That left the Girls of the Galaxy exhibit and the seedy Backstage USA, where ticket buyers could spy into the dressing rooms of off-duty performers between sets, in various states of undress. Though rumor had it that the ladies were often just knitting or reading, or mending their feathered costumes. Ernest opted for the former and paid to enter the darkened auditorium, where a dozen topless pinup models were posing in space-age costumes. He felt like a visitor to the set of Forbidden Planet as he heard warbling, futuristic sound effects and beheld a bizarre tableau of red-light science fiction come to life. He searched the audience as the stage rotated every few minutes to reveal a new scene, and Jose Duarte—the Man with a Million Voices—played emcee, introducing each new girl and her costume, or lack thereof, while concessionaires mingled through the crowd selling film and renting cameras.
This is the future? Ernest frowned as he scanned the crowd—single men of every age, couples, groups of curious ladies, and foreign visitors. His head ached as he noticed a familiar figure, though it was not Gracie. Alone in the front row, perched near a velvet rope.
“And here we have Sally the Saturness,” the emcee droned over the loudspeaker.
“Having a good time?” Ernest asked as he found a spot at the rail, standing next to Hanny’s fiancé. A flashbulb went off from one of the back rows, and he heard the battery-powered whir of a camera.
“You could say that again,” Rich said, then he did a double take as he recognized Ernest. He stammered, “Wait, Mr. Young—what on earth are you doing here?”
Ernest smiled politely.
Rich looked about the room. “Honestly, it’s not what you think. I was down here for research. Legal reasons, actually. I heard that the city tried to shut down all the cabarets for too much shimmying, can you imagine? So, I had to see the show in person—just to appraise the legal footing. For future reference.” Rich seemed to relax a bit as he realized that Hanny wasn’t in the room. “Now the girls here have to pose like statues, which is completely dull. Am I right?”
Ernest tried not to shake his head. “I’m here looking for someone.”
The emcee chimed in again, “And behold, the Heavenly Body of Venus.”
“Really?” Rich smiled and tried to contain his surprise. “Well, I don’t blame you one bit. And for what it’s worth, you got here just in time. They told me this place reopened a few days ago and already they’re closing the show down again. They’re padlocking the doors at midnight. What’s a fella to do in a city like this?” Rich patted Ernest on the back and waved to a girl wearing purple pasties, whose skin and hair had been dyed green. The stage lights went out and the theater was filled with polite applause and an occasional wolf whistle. Then the lights came back on as more maidens of the galaxy struck high-heeled poses in sparkling metallic outfits, with towering wigs and painted skin.
Ernest sighed, and left Rich in the dark without saying goodbye.
TWICE IN A LIFETIME
(1962)
Ernest stepped outside into the carnival world of glitter-filled balloons, flashing neon, and music. A bank of sun guns lit up the underside of the Space Needle as everyone celebrated nighttime at the fair.
He blinked as he heard a commotion; then he saw a group of elderly women and for a moment thought the ghost of Mrs. Irvine was back on the march. But the group was only the Grandmother’s Kitchen Band, happily playing washboards and tin buckets. Ernest stepped back to let the procession pass, listening to the banging of pots and pans and the buzzing of hundreds of kazoos.
The world keeps on spinning.
Ernest had almost given up hope of finding Gracie anywhere at the expo when he noticed a guide to the fairgrounds in an overflowing garbage can. He unfolded the discarded map and scanned the page, skimming over the Christian Science Exhibit, the Hall of Industry, and the Antique Car Ride, until he finally found the Japanese Village, near the Islands of Hawaii Pavilion, adjacent to the entrance of the Gayway.
He followed the map, walking past the rumbling compressor engines and hissing hydraulic pistons of the new carnival rides, the Giant Wheel, the Wild Mouse, and the Flight to Mars. He also heard the heckling, taunting seductions of midway barkers offering stuffed bears and Kewpie dolls.
Then, nestled between newly planted trees, he spotted an arched torii that marked the Japanese Village. Ernest walked beneath the gate and approached the kimono-clad girls at the entrance, struggling to communicate in his best, broken Japanese. “Hi…Konichiwa. Um…shusshin wa dochira desu ka?”
The workers stared back, brows furrowed.
“Where are you all from?” he asked. “What prefecture?”
The Japanese girls looked at one another in confusion, then back at Ernest as they smiled and shrugged and tried not to laugh.
“Um, look, mister, I’m from Bothell,” one of the girls said in perfect English.
“Yeah, we just work here,” another said. “I’m a sophomore at Franklin High.”
“And I’m from Garfield,” the last girl said. “Go Bulldogs.”
American Zen, Ernest thought, as he paid to go inside.
He passed a few tourists who were leaving as he followed the girls, who clip-clopped in their geta footwear into the heart of the Japanese Pavilion, where a hidden garden was nestled beyond tatami mats and behind shoji screens. In that quiet, serene space, far from the whirl and bustle of crowds and carnival rides, he finally found Gracie, kneeling at a small table with a lacquered tea set, the box partially open in front of her. She looked at the cups, the teapot, and held the ladle as though trying to remember the proper order of the ceremony she had once been so proud of.
Ernest thanked the hostess and approached Gracie, who smiled slightly, seemingly confused.
“Hello, Gracious.”
She looked up, surprised to see him.
“Oh…didn’t you get my message?” she said. She touched her pockets as though she might have misplaced it somewhere. “It said that you’re supposed to go to the Space Needle—up there, where I’m…too afraid to go.”
“I went,” Ernest said. “And then I came all the way back down to find you.”
“Was Maisie there?”
“Maisie has always been there,” Ernest said. “But she’s not who I’m looking for.”
Gracie gazed back at him. “Are you mad at me?”
“Of course not.”
She straightened the collar on her blouse and checked her pearl buttons. Then she noticed her mismatched shoes, one blue, one brown. “I’m still a foolish old woman,” she said, shaking her head. “I just wanted you to be happy.”
“I am. You’ve always made me that way. From the day we first met.” Ernest removed his jacket and sat down across from her. “Can I help you with this?”
Gracie set down the ladle. “Please.”
Ernest regarded the elegant tea set, then looked around and spotted a stout earthenware bottle with a wide mouth on a nearby table. He reached over and retrieved the carafe, then gently moved the tea box aside. He sat upright and softly, reverently placed two wide cups in front of them.
“But that’s…not tea,” Gracie protested. “That’s…” She touched the bottle as she remembered. “That’s sake. Rice wine. That’s used for…”
“Weddings,” Ernest whispered as he offered her a teacup with both hands.
She took the cup in hers, fingers trembling. “You…still want to marry me?”
Ernest nodded and began to pour.
CLOSING CEREMONIES
(1962)
Two months later Ernest and Gracie went back to the world’s fair, on the night of the Century 21 Exposition’s grand finale. They weren’t among the thirteen thousand lucky men and women who squeezed into Memorial Stadium to hear the mayor give his closing ceremony speech, or watch the Police Department Drill Team, or listen to every high school band in the city perform. Instead, they arrived just before sunset, well after the record-breaking crowd had thinned—eager people who’d packed the fairgrounds on this last day, hoping for one more ride on the Space Wheel, one antipodal sermon of science, one final taste of a strawberry waffle cone, or one more last-minute bargain-priced, half-off, souvenir statue of the Space Needle.
“Maybe they’ll raffle you off all over again,” Gracie teased as they walked slowly, hand in hand, along a row of transplanted cherry trees. The blossoms, like her memories, had returned in fits and starts since the opening of the fair. Some fresh and lovely, others fallen, swept up, or blown away.
“Doubtful,” Ernest said. “They already had to shut down one of the concessionaires on the Gayway for giving away poodles. Too cruel, they said. Besides, who would want me? I’m just a consolation prize at best.”
She squeezed his hand.