Joyland

crusty reputation is we all like you, kid. You learn fast, you do what’s asked of you, you’re honest, you don’t make no trouble, and the kids love you like mad when you’re wearing the fur. But you’d have to be blind not to see something’s wrong with you. Rozzie thinks girl trouble. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she ain’t.”
    Rozzie gave him a haughty dare-you-doubt-me stare.
    “Maybe your parents are getting a divorce. Mine did, and it damn near killed me. Maybe your big brother got arrested for selling dope—”
    “My mother’s dead and I’m an only child,” I said sulkily.
    “I don’t care what you are in the straight world,” he said. “This is Joyland. The show. And you’re one of us. Which means we got a right to care about you, whether you like it or not. So get something to eat.”
    “Get a lot to eat,” Rozzie said. “Now, noon, all day. Every day. And try to eat something besides fried chicken where, I tell you what, there’s a heart attack in every drumstick. Go in Rock Lobster and tell them you want a take-out of fish and salad. Tell them to make it a double. Get your weight up so you don’t look like the Human Skeleton in a ten-in-one.” She turned her gaze on Lane. “It’s a girl, of course it is. Anybody can see that.”
    “Whatever it is, stop fucking pining, ” Lane said.
    “Such language to use around a lady,” Rozzie said. She was sounding like Fortuna again. Soon she’d come out with Ziss is vat za spirits vant, or something equivalent.
    “Ah, blow it out,” Lane said, and walked back toward the Spin.
    When he was gone, I looked at Rozzie. She really wasn’t much in the mother-figure department, but right then she was what I had. “Roz, does everyone know?”
    She shook her head. “Nah. To most of the old guys, you’re just another greenie jack-of-all-trades . . . although not as green as you were three weeks ago. But many people here like you, and they see something is wrong. Your friend Erin, for one. Your friend Tom for another.” She said friend like it rhymed with rent. “I am another friend, and as a friend I tell you that you can’t fix your heart. Only time can do that, but you can fix your body. Eat!”
    “You sound like a Jewish mother joke,” I said.
    “I am a Jewish mother, and believe me, it’s no joke.”
    “I’m the joke,” I said. “I think about her all the time.”
    “That you can’t help, at least for now. But you must turn your back on the other thoughts that sometimes come to you.”
    I think my mouth dropped open. I’m not sure. I know I stared. People who’ve been in the business as long as Rozzie Gold had been back then—they are called mitts in the Talk, for their palmistry skills—have their ways of picking your brains so that what they say sounds like the result of telepathy, but usually it’s just close observation.
    Not always, though.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Give those morbid records a rest, do you understand that?” She looked grimly into my face, then laughed at the surprise she saw there. “Rozzie Gold may be just a Jewish mother and grandmother, but Madame Fortuna sees much.”
    So did my landlady, and I found out later—after seeing Rozzie and Mrs. Shoplaw having lunch together in Heavens Bay on one of Madame Fortuna’s rare days off—that they were close friends who had known each other for years. Mrs. Shoplaw dusted my room and vacuumed the floor once a week; she would have seen my records. As for the rest—those famous suicidal ideations that sometimes came to me—might not a woman who had spent most of her life observing human nature and watching for psychological clues (called tells both in the Talk and big-league poker) guess that a sensitive young man, freshly dumped, might entertain thoughts of pills and ropes and riptide undertows?
    “I’ll eat,” I promised. I had a thousand things to do before Early Gate, but mostly I was just anxious to be away from her before she said something totally outrageous like Her name is Vendy, and you still think of her ven you mess-turbate.
    “Also, drink big glass of milk before you go to bed.” She raised an admonitory finger. “No coffee; milk. Vill help you sleep.”
    “Worth a try,” I said.
    She went back to Roz again. “The day we met, you asked if I saw a beautiful woman with dark hair in your future. Do you remember that?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did I say?”
    “That she was in my past.”
    Rozzie gave a single nod, hard and