Thrill-Bent Read Free

mine did.
    “Maybe the carny who runs the ride had a heart attack and died right on the brake lever!” I suggest. Ralph laughs. “How can you laugh? Maybe there’s a psycho killer loose in the park, and they figure we’ll be safer up here. Maybe someone’s mom brought dinner and they’re taking a little break to say grace.” I start giggling too. “Maybe one of those huge Coney Island rats chewed through a wire, and everything automatically shut down. Maybe the world just ended. Maybe they finally got Bin Laden and we’re having a national moment of silence. Maybe we’re being punk’d.”
    I seriously consider this option, searching the dark area underneath our feet for an implanted secret camera. All I find is a wad of fossilized chewing gum. “Maybe this is something they do every day at 5:34 and we’re the only ones who don’t know about it.” I chew my lip and examine the midway spread out like a postcard below. “Maybe we’re dead. We died but purgatory’s not ready for us yet because of a paperwork jam.”
    I shiver, shot through with a sudden chill. This inauspicious start to my roller coasting tour is giving me the creeps—is this a bad sign for the entire trip?—but I have to admit I am also a little bit thrilled at the unexpected turn of events. Whenever things don’t go according to plan, I get this jump in my stomach and the world snaps into radiance, unfurling convulsively in its gorgeous lack of predictable continuity. I pound the sides of the train with my fists, unbalancing our car and letting out hollow little booms.
    “Hey, hey, hey,” Ralph chides. “Let’s just consider our options before we start taking it out on the equipment.” He puts his arm around me and holds me tight. “I’m sure they’ll fix whatever the problem is, and we’ll get going in a minute.” His eyes are steady, gas-blue and hot as stones. Ralph doesn’t need a jacket, ever—my theory is that lubricious thoughts keep his body heat hovering somewhere above normal at all times. Being enclosed in Ralph’s warmth and calm is so unlike our immediate predicament of being suspended in cold, wide-open space that I allow myself to take solace in the oxymoron of the moment. Exhaling slowly, I notice that the ancient message facing us on the inside of the car, which once urged riders to remain seated, has been scrubbed with keys and fingernails until it can barely be deciphered as a ghostly communique: main seat.
    Living in New York City, I’ve learned not to look up; it’s the first lesson you master if you don’t want to be pegged as a tourist. I’ve gotten used to the eye-level view; the world has been reduced to a horizontal strip four feet to seven feet high. I am constantly bombarded with other people’s faces and bodies, doorways and stoops, shop windows filled with bizarre things like paraplegic mannequins and human jaw bones draped in blood-red satin scarves and stuttered with Planet of the Apes action figures. Seeing grown men pick their noses or overgrown rats shimmy up fire escape ladders is old hat, but miles of airspace with absolutely nothing in it is remarkable. Sure, I’ll glimpse the bottom edge of sky when I flee to the Hudson River on one of my restless jaunts. Once my eyes sidle around leather boys cruising or dancing or sucking or kissing in the shadows of the pier, I have the whole industrial New Jersey shoreline to peruse. The sky is merely a backdrop, adding to the kitschy effect of the old-fashioned neon Hanson’s coffee sign. The view from the East River is a bit more expansive, but my eyes always seem to get sucked over to that old irresistible Statue of Liberty. Or the massive bridges, the majestic Brooklyn and Manhattan, will command contemplation. The sky is there, of course, but it is the part of the canvas that hasn’t been painted: not very interesting in its own right, yet integral to the cohesive beauty of the scene. Now, as I allow my vision to drift upward and outward,