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Chapter One

I know a story.

"I know a story," said Trick the Dwarf, and the rest of them leaned in close: Nanook the Esquimau, and Ota Benga the Pygmy, and Yolanda the Wild Queen of the Amazon.

"What kind of story?"

Yolanda's eyes bulged suspiciously, and it occurred to him again how she alone might actually be as advertised: tiny, leather-skinned woman with a mock feather headdress, betel nut juice dribbling out through the stumps of her teeth. A mulatto from Caracas, or a Negro Seminole woman from deep in the Okefenokee, at least.

"What kind of a story?"

He swiped at the last swathes of greasepaint around his neck and ears, and looked down the pier of the ruined park to the west before replying. All gone now, even the brilliant white tower festooned with eagles, its beacon reaching twenty miles out to sea. Gone, gone.

It was evening, and the lights were just going up along Surf Avenue: a million electric bulbs spinning a soft, yellow gauze over the beach and parks. The night crowd was already arriving, pouring off the New York & Sea Beach line in white trousers and dresses, white jackets and skirts and straw hats -- all quickly absorbed by the glowing lights.

The City of Fire was coming to life.

He could hear the muffled fart of a tuba from the German oompah band warming up in Feltman's beer garden. Beyond the garden was the Ziz coaster, hissing and undulating through the trees with the peculiar sound that gave it its name. Beyond that was the high glass trellises of Steeplechase Park, with its ubiquitous idiot's face and slogan, repeated over and over -- STEEPLECHASE -- FUNNY PLACE -- STEEPLECHASE -- FUNNY PLACE -- . Beyond that the ocean, where a single, low-slung freighter was making for Seagate ahead of the night.

He could see even further. He could see into the past where Piet Cronje's little Boer cottage bad stood, or the Rough Riders coaster, before some fool sailed it right off the rails, sixty feet into the air over Surf Avenue. Where a whole city had stood, back beyond the ruined pier --

Soon? he knew, the soft yellow lights would be honed by the darkness into something sharper. They would become hard, and clear: fierce little pearls of fire, obliterating every thing else with their brightness.

None of them now on the pier would see it, not Yoland or Ota Benga or Nanook the Esquimau. They would be working by then, in their booths and sideshows. They would not see the lights again until they were on their way home, in the early morning; would see them only as they shut down, already faded to a fraudulent, rosy hue by the sun rising over the ocean.

They liked to sit out on the ruined pier during the dinner hour, between the heavy action of the day and the night shows. They slumped on the rotted pilings, where once a hundred excursion boats a day had tied up, to smoke and eat, and spit and smoke and tell their stories: Ota Benga, spindly and humpbacked, no real pygmy but a tubercular piano player from Kansas City, exotic moniker lifted from an old carny sensation of the past --

In the City everything was passed down, even the names of the freaks and the gangsters --

--Nanook the Massive, Nanook the Implacable, slit-eyed hero of the north -- who was in fact a woman from some extinguished Plains tribe, signed on after her old man had tried to force her into whoring at the Tin Elephant hotel along Brighton Beach.

And then there was Yolanda. Immense frog eyes still staring up at him, curved beak of a nose, skin the color and texture of a well-used saddle --

"It's a love story," Trick told her. "It's a story about love, and jealousy, and betrayal. A story about a young man, the young woman who loved him, and a terrible villain -- a story about death, and destruction, and fire. it is a story about thieves and cutthroats, and one man's vision, and the poor man's burden, and the rich man's condescension.

"It is a story about Kid Twist, the gangster, and Gyp the Blood, who was a killer, and Big Tim the politician, and poor Beansy Rosenthal, who couldn't keep his mouth shut. It is a story about Sadie the whore, and the brave Esther, and the mad Carlotta, and the last summer they all came together in the great park.

"It is a story about the Great Head Doctors from Vienna, and the rampages of beasts, and the wonders of the Modern Age. It is a story about the great city, and a little city, and a land of dreams. And always, above all, it is a story about fire."

"Ah," said Yolanda, satisfied now, leaning back and lighting her pipe. "Ah. The usual."

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Excerpted from Dreamland by Kevin Baker, Kevin Baker
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.