Page 38

I slept beside Río’s tank like I’d left half my heart in the water. Once his hand had returned to its place across the glass from mine, sleep came instantly to him; meanwhile, I watched over his rest for as long as my tired eyes would let me, imagining I could still see through the scales and skin and feel the incomprehensible warmth of his spirit. I felt awed and grateful and too alive with the echoes of his music inside me to dwell on the chilly injustice of lying under a drop cloth where I couldn’t rest my head on his chest and hear his unhurried pulse.

Qué milagro. I understood what heartsong meant now.

When the blue tint of dawn filtered through the hopper window, I took myself home on boneless legs, detouring once to buy Río’s meal at the market so I’d at least have an alibi if Vera was out for a smoke again and happened to see me on my way in.

Only it wasn’t Vera waiting outside this time.

“Matthias?”

My voice stopped him mid-pace and he rushed at me, grabbing my shoulders so roughly he nearly shook the bundle out of my arms. “Get your ass back to the theater, and I mean now .”

My stomach dropped. “What’s happened?”

“Sam was just here looking for you,” he said in a loud whisper. “Practically kicked your door in, and as soon as he couldn’t find you, he grabbed Sonia and walked her out in her nightgown like a creampuff convict!”

I was too terrified to ask whether all my secrets—worst among them, my romantic affair with Morgan’s prized exhibit—had been spilled like blood before the entire company. “Breathe, kid,” Matthias said, reading my mind. “No one knows about that . Not yet, anyway.”

He spun me around but never got the chance to shove me back toward Surf Avenue.

I was already running.

The red curtain was wide open when I stumbled into the theater wheezing and coated in sweat.

Río was, of course, wide awake—and taut with fear. I jogged up the aisle and bypassed the tank toward Morgan’s tent, hiding my panic behind what I hoped was an encouraging smile in Río’s direction.

I passed through the tent flap directly into pipe smoke. In the middle of it sat Sam Morgan at his desk, dry but glowering, his lip scabbed and a shiner on his cheek courtesy of Lefty. The hand without a pipe in it held a liquor flask, which accounted for the Van Brunt saloon–like stink in there. Across from him, Sonia sat with her leg twitching like one of Timmy’s windup toys. She glanced up at me, then quickly resumed drilling her eyes into the floor.

Morgan set down the pipe. “Tell me, Benny,” he said, picking at a stick of drawing charcoal, “what exactly does a production assistant in training have to accomplish away from home at this hour of the morning?”

“Sorry you couldn’t find me. It’s just that”—I held up the small bundle of newspaper in my hand—“the market has the best cuts of fish if you go early.”

His bloodshot eyes raked across my features, and he leaned back in his chair. “Fish,” he intoned. “For the merman.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get right to the point,” he said in a low voice. “You spend an awful lot of time and resources on a beast that’s done little but stare daggers at us and prove itself—and, by extension, you —a worthless investment. What say you to that?”

I lifted my chin. Right into the smoke. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do.”

“Miss Kutzler claims you’ve spoken to it. Is that true?”

Here it was—the head-smelter I’d put off solving because I didn’t want to solve it. I’d had weeks to figure out what to say when Morgan inevitably came looking for reasons to throw me out, and sure enough, the moment had arrived and found me unprepared.

“Yes,” I said.

“ And? ” he snarled.

“And... he won’t take orders from you.”

Morgan’s curled lip dented the straight line of his mustache. “Now, you listen to me. This production has less than two weeks left before we open the gates to the public. The very future of Luna Park hangs on our success. I am out of time and out of money to spend on a tenement rat who caters to a merman’s whims and has nothing to show for it!”

Fire erupted behind my eyes, but I held it in check. Morgan got to his feet and leaned over the table, sending the sour whiff of booze up my nose.

“You’re done! Finished,” he barked. “Pack your things and get out of our establishment.”

Sonia sat up. “But Sam—”

“What I meant to say”—I matched his steely gaze with my own—“is that the merman only takes orders from me .”

The showman’s eyes bulged. He thwack ed down his pipe against the table. “Don’t toy with me.”

“I wouldn’t.”

I glanced at Sonia, still ashen and holding herself around the middle, then back at Morgan.

“The merman is stubborn,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about. “But I’ve earned his trust. He’ll listen to me.”

Morgan stared through two slits under his manicured eyebrows.

“Show me.”

I led the way back to the stage, slightly nauseous now that my heart was trying to make a run for it out the backside of my rib cage. When I finished walking, I found myself in the same spot Morgan had stood in only last night—before Vincenzo had leveled him.

Río sat in his shadowy corner, arms folded, tail tucked, and face concealed behind a curtain of dark hair. With the pump off, he had to have heard every word we’d said.

“Go on,” Morgan said. “Make a believer out of me.”

I walked a bit farther so I could reach between the bars and put my hand against the glass.

“Merman,” I said, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “would you come closer? So they can see you? Please?”

Río stared at me, unmoving. I could feel his alarm and confusion through the glass. God only knows what he was thinking after all that garbage I told Morgan.

“No one’s come to hurt you,” I tried again.

Still, Río didn’t budge. Behind me, Morgan growled. “The beast is laughing at us.”

“He’s not, he’s just...” My eyes lingered on the shadows of his face. They had deepened since the last time I’d seen him in the daylight.

“Tired,” I finished.

I leaned in close to the glass and whispered in Spanish so he alone could understand me. “Please. Give him something. Anything. Do not give him a reason to hurt you. I could not bear it.”

Río’s eyes lowered. The muscles in his jaw twitched. Slowly, he rose off the bottom of the tank and drifted toward me.

“Jiminy Cricket,” Sonia whispered.

When Río finally reached me, I smiled at him in a way I hoped hid how I truly felt, which was somewhere between wanting to empty the contents of my stomach and wanting to make like Lefty and backhand Morgan in the face. Río didn’t even look at me. It was a long moment before he lifted his hand and gently placed it on the glass against mine.

“Incredible,” breathed Morgan. “Go on, what else can it do?”

“Well, uh...”

An idea came. It was wild and ridiculous and a shot in the dark, but if it worked, it wouldn’t just exorcize Morgan’s rage—it would seal Río’s place in history as the most valuable curiosity in Coney Island, if not the world.

Once more I looked up pleadingly into Río’s silvery face and relied on my Spanish. “Do exactly as I say, my love,” I breathed. “Just until he has seen enough. Trust me.”

I looked back at Sonia and Morgan. Like I was taking over for Tití Luz again as lector of the tabaquería , I announced, “The Prince of Atlantis reigned over the East River when he followed the cry of a damsel in distress.”

Maintaining my fingers against the glass, I walked around the tank side to the ladder. Río followed uncertainly beside me.

“Her boat,” I continued, pointing to the roof of the tank, “drifted on the rough waters .”

Río’s lips pursed. I gave him my best I’ll-make-it-up-to-you grimace. Whether or not he bought it, he soared to the surface and swam in a wide circle around the top of the tank until the water became a swirling, churning rapid.

Meanwhile, I climbed up the rungs, stepped onto the lattice, and unwrapped the fish.

“Before it could capsize, the prince appeared...” Río’s face broke the surface, dripping and expressionless. I threaded my hand through the iron grill, the fish filet in my palm. He examined it through narrow eyes.

“The lady reached out to him. She begged for help.” Whispering, I added, “Por favor.”

With an almost imperceptible eye roll, he took it, then obediently replaced it with his fingertips.

“My word,” came Morgan’s voice from below, thick with emotion. “When you said it would listen to you, I never thought—but never mind what I thought! This! This is miraculous!”

I gently pulled my fingers away from Río and looked down over the edge at our audience. Morgan’s hands were fastened on his hair, his mouth stretched in a crazed smile like the Funny Face on the wall at Steeplechase Park. Sonia’s expression was stranger: she bit her lip like a disobedient thought was caught between her teeth.

“Do you understand what you’ve done here?” he said, beginning to pace around the foot of the tank. “No one in the history of mankind has ever tamed a merman, but look—he’s practically a poodle! My God, the crowds will go positively fanatical at the sight of him!”

“Then Benny should be in the show.”

We both gaped at Sonia. “?Perdóname?” I choked as Morgan simultaneously said, “Beg your pardon?”

“The merman won’t do any of that for you or me, Sam,” she said. “It’s Benny it listens to, so Benny’s gotta be onstage. We’ll build him right into the act!”

Morgan’s glee shriveled. “Benny is completely unseasoned—”

“He can do impressions! He can sound like anyone you’ve ever met, I’ve heard it!” she insisted. “And he plays the guitar!”

The way she was talking me up, I felt like one of those all-in-one fire extinguishers at Sears, Roebuck, and Co., priced up just for the illusion of being useful. “Sonia, stop—”

“Can he?” Morgan gawped.

“No. I can’t,” I said, louder.

“Just think of it, Sam...” Sonia put a hand on Morgan’s shoulder. He glanced down at it with restrained derision. “You could narrate while me ’n’ Benny did all the work. I’ll train him up myself. He don’t need nothin’ but some polish.”

Morgan sized me up with the same veiled skepticism he’d had the day he discovered the skinny, asthmatic Puerto Rican had designed his custom tank. He reached a wary decision.

“You and you,” he said, jabbing a finger at each of us. “Seven days to sort out your performance. I’ll redraft the script tonight.”

I’d thought my heart couldn’t sink any lower, but at that moment it buried itself in the sand under the Luna Park firmament. I clung to the iron lattice like a pigeon on a wire, wondering what new hell I’d just created for myself. I looked down for Río’s impression of all this, but he’d become a blob of blue-green and silver under the water.

“Yes, sir,” I wheezed.

“It’s Sam to you!” Morgan glanced cheerfully at his pocket watch. “Go home and alert the others that Benny has been added to our cast. Then it’s back here, Benny, to finish the floors. I’ll be returning to my studio for the next few days, seeing as Mr. Caldera needs a poster.” He produced a comb from his pocket, spit on it, and ran it through his rumpled hair. “And Sonia, try for pity’s sake. You look ridiculous in that frock.”

Sonia scowled at the back of his head as he left, while I climbed down the rungs. At the bottom, I crumpled the newspaper from Río’s fish, at which point she remembered I was there and turned to meet my dismay.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded.

She shrank away from me for only a second before glazing her face in another winning sonrisa . “You can thank me later.”

“ Thank you? Christ, you don’t know what you’ve done!”

“What you’ve done, you mean! Jeez, Benny, you did so great,” she crooned, her voice gooey with excitement. “Morgan was happy as a clam in high tide—”

“Sonia, I ain’t a performer! Neither is the merman!”

Her grin twisted skeptically. “Sure could’ve fooled me.”

“That was just for Morgan!” I paced in a small circle, bashing the newspaper into a tighter ball. “It was hard enough making him do that act for two people. He’s never been in front of a crowd—”

“Oh, honestly.” Sonia’s arms flopped down at her sides like I was nuts for missing the crackling potential of this whole sham. “The Albemarle is busting with folks who never thought they’d ever wind up in front of a crowd. Your pal in there is gonna be a star! The tourists will wrap around Surf Avenue just to see it!”

“ Him .”

“Him, flim, whatever he is, he’s gonna save the park! Aw, come on , Benny...” She hooked her arm on mine and steered me down the stairs into the audience. “You remember how scared you was the first time you rode the Circle Swing? You trusted me not to walk you off a cliff and look what a great time you had. Can’t you trust me now?”

I peered over my shoulder at Río. He was facing the wall, but his ear was trained on us, visible just beneath his billowing hair. I gently removed her hand from my arm. “What about Light the Night?”

A shadow passed over her face and disappeared. “What about it?”

“Sonia. You kissed me .”

Her pale face reddened. “It was a mistake, all right? We were dancing and I was spilling my guts and you were being so damn nice ...” She shook off the thought like she was shaking off a fly and sat down on a bench. “Benny, is it so hard to believe I’m just trying to help out a friend? You are my friend, right?”

“I am,” I said, and I meant it. “I just didn’t think friends spied on each other.”

Sonia’s eyes darted to the ceiling and back. “I just wanted to see where you kept disappearing to every night. I regretted it as soon as I walked in and heard you... splashing around in there.”

My stomach lurched. “What else did you hear?”

“Enough to know you’re more of a conversationalist with that thing than you are with the rest of us,” Sonia pouted. “You might’ve let somebody know it spoke English.”

“If you heard us talk, then you know he’s not a thing,” I said quietly.

“Fine. And since he’s not a thing, he oughta thank me too. Everything’s jake now!” She leapt to her feet. “Little Frankie and his goons’ll be over the moon! With all the money the show rakes in, we could get out of Lulu’s hotel and get our own homes—in Sheepshead ! Leave Coney Island to the out-of-towners, and come in on the train for work like all them highfalutin Long Islanders do. And Benny ,” she gasped, holding out a palm at a blindingly bright something in the distance, “you’re gonna be famous .”

“Aw, lay off the absinthe, Sonia—”

“I’m serious! Once your name’s up on that wall, kiddo, everything changes. The hotter the summer gets, the louder they cheer. Ain’t no feeling like it. You’re a god among men, you can live forever!”

I once cast fences for houses like the one Sonia dreamed of. Wondered what it was like on the other end of the custom order—to be the sort of yanqui whose happiness got bought in cash. But what was the point of a big Long Island house without someone to share it with?

As for being a god among men, Río made me feel that way every time he touched me.

“What about the merman?” I murmured.

“I dunno, he gets all the fish he wants?” She laughed. “With the money he rakes in, he can have his own lake with the pretty coral decorations like them fancy aquaterrariums in Castle Garden if it’ll make him happy.”

That wasn’t likely. Río was fond of coral reefs. Real ones.

At my lack of enthusiasm, Sonia’s sparkle waned. “I dunno what else to tell you. If you care about your friend in there, you’ll convince him to put on a show,” she said with pleading eyes. “If he won’t, it ain’t just his life on the line. It’s everyone’s.”

I looked past her at the theater—a box of wood and plaster I’d spent nearly two months painting, restoring, and polishing until the pantheon on the walls looked alive. Like every other job I’d ever done with my two hands, it was precise and perfect, because I’d never accepted anything less from myself, nor had anyone else.

Río was right. Between his tank and this theater, we were both caged. And my hands had crafted our prisons.

“Let’s go home.” Sonia tugged my arm. “You’ll feel better after breakfast.”

I nodded numbly. “I’ll meet you at the gate. Gotta turn the pump back on.”

With Sonia off my arm and headed toward the entrance, I climbed the steps to look in on Río a last time before I’d have to ruin the quiet with steam-powered chugging. I was going batty wondering what he thought of all this, but when I arrived at the glass, Río was sleeping, his back toward me.

In the center of the tank lay the fish I’d bought him, untouched.