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“I was a lost boy,” he begins in his native song. “Different from other young Puerto Rican men following the path of their fathers and uncles who scheme about liberation, marry young, and, in hardship, drink too much.”

Benigno’s garment twists in his restless hands, speaking for an agitation I realize I recognize within myself—as tremors that bristle my scales and drag like weights off my fins in the Shark’s presence.

“ Tití Luz foresaw me on an island of loneliness and pain without her,” he continues, “so before she died, she made me promise to follow a different path to liberation in New York. My courage had faltered at the thought of leaving, but once she was gone, the person I was disappeared with her. I guess I came here to find him.”

I listen, rapt. His words issue forth swiftly, but meticulously arranged. Indeed, his clipped Spanish sounds as though it were spoken by a different person entirely.

“And did you find yourself?” I ask in his tongue.

He answers with an acrid laugh. “I am even more of a stranger to myself here. This country has no better idea of what to do with me than it does of what to do with my island. They won the Spanish-American War and inherited an angry, wounded youth in the Caribbean. I often wonder if the people of Borínquen will always be caught between the master who conquers us and the master we wish we could be for ourselves.”

“It sounds like your Currents have failed you too,” I say.

He shrugs and resumes his saw-toothed version of English. “It hasn’t been all bad. If I hadn’t come to Luna Park, I’d still be breathing poison air at the ironworks. At least here, the sourpusses are made of plaster.”

In vain, I try not to smile. There is genius in the way Benigno softens bleakness with humor.

“Maybe, if it weren’t for my Currents,” he says, “I wouldn’t have this job, and I wouldn’t be here to...”

I say what he cannot. “Save me.”

Unexpected warmth rolls through my fins when he leans over the bars to observe me more closely.

“I won’t give up if you won’t,” he says. “At least Morgan’ll leave you alone for a while. Not that I’m a more welcome sight...”

From my view below him, Benigno’s face is partitioned, the bars crossed over his sultry skin and midnight eyes like a netting of iron. Still, his presence is a warm glow over my lightless captivity, and only now do I realize it—how thankful I am at once again being able to gaze skyward and know I am not alone.

“You are a welcome sight, Benigno. I never expected to find an ally in this dreadful place.” I reach for humor as well and add, “You are a rather pleasant sort of barnacle.”

“Thanks. I’m getting used to the hours.”

His smile is shy, and though his lungs are quiet tonight, I worry for the rest he does not give them conversing with me while the world outside sleeps. “I regret my mother did not charge you with a simpler burden.”

“You might regret it.” Benigno scratches a fingernail over the bars. “But I don’t.”

His words, reservedly spoken, make me feel buoyant in the water. “Then be assured. I will not give up.”