She asked Benjamin about Chris, and he reported that Chris was seen leaving the party on foot, in a hurry. "Are you hot hot for Christopher?" Benjamin wanted to know. "Are you warm for his form? There's a certain kind of damaged chick-you might be the type-that finds an for Christopher?" Benjamin wanted to know. "Are you warm for his form? There's a certain kind of damaged chick-you might be the type-that finds an enigma enigma like him irresistible." like him irresistible."

"Did he say where he went?"

"As his former roommate, I can report that he has a small p.e.n.i.s," Benjamin said. "I myself am above average."

"You're an average idiot," Ruby told him, as he smiled in a way that said he didn't care.

The sun is setting, the sky glazed in pink and tangerine. The porch looks out onto a grid of backyards, most of which are crowded with kids her age doing variations of the things going on here. To the left, the smell of reefer and the music of the Grateful Dead. To the right, a gang of jocks and frat boys doing beer funnels. People flow between the yards.

Barbecue smoke paints the air, hot dogs blackening on the grill like corpse fingers. There's nothing for her to eat here, but she barely has an appet.i.te anyway, with the rancid smell of vomit rising up from the alley alongside between the houses-the designated place to puke.

"I love summer," Benjamin says. "I love the humidity and all the exposed flesh and everyone dropping their inhibitions, girls especially. I love bikinis. I love a chick's stomach. And when they shake water out of their wet hair, I love that. I love the way your hair looked when you came out of the shower. Much s.e.xier. I love the days being so long. Winter sucks, the whole turning-back-the-clocks concept, and the f.u.c.king cold. Last winter I got a backache from tensing up because of the cold air. I went to a physical therapist, like I'm some kind of middle-aged man, can you believe it? I'm from Florida, we don't have winter, you know? It's stupid to live in these cold places. Do you see my point, Princess?"

Ruby nods. It doesn't matter if she says yes or no, Benjamin is talking for the sake of talking, his voice an apparatus running on cocaine.

"Ruby?"

It's Calvin, pushing open the back door. He looks at her with a droopy-eyed expression that could be worry, or is perhaps just the result of too much beer. "Come on a booze run with me. I'm going to the store with this guy."

Behind him is the curly-haired jock who helped Ruby wipe up earlier in the day. He waves at her like they're old friends and announces, in his own tipsy slur, "I'm legal, so I'm buying."

"I'll wait here," Ruby says.

Calvin looks from Ruby to Benjamin, and there's something very unsure in his eyes. "Whatever you do," he says, pointing a finger to Benjamin, "don't listen to anything this hose-bag says."

"What would I possibly say to your girlfriend that she wouldn't want to hear?" Benjamin is so smarmy, it makes her wonder. What secret is being held here?

"Ruby," Calvin says, almost a whine. Do me a favor, Do me a favor, she wants to say, she wants to say, and go. and go.

The jock places a meaty hand on Calvin's shoulder and says, "This is a mission for men."

Calvin turns to the guy and breaks into a smile-it's almost sweet to see-as if he's been granted some great and unexpected honor among his gender.

"I'll be right here," she says. Unless Chris returns, and then... Unless Chris returns, and then...

"Right here," Calvin says, pointing his finger down emphatically, as if she mustn't leave this little dirty wooden porch. He backs away with his new friend-making room for Dorian, who stumbles onto the porch waving a cigarette that she doesn't seem to be smoking.

Dorian looks at Benjamin, then throws a hard stare at Ruby.

"How nice to see you again," Ruby says. She's pretty sure this will provoke Dorian, and she's surprised to discover she doesn't care. Why did she agree to wear this awful girl's clothes? It's like she has donned a uniform making her Dorian's employee.

Dorian turns her gaze back to Benjamin and says, "You can't f.u.c.k her."

Benjamin flashes Dorian a delighted smile. "Do b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs count?"

The cigarette flutters through the air, but Dorian-so drunk that she can't keep her balance-is unable to form a response. She points a finger at Ruby and dramatically says, "You don't fool me," and then she's gone, swerving back into the house like a shopping cart with a loose wheel.

Ruby and Benjamin glance at each other and share a laugh at Dorian's expense. For a brief moment, she forgets her dislike of this guy. Then he opens his mouth again. "What I'm wondering, Princess, is, who are you saving it for, huh? I'm referring to the Big V."

"Do we have to talk about this?"

"Are you some kind of Puritan, dressed all in black?"

She turns back to the yard, squinting into the sun. "Once it was a religious belief. But now I'm just used to the idea."

"Are you going to give it to Mr. Right when he comes along?"

"I've waited this long, it might as well be right."

"And how will you know exactly?"

"I'll feel it. Like an answer to a question I've been carrying around." She looks at him, wanting this to be the last word. He frowns. Maybe her answer didn't convince him. She's not sure she's convinced herself. But how could she tell him the truth-that the next time she has s.e.x, it has to be someone who won't rush through it, won't hurt her with his clumsiness, won't say, Let's just get it over with Let's just get it over with?

Alice reappears, carrying a tray of Dixie cups. "Jell-O shots, Jell-O shots," she announces. She hands one to Benjamin, then holds the tray out to Ruby. Ruby tries to refuse, but Alice insists, "You have to take one before they get scarfed down by the townies." She waves an arm over the backyard.

There's a song coming from inside the house that Ruby has heard before-in a store, in the background somewhere, who knows-one of those songs she hears a lot lately. It's this pretty cliched rock and roll song about a boy, a girl and a guitar. She hates this song and every song like it, but it's catchy, and she finds that she actually knows the words: "Those were the best days of my life, back in the summer of '69." Her life is not going to be like that, a slide downhill after some fabled glorious youth.

"What's that look on your face?" Alice says. "Loosen up!"

Ruby reaches out and takes a cup in each hand and throws back one, then another blob of colored gelatin. The faintest taste of liquor pa.s.ses coldly across her tongue. "Happy?" she asks Alice, but Alice is already moving down the steps into the yard, where she's swarmed by the crowd.

"Maybe you're a lesbian," Benjamin says. "D'you ever think of that?"

Ruby crumples the cups in her hand and throws them at him. "Maybe you're mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded. Ever think of that?"

The insult just rolls off him. "I'm from Florida, we Christmased in Key West every year-I know from lesbians. They're not all diesel-truck drivers. Some are cool customers like you."

"My brother's gay," Ruby says angrily. She's surprised to hear herself say it; she doesn't blurt this out to strangers. Benjamin has probably already heard it-Calvin would have told Alice about Robin, Alice would have told Dorian, who probably told Benjamin, and probably not in very nice terms: "Calvin's girlfriend's brother is a f.a.g, can you believe that? Isn't that sick?"

Benjamin says, "Why don't they just stop having s.e.x altogether? Death, my Princess, is stalking the f.a.ggots."

"Straight people get it, too," she snaps. "In Haiti it's men and women both."

"In Haiti the men f.u.c.k the women up the rear. That's the problem. The body is rebelling against this invasion to the system." Benjamin reaches into his pocket-since leaving the bedroom, he's put his pants on-and he retrieves a box of Dunhills. He lights one and puffs on it like an amateur, pulling the cigarette away from his face and spitting out smoke without inhaling. Ruby knows what a real smoker looks like. Her mother and her brother smoke constantly. "There's a very fantastic article about it in Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone," Benjamin says. "It's almost mystical, this plague. Like a cosmic cleansing mechanism."

"It's not cosmic, it's medical," Ruby tells Benjamin. "You should learn something about the science." She knows about these terminal cases, the young men dying in New York hospitals as if they're at the end of their lives, their bodies unable to fight. There's a man in her apartment building with a purple splotch on his handsome face. In the elevator, he caught her staring, and before she could look away in embarra.s.sment, he started up a conversation about the building's garbage collection, and they chatted, like all was normal, for five flights down. She worries for her brother. He took an AIDS test last year, right after they became available. He was negative. But still-he's told her about a lot of s.e.x in the past. So she can't help but worry. She has asked him if he used poppers-they say that poppers have something to do with it, with immune system damage-and he said only a couple of times. He and Peter are monogamous, he said, and they're using rubbers, which is what doctors say you should do now. He told her, you're lucky you're not f.u.c.king your way through college. She told him that she didn't feel lucky. She felt apart from people because of it.

"You know," Benjamin says, "there's talk about Calvino being a little, um, susceptible susceptible. To, you know, tendencies. tendencies. Alice says Calvino used to wear their mother's lipstick." Alice says Calvino used to wear their mother's lipstick."

"Maybe you haven't noticed, lots of guys wear makeup now," Ruby says. "It's fashionable." Chris was wearing eyeliner, she thinks. But she hates hearing this about Calvin. What does it say about her, to be dating someone who could be in the closet?

Alice comes skipping up the stairs, her tray now empty but for one last shot. "Right, Alice? Calvin wore your mother's lipstick?"

"Shut up," she says, but her voice lacks force, and she turns to Ruby, jabbing the edge of the tray into her chest. "Why don't you give Calvin some action, so people will just shut up?"

Ruby's stomach tightens again as she considers the sticky, dense world she's been lured into-she's not a toy for cats but a winged insect snagged in a spiderweb. She wants to make herself weightier, heavy enough to break through the cords they're trying to tighten around her. She nudges the tray away. "Mind your own business, OK?"

Alice presses her lips together, and Ruby wonders if she's gone too far. She doesn't want to make an enemy here. But she's fed up.

"Ladies, ladies," Benjamin says.

Alice downs the last Jell-O shot, and then the injury or anger or whatever it was vanishes, smothered in a toothy smile that takes over the lower half of her thin face. She throws an arm over Ruby's shoulder and says in a too-emphatic voice, "I know we'll be great friends if we just keep drinking!" And she slips back into the house, and Ruby lets go the breath she was holding.

Benjamin relights his cigarette-which apparently went out because he wasn't smoking it right-and Ruby studies his face as the light casts a perfect magic-hour glow upon him. Benjamin is one of those people you could never be friends with no matter how much you drank. She takes a guess that of everyone here, he comes from the wealthiest family-maybe from the most uptight, emotionally frigid family, too. A rich kid, always suspicious of everyone he meets, because he has more than they do-more money, more things things, has probably traveled more and been schooled more rigorously. Even with his drug-induced twitchiness, he's not bad looking. He was probably a cute little boy. Now he's a horrible, handsome young man. A user. It was unfair, how the sun cast the same light on the good as it did on the bad, on kind people as well as cruel. She still finds herself wishing for cosmic justice-if there is a G.o.d, why doesn't he punish those who truly deserve it?

She looks westward into the sun, hovering between some distant, inland hills and the town's water tower. It's a solid, fiery ball. And she thinks of all those Friday evenings, after they moved into Manhattan, when she and Robin were driven by their mother across the George Washington Bridge to the house in Greenlawn where her father still lived. The fireball in the sky is the very image of joint custody joint custody, of every-other-weekend, of sinking into the tan upholstery of the Nissan Maxima as her mother and her brother gabbed up front, smoking their cigarettes.

The house on Bergen Ave. still retained touches of their mother's decorating style-arty black-and-white photos hung on the living room walls in pricey frames-though after the divorce, Dorothy never again stepped inside. She never made this refusal explicit, she just held back at the front door, and the rest of them came to understand that she would not cross that threshold. When she dropped them off, money went from Clark's hands to Dorothy's on the stoop, and then she drove away. The scenario changed over time: Dorothy staying in Manhattan, and Ruby, after she got her driver's license, taking on driving duty. Their father couldn't cook much more than hamburgers and macaroni and cheese, SpaghettiOs in a can, or frozen fish sticks, so she and Robin would stop at the A&P and concoct a menu: meatloaf or tuna ca.s.serole or pan-fried chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s glazed with apricot jam. Clark loved it, he always thanked them, said they were better cooks than their mother had ever been (information that they pa.s.sed on to Dorothy, who fumed in response but then bought cookbooks and became more skilled in the small kitchen of their Upper West Side apartment than she had ever been in the suburbs). In New Jersey, Ruby and Robin would pa.s.s hours of the weekend in silence with their father, but it was a gentle silence, not the tension of unhappiness that once ruled the house. After dinner, they watched movies on HBO or Cinemax. Their father paid extra for the good cable channels; in Manhattan their mother didn't even get the basic package that would have removed the static from the screen. That's what the setting sun conjures up-years of adjusting to separation. Separated parents, separate homes, a dividing line between her old life and her new.

She learned to sleep well in her old room, still appointed as when she was a little girl-the tramped-down russet carpet, the closet door with its mousy squeak, that ceramic bedside lamp in the shape of a ballerina, its hollow pedestal once a hiding place for little things she shoplifted-though it wasn't easy at first. The house had a negative charge buzzing through it. Not just the divorce but the terrible time leading up to it. And before that, the time of Jackson in the hospital, in his dark, damaged sleep.

Tomorrow's his birthday. Jackson's. She's been thinking about it for weeks. Thinking about going to the grave, and how frightening the idea was to her, because of what happened the last time she was there. She'd had the idea, a week or two ago, that she'd be able to deal with the cemetery if she could get all of them to go with her, her mother and father, showing up at the grave at the same time, and maybe Robin, too, if he could get a train from Philadelphia. They could all be there together to mark Jackson's birthday. But Robin said he had to work, and her father said that he didn't know if he and Annie, this woman he'd been dating lately, had made plans already. He had managed to slip into their conversation that Sunday was also Father's Day-she hadn't remembered, and felt bad about it, though, really, Father's Day strikes her as a fake holiday, a Hallmark holiday, not an important memorial like Jackson's birthday. (Plus, wasn't it creepy that the person her father had planned to spend his Father's Day with was Annie, his much-younger girlfriend?) Her mother hadn't been open to the idea of the group outing to the cemetery, either. She said that she had her day planned out, and she wasn't feeling very flexible about the schedule-she wanted to be at the grave early enough to allow her to get back to Manhattan and cook dinner. Of course, she was just avoiding Clark, still holding on to all the unfinished business surrounding the divorce, even though they'd actually been civil to each other lately-they even managed to share a few laughs at Uncle Stan's wedding last weekend. Still, the plan fell apart, because everyone in her family was basically self-absorbed or petty or both, and Ruby wound up feeling that she had expended way too much energy on the plan, and gotten nothing back from any of them, which was typical. Calvin tried to be nice about it, told her they could stop at the cemetery on the drive back from the sh.o.r.e tomorrow, but she wasn't sure she wanted to go with Calvin. He didn't know Jackson. It wouldn't mean anything to him. Plus, he'll probably have some critique of the whole concept of a cemetery, the way the funeral industry is essentially capitalist exploitation of grief, which of course, it kind of is, but who wants to hear that when you're standing in front of your dead brother's tombstone? What if she started praying and Calvin challenged her about it? It would be better not to be there at all than to be there with someone who misunderstood.

She makes a decision.

She turns to Benjamin and says, "I'm going for a walk. If Calvin asks, tell him that."

"Are you going to the boardwalk?" Benjamin asks, exhaling smoke past her shoulder. "We should all all go!" go!"

"No, we we shouldn't." shouldn't."

"Oh, the Princess needs her personal s.p.a.ce?" He winks at her, as if cementing a pact between them.

So she a.s.sumes, though she can't be sure it's true, that Benjamin has guessed that she's going to look for Chris.

The beach is only a few blocks away. Ruby walks eastward, away from the now-set sun, her boots slung over the strap of her handbag, a thermos in her hand filled with something called a New Jersey Iced Tea-lemonade, Coca-Cola, rum, and vodka-mixed by the girl playing bartender back at the house. She pa.s.ses a church called Our Lady of Perpetual Help. She thinks of the fact of the ocean, and how they take it for granted as a place of recreation, though it's more powerful than any of them. She felt that briefly today when she was jumping around in the crashing waves by herself. She thinks of sailors lost at sea, of cap-sized boats, of swimmers carried away. The ocean is perpetual, and the tides, and drowning. But so is love, and desire. She is staring at the church, a brick building with a strip of dehydrated lawn surrounding it. She ignores the pull she feels to enter, kneel, and pray to G.o.d that she finds Chris. She keeps walking. She walks another block and comes upon Waterworks, a giant waterslide occupying an entire block in the middle of this neighborhood, emitting splashes and shrieks from every direction. This is what people do, we take the forces of nature and we corral them into amus.e.m.e.nts. We're always trying to control everything. She hears her thoughts cascading and realizes she's definitely buzzed. Waterworks is situated catty-corner from the borough hall and the police station. Could she get arrested here, for being underage and under the influence? No, not with wasted teenagers everywhere. But she keeps her head down anyway.

Twilight settles upon streets dense with cruising traffic. With every step the noise of the night swells up. She dodges cars turning in and out of liquor store parking lots. Gangs of happy-hour drunks stumble serpentine along the sidewalk. Everyone seems so young, so inconsequential, and yet she doesn't feel safe, on her own like this. Catcalls fly out from guys on porches and hotel balconies. She guesses she's an easy mark, a single girl in preppie shorts, barefoot, unsteady on her feet.

Someone yells from a second-floor motel balcony, "Show us your t.i.ts." She hears the same thing a half block later from a different group of boys. She drops her head and walks faster, away from the hara.s.sment. Calls of "prude" trail her like the barking of provoked dogs. If it happens again, she thinks she might just do it. Drop everything, yank up her shirt and bra, give them a glimpse of her B-cup b.r.e.a.s.t.s, gleaming white in the darkening night air. She'd yell back at them, "Satisfied?" An Amazon, a Bond Girl, Bettie Page.

She sips from the thermos, wipes a splash from her chin. Just forget about those guys. f.u.c.k f.u.c.k those guys. That's what she'll yell next time they shout at her. those guys. That's what she'll yell next time they shout at her. f.u.c.k you. Show me your p.r.i.c.k. f.u.c.k you. Show me your p.r.i.c.k. The strong drink stimulates courage, or the concept of courage anyway. But then she rounds a corner and comes upon a tall motel taking up half the block. Its sign bears the lofty name Skyview Manor, but there's nothing posh about the four floors of long balconies jammed to the railing with riotous teens, like a hundred-eyed creature from a monster movie. If anyone gives her serious trouble, she'll run back to the police station. Until then she's keeping her course. She has no idea where Chris is, but the closer she gets to the ocean, the more urgent it seems that she'll find him. Maybe then she'll have the answer to the question that nagged at her all day long. The strong drink stimulates courage, or the concept of courage anyway. But then she rounds a corner and comes upon a tall motel taking up half the block. Its sign bears the lofty name Skyview Manor, but there's nothing posh about the four floors of long balconies jammed to the railing with riotous teens, like a hundred-eyed creature from a monster movie. If anyone gives her serious trouble, she'll run back to the police station. Until then she's keeping her course. She has no idea where Chris is, but the closer she gets to the ocean, the more urgent it seems that she'll find him. Maybe then she'll have the answer to the question that nagged at her all day long. Why am I here? Why am I here?

She turns a corner and comes upon another motel, the last block before the boardwalk, lit up in white light. This one looks more typical of Seaside Heights-a two-story building, a parking lot, a vending machine near a sign marked OFFICE OFFICE. There's a fenced-in pool running the length of the place and a big sign bearing its name, The Surfside. The picture on the sign stops her in her tracks-an ill.u.s.tration of a woman in a swimsuit, her body bent in half, diving into the water. Ruby has been here before. That family vacation, all those years ago. She was only eight, maybe nine, and she shared a room with her brothers. It felt like an adventure, like being on their own, though Dorothy and Clark were just on the other side of the wall. Jackson wanted to build a fort, so she and Robin stretched sheets and blankets between the twin beds, and brought the desk lamp underneath, and the phone, too-whatever they could move from all corners of the room into their "underground hideout." Robin decided this should be the Batcave. Robin was Batman, Ruby was Batgirl, and Jackson was Robin the Boy Wonder (which was confusing to him, only six years old and asked to play the character with his older brother's name). Robin fashioned capes for them out of pillowcases and they ran around the room fighting crime. Then they started over, playing criminals this time. Ruby called Catwoman, but Robin wanted to be Catwoman, too, so she agreed to be Catgirl, a criminal not part of the TV show but fine for pretend. She and Robin hissed to each other in cat-voices-"We're going to commit the purrfect purrfect crime"-while Jackson, as the Penguin, waddled around making honking noises. Eventually the door swung open and their father barged in, annoyed. "Aw, come on, guys! Clean up this mess." He wore his bathrobe, bare chest showing at the collar, hairy legs visible below. After lights out, she and Robin giggled about it- crime"-while Jackson, as the Penguin, waddled around making honking noises. Eventually the door swung open and their father barged in, annoyed. "Aw, come on, guys! Clean up this mess." He wore his bathrobe, bare chest showing at the collar, hairy legs visible below. After lights out, she and Robin giggled about it-Daddy wasn't wearing pajamas!

This was the very place, wasn't it? The Surfside Motel. She remembers her mother lounging by the pool, even though the beach was just a block away, reading the New Yorker New Yorker. She remembers that they only stayed one night before they moved to another place-too many teenagers, making way more noise than she and her brothers ever could. Ruby strides past the pool, full of girls and boys splashing around, toward a phone booth near the vending machines. She pulls a few dimes from her purse, flips through her address book, and finds her brother's new phone number in Philly. It's Sat.u.r.day night. He's probably working at the restaurant, or maybe he and George are out for the night. (He's only been in Philly for a month. Does he have friends? Where do they go when they go out? Do they use fake IDs and go to gay bars? Do they have parties?) The phone rings, then the machine picks up. Dorothy bought him an answering machine when he moved in with George, afraid that she'd lose him in the wilds of West Philly-after the news of the police bombing, she'd called the neighborhood a "war zone." Ruby had argued that Dorothy didn't understand politics at all; Dorothy said Ruby had no idea what it was to be a mother. Another standoff.

Robin and George have recorded a funny outgoing message together: "It's Robin. And George. We're out recruiting for our secret club. If you leave a message, we might let you join." When she hears the beep she fumbles with what she wants to say. It's harder to form words than she'd expected. (What was in those Jell-O shots?) She mentions Seaside, the motel, the party, Chris. "I'm trying to find him. I followed followed him. I'm a little buzzed." At some point she realizes the machine has already cut her off. There'd been a time limit, without warning. She thinks about calling back, changes her mind. Keep to the mission. him. I'm a little buzzed." At some point she realizes the machine has already cut her off. There'd been a time limit, without warning. She thinks about calling back, changes her mind. Keep to the mission.

She's remembering more and more of Chris, things he told her during those phone calls after the retreat weekend. His father was an engineer at an aircraft company. His mother was a college English professor. Ruby remembers Chris's descriptions of how brilliant his mother was, but also how unbearably skinny she had been. How he never used to see her eat anything of substance. His older sister was a curvy beauty, a good student with good looks planning on earning scholarship money by entering the Miss New York pageant. Brainy and bubbly and blond. There was a younger sister, too. Chris told her that his bedroom ceiling was hung with model airplanes, rockets, s.p.a.ceships. Tiny components pieced together by hand. The satisfaction of a.s.sembling something intricate. And then, the discovery of inhaling glue. He'd seen a psychiatrist after his sister found him pa.s.sed out on the stairs, eyes rolling back in his head. He laughed bitterly when he related the catch-22 that emerged during his treatment: the shrink said a "creative outlet" was important, but since his beloved models provided the means to getting high, they were forbidden. The solution was painting and drawing, but the images he came up with frightened everyone-s.p.a.ce creatures devouring children on barren planets, blood bursting out of human ears, noses, a.s.sholes. He told Ruby he used to squat over a mirror to get a look at his own a.s.shole, in order to be able to draw one correctly.

His confessions made her uneasy, and then made her bold. She, too, held her privates open in front of a mirror, wanting to see the parts she contained. After reading a s.e.x-soaked paperback found in Dorothy's bedroom, she tried out different textures down there, not just her fingertips, but stuffed animals and a hairbrush and a powder puff stolen from her mother's makeup table, which tickled to the point of ecstasy. She nicknamed the most tender spot her "clint," because she wasn't sure how to p.r.o.nounce its real name (c.l.i.toris or c.l.i.toris?). She told him she gave it a man's name because it felt like a stranger living there inside her. A sensitive, secret self.

It was Chris's mother who brought him to Jesus. Chris's shrink had taken one look at Mrs. Cleary and decided all was not well with this bone-thin woman. She had been seeing a therapist, too, and attending a regular support group, and letting a nutritionist put her on a regimen. The Save Your Life Diet, Chris called it. He told Ruby that before, he never hugged his mom because she was so hard and brittle-"Can you imagine that, thinking you could snap your own mother's bones?" But she put on flesh and grew softer, and the first time she held him against her newly cushioned body, he wept. His mother hushed him, "Don't cry, I'm getting better." She told him the change was not only in her body but also in her soul. It wasn't just the doctors, it was prayer that had made the difference. So the Cleary family went back to church-sober Chris, fleshy Mom, and the rest of them. Chris told Ruby he would stare at a painting of the crucifixion-Jesus' suffering like an image he himself might have sketched in oil crayons, Jesus with long hair like a rock star and a body as starved as the one his mother had just conquered. Chris would stare and then go home and read the New Testament, looking for anything that spoke of the pain, the actual bodily suffering. He went to their priest trying to understand the meaning of a single idea-that this man who walked the earth so long ago had suffered in order to end our suffering. suffered in order to end our suffering. It didn't make sense. The priest told him about a teen retreat called Crossroads. It didn't make sense. The priest told him about a teen retreat called Crossroads.

Ruby remembers all of this. She remembers, too, the jealousy she felt. Chris lived in a house where healing had been possible. (And now? Who was Chris Cleary now? What did he believe in, if anything?) In her own home, pain only rooted deeper over time. Her mother did not go to church, did not forgo her bottles of wine to drink from the cup of Christ, had no miraculous transformation. Dorothy didn't even drive Ruby to church on Sundays, not even in the winter when the sidewalks were treacherous with ice, and slush seeped into her boots. Ruby believed all on her own, until she stopped believing. That's what she tells herself, and others, too: She no longer believes in G.o.d, as she did back then, when the circ.u.mstances of her life brought her face-to-face with the kind of pain only G.o.d seemed fit to remove. Because He didn't remove it, and it deepened: an injured brother became a dead brother, a troubled home a broken one. She'd been uprooted from a quiet town and dropped into a dangerous city. So for a couple years now, she has resisted anything that smacks of the divine. It's all superst.i.tion, placebo. Rhetoric about things that are meant to be meant to be is just a way to rationalize a power structure, one that keeps people in their place, especially women. But given all that-how is she supposed to explain why crossing paths with Chris feels so preordained, so fated? is just a way to rationalize a power structure, one that keeps people in their place, especially women. But given all that-how is she supposed to explain why crossing paths with Chris feels so preordained, so fated?

She joins the throng filing up a wooden ramp to the wide wooden boardwalk. Flares of color. Strobing surfaces. Bulbs flashing the entrance to the Casino Pier. Barkers in front of wheels of fortune calling out, "Round and round she goes, and where she stops n.o.body knows." The buzzing and whirring of games of chance. She sees Whack-A-Mole and Skee-Ball and the one where you squirt water into the open mouth of a clown, which somehow triggers an inflating balloon coming out of the top of the clown's head. First one to pop the balloon is the winner. The prizes are enormous stuffed animals, blacklight posters, mirrors painted with beer labels and rock alb.u.m art. There's the smell of fried food in the air, pizza and hamburgers and Italian sausage smothered in onions. Music and sound effects compete for attention. She hears "Everybody wants to rule the world" "Everybody wants to rule the world" emanating from a blazing blur in neon pink-an enormous disk, tilted on its side, spinning seated, screaming people high into the sky and back down again. emanating from a blazing blur in neon pink-an enormous disk, tilted on its side, spinning seated, screaming people high into the sky and back down again.

Past the glowing, screaming arcades she sees the ocean. She sits on a bench and puts her boots back on and looks out over the beach, which is mostly empty now. The water is bisected by a wide white stripe. The black waves are capped in glowing foam.

She looks up-a fat full moon is on the rise, big and nearly as bright as the sun. So beautiful. It gives her a moment's peace. If only it were a spotlight that could pinpoint Chris in its beam and lead her directly to him.

At first she feels the power of moving solo through a mob. The power of invisibility, of sliding under the radar. Couples, families, groups of friends pa.s.s by, absorbed in their own good times. Then she gets slammed by a fast-moving shoulder. She gets jostled again moments later. When she calls out "Watch where you're going," a burly guy shouts back, "Eat me." His girlfriend stops, stares Ruby down. "What did you say, freak?" A menacing girl is worse than a bullying guy, more likely to hit another girl. This one is a terror-enormous mane of hair, weighty gold jewelry, animal-print shirt, and matching leggings. Ruby hates the way girls look these days-garish eye shadow, shoulder pads sewn into flimsy cotton T-shirts, athletic jackets that match the ones their boyfriends wear. Do they know they seem like clowns-goofy from a distance, aggressive and scary close up? She wishes she could squirt water into this girl's mouth until her head exploded. She can't shake the feeling that the eighties are turning into a mean decade. People are pushy in a way they didn't use to be. Or maybe she's just older, more like an adult than she's ever been and learning the very adult pressure to take from the world what you want, the h.e.l.l with everyone else.

It becomes clear that her presence is not going completely unnoticed. There are other solo observers here-all men. They catch sight of her and smile. Unwelcome smiles. One of them, early twenties, sports a white, ribbed "Guinea T-shirt," a slender gold chain, and the short-on-the-sides-long-in-the-back haircut favored by South Jersey boys. He locks eyes on her and breaks into a toothy grin. When he starts to move toward her, signaling for her attention, she darts away, heading not deeper onto the Casino Pier but parallel to the ocean, along the diagonal wooden slats of the boardwalk. In the middle is a bathroom, a moist, smelly concrete chamber. Sitting on the toilet in a locked stall, waiting him out, she feels for the first time all night the risk of what she's doing. It's not like her at all, taking this kind of chance, on her own. She guzzles from her thermos, wanting to regain that fearlessness she felt less than an hour ago, when she set out from the party.

"Women are not meant to be alone," her mother had said one night, preparing for a date with a man she'd admitted she wasn't all that fond of. The message seemed to be that any man was better than no man. Dorothy remains unmarried but, not yet fifty, still pursues her prospects. Last week she took a man she hardly knew to her brother's wedding, mostly, Ruby thinks, because she didn't want to face Clark without a date. Ruby sees now that only men appear on the boardwalk without company, not women. Certainly not young young women. women.

That last chug of booze might have been a mistake. She feels the wobble in her walk as she exits the restroom. She's had so little to eat today. Breakfast in Manhattan, hours and hours ago with Calvin. A couple mouthfuls of potato salad in the kitchen at Alice's house, scooped up on a hotdog bun. She needs to eat, feels a craving for something sweet. Cotton candy and a root beer. The airy tastes of a beach vacation.

She enters the gla.s.s door of one of the restaurants that run the length of the boardwalk. This one is called Lucky Leo's, and it's crowded. Waiting her turn at the end of a long line, she tries not to make eye contact with anyone, but at the same time she needs to look around for Chris. She sees on the menu something she hasn't had in years: zeppoles, b.a.l.l.s of fried dough coated in powdered sugar. She buys a bag, plus the root beer she'd been craving, pays with a couple of singles dredged from the bottom of her purse. She sits at the edge of a table occupied by a harried family-young parents trying to soothe cranky children with French fries.

If she really knew Chris, she could deduce where he'd gone. The boardwalk had seemed the obvious choice, the town's almighty magnet. Chris might indeed be nearby, drinking a beer under an awning, taking in the swirling decadence. Or he might have known better. Might have understood just how lonely being alone in an amus.e.m.e.nt park would feel. To deduce, deduce, she has to work with the little of him she witnessed. He saw her, kissed her, doused her in cryptic comments, then vanished after Calvin appeared. He was trying to lure her out after him, away from Calvin, away from that crowd-she feels certain of that. But how could he know that she would follow? How could he reasonably expect her to find him? she has to work with the little of him she witnessed. He saw her, kissed her, doused her in cryptic comments, then vanished after Calvin appeared. He was trying to lure her out after him, away from Calvin, away from that crowd-she feels certain of that. But how could he know that she would follow? How could he reasonably expect her to find him?

The children at the end of the table are crying and whining. Dad declares the evening over. As soon as they leave, their seats are occupied again. Two girls about her age sit down across from each other. They are dressed in black. The more pet.i.te of the two wears a miniskirt like the one Ruby shed earlier at the house. The girl's long, flat face reminds Ruby of the head of a snake. She is transfixed by her right index finger-its black-painted nail has had a chunk torn from it. "Joanne," she says to her friend, "should I just bite it off?"

Ruby winces.

Joanne, the larger of the two, rifles methodically through an enormous black vinyl purse, commanding, "Don't do that! I have an emery board in here." Her heavy New Jersey accent turns emery into amree amree, board into bawd bawd. Her pretty, feline eyes are ringed in dark eye shadow. Her entire face, moon-shaped and powdered, is like that of a white lynx.

"I have a nail file," Ruby says, and opens her own purse to fish it out. The girls notice her for the first time. She offers them a hopeful smile. They're the first people she's seen all day who in any way resemble her, at least in the way they dress-though she realizes, in Dorian's clothes she doesn't quite look like herself.

"She tore it on the Himalaya," Joanne explains, gesturing toward her friend.

The girl with the ripped nail explains, "You know that safety bar that comes down? It had this little thing thing sticking out, and I got caught on it. It hurts like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d." She puts her finger in her mouth for a second, and then flicks it in the air as if to shake the pain away. "I should sue." sticking out, and I got caught on it. It hurts like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d." She puts her finger in her mouth for a second, and then flicks it in the air as if to shake the pain away. "I should sue."

"You can't sue for a fingernail, Wendy." Joanne looks to Ruby for confirmation. "Am I right or am I left?"

"Right," Ruby says, smiling.

"Did you go on the Himalaya?" Wendy asks her. "It's my favorite."

"I didn't go on anything."

"Nothing?"

"I just play the games," Joanne says. "Last time I won everything I played. It was crazy! I couldn't even carry it all. These stuffed animals and things, I gave 'em all to my nephew. But I can't win nothin' nothin' today. And tomorrow's my birthday!" today. And tomorrow's my birthday!"

"Oh!" Ruby says. "Happy birthday."

"It's all rigged, Joanne," says Wendy.

"Then how come last time I won practically every booth?"