Tunnel of Love, Clyde was waiting for me as the storm came in off the Atlantic.  The night sky purpled to an unnatural color and the clouds flashed with occasional high lightning.  I knew he was meeting Rosie for their own secret rituals tonight, which is why he was wearing black.  Clyde might let a green or blue t-shirt into his rotation now and then, but when he's going to see Rosie, he wears the plain and faded black of their misspent youth.  His hair blew around in the cool air, like it always does, hiding his black eyes.

I can never decide if I've had the fewest conversations with Clyde, or the most, out of anyone else alive.  But it's the same as trying to decide that about myself.  Have I really spoken back to the voice I call my conscience, or have I never done so?  Thoughts don't narrate themselves any more than they are formed by language, but instead something more primitive like a collection of the senses.  The same goes for Clyde, as the boy who knows all and sees all.  Is he that way because I told him everything, or showed him?  Or did it just happen like a thought happens, to both of us at once?

Clyde stood on the beach, a black shape against the eerie purple storm and the gray berm of sand.  He didn't say he was waiting for me, but I knew that he was.  I didn't tell him I would come down the to the sand, but he knew I would.  The dim light reflected down on all of Coney Island casting it in shades of black and gray and violet, and the wind filled the atmosphere with an expectation of something terrible approaching.  The park was empty, but for us.

"I'll be right back," I told Brad, and he crossed his arms and leaned against the metal railing outside the ride, clad in his white thermal shirt and red baseball cap.  He squinted at me in jealousy, every inch the good ole boy we all know he can become.

"Alright, but don't take too long because we gotta get goin' an' we got stuff to do."

Behind him, emerging from the Tunnel with Nick wilting delicate under his arm, Adam threw me black glower.  His tie was undone and his fly was down, so I had a hard time feeling that sorry for him. 

"I need to speak with you, Evelyn," he accused me, the tone is his voice plainly implying I was avoiding him.

"I'm just going to say hi to Clyde," I shrugged, as if both of them were overreacting and there was nothing dangerous at all about Clyde; no dimensions we could vanish into, no memory spells he could cast to erase both Brad and Adam from existence entirely, no sexual prowess he possessed which they did not.

"Well, we'll wait here," Adam grunted, his heavy brows meeting over his eyes as he leaned against the same railing Brad had his weight against, Brad taller by an inch and a half, Adam stiffer by 10 degrees.  Nick stole away, judiciously silent and sparing me his sarcasm.

I met Clyde on the beach, and I've written what we discussed a few times now, at first descriptive passages explaining all the things his double-speak meant, and then a version which explained none of it, and I finally distilled it down to just our dialogue.  It would have made a good blog entry and provided a nice natural break in events.

But the words he said don't matter.  Or anyway, they wouldn't now, or in their translation.  Like anything Clyde says, they'll matter little by little, over time, a second too late.

We talked about love.  That's all he ever talks about.  At the end of the conversation, he smiled at me.  Clyde's smile is really more of a humorless grin on a skeleton where only his eyes get soft.  I knew when he smiled, something terrible was about to happen, and the beach disappeared, and I was lost in the desert without warning, and alone.

"It's supposed to remind people of a pussy," Joshua explains to me, and I roll my eyes.

"It is not."

Joshua takes every available inch of the benches along the beach at Coney.  The canvas of his jeans always looks tortured to it's limit as he stretches his wide legs apart to make room for his stomach on his lap.  His wide face is unshaven, and his hair is long enough and tangled with wild curls enough he's tied it back like a pirate.  The buttons of his flannel strain, and the sunlight is pulled thin through the clouds, and the entire moment is drawn long to contain his size.

Joshua is really big, and he laughs really loud at my embarrassment.

"It's called the Tunnel of Love," he reiterates to me, like I'll suddenly believe his point or even want to acknowledge it.  "It's all dark and there's water and it's really warm and damp cuz I put in those fog machines."

"But I mean... that's not like why they were invented," I argue, and his laugh echoes along the beach.

"Yes it is!"

I try and fail to squish beside him against the armrest of the bench and end up leaning against his shoulder and sitting halfway on his knee.  Sometimes I think Joshua's main accomplishment with his size was taking up available space so girls would have to sit on his lap.

"You're too fat to fit here," he teases me, and gently pinches me along the ribs.

"Okay, but is it like X-rated?" I ask him, and I feel him breathe deep and sigh with disappointment.

"No.  I thought about it, though.  Just making the inside a lot of porn."

"Why didn't you?"

He considers before answering me, touching his lips again.

"I thought it would be weird to pose all those animatronics like that.  What if I like it?  Does that make me a pervert?"

"Yes," I tell him, and poke him back in the gut.

"It's called Love Through the Ages.  You'll like it," he promises me.  "And the mauve is nice.  It's like a really classy mauve."

"It's pussy-mauve," I remind him.