Page 94 of Never Flinch

“Surprise me.”

8

Betty is waiting in the lobby of the Garden City Plaza, looking frumpy and anonymous in a shin-length skirt, bobby sox, kerchief, and wraparound shades. They go out the way Barbara came in, through the parking garage. They emerge in an alley behind the hotel.

“Where are we going?” Betty asks.

“You’ll see. Are you up for a walk?”

“Walk sounds good.” Betty slaps one meaty buttock. “I need to bust some calories.”

“Judging from the way you’re moving onstage, I’d say you’re busting plenty.”

They walk down Clancy Street and eventually come out on the waterfront. A block further along they come to Lakewood, the small amusement park with the Wonderland Pier at its far end. By then the two of them are chatting like old friends instead of new ones.

“Don’t know if you like amusements,” Barbara says. “This place just got going for the summer, and it doesn’t look like much stuff is open yet—”

Betty grabs Barbara’s hand and swings it. “Somethin’sopen, because I smell cotton candy.”

Betty buys two cones, and they sit on a bench, eating pink clouds. “Every bite tastes like childhood,” Barbara says.

“Same,” Betty says. “You thought any more about touring with us?”

“I think… I ought to stay here. Try to write some poems. The music… I don’t know… it kind of gets in my way.”

“Cock-blocks the muse?”

Barbara bursts out laughing. “Never thought about it that way, but you’re not wrong.”

Betty trashcans her cone—she’s vacuumed it up—and points across the boardwalk, which eventually leads to the pier. “That’sopen, too. Come on.”

Barbara looks at the Dodgem Cars and bursts into giggles. “Are you serious?”

“Girl, I’m going to mess you up.”

Betty buys tickets at the booth and crams herself into one of the cars. Barbara gets into another one and they race around, cranking their child-sized steering wheels, the poles on their cars spitting sparks and smelling like model train transformers. Barbara hits Betty first, spinning her into one of the padded rails. Betty shrieks with laughter and rams a twelve-year-old out of her way, chasing Barbara. By the time the overhead power dies and the cars drift to a stop, they have had several collisions and teamed to run a couple of teenagers into a corner, where they battered the kids relentlessly.

Barbara is laughing hard, and so is Betty.

“He’p me out of this thing, Barbara, I’m fucking stuck!”

Barbara takes one arm. One of the teenagers, bearing no animus, takes the other. They pull Betty out of the little car’s cockpit.

“Like a cork out of a wine bottle,” Betty says. “Thank you, Barb. Thank you, son.”

“No prob,” the boy says.

“Let’s find the restroom before I piss my pants,” Betty says.

They have the women’s bathroom to themselves. Betty asks if Barbara has a boyfriend.

“No one steady,” Barbara says. “I try em but don’t buy em. How about you?”

“Girl, I’m too old for that.”

“Never too old,” Barbara says, hoping for both their sakes that it’s true.

“I was married, but that didn’t work. He was into dope and I was into booze. Was a wonder we didn’t kill each other.”

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