The woman reached the back of the book then pointed up at a row of white T-shirts behind and high above Greenie on the wall.
“I’ll do one of them,” she said. “In double XL.”
Greenie had to use his chrome high-reach garment hook. He pulled it from his side and extended it, screwed it into place. He accidentally knocked the stick hard against the rack, and the shirts swooped unevenly left and right. He successfully hooked the T-shirt, and drew it down to the counter.
“How about the design?” he said.
She held out the book, returning to the page she’d already identified, and jabbed a picture with her gloved index finger. It was a picture of a cheesy pink sunset with the words, “Someone in Ocean City misses me.” Greenie wanted to laugh. He wondered if the woman could read, if she intended to give it as a gift or wear it herself.
“You got it.” Greenie entered the picture code into his computer, and went back to the studio to create the shirt. He watched the woman through a hinged seam in the partition. She went to the front of the shop and gazed out, across the boardwalk, to the water. Five or six shirtless little boys passed the front of the shop. They looked cold, cupping their hands together and hunching their shoulders. They all wore swim trunks and those newfangled webbed water shoes. The woman watched them pass and took a step toward the door. Only once before had someone walked out on a T-shirt while it was being made.
He finished the shirt and brought it back to the counter, hung it with yellow plastic clothespins on the line against the wall behind him, and set the fan on high directly in front of it.
“Whattya think?” he said.
“Can I wash it?” she asked.
“Only in cold,” Greenie said, “and only air-dry.”
After a minute or two, he took the shirt down, ran his fingers over the design, and folded it neatly. He slid it into a flat brown paper bag.
“It’ll be sixteen twenty-three,” he said.
The woman reached for the zippered fanny pack that swung at her groin and pulled out six or seven rolls of coins. Greenie expressed his annoyance with a little nose sigh. He counted the rolls, mostly dimes, and split into a roll of nickels to make the total balance. He deposited the coins into his register and his little machine spat out a receipt. He handed her this, as well as the shirt.
It wasn’t until she’d left and he was starting to close the register when he glanced in and realized that one of the coins she’d paid with was in fact not a nickel. Greenie picked up the coin, which was the approximate size of a nickel, but lighter weight, and on the side that faced him was inscribed a wheel that filled the whole coin, with spokes. He turned it over in his palm and the other side read: “1 ride.”
Greenie had only set foot in Wonderland, the amusement park at the far end of the boardwalk, once or twice. It opened in evenings and on weekends, and catered to little kids, featuring a dozen carnival rides, a mini-golf course, various food stands.
He recognized the coin as a token for the giant old Ferris wheel in Wonderland. Greenie had read about the wheel in the local paper; how it had been built in the 1920s, and still maintained the original operating system, whereby the guy who ran it collected coins from riders, rather than the red paper tickets required by all the other rides. The historic wheel was the largest structure in the park, and one of the tallest in the entire state of New Jersey; it was almost six stories high. Greenie had admired the wheel at night before and could see the upper half of it from his apartment. The spokes were covered with rainbow-colored lights, which blinked in and out from the center in bright circus patterns. Greenie held the coin warm in his palm for a moment, then shoved it into the front pocket of his jeans.
Greenie’s shift officially ended at six, but he closed the shop a few minutes early that evening, since he had to pick up Monkey.
At Pawscienda, an old man with an old dog spread across his feet paged through a Horse & Hound Magazine. There was a box of Kleenex on the plexiglass coffee table at the center of the room. A girl in a navy Kroger polo shirt had a cream crate at her feet. She was running her thumb along the screen of her iPhone.
Greenie checked in with the receptionist.
She showed him back to a blindingly sterile operating room with framed certifications and degrees hung crookedly on the wall.
The veterinarian introduced herself as Dr. Scott, and she rose from a desk in the corner, where she was flipping through a stack of perforated papers, to shake Greenie’s hand. She pulled her reading glasses from her nose, folded them, and hung them from the breast pocket of her white laboratory jacket.
Monkey was lying on the table on his side, licking the inside of his paw. He was clearly still sedated, each blink slow and uneven. Greenie felt suddenly nauseous.
Dr. Scott said, “The thyroid problems have advanced, as you guessed, with the weight loss and changes to his fur. The meds you started him on, when did you say? Four, five months ago? They’re not keeping up.”
She reached down to stroke Monkey down the center of his skull and Monkey dipped his chin a hair. She gently kept going at his nose with her middle knuckle, while reaching for a clipboard with her other hand. Greenie felt suddenly angry at Dr. Scott. Monkey had never liked having his face touched. Monkey’s mouth was slightly open and the thin gray-pink tip of his tongue peeked through. The fur around his mouth was white.
Dr. Scott fiddled with the glasses in her pocket but didn’t put them back on before squinting down at her chart. “Monkey’s fifteen years old now, is that right? That’s a good, long life for a cat.” She set the chart back down and looked at Greenie. “Monkey’s in a fair amount of discomfort now, with these problems. Blood pressure through the roof and constant dehydration.”
Greenie nodded. He willed steadiness to his voice. “Are there other medicines we could try?”
Dr. Scott shook her head. “Methimazole is the best stuff out there. Now, the other option would be surgery. Remove the thyroid glands altogether. That’s a big procedure for an old cat.” She fingered Monkey’s neck. “This is where the incisions would be made, this long, on both sides. We’d put him under.”
Greenie nodded. He pictured Monkey spread out on this very table, deep under anesthesia with his paws limp and agape while Dr. Scott sliced into his neck. He pictured the blood.
“I’d just tell you up front,” Dr. Scott continued, “it costs five, six hundred and there’s a fair amount of risk involved. Long recovery too. More than a fair amount of risk with a cat this advanced.”
The tip of Monkey’s tail danced and swirled on the table.
“It’s your decision, of course,” Dr. Scott said delicately, gazing down at Monkey. “Like I said, fifteen years is a long life for a cat. Letting him go, at a point, is the merciful thing, do you know what I mean? It’s your decision, of course.”
Greenie swallowed. His heart felt like it would fall out of him. He tried very hard not to cry.
Dr. Scott turned to Greenie and looked him straight on. She palmed his shoulder and gave him a hard, meaningful squeeze. “It’s hard to let go of someone you love.”
Greenie smashed his eyes shut and reached blindly for Monkey’s soft belly. He twirled his fingers through Monkey’s fur and felt his fine ribs, those bones gracefully curled to protect his innards, thinner than chopsticks. He blinked and looked down at Monkey through wet eyes. Unlike the fur on Monkey’s back, which was still the same deep gold-orange that it was when he was a kitten, his belly had turned into the palest corn-silk yellow. Greenie held his paw.
Dr. Scott walked Greenie to the receptionist, where he scheduled the appointment for the following week.
Instead of putting Monkey back in his crate for the ride home, Greenie carried the empty crate out of the office in one arm, and Monkey in the other. He held Monkey like a tired child; Monkey’s front paws draped over Greenie’s shoulder, head cradled to Greenie’s neck, his hind legs dangling free. Monkey was soft and heavy and lumpy, like an under-stuffed down pillow, and h
e vibrated happily against Greenie’s chest.
Where he ought to have headed west, inland, toward his apartment, Greenie decided instead to drive back toward the boardwalk. He parked in the lot behind Auntie Anne’s. The lights of Wonderland were on. He pulled Monkey from where he slept on a Buffalo Bills beach towel in the backseat. He wrapped the towel around Monkey and carried him at his chest. Monkey stirred and sniffed the air and swiped once, mildly, at Greenie’s neck with his paw.
Greenie entered the park from the boardwalk side. The rides were all active although there was scarcely a rider in the entire park, from what he could see. The empty carousel spun slowly and tinkled a la2y circus tune. Bumper cars hummed and moaned lazily against each other, migrating slowly in several large packs from one side of the rink to the other. Several employees gathered around the hot pretzel stand passed their smartphones to one another and chuckled at short videos. They didn’t seem to notice Greenie when he passed.
Pop music crackled over the intercom and was barely audible over the rush of the water cycle that delivered log carriages up to their peak at the Log Drop ride, and sent them plummeting down the drop. Greenie watched, as one after another, empty four-passenger log carriages slowly ascended, paused and teetered briefly at the peak, then whooshed down. It was a strange thing to watch without accompanying chatter and shrieks.
Greenie made his way past the small stage where a balloon animal artist had performed the last time he’d been there. The thick mustard-colored velvet stage curtain was drawn back to reveal an empty stage with a Mountain Dew bottle on its side, and a damp-looking newspaper with a rubber band around the center. Greenie passed the guy who’d guess your weight for a dollar and give you five back if he wasn’t within ten pounds. The guy was sitting in a lawn chair next to the scale, the hood of his sweatshirt up around his face, one earbud in his ear and the other dangling at his stomach. Greenie had always wondered if you could scam those guys by filling your pockets with rocks. He continued on past the cotton candy machine, where furry strips of pink clung to the inner walls of the transparent cage, and a girl stood ready with a stack of thin, white cardboard cones.
Greenie finally reached the Ferris wheel, where a long gated ramp, designed to organize a single-file line, lead up to the loading platform. There was no one in line when Greenie approached, and the platform was empty. In fact, the wheel wasn’t moving at all, despite the illusion of activity by the brightly pulsing bulbs on the spokes. The kid who operated the thing was sitting on a stepladder at the base of the wheel. He wore a newsboy cap and a black bowtie over an ill-fitting collared shirt.
Greenie made his way up the ramp, approached the platform, reached into his pocket, and handed the kid his “1 ride” coin. He clutched Monkey within the towel.
The kid took the coin from Greenie’s hand, but didn’t drop it into the fancy old-fashioned machine with antique gold trim. He peered into the towel at Greenie’s chest. He laughed. “Yo, I thought that was a baby at first. Sorry, man, no can do.”
“What?”
“We can’t let animals on here.” The kid held out the coin to return it.
Greenie was a good six inches taller than the kid, and he glared down at him. He didn’t take the coin. The kid had braces and an oily chunk of rust-colored hair across his forehead. “I need to take my cat,” Greenie said. He tightened the towel against his chest. Monkey made a slow grunting rattle.
The kid said, “It’s the rule, man. Surprised they even let you in the park with that thing. Usually they don’t unless it’s a service animal, like a blind-person dog.” The kid laughed. “You’ve got some balls, dragging a cat in here like that, yo.”
“This place is deserted,” Greenie said. “Nobody’s gonna care. Can I just go for my ride now, like I paid you for?” He nodded toward the coin in the kid’s hand.
“It’s gonna be my ass if they see you, man.”
Greenie took a step toward the loading deck.
The kid glanced nervously over both of his own shoulders then out into the park beyond Greenie. “All right, man, just, you’ve gotta say if anyone says anything, say you hid him, all right? Just say you snuck him on underneath the towel or something, all right, man?”
Greenie nodded and stepped up onto the platform. The kid dropped the coin into the machine and gestured toward the empty cart before them.
Greenie held Monkey with his left arm and used his right to grasp the handlebar to steady himself while entering the cart. He took a seat facing outward, away from the center of the wheel, and set Monkey next to him. The seat was a pleasing bouncy soft plastic that squeaked beneath his thighs. The kid lowered the safety bar to rest loosely at Greenie’s waist, and Greenie pulled Monkey from his side to arrange him across his lap.
He nodded at the kid. “Thanks, man.”
The kid grabbed a clutch and pulled it toward him to move the wheel a few notches clockwise, so Greenie’s cart lifted off the platform and ten feet into the air, where it swung gently, slightly lopsided from Greenie’s weight. The kid pushed that manual clutch back into place and pressed a big illuminated green button on the raised control column at his side.
The kid leaned back against the control column as the wheel hissed and groaned into action. It accelerated faster than Greenie expected, and made him dizzy for a moment. When he reached the top of the cycle, he sucked in cool, thick air as his inner ear adjusted.
Greenie stroked Monkey’s small skull. Monkey’s eyes were closed and his paws worked slowly in and out against Greenie’s thigh. They circled around five or six more times, and this time when they reached the bottom platform the kid caught Greenie’s eye and said, “Last time around, all right, man? I’ll give you a sec at the top.”
On this final cycle, the wheel slowed as it approached the crest. It got slower and slower, and when his cart reached the very tip-top, the wheel groaned to a complete stop. The cart swayed. It was early dusk, and everything was suddenly so fresh and crystallized before Greenie it was like a pair of old contact lenses had been peeled away from his eyeballs. He looked out beyond the boardwalk, beyond the wide, white beach, to the ocean. The water was taupe, churning and rolling mildly, like a massive silk sheet shaken out in slow motion. There was a fire down on the beach, and a large figure stoked it with what looked like a two-by-four.
Greenie felt the gentle tickling pulse of Monkey’s claws in his leg. The appointment was in five days. He wondered if, when the time came, he’d actually be able to leave his home, make that drive to Pawscienda, carry Monkey into that building, stand next to him while they did the thing.
He thought about what Dr. Scott had said: “It’s hard to let go of something you love.”
Love. Greenie considered this.
Love, that word no woman had ever torn from him. His thoughts veered suddenly, unexpectedly, to a memory of the worst fight he’d had with Tracy—it was the only time she had ever used that word—last winter after she had discovered that he was dating the much-younger cheerleader. Tracy was livid.
She had said, “We’re together for a year and you won’t even hold my hand.” Greenie closed his eyes and remembered now how furiously Tracy’s lips had trembled, how she’d thrown her palm in front of her mouth in a bad attempt to contain herself.
He remembered thinking that she looked very old, but she was crying a child’s tears. “You’re with this girl two weeks,” she’d continued, in a tight, fractured voice, “and you’re telling the world about it. Like it’s the real deal. Like you’re in love with her, or something.”
“Who said anything about love?” Greenie had scoffed. He was all squirrelly and pissed, because Tracy had made him feel guilty now, and he didn’t want to feel guilty. He didn’t want to feel anything. He was pissed, so he’d gotten a little mean with her. “And so what if I am?” he said. “I can love whoever I want.”
Tracy’s face had broken then. She hid it inside her sweater. Greenie waited. He looked out the window. A spider traversed the sill. He fo
llowed it until it disappeared, then he looked back at Tracy.
Her voice was raw and forceful when it burst from behind her sweater: “So can I.”
These words were not the words Greenie had imagined pent up inside her.
It was the only time the word would come up between them, rearing its enormous and unwelcome head.
Greenie’s cart swayed, but it was only the breeze—they hadn’t yet moved beyond the crest of the wheel. The view really was magnificent. The herringbone pattern of the boardwalk shimmered and bent.
He’d never been in love with Tracy, not even remotely, or at least he’d convinced himself of that at the time. She was too old, and too depressing. She asked for so little. She’d never asked him to love her, and he’d never offered that he might. He’d never for one moment imagined a future with her. But as he thought about it now, it occurred to him that, strangely, something in there seemed to have nonetheless been a very real deal. There was something more than just the slapping together of bodies, the sharing of food, the passage of time spent together. Time had bleached out thoughts of all the other far-more-attractive women he’d ever been with, whereas Tracy was still as bright and clear as a spring morning in his mind.
Did he love her? This thought startled him. It didn’t matter anymore, he supposed. If he did, it had never been a romantic love, but this stormy warmth he felt all through his chest . . . Had he been wrong? Was it love, after all? And if so, why was that word so slow to make its way up and out of him?
Was love perhaps much bigger, much weirder, much less voluntary than he had always expected?
Greenie smiled sadly, wondering what Tracy would make of him now; about to be broke and unemployed in this strange city where he knew no one, riding a Ferris wheel with this dying cat on his lap. She wouldn’t be very sympathetic. Tracy hated cats. He wondered what she was getting into these days; what was the latest business idea she was cooking up, and if she’d sold her house. They hadn’t been in touch since he’d left—not a single text or email in months. That had surprised him. He didn’t think she’d let go so easy.
Another Place You've Never Been Page 15
