The Cyclone Stole My Smokes

We'd just been there a few weeks earlier, but the October sun was out and the lure was simply too great. So we hooked up on the train and headed south again, to our secular mecca. I mean that in the most honest and serious of ways, too?Coney has become a near religion for me over the years. A Mecca, a Lourdes, a Wailing Wall by the Seashore.

Postseason or not, being a Sunday, things were livelier than they had been when we'd been there a few Thursdays prior. Most of the stands along the Boardwalk were open for business. And though the Boardwalk itself wasn't exactly jumping, the people who were strolling along the beach were more than just the Russians from the neighborhood. Most of the rides were running, too?but without any lines. The zipper-ride was looking more dangerous than ever, the Tilt-A-Whirl was entertaining one small girl and, moments after we'd left the subway station, we heard the clatter and chink of the Cyclone being pulled up that first hill.

In other words, it was alive, but it wasn't annoying.

We grabbed a couple hotdogs and took a seat in Ruby's. While Morgan was getting the first round, she noticed the helium balloons announcing someone's birthday. Ten minutes later, after flagging the bartender down for a second, she asked him if it was his.

He nodded quickly, and gave a little smile.

"Well, happy birthday to you."

"Yup. I'm 49." He smiled again, more broadly, and continued on his way.

"Do you really think he's 49?" Morgan asked, after he was out of earshot.

"Ohh, I wouldn't think so. I think he's just pulling our leg."

She thought about that. "Imagine reaching an age where you'd lie by saying you were 49."

"Oh, I dunno. I'm tempted to do that now, sometimes."

When the bartender passed by again, he admitted that he'd actually just turned 73. And for 73, he looked pretty damn sprightly. He returned to his stool at the front of the bar, sat down and lit a cigar. We sat there for a while longer ourselves, listening to the jukebox music, Morgan describing the pictures on the walls to me. There's something about Ruby's?it may not be this way with everybody, and I hope it's not?but there's something about Ruby's that just makes me feel good about things.

When we finished a third round, we got up and headed down toward the water. Weird thing about Coney water (and this is where the Lourdes connection comes in)?when we came down here a few weeks earlier, I still had a once-removed cyst the size of an eyeball growing on my ankle. Two days later, having walked in cool, ankle-deep Coney water, the cyst had shrunk to about one-third of its original size. There may not have been any real, solid scientific or spiritual connection whatsoever between the two, but I prefer to think there was. And to test that hypothesis, I wanted to get my ankles wet again.

The beach was, surprisingly, mostly empty?except for the gulls and the shipwrecked jellyfish and the occasional roving motorcycle gang. None of whom bothered us, though, as we worked our way along the surf. People were actually swimming out there, which amazed me, given that it was the beginning of October. Most of them, I noticed, were elderly?which may garner even more credence for my theory.

After the motorcycle gang's third near-miss as they screamed up and down the beach, it seemed as good a time as any for a couple more dogs and another set-down in Ruby's.

As the afternoon wore on and the bright afternoon sun turned blue-gray, more and more people stopped by to wish Sam?that was the bartender's name?a happy 73rd. People brought him cigars, gave him hugs. A few twirled him around in little dances. One wild-eyed blonde woman leaped over the bar and began groping him lustfully. Then she hopped on his back.

After the sun went down outside for good, and the fluorescent banks came on inside (myself, I've always had a soft spot for fluorescent-lit bars), someone brought him a small cake covered with candles. Everyone sang and applauded when he blew them out. Old couples in comfortable old-people clothes danced in front of the jukebox to the Eurythmics and Patsy Cline. Frank, the bartender who was filling in while Sam celebrated, made off-color cracks to the patrons, but nobody seemed to mind.

It's odd, and touching, in a place like New York?and a place with a rough reputation like Coney, to find so many folks who are simply, well, nice.

After the seventh round?I think it was the seventh?it might've been more?we figured we might as well get on with the trip home. Morgan lead me back to the unlit bathroom and I pushed the door open. I didn't know there was anyone else in there standing at the trough until I ran into him.

"Aww, Jesus," I slurred a bit, "I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay, man. It's okay. You go ahead."

"Oh, no, that's okay," I told him. "I can wait." Unfortunately, given that I couldn't see anything, I didn't know where, exactly, to do this waiting. So I took a step back from the trough and stood there, uncomfortably, until he was done. The Friday beforehand, I'd had the good fortune to share a bar bathroom with two Englishmen who were sharing a urinal. Yeah, I'd wait, trough or not.

When he left, I went to where I believed the trough to be, hoping I was aimed in the right direction. I still don't know if I was or not, but the guy who came in after me didn't say anything.

Afterward, Morgan and I strolled out onto the darkened and mostly empty Boardwalk, turned a corner and began heading back past the old Hell Hole (now the Ghost Hole) toward Surf Ave. Morgan, as she'll do sometimes, stopped to make friends with the attack dogs behind the fence near the Go Karts.

"Y'know," I said nervously, "I dunno if, uh, if that's..." But the dog was already sniffing her hand, friendly-like, and its tail was wagging.

"Cyclone still running, do you suppose?" she asked me, as we continued.

"Well, are the lights still on?"

"Looks like it."

She took my arm and led me through the arcade, where the men in the booths were trying, in vain, to coax us into trying to win a stuffed Tigger before they shut down for the night. Even if I'd tried, I'd probably just end up hurting someone.

"Just because ya got long hair," one of them said to me as we passed, "doesn't mean you're better than me."

I was thinking about that, and the fact that no one had ever said that to me before, when I found that we were standing at the Cyclone ticket booth. And then I was checking my hat (ticket number 13). And then sitting down in one of the cars, the padded bar being snapped into place across our laps. It was all happening so quickly that it was like a series of snapshots. There was no time to reconsider.

For all my dozens of trips to Coney, never once had I been on the Cyclone. Always meant to, certainly. Always knew I had to. But never did it. Even knew someone who was married on the Cyclone once.

Morgan had never been on the Cyclone either, even though she's a born and bred New Yorker. We'd been talking about it all summer and, well, I guess this seemed as appropriate a time as any. We were pretty much the only ones?with the exception, oddly enough, of the blonde woman who'd been riding Sam around the bar earlier that night.

I couldn't see a thing except for the dim red lights off to the right that spelled out "Dante's Inferno." Apart from that, it was impenetrable darkness. We were both pretty drunk. Maybe because of those two reasons, I barely noticed when we were being pulled up that first hill?or where, between that point and the point where the train finally stopped again, I lost my cigarettes.