Page 31

S onia didn’t dress in anything as extravagant for our Monday night jaunt as she had the day she returned with Morgan. Rather, she swept in with a burgundy skirt and matching box coat, which she complained was out of fashion by several years. I told her I didn’t know jack about fashion beyond making sure my union suit went under my shirt and pants.

“Men don’t worry about clothes unless they’re Sam Morgan,” she remarked. “He thinks he’s a walking billboard for the show.”

“Is that why you can see his suit from Midtown?”

“Benny!” She slapped my arm in mock surprise. “Who knew you had some bite in that mouth of yours!”

Since March when I’d first arrived in Coney Island, the Surf Avenue strip had gradually drawn more tourists; mostly night-trippers looking for an excuse to get out of the city for lower-key amusements. As we meandered down the avenue, a small crowd of gentry smoked in front of Buschmann’s Music Hall waiting for the evening’s entertainment to begin.

Sonia took my arm on Twelfth Street and squeezed it. “I finally get to join you on a nighttime walk,” she said blithely. “What do you get up to out here anyway? Offseason wages ain’t enough to buy you more than a cheap thrill unless...” She wilted under the brim of her lacy hat. “You’re not hitting up those peep shows on the Bowery, are you?”

“No!” I laughed. “I just like the water. The view’s nice at night.”

It was almost the truth. Seeing Río and visiting the shore weren’t too different. In either case, my proximity to drowning felt dangerously close.

We arrived at the front gates of Luna Park only minutes before seven. As we approached, I gently pulled my arm out of her grip to dig out Saul’s keys before a Brooklyn accent thicker than Sonia’s interrupted me.

“Eyyyyy, Fraülein!”

We followed the sound to the little booth where Oscar Barnes stood in a new pair of coveralls. A pipe poked out of his mustache.

“Why, Mr. Barnes,” declared Sonia as the portly man sauntered toward us. “I do believe you’re wearing a new coat of paint yourself!”

As she tucked into my side, Oscar’s bright eyes shifted onto me. “Benny!” He snapped his fingers and pointed one back in my face. “Calzone, right?”

“Caldera.”

“That’s what I said!” He turned back to Sonia. “This must be your third Light the Night, ain’t it? I’d’ve thought this was old hat for you by now.”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” Tugging on my arm, she added, “This is Benny’s first.”

Walking backward to his post, Oscar pointed his finger at me again and grinned fiendishly. “Hold on to your britches, kid.” Then, he disappeared into the booth.

Sonia’s breath brushed my ear. “Look up.”

I followed her gaze skyward to the red corazón that held the words “THE HEART OF CONEY ISLAND.”

There was a loud, echoing chock sound followed by another—then another. The hum of unleashed electricity crackled in my ears, and the next thing I knew, a light so bright it doused the stars exploded into my vision, sending me stumbling backward. Sonia, being stronger than the average lady, caught me easily by the arm before I could fall, though she was laughing so hard, she almost tumbled down with me.

The entire park lit up with thousands—maybe millions of lights. Lights on the spires. Lights lining the columns and adornments. Lights in every letter of “LUNA PARK” blinking on and off to their own musical meter. I had to shield my eyes with my hand, it was so bright.

“Dios misericordioso,” I breathed.

“Come on, ya big goop.” Sonia tugged me into the main prome-nade, empty and dark whenever I snuck in to see Río—now brilliant with artificial light.

I was Odiseo arriving in Ogigia , every tower and turret awash in a magical dreamlike glamour, even in the presence of maintenance men, electricians, and other carnival staff who came to delight in the promise of a summer season more prosperous than the last. We walked toward the towers that stood in the center of the main promenade, now surrounded by a lake of bright blueish-green water.

Sonia walked us right up to the edge. “Now don’t get spooked when—”

A geyser erupted from a spile in the lake and I nearly jumped into Sonia’s arms.

“—the fountains turn on,” she finished.

I clutched San Cristóbal through my shirt. “Jeez, is this how the whole night’s gonna go?”

“I sure hope so,” she proclaimed. “If the fountain can get your heart racing, just wait ’til I get you on a ride!”

She dragged me by the wrist down the bare concrete walkway toward the Circle Swing, which had bloomed overnight into a massive steeple with long metal arms from which a set of candy-colored boats hung. At the base of it, a man tinkered away at a little metal cabinet with several keys sticking out of a flat panel on top.

“Oh, Errrnieee,” Sonia sang, and he hit his face on the cabinet door.

Ernie was a youngish fellow, with pink skin and sandy hair that poked out of the bottom of his worker’s cap. He rubbed his smarting cheek. “Dammit, Sonia, you can’t just sneak up on a guy!”

“I don’t sneak, you’re just unobservant,” she countered. “Anyway, Benny’s the newest member of the Menagerie, and you have the distinct honor of hosting our very first ride of the evening!”

I stuck out my hand. “Nice to meetcha, Ernie.”

He eyed the point on my arm where Sonia had wrapped her fingers and grunted. I drew back my hand, wondering just how many guys among the maintenance crew were as sweet on the red-haired contortionist as Ernie obviously was.

My pondering was short-lived. The moment he strode around us to open the metal gate that led to the ride, my head emptied of all thoughts except, Me voy a morir .

“So, we’re, uh, sure it’s safe?” I asked, following behind Ernie as he meandered to one of at least half a dozen miniature multicolored boats. “I mean, you’re testing these to see if they still work ’cause you don’t actually know, right?”

Ernie scowled. “I’d never let Sonia step foot on a clunker. I ain’t no barbarian.”

“Then be a good non-barbarian and hold this,” said Sonia, removing the hat from her head and handing it to Ernie, who practically bowed as he took it carefully in his calloused hands.

Gesturing to my cap, she added, “You’re gonna want to tuck yours somewhere safe.”

He undid the chain of a bright apple-red barquito and helped Sonia inside. Left to fend for myself, I put a foot in and felt the boat glide in the air away from me, making me hop after it until Sonia reached out her gloved hand and tugged me aboard.

The seats were slippery—varnished wood—and as Ernie redid the chain, my mind ran through about a dozen scenarios in which a solitary aluminum-link chain would do nothing to save my life in the event the boat detached from the metal rig that held it.

“You are abso-tively gonna love this,” she squeaked.

“Can’t wait,” I said in a strangled voice. Another loud noise made me flinch, and my hands flew to the metal bar in front of us. Ernie had returned to his post beside the cabinet, his sunburned arms folded across his chest as the tower slowly began rotating, and with it, the boat.

We were picking up speed. The barquito started lifting away from the ground.

“Jesucristo...” I held on.

The faster it spun, the higher we rose. In seconds, I could see over the top of the front gate—a sight that whipped away as quickly as it had appeared. My eyes clouded over with tears from the chilly wind that lashed at our faces, my belly hollowed out like I’d left my stomach on the concrete.

Sonia was squealing.

Picking up yet more speed, the large metal arm that held us began to splay outward, tipping us sideways until I could look over my shoulder and see the ground parallel to us.

At which point, I lost my grip on my seat. But instead of careening to my death, I slid in the other direction and crashed right into Sonia’s hip.

“ ?Cono! ” I yelled over the noise. “I’m so sorry!”

“That’s supposed to happen!” she yelled back. “Now put your hands up! Like this!”

Sonia took her hands off the metal bar and lifted them over her head. She had obviously gone insane.

“Whooooooo!” she howled jubilantly. “Come on, before it’s over!”

I swallowed hard. One at a time, I lifted my hands off the metal bar.

I did not die.

Qué locura. We were flying .

The Circle Swing was churning now, dipping in the air only to crest the next moment into the wind. I worried that the force of my body against Sonia’s hip was crushing her, but by the manic joy on her face, I realized she couldn’t feel it. She was laughing and laughing—at me, at the sky, at the ground below us—and feeling half-hysterical myself, I started laughing too.

Emancipated from gravity, we cut a path into the wind. My face was numb, but I didn’t mind.

It felt like I had no body at all.

Sonia escorted me all over Luna Park. With every ride, I learned to think less and less about the indignity Sonia might be suffering every time a sharp turn or dip forced her into my lap, because there was no getting around it, and it didn’t seem to occupy her thoughts at all. Like everyone else who had ever entered Luna Park, Sonia and I had checked social propriety at the front gate.

At some point, Sonia walked us past a chained gate, behind which stretched a shaded avenue of straw huts in disrepair. She explained it was the now-abandoned Igorot Village, an attraction not unlike the Menagerie in that humans were the paid exhibit. When I asked why Luna Park had decided to host a commune of Filipino natives, Sonia explained that it was meant to teach Americans about “our new conquest in the Pacific”—before the proprietor got himself thrown in the clink for fraud. I wondered uncomfortably whether Puerto Rico would ever find itself represented in an American amusement park somewhere, or if annexation had spared it from such a crude display.

Then I thought of Río, who wouldn’t be paid and had no commune of his own. If only Morgan’s intent to erase Río’s culture and replace it with a fake one was the sort of fraud he could get locked up for.

We meandered around for hours, boarding as many rides as we could until my throat was raw from yelling and my hair looked like I’d lost a brawl with a barber. It was nearly nine thirty when we finally got to the rear enclosure where the Menagerie Theater stood across from the ballroom, the waning moon bright overhead, as if to remind us no electric light bulb could compete with the real thing.

“I saved the best for last,” said Sonia, tugging me toward the enormous, brightly lit open-air dance floor.

The ballroom facade was bordered with archways for onlookers and dancers alike to come and go as they pleased, with chandeliers and shining wood-paneled floors. On a wide platform in the corner sat a red wagon calliope with golden pipes glistening behind the gilded window. An older, sloped-backed man pushed a large industrial broom around the dance floor, kicking up little clouds of dust as he did so.

“Mr. Davis! Do your girl Sonia a favor and fire up that calliope!”

The man aborted his sweeping and squinted at us. “Henh?”

“Cal-li-oh-pee...” She pantomimed a cranking motion with her arm. “Turn it onnn!”

“Oh, you wants old Orpheus to play sumthin’, do ya?” Mr. Davis adjusted his hat and waddled over to the red wagon.

Meanwhile, Sonia walked around to face me. “You know how to waltz, don’t you?”

My hand searched for San Cristóbal . If I was going to tell her my secret, now was the time. “You know, I don’t really dance—”

“Lucky I’m a good teacher.” She stepped toward me and took one of my hands in hers. The other, she removed from my chest and placed on her waist. Across the floor, bright, airy music filled the air, poor Davis leaning into every crank of the machine. I wondered if Río could hear it.

“Now then. One, two, three, one, two, three...” Sonia lifted our hands and steered me in an arch around her. “Hey, you’re a fibbing fibber, Benny Caldera! You’re a better waltzer than me!”

Sweat had started gathering across my forehead. “We had la danza back in Puerto Rico. My aunt taught me.”

Sonia studied my face in a way that made it impossible to meet her eyes. “There’s a lot we don’t know about you, huh.”

“Nothing special.”

“You don’t gotta be special,” she said, as we turned on the floor. “You just gotta be real.”

Tell her now , I thought. “You’re right. Sonia, there’s something—“

“Take me for instance,” she went on distantly. “I’m not real.”

My eyes snapped back to hers. “What?”

“I’m a figment of Sam’s imagination.” Suddenly, her smile looked stilted. “Every person in Coney Island looks at me and sees a walking poster of the Flexible Fraülein—they don’t know there’s a heartbeat under all the paint. I ever tell you my real name?”

I shook my head.

“It’s Mary. Mary Schneider, after my grandmother. Sonia Kutzler’s just the stage name Sam gave me. Said it sounds more exotic. Imagine that.”

Still wearing that forced smile, she looked over her shoulder at the calliope, then up at the ceiling, willing away the tears that had suddenly gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“It don’t matter,” she said quietly. “It’s gonna be mine one day, ya see. I’m the youngest one in the company and the only one who knows the business side of sideshow business. When the rest of the Menagerie retires, I’ll be the next Morgan, and with a young guy like you in the company now, we could even manage it together! It’ll all be worth it... as long as the show keeps running .”

My stomach twisted as I realized she was trying to say something without saying it. I leaned close so I wouldn’t be overheard.

“Sonia, what really goes on in Manhattan?”

Her eyes met mine, and the confident coquette was gone. Then she glanced about nervously, as if Morgan might be hanging around the corner with his derringer cocked at us.

“Sam’s been borrowing money from some dicey folks in the Lower East Side,” she answered tightly. “It’s how he’s been paying for everything—the tank, the improvements, the clothes, the whole nine yards. But these folks... they don’t do nothin’ gratis.”

“‘They’?” My heart was beginning to pound. “Who’s ‘they’?”

“Frankie Agostinelli and his goons used to run the Coney numbers racket back in the day. Well, Sam hunted ’em down. Told them they’d get back their run of Surf Avenue if they helped him compete with Reynolds. Every time we go back, Sam asks for more dough, and now they’re antsy for proof that Sam’s gonna make good on the deal.”

She rattled in a breath the very same way I did in an asthma fit.

“He thought I might soften them up.”

I spun her around. My turn to look for eavesdroppers, but there was only Mr. Davis perusing yesterday’s Sun with one hand as he cranked Orpheus with the other. “Sonia, did they do something to you?”

Her face blanched beneath her rouge. “Frankie took a shining to me. Said he wanted to see m-more of me,” she stammered, her voice suddenly frail.

I stopped dancing.

“ Dios mío. That bastard sold you to them,” I said breathlessly. “Didn’t he?”

Sonia looked anywhere but my face, like she was searching for a hole in the ground to jump into. “With a couple drinks in me, it’s... it’s not so bad. W-what else was he supposed to do?”

“What else was he— Sonia .” I was losing it. My English too. I backed away from her so my profanity wouldn’t hit her on its way out of my mouth. “?Me cago en ná!”

“I know, I know, but once the debt’s settled, I’m free, you know? One more reason why, in the horse race between Luna Park and Dreamland,” she said through quivering lips, “Luna’s just got to win!”

The Heart of Coney Island twisted before my eyes. A fantasy land running on electric light bulbs and corruption.

“Benny, please , you can’t tell no one—”

“Sonia, the company’s gonna lose their minds when they find out Morgan’s done this to you! Matthias’ll crush him and Frankie What’s-His-Face to a powder!”

“That’s exactly why it’s gotta stay a secret!” she insisted. “Don’t you get it? Frankie owns half the cops; if anyone else finds out, he won’t just go after Sam, the whole company will be in danger! Promise me, Benny. Don’t. Tell .”

“ Cono, carajo... Fine! If it’s really life or death, I won’t,” I growled under my breath. “But Sam Morgan’s a dirty louse and a liar and I hate him for what he’s done to you!”

“You don’t have to say that—”

“I do have to say it! The way he treats you. The way he treats”—I caught myself before I said Río’s name—“ everyone ! Like you’re not people, just things he can just pawn off on a stage for fifteen cents a head. You deserve better!”

“Oh, Benny,” she murmured. Her eyes were big, green, and leaking tears onto her grateful smile. “You really mean that?”

“Of course I—”

I didn’t see it coming. Sonia dug her fists into my vest and crushed her mouth against mine so eagerly, her teeth nearly sliced open my lip. I took her wrists with both hands—I tried to push her off—but her grip was so strong, I didn’t know what kind of force I could use without hurting her or implicating myself in something a whole hell of a lot worse in front of Mr. Davis. There was nothing to do but pray she’d end it soon so I wouldn’t pass out from holding my breath.

She did. It only took an extra second for her to notice I’d gone stiff as a statue.

Ashen, she stepped back. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh God , I’m an idiot...”

I was panting. “Listen, Sonia. There’s something you gotta know about me. Something I should’ve told you a while ago—”

“How did I not see it,” she moaned.

“It’s my fault for not—”

“There’s another girl, ain’t there?”

The sentence died on my tongue. “ What? ”

“All the late-night walks and, oh God...” She covered her mouth and started retreating farther away from me. “I’m such a fool .”

I lunged forward and held onto her shoulders. “You’re not a fool or an idiot! You’ve got it all wrong— Aw, Sonia, please don’t cry!”

The ballroom went suddenly silent. “Miss Kutzler!” Mr. Davis pointed at me. “This man upsetting you?”

“No, no, he’s all right,” she called back, backing out of my hands. “I gotta go.”

And she gathered her skirt and hightailed it, stranding me under the chandelier with Mr. Davis who, by his puckered brow, had already decided who was responsible for the sudden change in her disposition.

If I ran after her, he’d think I was pursuing her. So, I ran in the other direction.

To the Menagerie.