Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 6: On a Carousel

6 
On a Carousel

===========DANNY==========

She was a bitch. It was an inarguable fact that Mary was a bitch. I didn't get why she was legit mean. I don't recall coming across particularly obnoxious or threatening or something. To be honest, it was heartbreaking. It shouldn't have been, because I hardly knew her, but it was. I convinced myself that she wasn't even pretty anymore.

Bargaining with the guy operating the carousel was no easy task either. First he said calling Mary on the intercom was against their rules. So I said I wouldn't tattle on him. He thought about it, and then still insisted no. So I slipped him a five and he called Mary on the intercom.

If anybody actually pinched themselves when they couldn't believe what was going on, I would've done just that when I saw Mary get up from the park bench. I began to wish that she hadn't gotten up when I watched her drag herself over, effortlessly launch the cigarette from her fingertips, and then cross her arms. I quickly fled to the closest pony, a poor little brown fella with a pole impaled through his tummy, as Mary stepped onto the carousel plate and climbed on the pony behind me.

Of course, she climbed on the one behind me. Of course. What else would make sense?

I didn't expect anything from her that didn't imply she simply wished I would die. The saddle was rather small and quite unkind to my crotch, and on top of that, we weren't speaking. I could feel her staring at my back. It was awful. Fed up and sure I was just going to drop her off at her house after the dumb ride, I called her out on her bullshit.

"I'm glad you're easy to get along with," I said, turning my torso, straining my back to face her.

"I am a people person," she said, in an almost not mean tone.

But before I could say anything else, something heavy sounding crunched as an accordion jingle crackled on the speakers. The plate then hammered through a few jerks before spinning smoothly beneath our hooves. The song sounded like it was from a music box; a tune that kids from an era not terrified of clowns, or the general overall idea of the circus, would've found amusing. I looked up at the dusty mirror wrapping the ceiling, and watched as the rusted cranking rod spun on its axis, carrying the ponies (and the occasional lion or zebra) off the ground and into the air.

Light bulbs reminding me of an old Hollywood theater lined the brim of the carousel canopy, and on the inner walls hung nineteenth-century influenced paintings of an establishing Americana Frontier. Mind you, they were rather controversial paintings by today's standards. One painting depicted now nearly extinct animals hunted by men in hunting coats and coonskin caps. Another exhibited a very racist portrait of Indjins chasing unsuspected bison. For a second, I fancied myself the cowboy mounted on his steed somewhere on the rocky frontier. Yet there I was, on a carousel pony.

"If this is honestly an absolutely terrible experience for you—" I began to say while starting the horrible process of once more turning my body around. "—I'm sure there's a party or some bar we could hit up."

"There's no way you go to bars."

"What do you mean?"

Then ignoring me, in typical Mary fashion, she just said back, "And I don't really party."

"Yeah right," I scoffed, shimmying my torso to kick my left leg over the saddle, and then looked up at her to claim my rightness. I had imagined Mary to be the White Girl Wasted type.

"I mean, I like drink, and stuff. But I don't party."

"Oh. That works because I don't either—party, I mean," I said, being truthful. Unlike her. I didn't party because, well, I never really got invited to parties.