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“I don’t know, but I aim to find out. Can I keep this?” Fi
“Wait a minute. Isn’t their logo like the one your preservation group uses?”
“You noticed, too?” Fi
Just then a cell phone rang. Fi
Evie was afraid to look. But it wasn’t the hospital. It was the gas station. Her mother’s car was ready to be picked up.
Chapter Forty-five
Evie accepted Fi
“So do you still want to see the stuff from Snakapins?” Fi
“Sorry. Do I what?”
He pulled to a stop in front of the gas station, yanked the emergency brake, and shifted in the seat to face her. “Remember, the stuff I told you about that’s in the store’s basement from Snakapins Park, the old amusement park?”
Snakapins Park and Snakapins Bungalows had been on the map in Mrs. Yetner’s bedroom. She hadn’t forgotten Fi
“A night later this week?” he said. “After I close the store? By then I should have some answers about what’s going on.”
Later in the week? Would she still be there? Already what she’d thought would be a few overnights had turned into nearly a week.
“What? Don’t tell me your nights are all booked,” he said.
“No, it’s not that—”
“Good. You know, I always thought all that stuff moldering down there was nothing more than junk that no one had gotten around to tossing out. You can tell me if any of it is worth preserving. I don’t even know what’s in half the boxes. ”
“How many boxes?” Evie asked.
“Lots.”
Probably they were filled with decaying junk, Evie told herself. Still, the prospect of being the first to open up a cache of storage boxes that had been closed for decades? It was the kind of thing she lived for.
“Besides,” Fi
“You cook, too?”
“I make a mean chili. Do you like chili?”
She nodded and got out of the car.
“Good,” he said through the open door. “See you then.”
“See you.”
He made a U-turn and waved through the window. As she watched him drive off, she caught her breath. She was excited about seeing the remnants of a 1920s amusement park. But even more, she liked that Fi
As if on cue, her cell phone rang. Seth.
“Hi, babe.”
Evie grimaced. She’d told him she hated when he called her that. “So how was the game?” she asked.
“They lost. Insane defense. Minor screwups, lousy offensive rebounds, throwing the ball out of bounds, jumping off the court and diving on the floor. I mean, what’s that all about? Sorry about changing plans on you,” he continued, barely missing a beat. “I know you’re not crazy about basketball. But, hey, great seats. How could I not go? How about we go out for Chinese tomorrow? I’ll make a reservation at the Shun Lee Palace.”
“Seth, I doubt if I’ll be back tomorrow. Besides, I wanted to go to Chinatown for soup dumplings.”
“I’m sure they have soup dumplings at the Shun Lee.”
They probably did. Four miniature ones for the same price that you could get two bamboo steamers full of them at the Soup Dumpling House.
“I hear they have a sensational Peking duck,” Seth said into her silence, his voice coaxing.
They probably had Seth’s favorite Polish vodka, too. “Are you going to ask about my mother?” she asked, not bothering to soften the a
She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. Finally, “I’m sorry. Of course. How is she?”
“She’s dying, Seth. And the house is a complete wreck. And I’m holding it together, but basically I’m a complete wreck, too. Which I know isn’t what you want to hear when you’re making di
“Hey, babe, it’s not your fault.”
Not her fault? Was he really that clueless?
“And you know,” Evie said, taking a quick breath before plunging on, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I don’t really like steaks. Or martinis. Or the smell of cigar smoke, even when you smoked hours ago and brushed your teeth.”
After that, a pit of silence before Seth exploded with, “Is that so? Well, while we’re on the subject, I don’t like soup dumplings. Chinatown is dirty. And I could care less about an old airplane engine lying at the bottom of an elevator shaft.”
“I guess it wouldn’t make much of a tie tack, would it?” Evie shot back, and she disco
Squashing the teeny-tiniest pang of regret, she turned to face the gas station. It looked nothing like it had when Evie used to ride there with her dad to fill up their car. Back then there’d been a single island with gas pumps on either side, serviced by a pair of nimble gas jockeys who cleaned and squeegeed windshields and offered to top off the oil. Now there were four islands with two pumps each, all but one of them self-serve, and a single attendant who pumped gas if someone actually pulled into the “full serve” spot.
But one thing was still there. Over the garage doors was a wonderfully detailed bas-relief of the front end of a 1930s car that seemed to emerge from a medallion of concrete. With its muscular fenders, exposed headlights, and distinctive grille, Evie guessed it was supposed to be a DeSoto.
Evie walked into a little glassed-in office tucked into the front corner of the garage. When she gave her name at the desk, the man whom she recognized as one of the brothers who’d inherited the business pulled out a bill. Jack was stitched over the pocket of his work shirt.
“I used to come in here years ago with my dad,” Evie told him. “It looks so different out there, but in here it’s exactly the same.”
He looked at the bill. “Ferrante?” Up at her. “You’re Vi
“One of them.”
“Fine man, your dad. Though we used to kid him about that heap he drove around in.”
Evie laughed, remembering her father’s Chevy Caprice woody wagon that he’d driven until the axle rusted apart. He loved that old car. It was so big that they’d once loaded a double mattress into the back of it.
“Must have gotten my love of old things from him,” she said, handing Jack her card. “If you ever tear this building down, the Historical Society would be very interested in that bas-relief over the doors.” She took him outside and showed him what she meant. “We’d come in and drill it out of there. Wouldn’t cost you a pe
He stared at her card for a moment, then looked up into the roof peak and scratched his head. “Really? What’s it worth?”
“It’s worth preserving.”
After Evie paid, Jack said, “Got a minute?” He led her out into the garage, which smelled of axle grease and cigarette smoke. Her mother’s car was being lowered on one of the hydraulic lifts. He went over to what looked like an enclosed broad shallow metal pan sitting on a sheet of plastic. With his toe, he lifted it. The underside was corroded and riddled with holes.