Wild Ride Read Online Free Page A

Fortune-Telling Machine.”
    â€œI plan to,” Mab said. “Could you go away now?”
    â€œThat’s no way to talk to your boss,” her uncle said, his geniality dimming.
    Mab shook her head and then regretted it as her head pounded harder. “You are not my boss. I am my boss. I have done an outstanding job on this park, and tomorrow when my concussion is over, I will begin on the Fortune-Telling Machine, and it will be as fabulous as everything else I’ve done, and you will say, ‘Thank you very much, Mary Alice,’ and then I will go on to my next job, where I will also be my boss and where I will also do a fabulous job.” She thought of the iron-covered FunFun by the gate, the beauty of the smooth stripes on his coat, the gleam she’d painted in his turquoise eyes, the lushness of the multiple glazes on his waistcoat. If somebody had damaged him—
    â€œYou have an interesting approach to employment,” Ray said, an edge in his voice.
    â€œI have an interesting approach to everything.” Mab turned awayfrom him and nodded at Glenda, nervously tapping her cigarette on the pack. “I’m okay now, I’ll go upstairs to bed. You go see your son.”
    â€œI’ll see Ethan in a bit, you sit and have some tea,” Glenda said, but she looked toward the door.
    â€œEthan?” Ray transferred his gaze to Glenda. “He’s here?”
    â€œHe just came home tonight.” Glenda lit her cigarette. “Resigned from the Army. Big surprise.”
    â€œYou should have told me,” Ray said. “Why’s he here now?”
    Glenda inhaled and blew out a long stream of smoke away from Mab. “He. Just. Got here.”
    Mab slid off her stool and detoured around Ray to sit at the end of the counter and look out the mullioned windows into the empty dark street beyond. It was too dark to see clear out to the gate where the iron clad FunFun should be, but she could still see him as he’d looked when he’d hit her, larger than life, saying her name . . . “You know, when the clown talked to me, he split the metal on his cheeks. That’s real damage, that’s not going to be easy to fix. Good thing it was a hallucination.” She caught sight of Glenda’s face, her shock reflected in the window.
    â€œHe said your name?” Glenda said.
    â€œThe clown talked to you?” Ray said.
    She swiveled the stool around to face them. “I hallucinated it. He said, ‘Mab,’ and the metal on his face split so I could see the wood underneath—” She felt ill thinking about it. “—and then he reached down his hand to help me up and I heard more metal tear. And then I screamed and he ran away.”
    â€œHallucination,” Ray said promptly. “It never happened. Put it out of your mind.”
    Glenda glared at him. “If she wants to talk about it, she can. You’re upsetting her.”
    â€œI’m not upset. I don’t get upset. Unless somebody is running around ruining my work, then I might get upset.” Mab looked back at them, but nobody was paying attention to her. Ray scowled at Glenda, Glenda took a hard drag on her cigarette and stared at Ray, Delpha shook her head, and Frankie moved from foot to foot on Delpha’s shoulder. “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”
    â€œNo,” Glenda said with finality. The kettle whistled and she put her cigarette on the side of the sink and picked up the teakettle, shutting off the awful screech.
    Ray stood up. “I’m not happy about the lack of security in this park,” he told Glenda. “Somebody coming in here, running around, knocking people down. We had a deal. I pay for the restoration, you run the place. If you can’t do that, I’ll have to take it over.”
    â€œOver my dead body,” Glenda said.
    Ray went very still, and Mab realized how really big he was, looming over