Page 27

T he cuatro was out, and I was celebrating my first full month working at the Menagerie. With Morgan and Sonia still running around the city, I took the liberty of improving Río’s living conditions on the pretense of dressing it up like a real aquaterrarium. Río was so pleased, I forgot to care what Morgan might think of what I’d done.

“Mm, I like that melody,” he said, popping a last bit of flounder into his mouth. “I would like it even better without a steam engine in my ears.”

I grimaced apologetically. “You know I can’t turn it off.”

“Then I shall keep complaining,” he muttered. “Are there words to that song?”

“Some, but I could use some help with the rest.” I picked up the pace:

Llévame, río, hasta el mar,

Sobre olas azules de agua cristal.

Porque soy un muchacho al que le gusta cantar...

I hummed through the rest of the verse. “And that’s it. I’m stuck.”

Río’s fluke appeared in front of his chest, folding over flat like a table so he could prop his elbows on it. “Why, Barnacle, have you made up a song about me?”

I busied myself with adjusting strings. “ Oye, ‘río’ means ‘river.’ It’s not always about you, your highness.”

“What a shame I lack legs,” he said, his fins slipping elegantly back under the surface. “I rather like your boleros, and dancing seems a perfectly civilized way to enjoy them.”

“Who says the way you swim isn’t dancing?”

He pulled his shoulders back and swept a thick wave of hair off his face. “In that case, when I teach you to swim, you will learn to dance as I do.” Brightening, he added, “And that shall be your next lyric! ‘Con tritones y sirenas, me gustaría bailar.’ ”

“Y’know, that ain’t half bad.” I tweaked a string back into tune and sang through the completed verse:

Carry me, river, out to the sea,

Over the blue waves of crystal water.

For I’m a young fellow who likes to sing.

With mermen and mermaids, I would like to dance.

“That’d be something, huh?” I said once I’d finished. “A human dancing with merfolk.”

Río cupped his hands in the water and lifted them, visibly enjoying the sensation as it dribbled over his wrists. “It reminds me of a merfolk legend from the Tailfin Sea. About a woman—a human chieftain who mated with one of our kind.”

“Can that sort of thing happen?”

He shrugged. “Any waters that might authenticate the tale are far away.”

I strummed him a regal introduction. “Let’s hear it then.”

“As the song goes, she had revived a merman wounded and washed ashore during a great cyclone,” he began with slightly histrionic flair. “Not realizing merfolk heal in seawater, she wrapped him in wet garments and ministered to his injuries until he was strong enough to call the sea to his aid, but by then, his attachment to her was so strong, he grieved the notion of a life without her. Hence, after he returned home, his visits to her shore continued as they each became the other’s heartsong—an immutable bond. Perceiving the sea in her spirit, the Ocean gave her safe passage to join her lover in Neptune’s robes, uniting her tribe to his harmony. It is said their descendants persist today, and that their song can be heard when one journeys to the shore where she saved his life.”

Of all the mer-culture novelties Río had shared with me so far, this story surpassed them all as my favorite. “I thought you were gonna say she served him up for dinner or something, the way merfolk think humans are out to ruin the world,” I quipped. “Where’d you hear that legend?”

“My mother told it to me.”

I smiled. “I liked the bit about the heartsong.”

He cocked his head thoughtfully at me. “From where are you descended?”

“That’s anyone’s guess. My tití saw all kinds of blood in me. African, obviously. Some taíno , some Dutch. Bit o’ this, bit o’ that.”

Río went quiet again and let his eyes rest on my face, the way he often did when the night deepened, and sleepiness thinned out our banter. Except now, his gaze held something more, a curious intensity I’d been noticing more often as spring grew warmer.

“Why’re you lookin’ at me like that?” I ventured through half a smile. “What? I got something stuck to my face?”

“It brings me pleasure to look at you.”

My hands tightened around my cuatro .

“Though,” he added, surveying my surprise, “you seem strangely unaware of your beauty.”

“ Beauty? ”

His voice lacked the sarcastic punch I’d grown accustomed to whenever he was kidding around. But he was still wrong. People didn’t cross the street to get away from beautiful people. Beautiful people didn’t invite ridicule or hate just for breathing the same air, for taking up space—

“Merfolk do not lie,” he declared, as if he could hear the mean thoughts stomping around in my head. “But as it seems you do not believe me, let us make an agreement.”

No. No agreements. “Río—”

“One day, I shall tell you how beautiful you are and why it is so. And on that day, you must believe it.”

“Aw, just cut it out, will you?” I snapped.

Confusion washed the remnant ease from his expression. “Cut what out?”

I rifled for words without sharp edges. “You can’t... just say stuff like that. Not to me.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause it ain’t right! Mírate , you’re so”—I gestured furiously at his entire mythical self—“and I’m just—I’m not...” With no command of my mouth, I got to my feet and grabbed my cuatro . “I gotta go.”

“Benigno?”

“It’s nothing, I’m tired. See you tomorrow.”

Río sank down to his chin and nodded. “Tomorrow.”

I left. Chased out of the building by my own shadow.

How could I explain it to him? How cruel his kindness felt sometimes? Brown, Puerto Rican, and inverted, I was a walking composite of undesirable traits, and every time he said I was something more, I wanted to shake him, make him understand that I couldn’t survive in this stupid town if I believed I was better than the petty allowance of scraps I lived on. More treacherous than hoping for a seat in Ornamental was believing in a world where Río wanted me.

I strode back to the Albemarle missing Tití Luz so much my insides felt bruised. There was no one to hear me confess what a rompecabezas my life had become. No one to place a cool hand on the back of my burning neck and say, “Give your problems to your guardian angels, nene. Y todo será curado. ”

But there’s no adage or saying for a man who falls in love with another man, let alone un tritón . A story like that only ends with a broken heart and God’s judgment.

“Bit early for work, isn’t it?” came a voice from behind me.

Vera stood in a thin violet dressing gown at the bottom of the stairs, her cigarillo propped in the V of her fingers, thin streams of smoke pouring from each nostril. A smirk canted her lips as she took another drag.

“Vera! What are you doing out here?”

“Keepin’ me promise. No smokin’ indoors. Also”—she gestured to a large potted flowering plant at the door that hadn’t existed when I left—“Igor let it slip that Madam Navya never got to celebrate Ram Navami, so I went out and got some marigolds. Put ’em out late so she wouldn’t know it was me.”

“Wow.” My eyebrows lifted in surprise. “That’s real considerate of you, Vera.”

“Aye, well, if karma’s real, mine could use some help.” Glancing past me at the screen door to check for unwelcome ears, she leaned in. “So, which is it? Henderson’s? Conner’s? Go on, you can tell ol’ Vera.”

I wasn’t nearly clearheaded enough for midnight interrogations. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on , Benny.” She waved her cigarillo at my cuatro impatiently. “Which music hall are you playin’ at?”

Chilly air collected in my eye sockets. “ Music hall ?”

“Tuck your jaw in. You ain’t the first lad in Coney Island to ever hold down two gigs,” she scoffed, dropping the butt and grinding it into the ground with her heel.

How should I temper a lie I hadn’t even come up with? “Oh. I thought about it, you know, but I got my hands full with the theater and... decided I’d better not.”

She reclined against the banister like I wasn’t fooling anyone. “That does it,” she announced. “Sit down, ya great sod. We’re havin’ a chat.”

I looked helplessly over my shoulder at the screen door, then sat on the bottom step beside her. Seemed to me that saying no to a fire-breather came with more risks than benefits.

“I’m the only member o’ this company what chose the carnival life, you know. Everyone else were run out of options or scouted but me.” She looked sideways at me. “And now, you.”

“You don’t think I was scouted?” I snorted. “Morgan practically sold me a dog to get me to come to Coney Island.”

“You had a trade. You made a choice,” she said, “and that’s ’cause you was lookin’ for something when you walked off that steamer from San Hoo-ann. It’s why every time I walk into that theater, I catch you staring at the walls wishing they’d paint themselves. I stared at me own walls that way when I were a proper housewife.”

My teeth bit down so my jaw wouldn’t fall open again.

“Don’t look so surprised. It were the only way to stop bein’ a burden on my da. Or so I figured,” she murmured.

“There were always a little piece of me what knew I were never meant to play house. A spark—in here,” she said, tapping her chest. “It made me an odd duck as a scrap, sneaking my brother’s trousers, playing’ rough with him and his mates when the other lasses was learning to tempt a lad. But then one day, fate got me a ticket to see Lord George the Imperial Sanger: The Leading Show of the World!”

Her eyes grew soft with nostalgia. “It were the first time I ever saw someone breathe fire. I thought to meself, ‘Feck, if only I could make the deadliest element on earth obey my command... I’d burn the world to the ground and come back to life as a phoenix ’stead of a lady.’”

I let out a laugh. “That’s a hell of a wish.”

“Yeah, well, eventually the wishing turned to needing.” She propped her elbows on her knees. “My man started drowning hisself at the pub at night only to come back wanting what I weren’t willing to give him. One night, he comes into the kitchen after goin’ for a swall at the pub, blathering on about when we was gonna have children and be a proper family. And I says, ‘When you stop pissin’ away every goddamned farthing we have on ale, ya great caffler!’ So he raises his hand to slap me, but damn if he missed and got the boiling kettle instead!”

My hand clapped over my mouth, to which Vera tipped her head back and hawed with laughter against the banister. “Seamus were so drunk, he passed out right there on the rug! So, I just wrapped up his daddle, packed me things, took the rest of his drinking money, and dropped me surname,” she said between giggles. “And well. Seamus couldn’t find his own prick, much less a woman who left his house dressed up like his brother.”

“How old were you?”

“Nineteen. I woulda been no performer yet, but the thirst for a crowd put me on the train all the way to Sandringham to catch up with that two-mile-long caravan. I marched right up to Lord George himself and told him I wanted to learn something no proper lady’d ever done before. So he brings me by the hand to the Fakir. ‘This one’s got a blaze in her heart,’ he told him. ‘Teach her how to wield it.’”

I shook my head. “Vera, either that’s the biggest thumper I’ve ever heard, or you’re the battiest lady—er, person—I’ve ever met.”

She nudged my knee with hers. “You’ll see the truth with your own eyes soon enough.”

“So... do you really wish you were a man, then?”

Vera shrugged. “Would be nice to be the next Ella Wesner, but I don’t feel much one way or the other. Some days the dress fits just right. Other days... it’s a skin I’d like to peel off. Either way...” Vera pulled back her shoulders and smirked mysteriously, her hair half pinned, half falling in tawny curls around her shoulders. “On stage, I’m the Phoenix.”

Ave María. Who would’ve guessed I’d wind up sharing a house with living proof humans could be just like merfolk who were neither man nor maid?

“That, I believe,” I murmured.

“You and me, we’re the lucky ones, Benny,” she said, grabbing my hand and holding it firmly. “Life ain’t taken away our choices, even when we been tricked into thinking it has. Way I see it, you can spend the rest of your dreary days hammering metal or painting walls ’cause that’s what the world’s told you you’re good for. Or you can ask yourself what you really want.”

I remembered the last thing Innis said to me. About living instead of surviving. What was happening in the theater each night made me feel more alive than I’d felt since the hurricane had struck through my memory. Until now, I’d held off admitting how much I wanted it—maybe even needed it.

“What if I’m not allowed to have what I want?” I asked.

“Not allowed? Or too afeart to go after it?” she said, sizing me up. “You and I know fire, Benny. Don’t waste your damn life trying to smother a spark what wants to be a blaze.”

Back in my room, I satisfied the momentary winding-down-for-the-night requirement by draping my bones over the duvet fully dressed. All the lamps in the Albemarle were out but mine, so I shut it off then turned my head on the pillow to stare at the April rain pelting at the window.

Eli and Emmett shared the room across from mine. I wondered distantly if they held each other at night. The only thing occupying the space beside me was my shadow, except tonight, the sight of it brought a loneliness that settled over my chest like the smoke from one of Vera’s rompepechos . Before it could gather in my lungs, I closed my eyes and laid my hands over my heart and my stomach.

I breathed in. Made it sound like the sea.

As air filled my chest, my imagination filled Saul’s room with water. The bed and armoire lifted off the floor, and I floated above the sheets with them, the old props and costumes coasting over my head like manta rays. Instead of rain at my window, my mind supplied a full moon casting cool beams and ripples across my legs—until a silhouette eclipsed the silver light.

In a whiplash of sparkling scales, I imagined Río gliding through my window. Reached my hand out to meet the ghost of his sandpaper palm and pull him close. I could almost see his long copper hair swirling around our faces like paint and stilled under the covers trying to conjure his pewter smile, not four feet below a metal grill, but close enough to kiss.

How would it feel to wake up to the ocean of his eyes? To measure his perfect dimensions against my imperfect ones, breathe in the turquoise sea off his skin, and feel like home had come to find me instead of the other way around?

Don’t waste your damn life trying to smother a spark what wants to be a blaze.

I got out of bed.