Page 18

W hen the waves return for me in my dreams, I capsize like a ship.

And though the sea is crushing and the color of blood, moonlight hews the darkness overhead with its luminous bands to show me I’m not alone.

Copper hair. Sea-colored skin. Eyes blue, bottomless, vast as a horizon.

Are you my captor or my savior? I ask.

His answer is a musical refrain my mind plays over and over again until I wake.

Benigno, you and I are both.

Morgan was a fuming inversion of the Steeplechase Funny Face when he strode into the curiosity museum on Monday morning to ask, “Any of you witless wonders know how to fix a dead whistle?”

Matthias pushed up his glasses in mock interest. “Have you tried blowing harder?”

Per the showman’s grumpy insistence, the whole company of human curiosities had come to help take apart the make-believe ones. By the way Morgan wound up and pitched the whistle at the promenade like a Yankees outfielder, it seemed he was profoundly regretting his decision.

He turned back but hadn’t made it past the vestibule before something outside the glass pane caught his eye and his spine went rigid. Sonia glanced up from her bundle of velvet ropes. “Sam?”

“If you’ll excuse me.” Morgan licked his palm, ran it over his unrumpled hair to no apparent effect, then strode outside.

Madam Navya clung nervously to a feather duster next to the hydra’s wireframe remains. “So it begins.”

“What is beginning?” said Igor.

She started dusting more furiously.

“Don’t you know, Igor?” Vera stood up in the men’s trousers she’d borrowed from Eli and pulled a cigarillo out of the pocket. “When a shite whistle’s banjaxed, means something spooky’s afoot!”

Navya jabbed her duster at Vera like a sword from the top of her stool. “Today it’s a whistle. But karma takes time to unfold. A horse does not stop the moment you pull on the rain.”

“You mean ‘reins,’” sighed Lulu.

“Do not scrutinize my words and forget to listen,” the madam snapped. “Who is to say we have not stolen the next incarnation of Vishnu from the river? Has anyone even spoken to the creature?”

I choked on a cloud of dust.

Beside me, Eli hoisted up the rear end of the mummified basilisk. “Karma? Ain’t Fares selling that stuff on the pier for a jitney?”

“That is shawarma . Karma is the earned outcome of our deeds .” Navya smeared an exasperated hand over her face. “Goodness knows what I did in this life or the last to win myself the company of an ignoramus like you, Mr. Eli.”

“Hey, who’s the guy gabbing with Morgan?” said Emmett from the window.

Eli left the basilisk tail to join his brother. Following suit, Matthias and Vera sidestepped Timmy Porter, who was quiet for once now that he was busy fashioning medieval weaponry out of leftover museum scraps. Igor only had to bend at the waist to get a good view over their heads. “It seem they know each other,” mused the giant, to which Vera added, “But they ain’t bloody mates, that’s for sure.”

“Get a load of the ring on that guy’s meat hook,” Eli murmured.

Sonia dumped the velvet ropes onto the ticket counter. “Clear outta here, ya nosy parkers,” she scolded, squeezing herself in front of Emmett. “He’s a patron, and their business ain’t none of ours!”

Emmett swaggered back to his spot at the front end of the basilisk. “If I didn’t know better, Fraülein, I’d say their business and your business were the same business.”

Lulu clapped dust off her work skirt. “Aw, put a lid on it, Em, and finish polishing your damn snake.”

At this, Emmett and Eli shot each other a silent plea for help, but it was no good. Their snorts turned into wheezes of laughter, and the rest of us tumbled headfirst into the gutter after them—save for Navya, who shook her feather duster into the trash with something like contempt.

I coughed out my residual chuckles and swept a path over to her with the broom. At the sight of me, she pulled back her shoulders and doubled her dusting efforts. I wasn’t insulted; when no one takes you seriously, you learn to doubt it when someone does.

“Say, Madam,” I began. “I was just thinking that stool you use all the time must be a pain in the neck to drag around. What if you kept that thing here, and I built you something at the hotel that made it so’s you didn’t have to use it?”

Without looking up, she whacked the feather duster hard against the bin. “I haven’t the money for such an undertaking.”

“I wouldn’t take it from you if you did,” I said. “It’s bad enough livin’ in a world that don’t fit. I just figure you should have a home that does.”

She lifted a leery eyebrow. “Trying to change your karma, are you, Mr. Benny?”

I laughed. “Nah. I’ve ticked off too many gods already. Although,” I added in a lower voice, “I wouldn’t mind hearing what makes you think that merman’s something special.”

Her feather duster paused mid-whack. “Why are you interested?

“Maybe I don’t want my karma getting any worse.”

Madam Navya’s defensiveness thawed before my eyes. From her stool, she seated herself elegantly on the little platform where the dragon once stood, produced the world’s smallest set of eyeglasses from her pocket, and smoothed her tunic over her lap. “Do you know where I am from, Mr. Benny?”

A trick question no matter who asked it. “I figured probably... India?”

“India is bigger than New York with borders well buggered by British colonial rule. One must be more specific,” she said instructively. “I am from Punjab, so named for the five rivers that flow into the Indus from the Himalayas. Our civilization has been tied to the sacred convergence of those life-giving veins for thousands of years.”

She reached into the handbag behind her, feeling around for something that, after a moment, it became apparent she couldn’t find.

“TIMOTHY PORTER!”

Timmy’s dusty curls poked out from behind the ticket booth.

Madam Navya thrust her open palm at him. “Give me back that picture,” she whisper-hissed, “or I will tell your mother who’s been sneaking sugar cubes out of the pantry again!”

Terror blanched his rosy cheeks before he shuffled over with the picture in his grubby hands like he was heading to the baby gallows. Navya snatched it back, and Timmy bounced off to resume building his armaments.

“This”—she held out the picture to me—“is Matsya, the first avatar of Vishnu.”

Goose bumps crawled up my neck. By the illustration, Matsya was a beautiful four-limbed man from the waist up, crowned with gold and draped in red and white garlands, his skin tinted a rich blue. Below his waist, an apron draped over a long fish tail.

Cristo . If I’d grown up worshipping this Matsya instead of a man on the cross, you could’ve convinced me easily enough that Morgan had made us drag a god out of the East River.

“In the Mahabharata , Matsya appears to King Manu as a small fish,” she explained. “He asks for protection, and so the king cares for it. It thrives and grows until, with the king’s help, Matsya is returned to the river. As reward for Manu’s care and devotion, Matsya instructs him to build a ship. ‘Tie the ship to my horn and you will survive the flood,’ he says. And so, Matsya carries Manu through the storm—up the river, to the Himalayas—and there reveals his true self: Lord Vishnu, the savior of creation.”

“Then you think the merman is this Matsya?”

She shook her head. “Vishnu’s avatars do not repeat. But I sense a nobility in this creature that makes me quake with unease. From the moment I saw it, I felt a foreboding. As though we had lit a fuse on a stick of dynamite.”

I gulped dust. “What do you think our deeds earned us?”

“My imagination can produce too many fitting consequences for imprisoning an exalted being.” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “Perhaps a flood comes for us too, and we have doomed ourselves to drowning.”

I almost said something then. To confess that, where that maldito whistle was concerned, the hand of fate was my own, and Río was far more interested in going home than visiting his wrath on anyone—except maybe Morgan.

But then the Menagerie door flew back open and the man himself tramped through it looking more pressed than a cork in a soda bottle. Everyone stopped to sniff him for clues about his mysterious visitors only to be disappointed when he stuck his casual grin back on his face and started moving at a trot toward the theater.

On the way, he pointed at me. “Benny, come along. We have some things to discuss.”

Madam Navya’s wary gaze met mine in the split second before she went back to dusting. I followed Morgan to the stage exit.

“Looks like I’ll be in Manhattan for a number of days,” he said, walking too fast for me to steal a glance at Río. “I’ve been tasked with promoting our little production there.”

Chilly air exploded into our faces as we strode outside. “What’s that mean?” I asked over the wind-whipped canvas and crunching gravel.

He forgot to hold open the tent flap for me, and it nearly hit me in the face. “A lot of botherations, that’s what. It’s easier to sell a bar of soap than a sideshow nowadays, what with those barking psychologists trying to make us all ashamed of ourselves.”

The wind that came in with us disturbed some papers on his table, so I threw a hand down to catch them. Glancing at what I’d caught, I paused and looked closer. “‘The Prince of Atlantis: Eighth Wonder of the World’?” I read aloud.

“Designed the flyer myself. Stunning likeness, wouldn’t you agree?”

Under the ornate lettering was a gaudy illustration of a man with the lower half of a mackerel, complete with crown, trident, and waves of fluffy curls. It looked like King Ferdinand II. With a tail.

“It’s stunning, all right.”

I sidled into the same chair I’d sat in the day he hired me, while Morgan disappeared behind the partition wall. A second later, he stumbled out with a small suitcase, dropped it heavily onto the table, and clicked it open.

“Now then. I have a very critical task to add to your duties. While I’m gone, I’ll need someone to look after the properties.” He pulled his green suit coat off his chair and commenced slapping dust off the sleeves. “That includes our occupant on the stage.”

The refrain to this tune was always Sure thing, boss , but I faltered. “You want me to look after the merman?”

He stalled in his slapping. “Are you resistant to the idea?”

“No! I just thought you’d ask one of the others, seein’ as they’ve been here longer and all.”

He pivoted to his desk and rummaged around for a moment before finding a roll of twine. “Out of the question. All those little whispers they think I can’t hear—I can tell they’re a bit threatened by our new exhibit. But you don’t seem to have that problem, do you?”

More rummaging. From the center drawer, Morgan drew out his derringer.

“No, sir—uh, Sam.”

“Besides”—he waved the gun around in a casual flourish—“the tank is just as much yours as it is mine, isn’t it?”

“Right,” I said with gaunt enthusiasm.

“Capital!” The roscoe went into the suitcase. “You can let the others know when your shift is over.”

“ I’m telling them?” I choked. “But what do I say?”

Morgan paused from tying twine around the flyers to twist his mustache between his fingers in thought. “Tell them you’re our new... production assistant in training! That has a lovely ring to it, doesn’t it? Oh, don’t look so terrified, it’ll be fine. There’s salt to treat the water in the crates behind the tent and plenty of dried cod in the dressing room. Open the hatch and drop it in thrice a day—and yes, soak it if you must. Though, I’ll advise you not to get too close,” he added with a frown. “I haven’t broken the beast in yet, which leaves it somewhat unpredictable. Wish I’d had the forethought to chain it up, but alas, we can’t all be fortune tellers, can we?”

I wanted to point out that Morgan’s impression of el tritón as a vicious animal was as far from the real thing as the flyers he painted. But I just stood up and nodded. “Salt for the water, cod for meals.”

In a torrent of words my brain stumbled to keep up with, Morgan rattled off instructions on maintaining everything from the motorcar to the horse stalls, concluding with proper use for the heavy wad of banknotes he slapped into my palm in case anything broke. I’d never held so much money.

“Oh! And for pity’s sake, get our pump running, would you? Sneak in coal in the middle of the night if you must. There’s a good fellow.” He clapped a hand on my arm. “Been less than a week and I already can’t remember how we ever survived without you!”

I had no idea what to do with his gushy praise other than accept it with a vague sense not to trust it. So much in Coney Island was embellished, it made me wonder if I could believe anything I saw, much less heard a ruffled Sam Morgan say.

Río was the exception. In a counterfeit world, he alone was the real deal.

Morgan practically shoved me out the tent. For the rest of my shift, and all the way back to the Albemarle, my gut churned. On one hand, this was the kind of promotion I’d always hoped I would get at the Ironworks, even if I couldn’t really understand how I’d earned it. On the other, as much as I was relieved to have Río in my keeping, I hated the idea of keeping him in the first place.

And if I was being honest, something in Navya’s warnings felt prescient. That somehow, we’d all pay a price for Morgan’s star exhibit. And if Río didn’t visit his wrath upon us, then maybe something else would.

“A production what ?”

Nine faces stared blankly at me over bowls of Eli’s spaghetti and meatballs.

I coughed into my napkin and repeated myself. “Assistant in training.”

“Yeah, I heard that part.” Emmett put down his fork and spoon, the better to leer at me openly. “What I can’t wrap my noggin around is what the hell he’s thinking putting a greener-than-grass blacksmith in charge of a sideshow!”

“I wouldn’t be in charge of you,” I replied, the air in the room suddenly thinning. “There’s the renovations to look after and the tank and, you know...” I caught Matthias’s wide eyes and quickly looked back at my bowl. “The merman.”

Emmett yanked his napkin out of his collar and tossed it on the table. “I knew it. Eli, didn’t I just say it this morning? Morgan’s already fixing to replace us with that thing !”

“No one’s replacing anyone,” Lulu interjected calmly. “Ain’t no reason to jump to conclusions.”

“No reason?” Emmett squawked. “This kid’s been here, what, a week? And Morgan puts him in charge while he runs off to put ads in the croakers?”

“Why you gotta be so damn paranoid?” Matthias asked.

“Yeah, Emmett,” said Vera with the calm of a priest, twirling more spaghetti onto her spoon. “That’s Navya’s job.”

Navya scowled at the fire-breather and aggressively speared a meatball with her fork.

“You’re drunk on scandal soup, Em,” Sonia remarked. “It only makes sense to put Benny in charge of the merman if he’s around it all day and built the stupid cage.”

Emmett swiped a finger at her. “You don’t get a say, Sonia. Yours is the only job that’s safe , and everyone knows you been sweet on Benny ever since you shared a backseat in the coach!”

Sweet on me ? I glanced at Sonia, at the open-mouthed silence that only seemed to confirm Emmett’s accusation, and promptly lost whatever was left of my appetite.

“Morgan is not fool,” boomed Igor sagely. “Luna Park need extra help to survive next season, and Mr. Benny is extra help. Merman? Is extra help. We keep park open; we keep jobs. What for you need to suspect Benny?”

“He ain’t one of us,” Emmett said without missing a beat. “You’re all so eager to trust this wisenheimer just ’cause he speaks English like a Brookie. How do you know he ain’t gonna sell us down the river when money pours in and Morgan finds out how much more of it he can keep with only a merman and a Porto Rican scab to pay for?”

“Emmett!” Eli gasped.

Suddenly, every face turned to look up at me. I’d risen to my feet without telling my body to do it. My head felt so hot, I thought smoke might start leaking from my eyeballs.

“I ain’t a scab,” I snarled, “or a dope you can talk about like I ain’t in the room! I’d never sell out anybody here.” I glowered at Emmett. “Not even a two-bit, peeled-potato, grousing comemierda like you !”

Timmy giggled “Peeled potato!” into his milk, which made me feel only marginally better about calling Emmett a shit-eater in front of a kid.

I turned to Lulu, whose face had gone completely pink. “‘With it, for it, never against it,’ huh? You said everyone in this house was family, and I believed it. Jesus, maybe I am a dope.”

Sonia reached out a hand but didn’t touch me. “Benny—”

“I’m going for a walk.”

I left my dinner in the dining room and took the stairs two at a time up to my room.

No. Saul’s room.

As I stood in front of the mirror, trying to fit my cap back on my boiling cabeza , Sonia appeared in the doorway. “You sure like to go on walks at night, huh?”

I whipped Matthias’s scarf off the chair and wrapped it around my neck. “Habit.”

“Well, you just missed a great show,” she said with a giddy lilt. “Lulu gave Emmett a talking-to like she ain’t never gave Timmy. I thought she might take away his dessert and send him to bed for good measure.”

“Bet that did the trick.”

She took the hint and dropped the artificial levity. “He didn’t mean it, you know. It was a poor choice of words.”

“Oh, come on.” Overheated, I ripped the scarf back off. “You think he’s the first white guy to throw a poor choice of words in my face?”

“If you knew him better—”

“No thanks.” I yanked my coat off the hook. “I know all I need to know about that paranoid pendejo .”

Sonia watched me hunt around for my keys in silence, opting not to strong-arm me for once. Meanwhile, guilt prickled on the borders of my anger for snapping at her. If Emmett was right, and she really was sweet on me, then as much as I really didn’t want to think about it, she’d had her vulnerabili-ties poked at too.

Was that why she was still standing here?

Suddenly, she blurted out, “Sam’s taking me with him.”

“What?” I stopped buttoning my coat. “Why?”

“Well, I’m his—gosh, how’d he put it—sideshow ambassador!” she exclaimed with flat enthusiasm. “Says it attracts new patrons to have someone with some sparkle hanging off his arm.”

“Huh. I didn’t take you for an ornament.”

The forced smile on Sonia’s face wilted away.

“I’m sorry,” I moaned. “I didn’t mean that. It just don’t seem like you’re that excited.”

She pulled back her shoulders. “Why wouldn’t I be? Manhattan’s hep, and going means I get to learn the ropes. I mean”—she let out a nervous chuckle—“ someone’s gotta take over the show when these goops get too old to run it.”

“Morgan tell you that?”

“Not everything’s up to Sam,” she said pointedly. “Anyway, this will all blow over as soon as we’re outta the way, you’ll see. You’ll still be here when I get back, won’t you?”

I sighed. “Yeah. I’ll be here.”

Like I had anywhere else to go.