Magic Pier

By Daniel P. Grote

After Hurricane Sandy destroys Seaside Heights Magic Pier, midlevel real estate lawyer Drake Garrison is compelled to return to his former place of employment to help rebuild it, just as his first child is about to be born. As the months go by, he struggles to balance the demands of two jobs, his home life and his friends bowling team, as the business leaders and politicians around him seek financial help from a Washington overrun with people who would rather let livelihoods be destroyed than allocate the funds to help them. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking the seconds to summer 2013, and the economic disaster that could follow the actual one if everyone doesnt do their part. Magic Pier revisits characters first introduced in 2008s My Evil Twin and I, only older, (somewhat) wiser and without all that evil-twin nonsense.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491757857

Daniel P. Grote

Daniel P. Grote has also written the novels Of Robots, God and Government and My Evil Twin and I. He is an editor for The Press of Atlantic City and a regular contributor to the Matt Signal comics blog (mattsignal.blogspot.com). He lives in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, with his wife, Hillary, son Logan and dog Chewie. He’s a lucky guy. Follow @danielpgrote on Twitter.

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1: MONDAY, NOV. 5, 2012

Drake’s car may have been one of the only civilian vehicles left in Seaside Heights.

Police cars blocked off side streets. Utility trucks parked around downed lines and trees, orange cones placed behind them like ducklings following their momma. News helicopters circled overhead, shooting video of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy as if it had changed from the day before or the day before that or the day before that.

The evacuation orders were pretty strict. A lot of people hadn’t been allowed to return to the barrier islands yet, and some probably didn’t want to, judging from the number of houses that had been boarded up, battered or, in some cases, lifted off their concrete slabs and transported feet from where they were supposed to be, exposing utility lines most people weren’t ever meant to see.

He parked his Prius a block up from the Boardwalk. Ocean Terrace was practically all road barriers and caution tape. Cop cars on the street kept their lights on to drive home the message: No one gets in to see the wizard, not nobody, not no how. That said, for all they were doing to keep away visitors and residents until things were deemed safe, Drake was pretty sure no one was enforcing parking-meter rules, so he didn’t bother to drop in any quarters.

Two uniformed officers blocked him from the entrance to the Boardwalk at Webster Avenue. They looked annoyed and cold.

He’s with me, Rusty Harmon said from the other side of the barricade, before either officer could pester Drake for ID or ask him his reason for stepping foot in a federal disaster area. The two men parted, letting him pass. Drake figured it probably helped that he was wearing a suit. It made him look important.

Monday was the designated day for business owners to survey their damage, according to a story Drake had read in the Asbury Park Press. He had called Rusty after work to ask him about the extent of the damage, and Rusty surprised him by telling him to Come see for yourself.

I’ll tell the people at the checkpoint to let you through. Just bring your ID, he said. He hadn’t sounded upset over the phone, but perhaps he was in shock or hadn’t stepped onto the pier yet.

Is it as bad as it looks on TV? Drake asked as they stepped on piles of sand that had washed over the wrecked Boardwalk and into the streets.

Of course not, Rusty said. It’s 10 times worse.

Seeing a roller coaster in the ocean on TV is one thing. Seeing the Screamster up close, like the wreck of an old ship or evidence of some ancient underwater civilization that knew how to have a good time, was another.

The media latched onto the Screamster in reporting on the damage Sandy caused to the Jersey Shore. That and the fact that the TV show Jersey Shore was shot in Seaside Heights. Oh my God, Snooki’s roller coaster! Drake assumed someone said somewhere.

But there was so much more. Everywhere they walked, they had to maneuver around a piece of the pier that didn’t belong there. A bumper car had lodged itself in the metal gate that covered the Boardwalk entrance to the arcade.

And that’s only the one I’ve found so far. The other cars are missing, Rusty said.

A cartoon alligator from the rooftop minigolf had fallen off the roof and through the Boardwalk, its pants-wearing legs sticking out above the hole it had created.

I’m pretty sure thieves stole the King Kong from up there. Either that or it washed out to sea, Rusty said.

Bits of wood were everywhere. The Boardwalk had buckled, warped and splintered in so many places, while in others there were gaping holes straight through to the sand below.

They’re gonna have to replace the whole thing, all the way down to Seaside Park, Rusty said. God knows how long that’ll take.

Areas that were used for storage were compromised. Large, plush objects that served as almost-unwinnable carnival-game prizes floated in plastic bags in the ocean around the Screamster.

I went five years without having to give out a single one of those stupid giant bananas, Rusty said.

Every ride control panel they passed had a clear plastic bag over it with a paper sign that said DON’T TOUCH! in black marker taped onto it.

The water got into everything, he said. Even when they restore power out here, I’m afraid to turn anything on because I don’t know what the saltwater’s done to the wiring.

All of the cars had been knocked off the Tilt-A-Whirl. Five of them lay on their sides in a circle around the base. Every once in a while the wind made them roll back and forth, like a family of Humpty-Dumptys were mugged and left struggling to regain their composure.

I’m missing one, Rusty said. It could be anywhere. For all I know, it got washed back to the bay and got stuck in the marshes somewhere.

Jesus, Drake said, taking pictures with his phone as he went.

You remember the Specter? Rusty asked.

Of course; I loved that ride, Drake said as they approached the small building that housed the indoor ride that spun people around in the dark amid strobe lights and fog, often to the sounds of the current generation of metal music. I took Stefanie on the Specter on our first date.

Well, I have to gut the whole thing, Rusty said. Completely filled with water from the storm surge. Adjuster said it might as well be a big box of mold and electrical fires waiting to happen.

Drake closed his eyes rather than look at it. He tried to think about sex, Will Ferrell movies, anything to make him feel anything other than about to cry.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Rusty had started to well up, too.

You’d think after 35 years I would have been smart enough to cut my losses, close the pier for the season and pack a lot of this stuff away before the storm, Rusty said. But I honestly thought I’d be able to squeeze one last weekend out of this place before it got too cold. After the last hurricane turned out to be all hype, I assumed all the warnings about Sandy were horseshit. He blotted his face with a rag that looked like it had been used to wipe sand off equipment. Drake wished he’d had some tissues on him or maybe sprung for the pocket square that matched the tie he’d bought for his suit.

If I try to rebuild, Rusty continued, insurance’ll fight me over every last bolt. I don’t have the energy or the patience for that. Hell, I wanted to sell this place by 2015 and retire. Who’s gonna buy it now?

Drake put his arm around his former boss of 11 years. Rus, if there’s anything … I know you probably wouldn’t even know where to start at this point … but if there’s anything I can do for you, like, I don’t know, off-the-books legal work or manual labor or something, please call me.

Rusty nodded. What kind of lawyer are you again?

Real estate, mostly, Drake said. I contest a lot of zoning stuff.

I still can’t believe they let you be a lawyer, Rusty replied, laughing.

Me neither, Drake said, chuckling politely – his default response when people who knew him back in the day expressed surprise that he could acquire a law degree and gainful employment. Listen, I gotta get home. Stef’s making supper. Are you gonna be OK?

No, but thank you. I’ll call you, Rusty said, staring out at the coaster-occupied ocean, where he remained the three times Drake looked back before exiting the Boardwalk.

***

Stefanie Garrison greeted her husband with a hug and a kiss. Post-peck, Drake peeked around Stefanie and noticed a dirty plate on the kitchen counter.

I hope you don’t mind, I wasn’t sure how late you were gonna be, so I kinda went ahead and had dinner without you, she said.

That’s fair, Drake said. What’d you have?

Pork chops.

Any left?

Nope. I ate the last two. We should probably go food shopping at some point. How’s Rusty?

How much do you think it would cost to buy and rebuild an entire amusement pier?

Stefanie thought about it for a couple of seconds, then settled on Millions?

Drake shook his head. Place is a mess. It’s worse than it looks on TV. The Specter’s destroyed, you know?

Stefanie blinked. Which ride was that again?

Really? You remember our first date, when I took you on that one ride and I had the operator play Journey’s ‘Open Arms’? Drake asked. I used to ride it after hours and blast Ratt’s ‘Round and Round.’ Any of this sounding familiar?

Ohhh yeah, Stefanie said as her memory kicked in. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.

It’s OK. Rusty’s devastated, though, says it’s fucked his whole retirement plan.

Jar.

Huh? Oh, right. Shit. Drake reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

Make it two.

God – nnnnnn – I have got to get a handle on this. Drake put two singles into a rinsed-out jumbo pasta sauce jar on the counter with the words Curses for College written on it in marker.

Stefanie came up with the idea for the jar toward the beginning of her second trimester, after a night when Drake’s friends Mickey and Quincy came over for dinner with their new boyfriend and girlfriend, respectively. Drake and his two friends frosted their speech with all kinds of fuck, shit, goddamn, dick, pussy, ass, etc. At one point, Stefanie was pretty sure she’d heard Mickey use the adverb twattily. She decided she wanted her husband to break his swearing habit before the baby arrived, and she figured if she used the old swear-jar concept, the baby could profit from it. So far, the jar contained $48.15, plus an IOU for the other 85 cents Drake owed from a time he stubbed his toe and yelled cocksuckin’ fuckbag but only had $1.15 on him.

So are we going to Charles’ thing tomorrow night? Stefanie asked Drake as she cleaned her dishes and Drake rooted around in the fridge for something to eat.

Drake grimaced, more concerned at the moment about whether to eat a ham sandwich or a turkey sandwich. I don’t know. Do you want to? I do have to go to work the next day.

True, but your bosses’ll all probably be there, too, so maybe you can bond over being hung over, Stefanie said.

Not a selling point. Drake settled on turkey, because there were more slices of it. Where is it, anyway? He can’t still be having it at Chef Jeff’s place. I heard all of Sea Bright was underwater last week. The restaurant must be trashed.

Stefanie blinked. Do … do you really not know?

Know what? Drake looked up from spreading mustard on white bread.

Check your email, Stefanie said.

Why can’t you just tell me? Drake made sure his tone conveyed his annoyance.

Check. Your. Email. Stefanie said it slower, smiling through gritted teeth.

Drake shook his head, ceased building his sandwich, pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through his email. He remembered getting a message from Charles late last week with the subject line Victory party has moved and not bothering to open it.

Dear supporter, the email read. Due to the unfortunate events of the past week, I am unable to hold my biannual Let’s Hope It’s a Victory Party Party at the usual location. That said, I am happy to write that we’re moving the party to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, where I plan to announce not only my victory in Tuesday’s election but also my plans to help the 4th Congressional District and all of New Jersey recover from the horrific Hurricane Sandy. Hope to see you there. Yours in freedom, U.S. Rep. Charles Kilgore, I-4th.

Drake looked up. His eyeballs were twice as wide as the last time Stefanie saw them. She grinned.

Do you think the rides will be working? he asked. I mean, the place usually shuts down after Halloween.

It would certainly make for some good photos – a bunch of wealthy political donors in suits on a roller coaster, Stefanie said. Not that I’d be able to go on any of them.

Drake’s husband-sense tingled. Oh, well, do you want to go then? I mean, if it’s not gonna be fun for you?

I don’t care, Stefanie said. Totally up to you. I wouldn’t mind trying to find a black dress that makes me look like one of those glamorous pregnant ladies you see in ads for Destination Maternity.

Drake’s face scrunched and furrowed as he thought about all the schmoozing he’d be forced to do and how tired he would be Wednesday morning. Then again, the rides might be open. OK, let’s do it. For Charles.

Right, for Charles, not because you want to ride a roller coaster at 10:30 on a school night, Stefanie said, smirking.

***

2: TUESDAY, NOV. 6, 2012

So did the old man try to get you to buy the pier from him or what? Drake’s officemate, Oliver Torville Jr., asked upon Drake’s arrival at the Red Bank offices of Ogilvy, Torville, Hollingshead, Rathbone & Ogilvy. It was without fail that Oli was always at work before Drake. It was also generally without fail that Drake was always a few minutes late, though hopefully not enough to be aggravating.

Huh? Drake asked. Why would you think he’d ask that?

Why wouldn’t he? Half his shit’s in the ocean, Oli said, his eyes fixed on the beige folder in his hands. You think he wants to deal with rebuilding, junking the old rides, buying new ones, paying the jacked-up insurance rates, taking out loans to afford all that, then having to do more work himself ’cause he can’t afford to hire anyone?

That is a lot to deal with, Drake acknowledged.

If I were him, I’d be buttering up any fool I could get a hold of and trying to sell them on their own nostalgia for funnel cake and Tilt-A-Whirls and crappy claw machine prizes, Oli said.

I like all those things, Drake said.

Of course you do, Oli said. That and the fact that you worked there for-fucking-ever make you an easy mark.

Fair enough, Drake said. He sat down at his desk and began rummaging through his inbox. Hey, are you going to Charles’ thing tonight?

Am I still married to his first wife? replied Oli. He turned around a framed 5 x 7 photo on his desk that showed him and Tracy Kilgore Torville at the altar.

Um, yes, I assume, but that sounds like a reason not to go, Drake said.

Oli shrugged. Yeah, but I think we’re gonna go anyway. Why not, right? The man did invite us. And hey, it’s free booze at a theme park.

Drake beamed. He really hoped the rides would be running. Why not?

***

Drake liked to joke that his work email was 50 percent spam, 50 percent stuff he didn’t want to read. As a junior associate, he was assigned some of the least sexy real estate cases in Monmouth and northern Ocean counties, and his inbox reflected that – and the spam of a pervert – with subject lines such as:

• Make penis grow L.@.R.G.E. Ask me how

• Re: Drainage basin behind Wall Plaza STILL not up to code

• V I @ G R @ at pennies on the doll@r, six-month supply (Someone clearly knew the IT department at Drake’s firm had not set the spam filter to trigger on subject lines with @s in them)

• Re: Discovery requested on Block 7, Lot 52.4

• Township planner not cooperating on flood mitigation plan

• Sexy sexy want make love on u face? (Drake pondered briefly before hitting delete how this was an interrogative sentence)

• Neighbor ignoring survey, planting trees on MY l@nd (Oh come on, Drake thought, what possible reason could you have to not just type the a like a normal person?)

His voicemail contained much of the same, minus the offers of cheap boner pills and mail-order cunnilingus:

Hello, Mr. Garrison, this is Sheila Millsbury, calling for the fifth time. Did you get my email with the report from the township on the basin outside Wall Plaza? I don’t care what their so-called experts say, that basin is still not deep enough. Do you know how long it took to drain after this last storm? Four days. Four. Days. That’s unacceptable. Now, I know all their documentation is in order, and their measurements match up to what’s required of them, but I think if we present a strong enough case, we can sue them and win. Please call me back. Again, it’s Sheila Millsbury.

Before Drake went to law school, he never paid much attention to the grassy ditches near shopping centers that filled up with water when it rained, but since he began working for the Ogilvys, he’d discovered an entire class of people obsessed with them: their depth, their width, their general shape, how quickly they drain after a rainstorm, etc.

His voicemails not about drainage basins were generally either about neighbor-on-neighbor disputes (I’ve asked him 12 times to trim his tree so the branches aren’t hanging over into my yard, and this most recent time, what does he do? He sticks his winky through a hole in the fence and taunts me with it! His winky!) or about setbacks, the minimum amount of space required between a property line and a structure on the property such as a dwelling or outparcel (The borough says I need 30 feet between the property line and my shed, but I think that’s malarkey. Do I have a case?).

After an hour of reviewing these and similar communiques, shuffling papers, returning calls and drinking coffee, Drake opened a Web browser tab on his computer and clicked on a bookmark labeled Blog.

At some point during his first year of law school, Drake decided he needed a creative outlet, so he started a theme park blog, Drake’s Ups and Downs. He used the blog to critique new rides at theme parks he’d visited from the shore to Great Adventure to Hershey Park to Coney Island, even Ohio once, although he stopped taking the longer trips once Stefanie became pregnant, as it seemed unfair to drag her someplace she couldn’t thoroughly enjoy.

If he’d seen the analytics on his blog, he might have given it up years ago, as he was basically writing for an audience of one, although Stefanie read it occasionally, usually after a conversation in which Drake mentioned his blog, reminding her that Oh, yeah, he does that.

Yesterday my old boss let me under the barrier to check out Magic Pier in Seaside Heights, he wrote. "It was disgusting, like Keansburg Pier on a good day. You’ve probably seen the footage of the Screamster in the ocean. Seeing it up close, I think I know how Charlton Heston felt when he saw the Statue of Liberty at the end of the original Planet of the Apes. You just kinda want to yell at the sky, pretend there’s someone up there to blame.

"That’s just the tip of the iceberg, however. The Boardwalk in front of the pier was torn to shreds. Many of the other rides were damaged. Some of the games will have to be rebuilt. The storage shed that held all the Rasta bananas was obliterated. In fact, if you, in your travels, happen to see a stuffed banana wearing sunglasses and dreadlocks wash up on the beach somewhere, take a picture and email it to me at [e-mail].

"I worked at Magic Pier for 11 years, probably longer than I should have, and if my then-future wife hadn’t given me the kick in the ass I needed to grow up, I probably would have stayed there. I loved it there. It didn’t feel like work in the slightest. But it did pay garbage.

"Rusty, the owner, is still in shock. Whatever comes next, it won’t be the same place. A shorter pier, fewer rides, less staff, whatever. But as long as there’s something there to call Magic, I’ll be happy.

"Side note: The wife and I are going to an election night party at Great Adventure. My congressman, who