Mr. Boardwalk

By Louis Greenstein

At the age of seven, Jason Benson first experiences the wonders of Atlantic City--carnival rides, fortune-tellers, fudge shops, arcades and Miss America. Amazed and smitten, he decides his real life will happen here, in this magical shore town. Growing up in a Philadelphia suburb in the 1960s and 1970s, he lives only for his summers on the boardwalk, where his father owns a pretzel stand. From a friend the boy learns to juggle, and soon "Jason the Magnificent" entertains rapt beachside crowds with his skill and his clever patter. He can’t wait to finish high school so he can move to Atlantic City permanently.

But his plans go awry. More than 20 years later, we meet him as a grumpy, distant New York copywriter who has never spoken of his youth. All his adventures on the boardwalk--and all the dreams he cherished there--remain a secret from his wife.

In deftly interwoven passages, MR. BOARDWALK traces the excitement and perils of the young Jason and the moral growth of the adult who must come to terms with the past he tried to forget. It is a dual coming-of-age story like no other--a tale of magic and reality intertwined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Door Books
• Release date: May 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9780978863692

Louis Greenstein

Louis Greenstein's writing has crossed multiple genres, from scripts for the Emmy Award-winning Nickelodeon series RUGRATS to stage plays performed by theaters around the country. Several of his plays are available in print, and his playwriting has been honored with a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His musical show ONE CHILD BORN: THE MUSIC OF LAURA NYRO, co-written with performer Kate Ferber, travels to multiple venues in New York City and elsewhere. MR. BOARDWALK is his first novel.

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Mr. Boardwalk

Louis Greenstein

Copyright 2014 by Louis Greenstein

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Published by New Door Books

An imprint of P. M. Gordon Associates, Inc.

2115 Wallace Street

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19130

USA

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance herein to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-9788636-9-2

Cover design by Miriam Seidel

To Catherine, Barry, Hannah and Sam

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Acknowledgments

If you want to know the true nature of a hero, ask his children.

—Chinese Proverb

Prologue

Atlantic City, New Jersey

March 1999

The casinos are more ostentatious than I expected, but the souvenir shops and frozen custard stands look the same as when I was a kid: reliably, comfortably tacky.

The air is so blustery my ears prickle. I hitch my jacket collar to staunch the chill. Gripping the boardwalk railing, I study the beach. Four shaggy teenage boys toss a football. A middle-aged couple walks a shepherd-collie, straining on its leash, barking into the wind. Beyond the shoreline the water's choppy, the tide's low. A hundred yards out, whitecaps flash like static. In the distance an ocean liner glides across the horizon.

This is where I got my start as a soft-pretzel baker, boardwalk shill and juggler—all before I was ten years old. Later, in the early 1980s, I juggled in college theaters and rock-and-roll clubs, opening for groups like Pure Prairie League and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. For a while I traveled with a New Vaudeville revue—magicians, sword swallowers, contortionists and a punkish brass band that played Balkan waltzes. I got my higher education on road trips from New Orleans to Boulder to San Francisco, in midnight diners and public libraries, in moldy youth hostels and flickering Motel 6's.

Now, fourteen years into marriage, I am the father of a teenage daughter who disdains me. A year ago my wife Eileen called me detached. Three months ago she changed her assessment to disaffected. She is seriously considering leaving me. She says I've built a wall that separates me from the people I love. Other than her and our daughter, everyone I loved is gone. First they lied to me, and then they disappeared.

I feel a rustle. Eileen is at my side, squinting at the ocean. I can guess what she's thinking: You really blew it this time, Jason. I don't know if I can forgive you, but you have today to explain yourself. She studies boards and beach as if everything I recognized were a fresh betrayal.

Like the veteran street performer I am, I tell myself: Tough crowd. But I can't shake the jitters like I used to.

Beyond the breakers there's a sudden swell, a natural pull and drift. I watch the water swirl. I think about the calm below the surface.

A question hovers like a purple cloud: Why didn't I tell Eileen until three days ago that I have owned a house here for the past twenty-two years? I want to ignore that issue. It's not a big deal, right? On the vast scale of marital duplicities, not telling your wife you own a rental property is on the low end.

No, I hear her unspoken answer. When you share your life with someone, you don't omit something as big as a house. If you do, there's an even bigger reason.

I left this place when I was eighteen, and rarely thought about it until last December, when, coincidentally, I learned two things the same week: that a marketing analyst I work with grew up here, and that my cholesterol was off the charts. The analyst, Jennifer, was the first person from Atlantic City I've met in all these years. I knew better than to talk with her about it; I knew the trouble it could create. In retrospect, that's why I blundered into her cubicle to talk about Atlantic City. I was ready to tell Eileen, but afraid to approach her directly. So I forced my own hand. And the more Jennifer and I talked, the more I recalled the smell of crabs and funnel cake, the shuffle of sandy feet, the cling of salt water.

I returned today because I promised the therapist I would tell Eileen and our daughter Ruth about the house and my childhood here. Over the past few weeks, he has pressed me for details about my boardwalk summers. He thought it unusual that despite my colorful memories—not to mention my real estate holding—I haven't set foot here since 1978.

I haven't been back to Atlantic City, I finally told him, because it isn't there. It changed. I moved on. The therapist nodded. I added, I don't know why I never told them. They know about my years out west. That counts, right?

He shifted in his chair and jutted his wide, doughy jaw. So you haven't gone back because it's changed? I'm a little surprised you're not curious about what it's like these days.

I'm not sure what you mean. I felt a headache coming. Therapy had not been my idea but Eileen's, and my employer's—their recommendations coming, improbably, within twenty-four hours of each other. Why would I be curious about that?

The therapist raised his hands, supplicating me. "I'm just saying, most of the year, you were an unhappy kid, and with good reason. But every summer you were on top of the world. You've told Eileen and Ruth about growing up and juggling on the streets in Philadelphia, but nothing of Atlantic City—even though you have this connection, this real connection? That's unusual, wouldn't you say? And I'm surprised you're not curious about what's happening there."

"But there's no there there, I said. It's all casinos. All the old places are gone. I don't gamble or drink, I don't like oldies acts. I don't patronize prostitutes. Why would I go there?"

I watched his lungs fill up and deflate. Why'd you keep the house? he asked.

Well, if I sell, Eileen will, you know, find out. … And, I guess, the longer I go without telling her, the more impossible it gets.

At last, sitting in the therapist's office that day, I saw two possibilities: Either I drop dead of a heart attack and Eileen learns about the house, in which case she'll divorce me even though I'm dead and then she'll hate me for the rest of her life; or I don't drop dead, and she meets Jennifer at the firm's spring gala next month. Jennifer will mention my childhood in Atlantic City, and then I'll wish I'd had my heart attack.

The therapist didn't come out and say it; he didn't have to. There was a third, less dramatic possibility, which did not involve a myocardial infarction: This morning the three of us piled into the minivan and took the Garden State Parkway from Yonkers, across the bay, then down Pacific Avenue, past motels and casinos, liquor stores and pawn shops. We turned right on Virginia Avenue, a residential block of mustard-colored cottages. I parked and pointed at one.

Eileen rolled down her window. Until last Thursday she thought I'd inherited a share of an industrial investment property from my father, who'd inherited it from his uncle. I told that lie to explain the rental income we had to report to the IRS. In truth, the only thing I inherited from my father and his uncle was arteriosclerosis.

That's it? she asked, surveying the sagging front porch. Her first words to me in more than two hours—and one of her few comments since I came clean three nights ago. Anyone inside?

I shook my head. Summer rental only.

Can we go in?

Sorry. No key. I called the property manager yesterday but haven't heard back yet. Eileen fiddled with the zipper on her parka. We can look through the windows, I said. She tightened her zipper and shrugged me off.

Ruth, in the back seat of the minivan, leaned forward. "Dad, wait, like we own that house? For real?"

It doesn't even have a mortgage, I said.

Good, 'cause it looks shabby, she snorted, drooping back against her seat, her honey-colored eyes fixed on the cottage. She's barely spoken to me for six weeks, since the night I lost my temper and humiliated her in front of her friends.

All right, I said, opening my door and stretching my legs toward the street. Let's hit the boardwalk. We climbed out of the minivan. But first… I trotted up the cracked cement path to the house. Eileen and Ruth followed hesitantly. I'm just gonna take a quick look. I put the heel of each hand on the east-side window and peered inside. The living room was dim and sparsely furnished: a flimsy plaid sofa, a TV with rabbit ears, a card table and an oak hutch filled with cheap plates and snow globes. I puffed my cheeks and exhaled, fogging the windowpane. I'll call again. Maybe we can get inside after we walk.

Though Eileen hadn't voiced it, she must have feared the house bore secrets. A woman. A hidden life to which I've retreated when I told her I was out of town on business. None of that's true. Yet how can I convince her? The plan is to tell my story as we hike the boardwalk past my old haunts, or what's left of them. If it's not too cold and Eileen and Ruth are willing, we'll make it to the inlet at the northern end where the ocean meets the bay. The walk should take two or three hours, enough time for them to see and hear and, just maybe, understand. Forgiveness will be a longer haul. But today could be a start.

So, now we've trudged up Virginia Avenue, hunched like a mime troop walking against the wind. Up a splintered wooden ramp, along the boardwalk, past Victorian homes and reedy dunes, to the bling of casinos, restaurants and amusement piers. I'm watching Ruth tromp ahead, past the Tropicana's pillared, sandstone facade, defiant as a picketer, my little Goth girl with her raven-black hair and lipstick and raccoon-like mascara. Eileen and I hang back. We lean against the railing. I inhale through my nose. You smell that? I ask.

Her nostrils tic like miniature sensors. Salt, she says, the ocean.

No, it's more than that.

She adjusts her floppy knit hat, tucks in her hair. She nods, her quick eyes puzzled but urging me to continue.

1

The Bearded Lady's a big fat fake.

On a balmy afternoon under a cotton candy sky, Million Dollar Pier smelled like seaweed and French fries. The only money among the three of us was what Bobby had gotten from Mom and Dad, and from Norman and Betty, in exchange for keeping an eye on Lita and me for the afternoon; and Bobby had no intention of blowing his babysitting pay on a freak show. I got a date tonight with an Irene's Fudge girl, he said. I'm holding on to my money, and so should you. That Bearded Lady's phony.

The barker in front of the Bearded Lady's tent must have heard Bobby. The hulky redheaded man stopped mid-pitch—"Step right up, ladies and gent…" He glared at us. Bobby, sixteen and streetwise from years on the boardwalk and in gypsy camps in Florida, stuck his tongue out at the man. The three of us turned to go back to the boardwalk.

What's a Bearded Lady? asked Lita. She was only five—two years younger than I. She had mud-colored, curly hair, like mine, but hers was long, cascading in ringlets past her shoulders. And, like me, she was reed-thin and suntanned. Some people thought we were siblings, even though we'd met only a week earlier.

The barker hollered, "Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Come see the Incredible Bearded Lady! Only a quarter—one thin quat-ah!" Lita stopped; she dug in her heels, grabbed our wrists and tugged us back toward the tent.

It's dumb, it's fake! Bobby said. He stooped and looked Lita in the eye. She pouted. Suddenly Bobby's face lit up. All right, you want to see the Bearded Lady? Follow me. Be cool. He led us around to the back of the tent, by the edge of the pier, then checked both ways to make sure no one was watching. He got down on his belly, lifted a tent flap and peeked underneath. Quick, you guys, he whispered. There she is!

Lita and I dropped to our bellies and slipped our heads under the flap. Inside the tent a skinny, bare-chested man sat in an easy chair, drinking a bottle of beer and reading a newspaper. He wore a thick black beard, a long green skirt and a pair of white socks. His chest was hairier than Dad's.

That's the Bearded Lady? I asked.

Bobby chuckled. What'd I tell ya?

What's he doing? asked Lita.

He's taking it easy between shows. Bobby knew all about show business. His dad Jimmy ran the marionette theater next door to Dad's soft-pretzel bakery.

But it's just a man in a dress, I said.

Shh! said Bobby. But it was too late; the Bearded Lady heard. When he saw us spying through the tent flaps he dropped his beer bottle. We scrambled to our feet. Lita's eyes were open wide, like she'd seen a ghost. Bobby was still grinning.

At that instant the redheaded barker appeared from around the corner of the tent, only a few feet away. Hey! Hold it right there! he shouted, waving his beefy sunburned arms. I'm calling the cops! He was so close I could see his yellow-stained teeth.

"Run! cried Bobby, yanking Lita and me by our wrists and dragging us toward the midway. We wove in and out of the crowd, dodging through lines of people waiting to board rides and buy snow cones, till we stopped at the base of the Ferris wheel. No barker or Bearded Lady in sight. We were safe. Let's beat it, said Bobby. And you better not tell your folks!"

Ruth seems to have realized that storming ahead of Eileen and me won't push our buttons. She's free to roam the boards; we know she won't get lost. But she's circled back to join us. I think she actually wants to hear about my mysterious childhood summers. She's not looking at me; she's studying a strand of small shops on our left—polyester sweatshirts bearing vulgar slogans, a Burger King, a tattoo parlor. But I'm pretty sure she's listening.

Dad would have called the Bearded Lady incident a matter of principle. You don't interfere with somebody's livelihood. Bearded ladies and the guys who pitch them deserve to turn a buck like everybody else.

Did you ever tell your dad about the Bearded Lady? asks Ruth. As I suspected, she's listening.

Not for a few years.

Did he yell a lot? Was he mad all the time?

Not really, I say. He was pretty happy for a while once he opened his own business. But he had his principles, and when he defended them he could get loud and sound angry.

Ruth watches a group of college-age kids emerging from Trump Plaza's triangle-shaped front entrance. Two giggling, leggy girls in little black dresses walk arm in arm, while the boys—in Gap sweaters and khakis—pump their fists in the air under the casino's wave-crested facade. They roar like young lions, like drunks at a football game.

Down here, the summer seasons played counterpoint to my dreary career in public school. Eleven years, give or take, till my abrupt departure—all of which I've trained myself not to think about. Like how we arrived here in the first place; how one night when I was in first grade, Dad came home from work and told Mom and me that he had a surprise: He was quitting Westinghouse and signing a lease on a boardwalk storefront. He was going to be a pretzel baker.

He must have had another fight with his boss. Practically every night before that, he came home mad at his boss, that goddamn idiot with his goddamn small-minded office politics that stifle original thinking! He'd sit at the dinner table, mashing his peas and carrots with the back of his fork, grumping about how he was born to be self-employed.

Mom set her fork on her plate. She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and cleared her throat. She looked across the table at Dad and raised one eyebrow. He made a placating smile. Judy, trust me. I'm a Wharton School graduate. I have a business plan, I can do this and I'm never going to work for anybody else again.

Mom twisted her napkin between her thumb and forefinger. Will you make enough?

Dad looked her in the eye. I guarantee you there's nothing to worry about.

What about your job security? Mom asked.

Dad shook his head. "That's an illusion. I could get fired tomorrow. And then what? I'd have no source of income. But if I own my own business, no corporate jackass can fire me. If I don't make enough money, I'll sell more pretzels or cut my expenses. That's job security!"

It was like the Seder at the Jewish Y a couple weeks earlier, where we asked the Four Questions. Why was this night different from all other nights? Because on this night Dad was joking about bureaucratic stupidity, not complaining about stupid bastards.

Atlantic City's where Mom and I fell in love, Dad said. On Steel Pier. He'd already told me how he'd first gone to Atlantic City when he was a teenager to visit his great-uncle Joe, a doctor who took care of the boardwalk merchants and workers—immigrants from Italy and Russia, gypsies and barkers from the amusement piers. Someone had to help those people, Dad had said. It was the Great Depression. Nobody had money, so Uncle Joe put it on their tab, or they'd pay him with a chicken. When Dad was in college he worked the boardwalk as a soda jerk every summer, scooping ice cream and mixing fountain flavors.

Now he set down his knife and fork. I don't want to go to the shore just on weekends. He rose from his seat and held his hand out to Mom. He took her in his arms and waltzed her around the kitchen.

Mom was reluctant at first, but soon she gave in. This is going to be quite an adventure! she chirped.

My parents had their own dance. They looked like two chickens strutting and pecking, wrists on hips, necks jutted out, circling each other and whirling their waists, grinding toe to floor. They'd made up their jazzy routine when they couldn't afford Arthur Murray lessons. Our kitchen was their ballroom. Mom, dark-eyed and reedy, waggled her slender fingers while Dad, thick-framed and balding, cavorted pigeon-toed in his stocking feet, wiggling his ears, his broad lips stretched into a grin.

You're going to love Atlantic City, Dad promised me. You'll never want to leave!

SEE THEM TWISTED SEE THEM BAKED!

The sign extended from a pole on the bakery's roof: five feet wide by nine feet long, with a glossy white background, a red border and hand-drawn, pretzel-colored letters. Dad made up the slogan, and Mom painted the sign in the little studio Dad had built in the attic of our house. In between TWISTED and SEE she'd painted a pretzel, oven-browned and speckled with salt.

On our first day in Atlantic City, after Dad hung the sign and returned the ladder to the marionette theater, the three of us stood in the middle of the boardwalk, admiring Mom's handiwork. I liked the boardwalk's smell: Grease and sugar wafting from the takeout stands. Cigar smoke. Roasted peanuts.

Dad took off his glasses and wiped them with the tail of his Hawaiian shirt. Squinting in the sunlight, he mopped sweat from his forehead with the heel of his hand, pushing back a thin strand from his receding hairline.

Mom knew how to paint more than just signs. She painted sailboats and fruit baskets in her attic studio back home in Philadelphia. After she finished a painting, she'd carry it downstairs draped in a white sheet. She and Dad would hang it on the wall and make a big fuss about unveiling it.

Now Dad looked up and down the boardwalk. He smiled like he knew where a secret treasure was buried. He put his arm around Mom's shoulders and kissed her cheek. Mom put her arm around me. The three of us lingered on the boardwalk and gazed at Dad's bakery, tucked in between the marionette theater and the Two for One Arcade.

Inside the bakery, Dad and the college boys he'd hired for the summer had arranged all the equipment that he'd been storing in our garage back in Philadelphia since he announced his plan. First he bought two black Blodgett ovens, the kind you see in pizza joints. Next he found an industrial-size dough mixer and a rolling machine—a wide, canvas conveyor belt with a white iron hopper at one end where you stuff the dough. The dough in the hopper gets sliced into fist-sized chunks and then rolled into strips for hand twisting at the other end of the conveyor belt. He bought a metal vat and a wire mesh basket for dipping the pretzels in a solution made from lye and water. He bought wooden paddles for sliding the pretzels into the oven, and a dough retarder, which is like a refrigerator but not as cold. Inside it were slots for the wooden boards filled with twisted, unbaked pretzels and compartments for the bricks of springy-smelling yeast. He bought an old cash register with a bell that rang when the drawer sprung open, and a crate of yellow, plastic mustard dispensers.

There's dough to mix and pretzels to twist, Dad said now. Time to put on our aprons and get to work!

After my first week in Atlantic City, the boardwalk was the center of my life. Thousands of people, young and old, swarming the custard stands and shooting galleries; bare-chested muscle boys dashing across the sand, plunging headfirst into the foamy ocean and swaggering out like James Bond. There was noise everywhere, all the time. Carnival sounds. Carousel music. Flags rippling. Gulls squawking. Waves rumbling. Fast-talking pitchmen outside Madame Tussaud's. Wheels of Fortune clicking like ticker tapes. The clattering, rattling roller coaster at Million Dollar Pier. The clomp-clomp shuffle of a hundred thousand feet.

On one side of our bakery stood the Two for One Arcade, a humid, army-green cavern of pinball machines with names like Zoltan and Mad Dogs, skeeball ramps, a photo booth and an iron claw that dug for prizes. Inside, the lights were dim and the games flashed and chimed like cranky robots. The air swelled with bells and whistles, sirens and mechanical voices, and clouds of cigarette smoke from the teenagers who played there. Sometimes when it rained and sales were slow, Dad gave me a handful of quarters and sent me to the Two for One. Norman and Betty, the owners, patrolled the aisles—policing fights, coaxing stalled games back to life and making change from coin dispensers clipped to their waists. Norman and Betty had no children, but they were raising Lita, who was either Betty's niece or a family friend. Dad had told me they came from the old country—Poland—after the war, and now they stayed year-round in Atlantic City.

I had two jobs that season. One was standing on a metal milk crate behind the counter in the bakery, ringing up sales and stuffing steaming hot pretzels into brown paper lunch bags for the customers who lined up on the boardwalk, sometimes for half a block. Behind me, Mom and Dad and the college boys—lanky, crew-cut college students—stood by the rolling machine's conveyor belt in their white tee shirts and khaki pants, snatching strips of rolled dough, twisting them into pretzels, pinching them together into neat rows of a half-dozen on wooden boards and sliding the boards into the dough retarder. In the back of the bakery, beside the mixing machine, sat the two ovens, the dipping vats and the salt tray.

My second job was shilling for the marionette theater next door. The owner, Jimmy—Bobby's dad—was a dark, wiry man with a bulbous nose, wavy black hair slicked into an enormous pompadour, and a tiny gold earring. Some days he smelled like garlic, other days like beer. Jimmy and Dad knew each other from Dad's college days when he worked the boardwalk every summer. Bobby told me I was lucky our families were friends. "Gypsies stay away from gadjos," he said. Gadjo was the gypsy word for outsider. "But you guys ain't gadjos."

What are we? I asked.

You're honorary gypsies.

Norman and Betty and Lita too?

Bobby shrugged. Sure, why not.

One rainy day, instead of going to the arcade, I visited the marionette theater and found my second job. That day, Bobby built a marionette out of one of my toy animals—a raggedy stuffed dog named Floppy. While sheets of water pounded the tin roof, Bobby and I sat backstage, side by side on a wooden bench. Bobby worked diligently with a big needle, attaching thin strings to Floppy's head and limbs. He showed me how to work the wooden handle: level to keep Floppy still; palm down to sit; index and pinky up and down to move the legs; middle finger up and down to make his head bob. He showed me hand exercises, stretches to help isolate each finger. And he told me to practice. Every chance you get, he said. You can do anything if you practice.

I promised to practice every day.

Even that dumb old Bearded Lady's gotta practice, practice, practice so he can go out and trick people, said Bobby. And the auctioneers, he said, handing Floppy over to me so I could work the handle, "that's how they talk so fast. Practice. And that's all you got to do to get good at something. Ya do it over and over until ya can't do it no more. And then ya make yourself do some more. And then, when ya really can't do it no more, ya do some more anyways. And when you ain't practicing, you're still practicing in your head. Don't think about nothin' except what you're workin' on. Pretty soon you're so good everybody's going 'how the hell's he do that?' Easy answer: Practice."

Five times a day, Bobby and I stood on the boardwalk, him with his big dancing bear marionette and me with my Floppy marionette, with James Brown or Diana Ross and the Supremes blaring from a tinny speaker hanging from the awning outside the marionette theater. People on the boardwalk stopped to buy soft pretzels and watch the dancing marionettes. Everyone laughed and clapped and took our picture. When the music stopped, we'd dance our marionettes into the theater, luring the crowd to the Big Show that Bobby and his family put on. They came up with a new show every season. My first year, it was a circus theme with clown marionettes dancing out into the audience and tickling people's heads. Jimmy and Bobby and Bobby's two older sisters worked the life-sized creatures. The puppeteers wore black costumes. They were on stage, but they faded into the background. When a marionette acrobat did a tightrope walk over three marionette lions, no one in the audience made a sound. It was like they couldn't see the gypsy puppeteers yanking the strings and waving the sticks.

You guys are invisible when you're working the big marionettes, I told Bobby after I saw the Big Show for the first time.

Right, he said with a grin. "Not to you, 'cause you're an honorary gypsy. But to the gadjos, forget about it."

How do you get invisible? I asked.

Just like I told ya. Practice.

Another time when Mom and Dad paid Bobby to babysit me for a couple hours, he took me to meet Madam Diane the fortune-teller. Her shop was across the boardwalk from Million Dollar Pier, about six blocks from the bakery. The sandwich-board sign out front said:

FORTUNES TOLD DAILY BY MADAM DIANE

Inside, it was shadowy as a spook house and smelled like spices. Purple silk curtains hung on the walls.

Jason, said Bobby, this is my Aunt Diane.

I know about you, Jason, said Madam Diane, rising from a small round table in the center of the room where she'd been shuffling a big deck of cards. She took my hand in hers and bent down to my level. She wore a long purple dress, and she was barefoot, with gold rings on her toes. Raven-colored hair crept out from under an orange scarf tied to her head. Your partner here tells me you're quite the showman, she said.

Yep, and my dad makes the best soft pretzels in the world!

When I visit, will I get a free pretzel?

I paused, breathing in Madam Diane's dusky, earthy scent. I don't know, I teased. I'm not the fortune-teller, you are.

Madam Diane and Bobby laughed. Sit down, said Madam Diane, guiding me to her table. Your uncle brought me into the world. Did you know that? Now, let me see your palm. I climbed up on the folding metal chair across from the gypsy woman and watched as she studied the inside of my hand, squinting and wrinkling her nose. Hmmm, she said, tracing the lines on my palm with the tips of her bright red fingernails.

I giggled. That tickles.

Sit still. She sounded like a teacher at school.

What do you see, Diane? asked Bobby, arched over Madam Diane's shoulder for a look.

Madam Diane studied my palm. Then she clasped my hand in both of hers. She stared into my eyes. I stared back like we were having a contest. What do I see? she smiled. Cherry is your favorite flavor. Right?

"I don't