Read Return to Pleasure Island Page 2

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  Return to Pleasure Island=========================

  George twiddled his thumbs in his booth and watched how the brown, clayeyknuckles danced overtop of one another. Not as supple as they had once been, histhumbs -- no longer the texture of wet clay on a potter's wheel; more like clayafter it had been worked to exhausted crackling and brittleness. He reached intothe swirling vortex of the cotton-candy machine with his strong right hand andcaught the stainless-steel sweep-arm. The engines whined and he felt them strainagainst his strong right arm, like a live thing struggling to escape a trap.Still strong, he thought, still strong, and he released the sweep-arm to go backto spinning sugar into floss.

  A pack of boys sauntered down the midway, laughing and calling, bouncing high onsugar and g-stresses. One of them peeled off from the group and ran to hisbooth, still laughing at some cruelty. He put his palms on George's counter andpushed against it, using them to lever his little body in a high-speed pogo."Hey, mister," he said, "how about some three-color swirl, with sprinkles?"

  George smiled and knocked the rack of paper cones with his strong right elbow,jostled it so one cone spun high in the air, and he caught it in his quick lefthand. "Coming _riiiiiight_ up," he sang, and flipped the cone into thefloss-machine. He spun a beehive of pink, then layered it with stripes of blueand green. He reached for the nipple that dispensed the sprinkles, but before heturned its spigot, he said, "Are you sure you don't want a dip, too? Fudge?Butterscotch? Strawberry?"

  The boy bounced even higher, so that he was nearly vaulting the counter. "Al
lthree! All three!" he said.

  George expertly spiraled the floss through the dips, then applied a thick crustof sprinkles. "Open your mouth, kid!" he shouted, with realistic glee.

  The boy opened his mouth wide, so that the twinkling lights of the midwayreflected off his back molars and the pool of saliva on his tongue. George'squick, clever left hand dipped a long-handled spoon into the hot fudge, thenflipped the sticky gob on a high arc that terminated perfectly in the boy's openmouth. The boy swallowed and laughed gooely. George handed over the drippingconfection in his strong right hand, and the boy plunged his face into it. Whenhe whirled and ran to rejoin his friends, George saw that his ears were alreadygetting longer, and his delighted laugh had sounded a little like a bray. A jobwell done, he thought, and watched the rain spatter the spongy rubber cobbles ofthe midway.

  #

  George was supposed to go off-shift at midnight. He always showed up promptly atnoon, but he rarely