The Funhouse

sightless, third eye on the side of its head, and she pulled her hand away. The nightmarish animals were a beer chaser to the whiskey-like effect of the spiced grass she had smoked, when she left Animal Oddities, she felt higher, more thoroughly detached from reality than when she had entered.
        They rode the Rocket-Go-Round. Amy sat in front of Buzz on the motorcycle-like seat, in one of the two-passenger, bullet-shaped cars. In the relative privacy of that rapidly spinning container, he put his hands on her braless breasts. The centrifugal force pushed her back against him, and she felt the heat and size of his erection as his crotch was jammed hard against her buttocks.
        “I want you,” he said, putting his mouth against her ear, making himself heard above the roar of the Rocket-Go-Round and the fierce whining of the wind.
        It felt good to be wanted so badly, to be needed as Buzz needed her, and Amy wondered if maybe it was a good thing to be like Liz. At least you always had someone around who needed you for something .
        At Bozo the Clown's booth, both Buzz and Richie managed to hit the bull's-eye and dunk the jeering clown in a huge tub of water. Buzz went about it doggedly, buying three baseballs, then three more, then three more, until at last he connected and sent Bozo into the tub. Richie, on the other hand, disdained that approach. He considered the situation with a mathematician's eye and sensibilities, threw two bad pitches, learned from each of them, and banged the bull's-eye on his third try.
        Later, when their car stopped for a moment at the top of the Ferris wheel, with the diamond-bright midway spread out below them, Buzz kissed Amy, kissed her deeply, hungrily, his tongue probing her mouth. His hands were all over her. She knew that tonight had to be the turning point in their relationship. Tonight she would either have to drop him or give him what he wanted. She couldn't stall any longer. She had to decide who and what she was.
        However, she was so high, so loose that she didn't want to think - couldn't think - about complex problems like that. She just wanted to float along, enjoying the lights, the sounds, the blur of motion, constant action.
        After the Ferris wheel, they boarded the bumper cars and bashed each other mercilessly. Sparks crackled and flew from the exposed-wire grid overhead. The air smelled of ozone. Each noisy, shattering collision sent a jolt of sensual pleasure through Amy.
        On one side of the bumper-car pavilion, the carousel turned in a blur of brilliant lights. On the other side, the Tilt-a-Whirl spun, rose, fell. Calliope music mixed with the roar of the crowd and the constant chatter of the pitchmen and the crashing of the bumper cars.
        Amy loved the carnival. As she pursued Richie's car and slammed into it broadside, as she was spun around by the impact, she thought that the carnival, with all of its lights and excitement, might be a little bit like Las Vegas, and she wondered if perhaps she would enjoy going to Nevada with Liz.
        From the bumper cars they went to Freak-o-rama, and Amy's disorientation was made worse by what she saw in that place: the three-eyed man whose skin was like the skin of an alligator, the fattest woman in the world, sitting on a gigantic couch, dwarfing that piece of furniture, her body nothing more than a lump, her facial features lost in doughy fat, a man with a second pair of arms growing out of his stomach, and a man with two noses and a lipless mouth.
        Liz, Buzz, and Richie thought Freak-o-rama was the best thing on the midway. They pointed and laughed at the creatures on exhibit, as if the people at whom they were laughing could neither see nor hear them. Amy didn't feel the least bit like laughing, even though she was still very high on grass. She remembered Jerry Galloway's curse and Mama's certainty that the baby would be deformed, and such sights as those in Freak-o-rama struck too close to home to amuse her. Amy was embarrassed, both for herself and for the pathetic freaks who posed for a living in the stalls. She wished there were some way she could help them, but of course she couldn't, so she listened to her friends making wisecracks, and she smiled dutifully, and she tried to hurry them along.
        Strangely, the most frightening exhibit in Freak-o-rama was the baby in the enormous jar. All of the other human oddities were whole and of such