Under the control panel is a first aid kit. I open it. It’s full and hasn’t been used.
“See?” I say. “My emotional breakdowns can be extremely useful to us.”
“Sure.”
I look for anything else that might help us out, but all that’s there is a giant Maglite flashlight. I pick it up and already know we aren’t bringing it with us. For one, it needs batteries, and who has the time to stop for those when we have the hand-crank flashlights? Also, it weighs about twenty pounds.
Still, I click the button and it turns on.
Oh, I have a terrible idea. I hand the flashlight to Jamie and take his other hand, pulling him back out onto the platform.
“Come on, love,” I say. “Jingle Jaguar built this tunnel just for us.”
Jamie pulls back on my hand gently. “I don’t like our history with tunnels.” But he’s talking about the Fort McHenry Tunnel outside Baltimore, which flooded and had cars full of dead bodies—very muchnota tunnel of love.
“Then let’s change it. Come on, there’s no bodies in there. The amusement park was closed down just like all the movie theaters and sports arenas. And it’s not flooded because look.” I point to the evaporated troughs that acted as the river.
“What about animals that have made it a nest?”
“We’ll run from them. Please?”
Jamie frowns, but he hops down into the empty river between two of the boats, then turns and holds out his hands to help me. I crouch at the edge of the platform as he grabs my hips and effortlessly lifts me down without jostling my bad arm.
Then he lets me guide him around the boats toward the plywood entrance, which is heart-shaped and painted pink. The wordsTunnel of Lovewere supposed to light up, but they’re dark now. Torn red metallic fringe hangs down from the top of the heart, but the elements have pulled most of the plastic strips down.
As we pass under, into the darkness, Jamie clicks on the flashlight.
The first room is a letdown. It’s just a white tunnel. I put my hand out to touch it and the wall gives. It’s fabric.
“There must have been a projection or something,” I say. “On the other side of the fabric.”
“If it’s all like this, it’s going to be a boring trip in the love tunnel.”
“Title of your sex tape.”
I turn to see if he’s blushing. He is. I give him a playful peck on thecheek and continue to the next room.
This one is much prettier. The sides of the tunnel are filled to the ceiling with brightly colored fake rosebushes. String lights loop across the curving roof above us. There’s another curtain of pink fringe ahead that we push through.
“Wow,” Jamie says, pointing his flashlight around the next set piece. It’s a long, straight tunnel that’s painted to look like the outside. In the ceiling and to our left are little lights in the shape of stars. To our right is a small-town street lined with a dock. Animatronic heterosexual couples sit on wooden benches—the man’s arm around the woman’s shoulder—or hold hands in the street or share a milkshake with two heart-shaped straws at the Fountain d’Amour ice cream shop. All the animatronics are dressed in ragtime-era clothes and the streetlights are shaped like hearts as well.
“And you were worried,” I say.
“I still am. These animatronics are creepy.” He shines the light on the guy in the background of the Fountain d’Amour shop. He’s smiling wide and holds an ice-cream cone while watching the couple in his storefront window share their milkshake. Jamie has a point—some of them are very creepy.
The next winding tunnel is a repeat of the rose room—this time with an emergency exit hidden at the end with a dark exit sign above it—and then we reach the biggest set piece. If my sense of direction is still good in the dark, we should be in the center of the ride.
It’s another place painted to look like the outside sky. The ceiling is pitch-black but I can see where they’ve attempted to put pin lights in the shape of some constellations. We’re in a garden filledwith topiary hearts, dogs, and a unicorn. More fake rosebushes line the wall, breaking the horizon’s line of sight so it looks like the garden could go on forever.
In the center is a waterfall that’s gone dry. Next to that is a fake moss-covered island with stone pavers placed in the shape of a heart. At the top center of the heart is a large, fake willow tree. And if you look close enough, the leaves are all shaped like hearts, too. Smaller rosebushes dot the island.
“Is it weird that I love how tacky this is?” I ask.
“No, I think that’s about right for you.”
I laugh. But whatever happiness I feel is gone just as quickly as it came because I’m thinking of Daphne again. How she used to tell me some of the more sordid storylines she’d written in her romance novels. Before we left the Keys, I had been planning to ask her for a copy of her most Hallmark Channel Original Movie-ish book to give to Jamie for Christmas.
I don’t know why I thought going into a tunnel of love would give me time tonotgrieve her. In fact, she would have loved this place. The tackiness, yes, but also because of all the different ways she’d say she could use it in a book. Either in a near-drowning meet-cute or a big love confession climax. Then it clicks for me. How perfect this place is.
