Page 35

M y spare drop cloth made a decent towel in a pinch, though I was hot enough around the collar to air dry. The front entrance’s only lock was undone, and apart from an empty promenade, all I could see was red. Anyone with half a brain might’ve expected snoops and intruders after Morgan had wallpapered Manhattan in those maldito flyers!

To thwart entry from the outside, I hooked leftover wire from the creature displays around every door handle but the stage door exit to Morgan’s tent so I could leave. Installing new deadbolts would be my morning priority; I’d have to sell it to Morgan as a precaution, since there was no way I could tell him about trespassers without owning up to being one myself.

After securing the theater, I took the longest route possible to Luna Park’s front gates, hoping I’d trip over one of Reynolds’s goons. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I found one, but the only punch I’d ever thrown in my life had drawn blood, and that seemed promising.

“Stop right there,” came a voice from behind me. I spun around, and my bravado promptly withered away.

It was a policeman.

“What’s your business wandering out of Luna Park at four in the morning?”

I eyed the club dangling at his hip and tried to look harmless. “I work at Luna Park.”

He stepped closer. “And loitering’s part of the job description, eh?”

I raised my hands to show I wasn’t armed. “Honest. I’m just looking after an exhibit.”

“What’s the exhibit, then?”

Morgan would have my head on a spike if I told anyone the Prince of Atlantis already resided at Luna Park. “I... can’t tell you.”

“Now, that I believe.”

He reached for my arm, but as I dodged the cop’s fingers, his remaining patience seemed to slip through his hands too.

“Please, sir,” I said without any amusement at the irony of having to beg twice in one night. “There actually was someone else here—someone who broke into the—”

I wasn’t fast enough this time; he grabbed my swim-sore arm and twisted it behind my back. “You better rethink your next words, or I’ll bust you so hard you’re gonna forget how to lie!”

“There a problem here, Joey?”

We both looked over the cop’s shoulder. Matthias was strolling over with his hands in his pockets, doing his most leisurely impersonation of a brick wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the policeman’s spine go straight as a tentpole.

“What brings you out here, Matty?” he said in a squeak ill-suited to a guy with a badge.

“Ain’t I told you I’m writing my autobiography?” he said, smiling. “ The Heaviest Weight: A Mighty Memoir is gonna be in every souvenir shop on Surf Avenue, if I can ever finish the dang thing. And wouldn’t you know, the only cure for writer’s block is a good walk around the corner, so here I am. Anything I can help with?”

“Just a loiterer making like he works at Luna Park,” Joey spat.

“That’s because he does,” Matthias said coolly. “Meet Benny Caldera, our new day laborer.”

Officer Joey’s grip loosened, then let go. Even in the twilight, I could see his face flush. “All right. Then what’s a day laborer doing here when it ain’t day yet?”

“Matthias, I tried to tell him—”

“Stop your damn mouth, Benny,” Matthias hissed before turning a placating face back to Joey. “You’re gonna have to forgive lunkhead here. Fact is, Sam’s got him looking after a very important, very expensive attraction and Mr. Caldera here don’t know how to manage his time is all.”

“Very expensive and important, huh?” The officer squinted in my direction, baffled. “And they left him in charge of it?”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Matthias clapped me on the back and sent all the air out of my chest. “Crazy, right? Turns out Benny’s the only one with the right credentials. Now”—he walked up to Joey and clasped his hands amiably—“he ain’t hurting no one, is he? Just look at him. Harmless as a seagull with half as much meat on his bones. He ain’t even fit to hawk shoes.”

I scowled.

“And I guarantee, sir, that brother here is gonna do a better job managing his workload from now on. During the daytime ,” he added through his teeth.

The value of my silence dawned on me as Joey’s posture visibly loosened under Matthias’s influence. I nodded emphatically.

Joey took the baton off his belt and stuck it in my face. “Don’t let me catch you out here off hours again.”

“You won’t,” I croaked.

“Thank you for your service to our humble neck o’ Brooklyn, officer.” Matthias took me by the shoulder and tipped his cap. “You have a good night.”

“Night, Matty.”

We turned back toward the Albemarle, the strongman’s grip about to chip off a piece of my shoulder. For several blocks we walked like men fleeing death, my insides roiling, but when we finally reached the hotel’s back door, Matthias took a giant step ahead of me and blocked my path up the stoop.

“For a goddamned genius, you sure are stupid ,” he snapped. “I ain’t never seen anyone so desperate to have his brown ass scraped across pavement!”

“I’m sorry—”

“What in the fool shenanigans has got you dancing a jig on the tightrope between arrested and dead at four in the morning?”

“I’m just looking after the merman! Someone broke into the theater tonight—”

“Yeah, you did!” He turned in a furious circle. “To think I been defending your behind every time Emmett spouts off about not trusting you—”

“C’mon, Matthias, I’m no traitor!”

“Then tell me the truth!”

“It’s not— You don’t—”

He leaned against the rail. “Go on. I just had me a nap and Igor’s coffee, I got all damn night.”

I was a lousy liar. It was always miles easier to just shut up and let everyone else come to their own conclusions about me, which they were usually bound to do whether I had anything to say about it. But now that mine wasn’t the only neck at risk, all the angst I’d felt after Sonia kissed me came right back like I’d escaped Officer Joey’s billy club only to back into quicksand.

I’d gone quiet when Matthias finally threw his hands up. “Fine. You don’t wanna tell me? That’s just fi—”

“ I love him .”

Matthias couldn’t have looked more stunned if I’d told him I was President McKinley’s illegitimate Puerto Rican son. “Come again?”

I slumped onto the bottom step. “ Madre de Dios , don’t make me say it twice,” I whispered into my hands.

“You mean to say, Sam put you in charge of the fish-man,” he said in the most high-pitched voice I’d ever heard him use, “and you went and fell in love with it?”

“ Río ,” I corrected angrily. “Dammit, he’s not a thing !”

He yanked his cap off his head and paced across the walk. “But... I thought... you went with Sonia to Light the Night—”

“Yeah, God knows I regret it. I been trying to tell her I’m not the guy for her.”

“’Cause of Sam?”

“’Cause I ain’t made that way.”

Matthias’s face went slack. “I don’t believe it,” he murmured. “This whole time, I been thinking you was Mr. Shy Guy when really, you’re just like Humpty and Dumpty!”

“Who?”

“Eli and Emmett. You don’t want Sonia ’cause you don’t want ladies, full stop. I get that right?”

I stared down at the ground. “You gonna put that in your memoir?”

He teetered away from me, his hand over his mouth, then spun back. “Brother, I am far more concerned about what Sam’ll say when he finds out the merman who’s been giving him the cold shoulder since day one is playing Romeo and Julio with the hired hand.”

Dread snapped me back upright. “Shit, you’re not gonna tell him, are you?”

He blew a sharp breath through his nose. “Hell no! I value my peace too much to be the bearer of that news.”

We slipped into a tense silence. I figured Matthias probably needed a moment to let all this sink in, so a moment is what I gave him before nerves made me ask, “Does me being... you know... bother you?”

He shook his head. “Nah, brother. I been in the sideshow business for ten years, six of them with the twins. Men sweet on other men, ladies sweet on ladies, folks sweet on nobody at all—who cares so long as everyone’s living happy and hurtin’ no one?”

My relief mingled with gratitude and an entirely new appreciation for Matthias’s mightiness.

He dropped onto the empty space next to me on the step. “All right, so. You love him. He love you?”

I almost said no, but then I thought of the proud look on Río’s face after my first strokes in the water—of kisses against my eyelids and lines drawn over my heart with wet fingertips—and said, “Maybe.”

“And like”—he cleared his throat uncomfortably—“the tail and the fins and whatnot. That don’t bother you?”

“Aw, jeez , Matthias—”

“What! It’s an honest question!”

“Well, I dunno, on him they’re nice,” I admitted, my ears on fire. “When Río swims, Ave María , it’s like the most beautiful thing I ever seen.”

“Well butter my ass and call me toast,” he snorted. “I seen a ton o’ shit in sideshow work, but this takes more than the cake. This takes the whole goldang bakery!” Glancing sideways at me, he bumped my shoulder. “So, then, the two of you been...”

His eyebrows actually waggled at me.

“What? No! He never even kissed me before yesterday.”

“What’s with the wet hair, then?”

I shifted in my seat. “He’s teaching me to swim.”

Matthias laughed so loud I had to shush him. “I forgot your Caribbean ass can’t even swim! Holy shit, Benny, what does this merman even see in you?”

In spite of myself, I cracked a smile. “Who knows. Something. It don’t matter to him that I’m colored and speak Spanish, or that my whole family’s gone, or that he’ll outlive me by like a thousand years or something. It’s like what Igor said about his wife,” I murmured. “He just sees me, Matthias.”

“He sees you.”

Matthias leaned back on an elbow and cast me a bittersweet grin. “Benny, I’m happy you’re happy. I am. But how do you think this ends?” he asked quietly. “You think he’s still gonna feel tender for you when the crowds pour in to stare and laugh at him—as they inevitably will—meanwhile you’re standing around in the wings like the Porto Rican Statue o’ Liberty? What, is he gonna stay in that tank for the rest of eternity or however long fish people live?”

I looked back at the ground. I hadn’t considered that.

“Brother, you ain’t thought this through,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “Not by a long shot.”

“What if I don’t want to think it through?” I demanded. “Every day of my life, I’m thinking. About the next Officer Joey waiting around the corner. About how to keep my head down, how to perfect my impersonation of someone who’s lived here his whole life so no one figures out I’m not supposed to be here, how to work my way to liberty the way Americans are supposed to do.” I tore off my cap. “?Qué idiota!”

Matthias let his head hang. “Just because this country sold you the same thumper they sell everyone don’t make you an idiot.”

“Yeah, well, Río makes me feel free,” I said. “Like I don’t gotta prove anything—because he thinks I’m enough as I am. When I’m with Río, I feel like maybe all my dumb decisions weren’t so dumb if they brought me to him.”

“Damn, man.” Matthias propped his chin on his knuckles. “They could see the stars in your eyes from Staten Island. Look, I get it. You’re in love. But there ain’t no being free on the outside if you ain’t free on the inside, and that starts with accepting reality. What you have in that tank ain’t just a merman. He ain’t even your sweetheart. As soon as Sam sells his first ticket to the Prince of Atlantis show, you and I know exactly what he’ll be.”

My gut clenched around a sudden wave of nausea.

“So, the question is,” Matthias continued, “are you gonna free him?”

I gulped, and nothing but dry air went down. I had promised Río I’d return him to the sea.

But that was before he kissed me. Before he called me innocent and said holding me felt like holding the moon. Before Lulu told me she was glad I was one of the gang and Eli told me about Rudy and Lenny. Before Sonia told me what would happen to everyone if Morgan’s plans failed.

“It ain’t so simple,” I answered.

Matthias chewed on that for a second before getting to his feet and wedging his fists back into his pockets.

“Sure, it ain’t. But it’s what you’re gonna do. If not now, then eventually.”

I looked up at him. “How do you know?”

He shrugged. “You’re the one who said you loved him.”