CLIFF’S AMUSEMENT PARK, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, JUNE

Albuquerque is hot and bright and infested with moths. Gary Hays, owner of Cliff’s Amusement Park, the only amusement park in New Mexico, tells me the moths return every five or so years. No, Hays doesn’t know where they come from; no, he’s not troubled by them. Hays is tall and ambiguously built with red, waffled skin on his neck from being out in the sun too much. He and I stand about ten yards away from the New Mexico Rattler’s tin-sided tunnel. The Rattler is Cliff’s new wooden roller coaster. It is the reason I’m here on my first assignment of the season, and one of the reasons Hays looks distracted during our interview. A moth crawls unnoticed up the right sleeve of his shirt.

“How big’s the Rattler’s footprint?” I ask him.

Hays seems puzzled and annoyed by my questions. Twice already he’s said, “You came all the way to New Mexico just to come to Cliff’s?”

“Those sled brakes?” I ask.

Now he is walking away in midsentence. I put my pad on the plastic trashcan next to me and make notes while Hays confers with a trio of burly men in wraparound sunglasses. On the back of their Cliff’s polo shirts is printed Courtesy Patrol.

Early morning, and teenage boys mill around the park with brooms and handled dustpans, sweeping imaginary trash and eyeing one another conspiratorially.

The teenagers have sparse tragic goatees, I write.

I’m feeling haphazard in New Mexico. My shorts are covered with breakfast stains and my T-shirt says “Yo La Tengo” on it. I should have worn a Funworld shirt. No wonder Hays isn’t taking the interview seriously. I look like I work at a comic-book store. A Hispanic girl raccooned in silver eye makeup walks by with an ice-cream cone. She reads my shirt and laughs. I’m not even sure what “Yo La Tengo” means.

*

Three years ago, I dropped out of a graduate writing program in Florida and moved to Washington, D.C., to find a job. I sent out applications and was interviewed at places like the Association of Scholastic Testing Centers, where I was given a confusing multiple-choice personality test, on which the question “Do you consider yourself a silly person?” appeared twice. (No; oh, all right, Yes.) At Georgetown Prep School, the head of the English department asked me, “Could you briefly explain how you would use Oedipus Rex to teach metaphor to a classroom of literal-minded thirteen-year-old boys?”

I answered an ad that asked, “Like amusement parks? Want to write about them?” and was called for an interview. Bill, editor-in-chief of...