WE headed down to the Seaside Heights boardwalk. "My snobbier friends at school call this Sleaze Side Heights, " Brenda remarked as we strolled past buzzing pinball emporiums and the blinking lights of popcorn wagons. "I take it they've been here before?" She laughed. Tucked her arm under mine. "You got any smokes, Dave?" "Nah. " "You quit already?" "Sort of. Maybe. " "Too bad. " I pulled a soggy dollar bill out of my swimming trunks. "They sell 'em over there, " I said, gesturing to a smoke shop wedged between a French fry stand and a skeeball arcade. "You still doing Dorals?" She nodded. "Menthol, right?" "Right. " "Don't disappear. " "I won't. " And she didn't. Not then, anyway. IT was easy to buy cigarettes when you were sixteen back in 1975. Everybody smoked. Brenda said at her college, you could even smoke in the classrooms. There were disposable ashtrays on every desk. I handed her two packs of Doral Menthols. "They were only forty cents each. " "Thanks, Dave. " She uncurled the plastic wrapper off a pack, lit up a cigarette fast. I remember her hands were trembling slightly until she huffed down that long first drag. After she finished her smoke, Brenda grabbed my arms and pulled me close. Let me feel her bikinied br**sts press against my chest. "Did buying me my ciggy-boos wipe you out?" She exhaled the remnants of stale smoke that had been swirling around inside her gorgeous chest up into my eyes. "Yeah. I only grabbed like a buck this morning . . . " She tugged playfully at my swimsuit's elastic waistband. Glanced down at my unambiguous bulge. "Funny, your pockets don't look empty. " My ears went sunburn red. I so wished I had worn blue jeans to the beach. Maybe an athletic cup. "Don't worry, Dave. I've got cash. " She broke our clinch and headed toward a clapboard kiosk. "I'll spring for the tickets. " We had been cuddling up in front of Dr. Shallowgrave's Haunted Manor, the rickety, ride-through spook house on the Funtime Pier. It was the closest thing Seaside Heights had to a genuine Tunnel of Love. Brenda bought five tickets for each of us, and we stepped into the waiting twoseater roller-coaster car. It was shaped like a skull. "Welcome to the frights of Seaside Heights, " said the guy who lowered our safety bar. He was about my age. Had more pimples. He also spent a little too much time eyeballing Brenda, checking out her tight top. When he finally stepped away from our car, he whistled in admiration and gave me a knowing nod: "Looo-king goooood, bro. Looo-king good. " The car jostled forward. I heard the pull chain clanking underneath our feet. Barn doors swung open, and our slow moving love seat was tugged into a dark tunnel filled with hazy smoke, ultraviolet lights, tolling bells, and hokey pipe organ music. Brenda snuggled closer. I draped my arm over her shoulder. She moved my hand to her breast. "Welcome to my Haunted Home!" boomed a sinister recorded voice. "Ride in peace! Mwa-ha-ha!" I heard a whoosh-click of compressed air. Hidden doors sprang open. Two skeletons with tattered clothing flailing off their jangling bones flew out of dark cupboards. Brenda shrieked. I laughed. And kept my hand locked on second base. Next came the mannequin strung up in a noose. Then another dummy puking up bright red blood into a witch's cauldron. "Gross, " mumbled Brenda. "Yeah. I told him to stay away from the chili. " We rounded a bend and entered the Haunted Library. An automaton--a shriveled old woman who resembled Norman Bates's dearly departed mother after a witch doctor had shrunken her head--was rocking back and forth in a creaky chair in front of a wall of bookcases. A rubber rat popped in and out of a hole in her rib cage. Some of the books shook in the shelves while a gargoyle serving as a bookend flashed its bright red eyes. That's when the lights went out. Our car froze. All the moaning and groaning and spooky music slid to a stop. The ride had died. The tunnel was pitch-black. "Guess they forgot to pay the electric bill this month, " I quipped. "Smoke 'em if you got 'em, " said Brenda, fumbling through her canvas bag,crinkling open that pack of Dorals I had bought her. She flicked and flicked her Bic but the gas didn't catch. The flint just sparked and strobed. "Damn, " she muttered, the white tube stuck to her upper lip. "Here, " I said. "Let me. " I took two cigarettes out of the pack. Stuck them in my lips. "Use these, " said Brenda, handing me a book of matches. I gazed into her eyes. Flicked a paper match across the strip of sandpaper at the base of the book. Tried to light the cigarettes as suavely as I'd seen tuxedoed rogues light double smokes in the movies. I inhaled on mine while I handed Brenda hers. "I thought you quit, " she said, taking a puff and snuggling closer. "I changed my mind. " "Cool, " she said. "Yeah, " I said. "It's the menthol. " We laughed and smoked, the glowing hot tips of our cigarettes casting the only light in the darkened tunnel. When the cigarettes were nearly finished, Brenda held hers elegantly off to the side. "Come here, big boy. " I did as instructed. We French kissed like crazy. It tasted a little like two ashtrays licking each other, but I didn't care. I was alone in the dark with an incredibly sexy woman dressed in a bikini too tiny to fit my two fists. I flicked my cigarette down to the ground, leaned out of the car so I could stomp it out without looking down, then sank my hands into her wild hair to pull her face closer to mine. Soon, my hands were sliding down across her bare shoulders, down to those barely contained br**sts straining to burst free. "I hope it takes all night for them to fix it, " she moaned. I was heading for third when he showed up again. The demon from the dunes. The emaciated man in the rumpled white cloak, his hooded face more horrifyingly gaunt than I remembered, the jawbone clearly visible beneath the skin, the nose a sharp protrusion of jagged cartilage. He was struggling to breathe through his gaping mouth hole. As he hovered in the darkness behind our car, I realized he was luminous, as if he had been irradiated in a nuclear bomb blast. His body was a floating, yellow-green X-ray; his head a skull wrapped in translucent skin. "Stop!" he hissed at me, turning the air in the tunnel rank. "Now!" I tried to ignore the glowing demon because it was obvious from the darting tongue dancing around inside my mouth and the hand guiding mine southward that Brenda Narramore sure as hell didn't hear her ghostly guardian of sexual abstinence wheezing his words of warning at me! "Stop!" I closed my eyes, tried to make the thing disappear. "Stop!" I sneaked open an eye and saw the demon once again attempting to raise its rigor- mortised right arm like the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come from the Dickens tale so it could point a bony finger of condemnation at me. That's when the lights thumped on. The audiocassette of scary music slurred back to life. Brenda giggled. Pushed my wandering hand, inches from heaven, aside. "Just our luck. " "Yeah. " The car lurched forward. The demon had disappeared. A day later, Brenda did, too.