Slugfest

Three

All heads turned to see what the commotion was. Other security guards and exhibitors rushed in, only some running toward the screams that had now escalated into wails. Rolanda held her arms out wide, but it was like trying to hold back the ocean or a surging crowd of European soccer fans.

“Oh, hell.” She dropped her arms and sprinted, as much as a large woman can sprint, in the direction of the cries. Rolanda was the largest and most intimidating of the Wagner Center staff, and the crowd parted for her. The shrieks were coming from the direction of my booth, so I rode in her slipstream.

Near a grass shack, under a banner that read Connie’s Brooklyn Beach Garden, was a blond woman dressed in an outfit that suggested she’d raided the closet of the Little Mermaid’s promiscuous older sister. The top was a shrunken Sergeant Pepper–style vest with two small fabric lobsters instead of epaulets on the shoulders and scallop shell appliques cupping her breasts. Across the back was an octopus whose tentacles reached to the front, grabbing the wearer around the waist. Someone spent hours of his or her life creating this garment. It was impossible not to stare.

“My veronica. My veronica’s dead.”

Two women from nearby booths brought a conch-shaped chair from the back of her display. Without thinking, the woman I assumed was Connie sat down heavily on the papier-mâché chair, and it collapsed, eliciting a ripple of laughter from some teenagers on the fringes of the group. A woman in overalls, who wasn’t much older than they, gave them a stern look; but it wasn’t easy to maintain since she was chuckling herself.

A trade show volunteer in a bright yellow pinny fanned the woman with a straw hat, and a weather-beaten exhibitor in a smock produced a pack of cigarettes that the woman smacked away. The smoker stood with her arms folded as if to say, In that case, I’ll just enjoy the meltdown. She scanned the crowd and fixed an accusatory gaze on the teenagers that shut them up more effectively than their companion had.

Rolanda explored the partial ruins of a cloyingly sweet flower bed filled with a staggering number of cardboard fish and plaster crustaceans. In the rear, a painted sign paid homage to Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and thick-cut fries, two Coney Island staples.

The woman’s eye makeup spread out like a Rorschach test. The creator of a nearby Zen garden drifted over to console her. “Sometimes plants die,” he said. “It’s a circle.”

“Listen, grasshopper, circle this. My garden looks like it’s been kissed by a blowtorch. Don’t talk to me about impermanence. I’m not shopping for enlightenment right now, so why don’t you just scurry back to your little hut and rake the sand again?” Ouch. The pajama-clad man backed away.

Any sympathy the shrieking blonde might have garnered evaporated. She’d been rude to the hat fanner, the smoker, and now a Zen gardener. It was as if she’d trashed the Dalai Lama. The Little Mermaid’s less nice sibling fiddled with her cell phone and jutted her chin in the direction of an exuberant display garden, prejudged and already festooned with ribbons. It belonged to a Mrs. Jean Moffitt.

“That old dame practically has armed sentries stationed at her displays. Where are my sentries? I’ve ruined five nail wraps on this exhibit, and someone has sabotaged it. And don’t think I don’t know why.” She held the phone to her ear and waited for it to come to life.

“There’s no one here,” the security guard said, after a thorough check around the display and inside and behind the fake grass beach house.

“Veronica, veronica,” the woman persisted. She raised a freshly manicured hand and pointed to a mound of desiccated plants. Formerly blue, formerly tall and willowy.

Under her breath, Rolanda Knox muttered, “Welcome to the Big Apple Flower Show.”