There weren’t as many people surging through the park as when I first came to Coney Island – after all, that had been a weekend – but their shouts, laughter, and jostling were sufficiently intrusive to prevent more brooding over my reunion with Stefan. Weaving through Luna Park, it took me a while just to locate that enormous statue of the half-naked woman, holding up the word “Dreamland.” On my way to finding the Creation Angel, I passed a stone bathing pavilion surging with what looked like thousands of people joyfully splashing in the water. Between the stone pillars I could spot them frolicking as the beads of perspiration trickled down my own back; how wonderful it’d be to feel cool water on my skin. The sun grew stronger by the minute. It had to be the hottest day of the year.
By the time I stepped under the archway to Dreamland and paid my ten cents admission, I felt positively lightheaded. This weakened state was not ideal. In search of relief, I joined the long queue outside a dining pavilion. At first, being there made me feel sicker. The odor of stale food and rank grease curdled my stomach. Once I reached the front of the queue I could manage to order only a large iced tea.
The instant my fingers closed around the tall chilled glass, I felt stronger. There wasn’t a free table available, so I sipped my drink standing up, savoring not just its blend of taste, the bitter tea and jolt of sugar, but my square of shade. I looked out across Dreamland from this vantage point, seeing a different place than before. On Saturday, the afternoon’s end and the slanting dusk had brought out the park’s array of colors. Today, the buildings all radiated white. Under the cloudless blue sky, it was like standing in a valley of pyramids, but instead of the tallest of the ancient tombs taking precedent, it was that soaring white-and-gold Spanish tower at the far end. Across the way, beyond the Shoot the Chute waterway, squatted the exception to this pale parade: A black cavern stared at me with the words “Hell Gate” posted above and what could only be the statue of a winged demon leering at the park-goers. What would the Protestant preachers of New York and all their faithful, those who’d pressured the lawmakers to close race tracks as dens of iniquity, make of this? I had to assume they’d never seen it, never forsaken the pew for the dangerous delights of Dreamland.
Once I’d drained the last drop of cold tea, I stepped out of the shade. I was refreshed and ready – or as ready as I’d ever be. I made my way past “Alps of Switzerland” to the Art of Coney Island building. It occurred to me that, for someone who loved the new world promise of America, Stefan had picked a place that showcased other parts of the globe. I still hadn’t made up my mind what to say, but I refused to let that stop me. And now here I was, standing in front of the small art building once more, tingling with excitement. A foursome paused in the doorway, and I held back, impatiently waiting for them to step all the way through before following.
“So you’ve come back for more of him – what a nerve that takes,” a woman said, inches to my left.
I flinched at that; it was so close to what I was poised to do, the coincidence startled me. Or was it a coincidence? I turned toward the person who’d spoken. It took me but a few seconds to place her. The first time I’d laid eyes on this woman, when she called out to Stefan from the platform, she stood out, and now she was even more of a shock to the eyes, among the light, loose summer dresses of other females flitting about. Her emerald-green dress was not just belted but tightly fitted, particularly at the plunging neckline that left little to the imagination. Her long, copper-colored curls cascaded over her shoulders. The feathered silk green hat perched atop her red head was completely absurd for this time of day and this occasion. But as her eyes traveled up and down my figure, a sneer on her rouged lips, the suitability of this woman’s hat was the least of my problems.
“I beg your pardon?” I said coldly.
“Oh, isn’t she high and mighty,” said the red-haired woman, with a mocking titter. “No, I won’t be handing over my pardon, Missy. Not after what you did.”
She took a step closer to me and said, “You don’t belong here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I was dismayed by the knowledge that Stefan must have confided in this person. They had to be close indeed. But I was also deeply offended. To be waylaid like this by someone – insulted in public!
“I’ve nothing to say to you,” I snapped, and stepped into the building, the entrance now clear. I walked quickly past the photographic area, toward “The Futurist” sign, without a backward glance.
Now my pulse raced for a myriad of reasons, but when I pushed aside the curtain cordoning off Stefan’s work from the rest of the exhibits, I faced a setback. Stefan was nowhere in sight. In front of his paintings, sitting on a stool pulled up to the counter, was another female, this one not much more than a child. She stared down at a newspaper spread out in front of her, her lips moving as she read, and glanced up when she realized someone had stepped into the area. No flicker of recognition – much less hostility – animated her light blue eyes, set close together across the bumpy bridge of a nose in a narrow face. It seemed safe to assume this girl knew nothing of my existence.
“I am looking for Stefan, the artist,” I said.
“He not here now,” she said in a strong accent, one similar to his, and her eyes returned to her newspaper. I would have guessed her to be thirteen.
“Do you know where he is this afternoon?” I persisted. I’d gone to such trouble to get here, I hated the thought of slinking back to the hotel.
Without looking up, she said, “On pavilion with pushcart. His shift to sell sausages.”
“Sausages?” I repeated.
“What – selling sausages not good enough for you?” My nemesis, the redhead clad in green, had followed me to continue her harangue. “No, I bet it isn’t. How do you think he pays for room and board, for the dinner he bought you?” She waved dismissively at the wall of paintings hanging behind the counter. “That stuff sure doesn’t put a roof over anyone’s head!”
Now I was not just irritated but really angry.
“The ‘stuff’ you refer to is art, and art of incredible talent and vision,” I said, my hand on my hip. Observing her more closely, I wasn’t surprised by her inability to appreciate Stefan’s creations. Her beauty was crude – and somewhat artificial. A layer of cosmetics spread across her face didn’t completely conceal roughened skin. Russet lip rouge couldn’t compensate for crooked lower teeth, either.
I turned back to the blonde girl. “If you could direct me to where Stefan is on the boardwalk, I’d appreciate it.”
“Don’t tell her, Marta!” hissed the woman at my side.
The girl looked at me, then at the other woman and back at me, interest sparking in her eyes. She said in her accented voice, surprisingly deep for someone so young and small, “Leave her alone, Louise. I take her to Stefan. Up to him, not you.”
To my surprise, Louise turned away, muttering under her breath as she stalked back the way she’d come. This Marta somehow wielded authority. Now the girl resumed her study of the newspaper page. Looking down, I realized she was reading a strip of the comic “Mutt and Jeff.” She nodded as she came to the end, folded the newspaper carefully, and found a place for it in a box on the floor.
Without another word, she left the booth of “The Futurist” and I followed. Once we were out of the building entirely and moving toward the entrance to Dreamland, I quickened my pace to stand next to her. “I wish to thank you for doing this,” I said.
Squinting in the bright sun, Marta said, “You like his art.”
“Yes, very much.”
Nodding, she said, “Art is soul for Stefan.”
“Yes, well, this other… individual doesn’t seem to grasp that fact. I’m sorry you had to be caught in the middle of such an unpleasant scene, Marta.”
For a few seconds she looked up at me warily, as if she weren’t completely sure of what I’d said, before shrugging and making a blowing noise with her lips, “Pffffftt.”
With that, she led m
e out of Dreamland. I fell back behind Marta, as she expertly snaked her way through the milling crowd. She was as calm as Stefan in navigating Coney Island. There were two differences: A thin blonde braid bounced on her back as she walked, and she limped slightly. It concerned me to see the drag in her gait, but it definitely did not slow her down. I had to push through a stitch in my side to keep up.
Once we’d departed Dreamland, she turned not toward the long pier holding the restaurant and ballroom or the bathing pavilion, but farther west. We seemed to be headed for another, comparatively smaller pier jutting into the ocean. People streamed to a row of stalls under a long roof stretching down its middle. I expected Stefan to be selling sausages in one of those stalls.
We were still at least 100 feet away from the pier when Marta came to a stop. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Can’t you take me to Stefan?”
She didn’t answer, just pointed. To our left, standing on the boardwalk, was a cart on wheels, a family crowded around it. Manning the cart was Stefan, wearing a straw hat a bit too small for his head and a striped shirt with the word “Feltman’s” on it. He didn’t see me, or Marta. He was busy dealing with the children clamoring for sausages. “I’m next!” “No, me!” A heavyset woman, her face red and shiny, struggled to control the children, without success. A fistfight was breaking out.
Stefan, holding a sausage in a long yellow bun, called out, “Hello – hello? You will all get sausages. I have plenty. But please to get in line, the shortest one first, then second shortest. Go on. Yes, you can do this. Show me you can do this. Make Mama happy today, yes?”
The children scrambled to obey, and their Mother said, “Oh thank you, Mister. Thank you.”
Stefan threw her a smile. “Ah, good children, yes, they are good.” Amazingly, the children quivered with obedience when seconds ago they’d been brawling. Stefan bent down with the sausage and handed it to the youngest child, now first in line, giving him a gentle pat on the arm to nudge him to the side so the next could come forward.
Tufts of dark blond hair stuck out from under Stefan’s incongruous hat. But it didn’t make him look undignified to me, just different. Like a playful young uncle. Stefan winked at the next child in line, saying, “Ah you like to eat sausages. Good. You grow nice and strong, help your Mama.”
“Did you hear that, Jimmy?” A broad smile split the mother’s face. “You’re going to be my helper.”
“Sure, whatever you say, Mister,” said the boy. “Just gimme the hot dog.” Everyone laughed, including Stefan. As I continued to watch him smile, and laugh, and wink, and pat children on the arm, I couldn’t move a fraction of an inch, couldn’t tear my eyes away. I realized I was even holding my breath. Tens of thousands of people at Coney Island surrounded us in an overheated sprawl, but for me, there was this one single human being. The redhead, Louise, had scornfully predicted that I’d look down on him for doing this sort of work. Nothing could be further from what I felt at this moment.
After the four children happily stuffed sausages into their mouths, and their mother measured out coins for Stefan, he gripped the handles of his wheeled cart and pushed it a few feet, looking out at the ocean and then swinging back toward Marta and me. As his gaze met mine, he stopped mid-stride. To my dismay, a frown appeared.
“She looking for you, Stefan,” said Marta. “I bring her.”
“Yes, I can see that, Marta.” How wonderful it was to hear that voice again, to enjoy the way his accent curled around “Marta,” adding strange half syllables where none existed if anyone else said the word.
My legs turning to jelly, I pushed myself forward. This was it, the moment for my speech, my eloquent, dignified appeal. But all I could do was stand before him, mute, as I breathed in the sight of him. His steady gaze, those angular features, his lean frame.
“Hello,” I said. And nothing else.
His lips curved into a smile. “Hello, Peggy,” he said. I smiled back at him, my relief so great I nearly staggered from it.
“OK, OK, I go now,” said Marta, with a gruff laugh, and she was gone, swallowed up in the crowd.
“I want to say how sorry I am,” I said. “I haven’t thought of much else but how I want you to know that.”
“No, no, Peggy, I am one who must say it,” he said, waving his hands passionately. “You did not tell me whole truth – but why should you? We meet, we eat, we dance. A few hours. You were shop girl at bookstore, that much true.”
Startled, I asked, “And how do you know that?”
“From a friend’s house, I call Moonrise,” he said, not at all sheepish.
I found myself laughing. “Well, good for you.”
At that moment, a young couple approached his cart, and I stood aside while Stefan supplied them with sausages in those long buns. Now that I stood close by, I realized that the cart itself had some source of heat inside, a few banked coals perhaps, which kept the sausages warm for customers. It was hard to believe, but in this nearly intolerable heat, Stefan bent over a portable stove.
When he was finished serving them, I said, “Apart from apologizing to you, there’s something specific I would like to ask of you, Stefan.”
“Anything,” he said with a smile that sent my insides flip-flopping again. It wasn’t easy to set the conversation on the necessary somber path.
“Have you heard of the girl who was killed – murdered on the beach near the Oriental Hotel?”
Stefan stared at me blankly. I told him what I knew, and in the middle of relaying the facts, I took out the newspaper article I’d folded and tucked in my handbag. He held it carefully as he read the article, shaking his head as his eyes scanned the sentences.
“This is bad, very bad,” he said.
“Stefan, there’s something about this that is especially strange. They found her at the same spot – the very same spot – as where we sat on the beach that night. The wood pilings.”
His eyebrows shot up, a ghost of a smile appearing before he resumed his solemn regard.
When I asked Stefan if he remembered seeing a man spying on us, he said, “Ah, yes,” and grimaced with distaste. At that moment a seagull chose to swoop down on the cart as if to raid it of food. Stefan waved the bird off. “More trouble with birds than people,” he said. Before I could resume our conversation and explain the need for us to make a trip to the police, a fresh crowd of people descended on Stefan, eager for sausages.
He worked hurriedly for this group, glancing over at me every ten seconds or so. Stefan beckoned to me once they’d bought their sausages-in-buns and left. “Sorry – hard to speak here,” he said. “What you want to ask, Peggy?”
“It’s the police who are asking, they want to speak to anyone who saw something strange the night of the murder. And we did see something strange. Or, rather, you did. The man you said was watching us.”
Stefan cocked his head. “We don’t know if same man is killer, Peggy. And even if so, I don’t know name, where to find him.”
“But they are asking for citizens to come forward who can be of help,” I said. “I thought too, at first, that we didn’t know enough to go to the police, but then when you read how that girl’s family is suffering… I just think we need to do it, Stefan. The two of us. We will explain. You may very well have seen the same man who killed her. We could help solve this.”
Stefan turned to stare out at the ocean. It was much like that first time he’d appeared lost in thought, seeing some faraway place I couldn’t imagine. At last he said, “You request this of me, Peggy? It important to you?”
A part of me wanted to say, “Oh, you’re right, of course, we can’t help much. Let’s do something together instead that has nothing to do with an awful murder.” But there was another part of me that felt our meeting, our first kiss, was special. Magical. The death of that poor young woman so close by had darkened it – we needed to seek out the police, not only because it was the correct and moral thing to do but because it would free us of that taint. All
ow something more to follow, I hoped.
The way Stefan regarded me, so somber, it was almost as if he dreaded my answer. I said, hesitantly, “I believe it is the right thing to do. And if we didn’t come forward, wouldn’t we always regret it? Don’t you think?”
With that, he took a deep breath, inhaling so vigorously that he whistled as he pursed his lips. After he exhaled, his chest slowly falling, Stefan said, “Then we go to police.” He gripped the handles of the sausage cart and pushed, but not to go forward. His muscles bulging under his short-sleeved shirt, he made a quick half-circle in order to go in the opposite direction. Stefan was stronger than I realized.
“Is it – permitted – that you stop what you’re doing now?” I asked. “Is that all right?”
“Wiktor owe me favor,” Stefan answered. “Is OK.”
Just as I made use of a favor from Lydia, Stefan would be calling in a favor from Wiktor, his employer presumably, to make our trip to the police. It was as if a web of favors made possible this destination. Or was that really the case? For the first time that day, I felt a twinge of fear, that this wasn’t a web of happy coincidences linking us all, but from the start it was an iron chain, dragging us to something dangerous.
With me walking alongside, Stefan pushed the cart to a booth with the sign “Feltman’s.” The aforementioned Wiktor, a short, blond man, was unpacking something within. With his slight build and close-set eyes, he looked very much like Marta. I also took note of the yarmulke pinned to his blond hair. He clapped Stefan on the back, with a nod in my direction, agreeing immediately to an early quitting time.
Once we were heading back toward the main part of the park, I mentioned the remarkable resemblance. “Yes, she is little sister to David,” he explained.
Dreamland Page 14
