Rides with the Devil

"All right," the smooth and relaxed voice behind us said, "who's it gonna be, kids?"

Morgan turned to see who it was, but I didn't dare, afraid of what I might find. A moment earlier, we'd been standing in an empty alleyway lined with shuttered count stores, alibi stores, flat joints and bat aways, just off the Boardwalk. It was late on a Sunday morning, and not much was open yet. That's why I figured we were alone. We had been on our way out, actually, when I'd found myself transfixed by a hand-painted sign offering "sanatary electric" tattoos.

Who's it gonna be, kids? the voice asked again. Still refusing to look (but wondering why it is that everyone we meet calls us "kids"), I took Morgan's elbow, and we began walking quickly toward the traffic along Surf Ave., figuring we'd be safe there. "That's the first voice we're going to hear when we find ourselves in hell," Morgan whispered as we walked away. Suddenly we heard an unmistakable sound behind us.

This time we both turned, to see a large, white-haired man on a motor scooter roaring (or at least buzzing) down on us.

"My God, he's coming after us!" she said, as we began to race for the sidewalk.

"Ahhh!" I said.

We hit the sidewalk and darted quickly around the corner to the right as the man on the scooter happily puttered past us, into the street and away.

That was a close one.

Weird things seem to happen to us damn near every time we go to Coney. Over the course of the past year alone, we've been assaulted by giant birds and tiny Russians and deranged music lovers. And given that I was convinced from my very first visit there all those distant years ago that somewhere around Coney you'd be able to find the entrance to hell, I guess it only made sense that one of these times we'd have a brush with Satan himself, if only a brief one. The Satanic presence there was palpable.

"What kind of stand was he running?" I asked, as we caught our breath while watching him drive away. "I never did look."

"It was just a shooting gallery."

That made sense. Perfect sense, really, if you thought about it, that the devil would be running a Coney flat joint in his spare time.

Who's it gonna be, kids ? It was such a loaded question. Things had been quiet up until that point. There were a few people out on the Boardwalk, but no choking masses yet. They'd start showing up in an hour or so. Ruby's had been open already, but this time we didn't stop in. Though it had only been a few weeks since our last visit, this was the first time we'd been there since the season began. A lot had changed. Several fancy new public bathrooms jutted out from the Boardwalk onto the sand. They looked nice enough?and they were certainly good things to have around, given the state of Ruby's bathrooms?but they ruined the view. There were several new rides up, too, most all of them aimed at kids. Both the Cyclone and the Ghost Hole touted new paint jobs. There was a half-constructed miniature golf course out behind the go-kart track, and we were searched by a woman in a trenchcoat, who wanted to make sure we weren't smuggling any booze out onto the pier.

Even when we first got off the train, workers with mops and buckets were scrubbing away a year's accumulation of pigeon shit. On second thought, it might've been more than a year?it was the first time I'd ever seen them do such a thing.

It was obvious, Morgan pointed out, that the facelift was a blatant attempt to make the place seem more "family friendly." Never a good sign.

"Or maybe they're just trying to reach a point," I suggested, "where the families and kids at least reach some sort of balance with the drunks and the junkies."

At 11:30, having successfully evaded the devil and his motor scooter and his game of chance, we decided to head back north.

As we were about to enter the 8th St. subway station, Morgan looked up just in time to see an MTA worker leaning over the edge of the platform, grinning an evil grin, as he prepared to douse us with a 10-gallon bucket full of soapy water and old bird shit.