fun city

Amelia and Harold, a couple married twenty-eight years, on vacation in Fun City, entered a strange and ominous-stocked store.
It smelled of cheerful popcorn and grease.
"They have everything a person needs, I'm told", she boasted. She wasn't told. She read the small print from a creased brochure she held in both hands touting a cavernous clown mouth entrance built in the terrifying dark days of the Depression, 1931.
"Oh, that's just wonderful", Harold countered breathlessly with a sarcastic undertow.
She glared at him but he was pretending to be interested in a table full of one dollar unwrapped items.
She walked on a ways and turned back to her husband, the camera floating from a strap around his bulbous neck swinging like a pendulum, the man closely inspecting a squeaky squeeze toy for dogs that made no noise. He imagined it was built on a secret German Shepherd frequency. He could smell the air exiting the plastic toy, stale and rotten, shipped from China. He squeezed harder, but it just stunk more. He looked around but heard no dogs barking or charging towards him so he dropped it.
"Harold! What are you doing? Over here"!
"Yes, dear," he moaned.
"Look. They have devices to cure snoring".
"Just put a bowling ball on your chest why don't you", he said to himself.
"Look, Harold. Harold, look". She was pointing and talking loudly.
It was some sort of bed contraption with straps and levers. He looked closely, camera swinging in front of him, wondering where he might be able to fasten those straps, hoping at least one would be wide enough for her mouth.
A sales clerk in a blue jacket and pink tie smiling with yellow teeth and a white carnation in his pocket appeared and offered assistance.
"May I offer assistance?", he asked in a six dollar an hour monotone.
Amelia was startled and dropped the Fun City brochure.
"Do you have any bowling balls"?, Harold inquired as he took a picture of the man.