Dark Maze

Island—that she wanted both of us changed, until death us do part. And now she stared at me, searching my face as I thought carefully of how to answer.
    “I do,” I said.

    We walked along the fenced vacancy that once had been Steeplechase Park, where once there was a graceful glass and cast-iron dome that contained a world of wonders a boy naturally believed would live forever.
    We walked some more, past the last remaining wall of Steeplechase. The rain had softened now to little more than mist.
    Ruby spotted a mural on the low wall, recently put up by an outfit called the Coney Island Hysterical Society. There was the familiar logo of the Steeplechase man, with slick black ringlets on his forehead and a black moustache curled up over his full-face, toothy smile. And a drawing of the old glass and cast-iron dome. And the legend:

    Steeplechase Park ...
    Come Back...“
    Come Back...“

    We cut along the back end of Nathan’s Famous. A prostitute lazed in a doorway, lit a cigarette and sized me up as a no-sale. Bowery Avenue was steely wet. In the distance, toward the water, was the rubble of giant spokes from the wheel of an abandoned carnival ride; it lay in the sand looking like wreckage from a battle to the death with Godzilla.
    Then a sound came through the clammy air of the Bowery and cleansed it like sunlight, a sound I knew from so many years ago; so real a sound as my mother’s voice, as if it were really possible for a world to come back.
    “Where is it coming from?” Ruby asked.
    The softly booming sound, the clatter and whine and thump of a carousel. Bellows pushing air through rolls of perforated paper, brass pipes tooting, felt-covered wood mallets pounding out a dozen different tones. And with the music, the painted horses would be lifting and falling, lifting and falling...
    It was from another life, I thought. “It’s from the carousel over on Surf Avenue,” I said.
    “It’s a pretty sound,” Ruby said. “Maybe we can take a ride before we go back?”
    “I don’t know, maybe.”
    We moved on, past the lane to Picasso’s masterpiece, then up the stairs over the sand and onto the boardwalk, where I would spend the afternoon in and around the concession booths gathering information on the Furmans—Charlie and Celia, in the snapshot with the unidentified man. And, just maybe, some reason behind the lies of Johnny Halo and Big Stuff.
    Rain threatened again, this time a real storm. Black clouds formed low over the ocean and there were distant thunderclaps.
    A boardwalk barker took advantage of the turn in the weather: “Hurry, hurry, hurry! You’ll want to get in here quick; you’ll want to stay dry. The show’s almost over, folks, but I’ll tell you what—pay me half price now, and a new show begins in thirty minutes and you’re welcome to stay. Now, how can you do better than that? Hurry, hurry, hurry! We’ve got nature’s oddities on parade today! You’ll see them all, at half the price! You’ll see them high and dry. Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
    Ruby grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the barker. He stood on a riser outside a large rickety shed, flagged with huge canvas posters of sideshow performers. A small crowd was circled around him, mostly old gents with nothing to do anymore and teenage mothers from the nearby housing projects.
    “Look at the posters,” Ruby said.
    I looked, and saw what she meant. “It’s Picasso’s style,” I said.
    “Nature’s oddities, folks!” the barker cried. “Yes, we got them right here. We got them just the way you like them! And right now, so long as the rain holds off, you got them for free! That’s right, free! Keep that money in your pants, folks. This little show’s on me!”
    A skinny young woman draped provocatively in black lace stepped from behind a curtain at the barker’s side, then took her place below a canvas poster that bore only a vague resemblance. She had long black hair that cascaded down her back and past her waist, olive skin and black Arab eyes. She wore a speckled python wrapped twice around her shoulders, once across her bare belly. The cool sea breeze made the fine hairs on her arms rise. She held the serpent’s bony head in her hands, pointing its leathery eyes and its darting tongue at the crowd.
    “Now, ain’t she beauty-ful?” the barker said.
    The old gents returned a mumble.
    “Meet Sparkle the snake charmer, di-rect from Damascus, in faraway Syria!” The barker leered. “Don’t you men out