It’s been ten years since I’ve been to a carnival, he told her.  But it feels like nothing’s changed.

          Of course it does, she said with a hint of soft reproval.  That’s because all carnivals are really the same carnival.

            And Glenn knew that she was right.  It unfurled before him in every direction, an oasis of latex and cotton candy, colored glass and oiled gears, transistor radios belting tinny pop music, fingernails nicotine yellow, until the night blurred together like an impressionist painting.  It hung like a vapor in the air.

            Carnival space is like the fairy-lands of old, she told him.  It is a patch of the fantastic that’s somehow seeped over into the quotidian.

              He brushed her hair away from her face and hooked his fingers behind her ear, feeling where the metal studs emerged from her lobe.  He loved every hidden corner of her body.  He wanted to press her into his finger tips and hold her there, to recall at will whenever he was alone.  There’s nothing sadder than a carnival in the daytime, she said, because a carnival is like a whore.  A carnival will offer you magic, but only at a price, and that’s why you have to come after dark.  Nightfall is the concealer.  It smoothes over the pockmarks and herpes scars.

              Bianca walked beside him, her hand in his.  Only she didn’t seem to be walking at all.  In the ethereal glow of the fey lights she was floating and it was only Glenn that tethered her to the earth.  She smiled at him and tugged his arm, wanting to pull him up to the sky with her.  And once they had exhausted the sky, where to then?  The moon?  Jupiter?  Outer space and the realms beyond?  She promised all that and more.  But it was no use; gravity held him fast, unwilling to relinquish its rightful prey.

            He took her instead beneath the canopy of a metal shanty, traced with round, blinking bulbs.  Three dollars to play, said the operator, his sunken eyes staring through Glenn as though the boy were made of something less substantial than flesh.

            Glenn reached into his pocket.  The only money he had was the seven dollars Jerry had given him so they could meet at a show that night.  Glenn pulled out a five.  With practiced ease, the Carnie swapped him two wrinkled singles.  His eyes were yellow, like his teeth, like his fingernails.  He had done this a thousand times, seen a thousand couples on a thousand nights just like this one, and when he returned in the following May, he would see them all again, all the girls with different boys, all the boys with different girls.

            He handed Glenn three aluminum rings.  If you land all three rings on any of the pegs, you get a small prize, he explained, and his yellow eyes looked through Glenn and off into the distance.  If you get a ring on each of the three, then you can pick a big prize. 

           Glenn stood behind the counter, about one meter away from the three wooden pegs.  The nearest peg was short, the second a little taller, the furthest peg was not only taller, but an inch and a half thicker as well.  You are wrong, Glenn thought.  You have seen much, but you have not seen me.  He took the rings in hand and measured the distance with his eye.  Feeling her lover tense, Bianca removed her hand from his shoulder.

            Glenn let the first ring fly.  It traveled in a slow, graceless arc; it caught the shortest peg, twirled around it twice and for a second, he thought he had lost it, but the ring held fast and slid down to the base of the peg.  Gravity.  Bianca kissed him on the cheek, but Glenn didn’t move, dared not take his eyes off his target.

              He took a deep breath and tossed the second ring.  A sick, weightless feeling as it traveled toward its destination, then the ring landed squarely on top of the peg in the middle.  This time, Bianca did not move to congratulate her champion.  Two rings, two pegs.  Now he permitted himself a glance at his nemesis.  The carnie leaned against the counter, arms folded over his chest.  Do you see now? Glenn asked with his eyes.  You dried up husk.  You yellowed thing.  You judged too quickly.  You have seen much and traveled far, but in a hundred years and a thousand cities, there has not been a love such as ours.  But the carnie’s eyes offered no recognition, not of the sort that Glenn was after.  You had better shoot for one of the short pegs, was what the carnie advised, wordlessly.  You’ve had a good run, but everything comes to an end sooner or later.

              Yes, the carnie’s eyes were almost friendly.  A good run, why spoil it now? they seemed to ask.  Enjoy what you can while you can and don’t torment yourself to hope for more.  Go for one of the short pegs and let the lady go home with a little something to remember you by.

            Glenn felt his brow tighten.  His eyes narrowed on the third peg.  The furthest, the thickest.  Bianca did not move beside him, barely even seemed to breathe.  He hefted the ring in his hands, feeling its weight, and then let it go.

            Even as it left his fingers, he knew it was no good.  The ring sailed in between the first and second peg and clattered on the floor.  The operator picked the rings up and got them ready for the next contestant.

            Hey, it’s no big deal, she said.  He didn’t look at her, just kept his eyes fixed on his feet. 

            Why don’t you make it up to me by getting me something to eat?

            He spent the rest of Jerry’s money on an elephant ear.  They split it between the two of them.  It was sweet with a bitter aftertaste of stale grease.  When it was gone, Glenn kissed the cinnamon from the corners of her mouth.

            They got in line for the Ferris wheel, and Bianca shelled out the six dollars for their tickets.  You know that the first ever Ferris wheel was at the Chicago World’s Fair, she said.

            Really?

            Uh-huh.

            She nestled close to him in the cage, and he could feel her heart beating next to his.  Glenn planted a soft kiss on her earlobe and felt two fingers pressing against his lips.  Not yet, she whispered.

            They waited in silence as the cars filled up, Glenn warm with anticipation.  At last the boarding was complete and the wheel began to turn in earnest.  Now? Glenn asked.

            Not yet.

            Glenn looked ahead of him through the metal lattice, caught glimpses of a dark world through a web of iron beams as they slowly ascended toward the apex of the wheel.  He could feel Bianca tensing under his grasp.  A knot formed in his stomach.  The car crawled slowly to the summit and the entire fairground stretched out in all its majesty for the two lovers to behold. 

           Now. 

           Her lips worked slowly over his, gently tugging, gently exploring the recesses of his mouth.  His arms closed tighter over her ribs, squeezing the air from her lungs in a gasp of surprise and pleasure.  Her tongue slipped tenderly between his teeth, drawing along the roof of his mouth.

            And it was fireworks.  A dazzling explosion of color.  A rush of blood to the head greater than any high he’d ever experienced.  Better than booze, better than weed, better than his first cigarette, better even than the Aderol that he and Jerry had filched in the ninth grade.  And he pulled her tighter to him, could feel her back arching with the strain, her breasts crushed flat against his chest, but it couldn’t be close enough.  They would never be close enough.  Even in the throes of sex, it was not enough.  He wanted her inside of him, for their ribcages to disentangle and fuse, to push his face into hers, until they were a single organism, thinking, feeling, living, and loving always together.