He walked to the pier’s edge, then looked out across the water. In the summer, this area had been lined with face-painting tables and caricature artists working at easels. They, at least, had taken their wares home and left the space clear. Now, with the tables and booths gone, Ebon could see the water. But the ghostly absence of activity was as ominous as the open ocean beyond, and looking across it made him feel unsettled.
Again, Ebon wondered why he was here. He’d come to answer the question of the Party’s continued existence, but he’d verified that from the sand. He hadn’t needed to come up to the entrance, and he certainly hadn’t needed to trespass.
He didn’t have an answer, yet somehow felt compelled to stay a while longer anyway. Being on the pier was like stepping through a memory. Everything around him was crisp and bright (though the vivid colors of the past had been traded for ghosts of their former hues and a forest of sad browns), and yet it didn’t feel real. He kept touching things to convince himself of its presence. He wasn’t a kid, and neither was the carnival. And yet it was as if he could sense all those lost summers still here just below the surface, their essences steeped into the deck like wood chips soaked in mesquite. A million sandal-clad feet had crossed these boards, their owners giddy with laughter, heads alight with joy and carefree mirth, stuffed with the thrill of immature romance. A million memories had been forged on this wood, among these rusted machines and dilapidated stalls.
Turning around, Ebon sighed.
It wasn’t fair that the machines and stalls had quit on those old memories. The Party had a responsibility to endure forever — to remain an anchor point for the souls it had touched as they wandered into the mire of adult life and adult responsibilities. Aaron’s Party had been a place where people came to be happy and forget themselves. Old times decayed, but the Party should remain as a reminder of those times, keeping them alive beyond the veil.
Looking around the deserted playground in the stark light of a dying summer, Ebon suddenly felt a bone-deep sadness. He shouldn’t have come here. He should have left Aaron’s Party decently buried. Gone forever, his peace already made. Seeing it now, like this, was like watching a beloved’s life slowly draining away. He’d had beautiful, pristine, innocent memories of this place, and now he’d remember it this way forever. It felt as if those old days were slipping away, their anchor untethered. It wasn’t fair.
There was a ride called the High-Glider to his right. It consisted of overhead arms that revolved hanging benches like those of a ski lift. The thing looked pathetic now, its wooden seats splintered and cracked. The blue paint, once vibrant and joyful, looked sad and pocked with brown. Looking at it was like visiting a childhood space that had seemed large and realizing now that it was actually small. How had this ride housed the giddy thrill he seemed to remember? It merely went in circles, not even up and down. It was wood and iron, nothing more.
He was about to sit when something caught his eye.
“Oh,” he said, the word coming out as a whisper.
His fingers trailed along the High-Glider’s wooden seat as his feet plodded toward the new sight, his finger pads somehow skirting splinters. When he reached the bench’s end, his arm flapped down to his side, slapping his hip like a corpse’s limb.
The carousel.
Ebon almost didn’t want to approach it, but he inched forward under the same phantom compulsion that had caused him to hop the fence. He was seeing something soiled — something treated harshly by a stranger who hadn’t realized the delicacy of what they’d been entrusted with.
(Get off, you’re going to break it)
(Get away, giggling, it’s my birthright)
He remembered Aimee riding the carousel, too old and too tall for the thing, her head practically brushing the underside’s brightly painted circus scene. She’d ridden a white unicorn. Ebon could still hear her laughter, the slow fading Doppler of her glee as she moved away from him, then its slow return growing ever louder as the tinkling machine brought her back around. There’d been a red-haired girl on the horse behind Aimee — a plain, roan-colored thing, no horn, no ride for a proper princess. Ebon remembered how the girl had pouted, and how Ebon had told Aimee to let the little girl have the unicorn. But Aimee had ridden the carousel just once in Ebon’s presence, as a joke, and had kept saying that she’d ride what she wanted, because the island only had the carousel thanks to her family, and that it was her birthright.
You’re too big for that thing, Aimee. You’re going to break it!
Get away. It’s my birthright.
Swatting at Ebon on every loop. The little red-haired girl behind her, face set, Ebon wondering if he should apologize for his too-large, too-mature friend, who’d reached the unicorn first. Who’d stolen it without shame or embarrassment. The seventeen-year-old girl who’d begun as a brat and grown beautiful. And as she’d circled around and around, laughing inappropriately and drawing stares from parents, Ebon had pondered the unfairness of her growing so beautiful. It wasn’t fair that she hadn’t simply remained his fun but boring friend. It wasn’t fair that, at only fifteen, he’d had to try and decide if he loved her.
The ride had finished. Aimee had come down, and the carousel’s operator had looked at Aimee askance, seeming to wish her away lest she ride again. Drunk teenagers, he’d seemed to think, but Ebon had never seen Aimee drunk — or, really, even seen her drink back then. It was just how she was. Like how she wore her long hair in a mess, her smile bright, her carefree sundress swishing above suddenly long legs, because she’d grown fast and hadn’t updated her wardrobe. Aimee had wanted to ride the Danger Wheel next, and they had, as in summers past — as they had time and time again since that first kiss, Ebon always hoping for (and sometimes getting) a repeat. But had she ever been as infatuated with him as he’d been with her? It seemed impossible. She had her off-season boyfriends, and had always crowed of her exploits.
The unicorn was still here. Ebon touched it, feeling cold despite the warmth. She’d sat here. All those years ago, when it had been fresh and bright and newly restored. He wanted to feel her presence, to see his teenage footprints in the dust where he’d stood, his arms crossed, wishing she’d stop embarrassing him. How did time slip into something so thin? And why, once time sifted through your fingers, could you never reclaim it?
As the sense of loss and malaise settled onto his shoulders, Ebon began to breathe shallower, plodding more slowly, savaging himself with a distant, tugging pain as if relishing its blunt agony. The unicorn had been scratched and chipped, its side marred by blue graffiti, but he found himself hoping that other mounts would be in worse shape. He wanted to see tragedy and sadness and decimation. The knife was already deep. He wanted to feel it deeper, to revel in the sorrowful catharsis.
Even in Ebon’s final summer, the carousel had fallen out of favor thanks to the Danger Wheel’s newness, and some of the best horses had been sold off. Those that remained had been moved to the outer edge to create the illusion of completion, but now many that had stayed were cracked, broken, and missing hooves or ears. Sometimes both. It looked like thrill-joy vandals had gone through with a bat, smashing at random because nobody cared. Some of what he saw was simple neglect and decay: spindles broken from their top mounts as screws pulled from rotting wood, horses canted sideways and left with their sunward sides to fade, unpainted areas left to the weather. Mechanisms and members had been ravaged by the caustic salt air as time attempted to erase all that dared stand in its way.
Ebon returned to the unicorn. The day was bright, but his mind saw only nighttime and multicolored lights, hearing only the delighted screams of the Danger Wheel’s riders. He imagined only the soft press of lips against his, the firm but yielding weight of a tender young breast in his palm.
He should leave. He had no reason to be here. The Party was here; it was dead; he’d lost half of his life and everything he’d acquired during it. He’d come full circle, now back on this old boardwalk without a proper apartment,
a proper job, a wife, or ambitions beyond these splintered boards and screws. Back in the cottage was the girl he’d first loved, waiting for him to build something with her. They’d once made a castle together with sand — Aimee’s inspiration and Ebon’s flair combining to create something new from what had once been mere crumble. But even that beautiful castle had lasted only a day.
Ebon sank, sat on the edge of the carousel’s deck, and stared across the pier toward where the caricaturists and face painters had once set up shop, gazing across the ocean that hadn’t changed. He could see Redding Dock in the distance, suddenly feeling its pull. He should go there. He should leave this old place. Richard’s cottage had fallen apart, along with Aaron’s Party. At least Redding, as he’d seen it just days ago, had remained the same. At least the dock had still been as new and fresh as his memory, still as secluded and alone as he needed it to be.
He blinked. So you could see Redding Dock from Aaron’s Party.
Which meant he’d be able to see Aaron’s Party from Redding Dock.
He’d been at the dock just a few days ago (Two days? Three days? Four weeks? How long had he been on the island anyway? Long enough to make eggs and coffee for a red-haired woman with breasts like white pillows) and when he’d been there, he’d seen the pier. It had been empty. That was the reason he’d believed Captain Jack’s story about Aaron’s Party, and disbelieved Aimee’s.
The thought was too obtuse. Too difficult. He didn’t want to think about it. He could walk to the rail and look at Redding Dock more properly, or he could hop back over the fence and walk all the way down to the dock and look back. Anything else was only theory.
Was it possible he’d simply seen it wrong that first time? That his eyes had fooled him? He’d been exhausted and mentally beaten that day. Ebon made his living in part due to an excellent memory (A great connector remembers everyone’s dogs’ birthdays, his standard joke went), but even his airtight memory was fallible. He recalled once arguing with his mother about a woman he’d seen by the side of the road holding a sign that said, I’m for rent. The picture had been vivid in his mind, and he’d seen every detail. The truth, when they’d circled back at Ebon’s insistence, had matched his mother’s version of reality: the woman had been sitting on a bus stop bench, and it was the bench (not the woman) whose sign had proclaimed its availability. He’d been so sure, and yet he’d been wrong.
You didn’t really see an empty pier.
But of course he had; the memory was as vivid as the woman’s sign. He could close his eyes and see every detail. He’d been floored by that mental image; it had made him feel sick and alone because it was so hollow. But still, the memory wasn’t like a photograph. He couldn’t pull it out to stare, and convince himself that his way of remembering was right.
He must have seen it wrong, but just as wondering if you left the iron on can make you believe you did, wondering about his image of the empty pier was already making Ebon doubt its veracity. He was here, right now, standing between the carousel and the Danger Wheel. Two pieces of solid evidence to contradict one fuzzy memory from a few (days? Weeks? Months?) ago, around the time Aimee was adding the porch outside her father’s old bedroom and moving her art studio upstairs. If the house could have changed so much in that time, why couldn’t Ebon’s sense of recall?
Something seemed to move behind him. Ebon turned and saw that one of the broken-away carousel horses had shifted on the platform, rocking across the horse’s wooden flank. How long had it been since anyone had walked through the carousel debris to disturb whatever else had been precariously balanced? Probably not since the ‘90s.
Ebon looked back toward Redding Dock. He wasn’t remembering incorrectly, he decided. That sort of thinking (that it was no big deal to be standing in a place you were quite sure hadn’t been there not long ago) was like noticing a cancerous lump and convincing yourself it would improve if ignored … or possibly believing the same about a crippling back injury. He let the chilling thought settle, trying to see where it slotted in with the rest of his thoughts. He watched it like a deadly snake, handling it deftly and waiting for the strike.
Ebon owed his fancy apartment, his BMW, a closet full of suits he hated to wear, and at least one or two classy girls who hadn’t truly liked Ebon for himself to his spectacular memory. Others in his agency had landed contracts with fast talk and convincing arguments, but all Ebon had ever done was to listen and remember. When he recalled every detail of the last meal he’d had with a client (the fabrics and colors, every topic of conversation, the GPA the client’s daughter had achieved that they’d been so proud of, the waiter’s name and whether the client had tried to tip beyond what Ebon had paid, the smoothness of their nails and the source of a cut they’d got from gardening), then being liked was easy. Ebon was everyone’s best friend when he wanted to be, and he remembered everything. It’s why the agency had allowed him to take an indefinite hiatus to come here — why he hadn’t really been laid off, no matter what Pillman had said that last day in his teak-scented office.
Yes. He was quite sure he hadn’t remembered Aaron’s Party wrong at all.
When he’d been at Redding Dock six weeks ago (it had been six weeks, right? He felt the need to get it correct to the day, and was sure, now, that he had), he’d looked south to see an empty pier — no carousel, no game stands, no enormous red Danger Wheel. He’d even asked Vicky about it, and she’d told him it had been torn apart years ago, shipped off island and junked as scrap. There were plans to remake the pier as a more traditional and less thrill-filled boardwalk, if for no other reason than to erase the blight it had become. Ebon remembered that in detail too. He and Vicky had had sex and then worked all day ripping out plaster in the living room. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the way she’d tucked her pile of red hair up under a painter’s cap without so much as poking a pony tail out the back, making the cap look like a lumpy turban.
The horse shifted behind Ebon again, probably because he was tapping his foot. An uncomfortable certainty was dawning: Maybe I shouldn’t have come back to Aaron after all. He reached back to still the carousel horse’s rocking, but it was no longer rocking. It was right where it should be, mounted upright behind a palomino with a long blonde tail.
You should leave.
The voice inside Ebon sounded smooth and sensible — not rushed or panicked, frightening for its lack of alarm. Ebon thought he could hear that voice struggling to stay steady, as if it weren’t his own and he had no control over it. The tone was that of a stewardess calmly informing passengers to put their heads between their legs — and, unsaid, to kiss their asses goodbye.
The pier had been empty six weeks ago. Three days ago. Whichever, whenever, whatever. You saw it with your own eyes. You should go. Stand. Walk slowly. Back out, if you must.
Ebon heard a noise and looked back to see the Danger Wheel beginning to turn. It didn’t grind with rust; it turned as smoothly as it always had, as if it wanted to move and resented inertia. Instead of hearing the grate of metal on metal, he heard the smooth spinning of wheels, the meshing of cogs, and the distant, delighted screams from riders at its top. The Danger Wheel wasn’t like a normal Ferris wheel. You went around, but then you went up and stayed there. Ebon tipped his head back, watching it spin. A large red circle of metal girders, eight smaller circles around the periphery, each with a car making slow revolutions. He could smell popcorn. He could smell cotton candy.
It’s not really here. Or it is here but shouldn’t be. The pier was empty. Nobody builds a carnival in just a few weeks, and nobody would ever rebuild a closed one. It would take an impossible amount of time, like remodeling a house.
Behind him, the carousel began to turn.
Ebon stepped back, aware in a distant, technical way that he should be afraid — for his sanity, for his sense of reality, for his violated sense of what was and should not be. But when he looked at the carnival, it was like he was seeing two images overlapping, both equally solid
and equally ephemeral. It was like smoke atop smoke — one image of the dead carousel and another crossing its lines and colors that showed the carousel revolving. In one image, the horses appeared fresh and bright. Bright under the lights anyway, because night had begun to fall. He’d left the cottage midmorning, and it was past sunset now.
Get out. Get out!
But he didn’t want to get out. Atop the conflicting visions of the carousel and Danger Wheel — and now the game stands and the area by the railing where artists had set up easels and tables for face-painting — Ebon saw a dozen other random memories of events that, like what was happening now hadn’t actually occurred. His boat ride with Captain Jack. His first night in Aimee’s cottage. Seeing the woman with red hair and no discernible face, then losing her in the island’s twisting, shifting streets. Holly cheating on him, Holly dying. Himself betraying Holly right back, then running away. Richard Frey, his big hands and solid arms, towering above him. Sandcastles in the sand. Houses in the sand, just as temporary.
He blinked. A sense of missed panic swept past him like a car brushing his sleeve on the side of a busy expressway. He was suddenly afraid. Very afraid. But Ebon wasn’t afraid of the carnival, because it was just a rusty old place around him: carousel horses lying on their sides in disrepair, the Danger Wheel forever frozen, the game stalls fallow and empty. Only now was he feeling fear at all, and the fact that it had taken so long to arise was the most frightening of all.
There’s something wrong with the town. Get out. Not just out of Aaron’s Party, but out of Aaron itself.
That’s ridiculous, he answered the voice. But it wasn’t, and he knew it. His heart was beating faster than it should, standing on a boardwalk in late morning’s full light. His hands were shaking tattoo rhythms against the legs of his cargo shorts.
He remembered falling into the sand as the horizon tilted. He remembered heading west, yet ending up east. Ebon remembered impossible rooms, impossible timelines. Two women, one of whom he knew while not knowing at all. Three women, if you counted the ghost who slept in the bunk above him as he obsessively read her journal, bringing her back to life each evening. Hadn’t he heard the bunk above him creak at night? Holly hadn’t been shy when she’d spoken to her raw and uncensored journal. Hating himself, Ebon had read about her dalliances with an erection. Above him, the old bed had creaked, a soft, almost-there voice asking if it could come down and help him out, for old times’ sake.
Axis of Aaron Page 15
