The bus stops in the Niagara Falls bus station, and I can feel it before we even get off the bus, while we’re waiting to get out. The doors open and it slides in, slick and smooth, up the stairs, up my shirt, behind my ears, licking every crevice: a warm breeze. It’s warmer here, sunnier, stickier, trashier. We stand in the street and a big fat fly buzzes lazily around my head, drunk on decadence, and the bus pulls away again, its engine revving and its wheels shaking off sweat.

We laugh and head in the same direction as though pulled by a magnet.

Where we go, naturally, is the wax museum. It’s on Clifton Hill, an area that is chockablock with noise, where giant billboards carry the strained smiles of tired strippers. The Great Canadian Midway is calling us in its hoarse voice, and the restaurants shake their hips and tempt us to feed our weary bodies, but it is the wax museum that nods quietly and knows what we really need.

We want Niagara Falls in all its finest, waxiest, untouchable fakery.

We go past impressive wax celebrities, like Taylor Swift and Katie Perry, who seem to be getting on just fine, and then head in, Dee leading the way with a fat grin on her face, like she just broke into the barn and ate all the chickens. There are groups of teenagers and couples and friends and families, all jostling and laughing and posing with these people, these waxy larger-than-life people. Indiana Jones and Marilyn Monroe and Freddy Krueger. The peeling paint is trying to hold itself up—tummy in, tits out—and the audio system is coughing out its scratchy, hungover voice. Our Lady of Frozen Beauty, Our Church of Celebrity and Eternal Youth. Give us a taste. We could be born again: dedicated parishioners, junkies of the camp faith. Maybe this place could save us.

We spend the day there, and if this were a movie, it would be the part where the fun music is playing, the montage, where we laugh and scream and pull faces. It is where we see Johnny Cash all mournful, and Prince, that smooth fox who whispers something so dirty and poetic that I will never forget it. Dolly Parton looks right at us, and we are starstruck, and she tips her head back and laughs and it feels like we’re drinking the best southern lemonade. Dee says Justin Bieber looks like her aunt after a stroke. Jack Sparrow is terrific. Indiana Jones is missing an ear, and then, his whip. I know it’s in Dee’s backpack, coiled like a snake, promising to come out later.