Joyland

you’ll go. Does that strike you as fair?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Good, because that’s the way it is. I’ll need the usual: first month, last month, damage deposit.” She named a figure that also seemed fair. Nevertheless, it was going to make a shambles of my First New Hampshire Trust account.
    “Will you take a check?”
    “Will it bounce?”
    “No, ma’am, not quite.”
    She threw back her head and laughed. “Then I’ll take it, assuming you still want the room once you’ve seen it.” She stubbed out her cigarette and rose. “By the way, no smoking upstairs—it’s a matter of insurance. And no smoking in here, once there are tenants in residence. That’s a matter of common politeness. Do you know that old man Easterbrook is instituting a no-smoking policy at the park?”
    “I heard that. He’ll probably lose business.”
    “He might at first. Then he might gain some. I’d put my money on Brad. He’s a shrewd guy, carny-from-carny.” I thought to ask her what that meant, exactly, but she had already moved on. “Shall we have a peek at the room?”
    A peek at the second floor room was enough to convince me it would be fine. The bed was big, which was good, and the window looked out on the ocean, which was even better. The bathroom was something of a joke, so tiny that when I sat on the commode my feet would be in the shower, but college students with only crumbs in their financial cupboards can’t be too picky. And the view was the clincher. I doubted if the rich folks had a better one from their summer places along Heaven’s Row. I pictured bringing Wendy here, the two of us admiring the view, and then . . . in that big bed with the steady, sleepy beat of the surf outside . . .
    “It.” Finally, “it.”
    “I want it,” I said, and felt my cheeks heat up. It wasn’t just the room I was talking about.
    “I know you do. It’s all over your darn face.” As if she knew what I was thinking, and maybe she did. She grinned—a big wide one that made her almost Dickensian in spite of her flat bosom and pale skin. “Your own little nest. Not the Palace of Versailles, but your own. Not like having a dorm room, is it? Even a single?”
    “No,” I admitted. I was thinking I’d have to talk my dad into putting another five hundred bucks into my bank account, to keep me covered until I started getting paychecks. He’d grouse but come through. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to play the Dead Mom card. She had been gone almost four years, but Dad carried half a dozen pictures of her in his wallet, and still wore his wedding ring.
    “Your own job and your own place,” she said, sounding a bit dreamy. “That’s good stuff, Devin. Do you mind me calling you Devin?”
    “Make it Dev.”
    “All right, I will.” She looked around the little room with its sharply sloping roof—it was under an eave—and sighed. “The thrill doesn’t last long, but while it does, it’s a fine thing. That sense of independence. I think you’ll fit in here. You’ve got a carny look about you.”
    “You’re the second person to tell me that.” Then I thought of my conversation with Lane Hardy in the parking lot. “Third, actually.”
    “And I bet I know who the other two were. Anything else I can show you? The bathroom’s not much, I know, but it beats having to take a dump in a dormitory bathroom while a couple of guys at the sinks fart and tell lies about the girls they made out with last night.”
    I burst into roars of laughter, and Mrs. Emmalina Shoplaw joined me.

    We descended by way of the outside stairs. “How’s Lane Hardy?” she asked when we got to the bottom. “Still wearing that stupid beanie of his?”
    “It looked like a derby to me.”
    She shrugged. “Beanie, derby, what’s the diff?”
    “He’s fine, but he told me something . . .”
    She was giving me a head-cocked look. Almost smiling, but not quite.
    “He told me the Joyland funhouse—Horror House, he called it—is haunted. I asked him if he was pulling my leg, and he said he wasn’t. He said you knew about it.”
    “Did he, now.”
    “Yes. He says that when it comes to Joyland, you know more than he does.”
    “Well,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her slacks and bringing out a pack of Winstons, “I know a fair amount. My husband was chief of engineering down there until he took a heart attack and died. When it turned out his life insurance was lousy—and borrowed against to the hilt in the