Page 41

T he hours until dawn were a drowsy stretch of tears, asthma, and nightmares of Playa del Condado after the hurricane. In them, my nose clogged with the unbreathable stench of corpses floating facedown around my legs until their bloated hands took me by the ankles and dragged me under. I woke up with Saul’s sheets in my mouth and, with the added insult of a pounding headache, decided I’d slept enough.

That same day, an unseasonable heat descended on the city. It was only the second week of May, but seemingly overnight, the temperatures had climbed high enough to draw a fair number of city folk away from the unventilated tenements and fetid sunbaked streets out to Manhattan Beach. They came seeking the sea breeze, but there didn’t seem to be any breeze at all.

On my way into work, loudmouths in stained coveralls trudged around Luna Park with ladders, toolboxes, and carts full of bricks, lightbulbs, and steaming vats of pitch. Familiar as I was with tropical heat, I worked up a sweat just looking at them and tried to ignore the itch as my wool pants stuck to me like wallpaper.

I’d just reached the ballroom when a shrill sound from inside the Menagerie made my heart nearly give out on the promenade.

A whistle.

I exploded into the theater. “Hey... HEY!”

Morgan stood next to Río’s tank with a brand-new metal pipette between his lips hooked from a chain around his neck. He spit it out. “Benny, do you mind ?”

“You can’t use that thing!” I shouted.

Sonia, observing from the center aisle, wasted no time getting right in my way. “Benny, Benny, everything’s jake, all right?” she coaxed softly, pushing me backward. “Why don’t we let them have a moment?”

“What? No! ” I shoved past her. “His ears can’t take the sound, Sam! It hurts him!”

Morgan slanted an incredulous look at me. “A few weeks of soaking codfish, and suddenly you’re the expert,” he scoffed. “As I recall, I taught you about their sensitive ears.”

Then he didn’t care. “But what’s he done? Why are you punishing him?”

“Escort Benny to the museum, Sonia. I’ll be along when I’m through with our session here.”

Sonia recommenced yanking my arm, but I was staring at Río. He braced himself against the wall with a hand on his ear. The reams of daylight across his back gave him a sickly, matte pallor as if his iridescence had gotten washed out with dirty laundry water. His skin had paled overnight like leaves left too long in the dark.

“Come on,” said Sonia, yanking harder. “We’ll talk outside. I can clear things up.”

I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to rush the stage. One swift tackle, and I’d force-feed Morgan that maldito whistle until his inhales sounded as reedy mine. Instead, I snapped my arm out of Sonia’s grip and strode past her into the hallway, watching Río over my shoulder until he disappeared behind the swinging doors.

As soon as her feet crossed the museum threshold, I got right in her face. “What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “ I’m the one who looks after Río, not Morgan!”

“What’s a ‘río’?”

“The merman!” I started pacing as an alternative to kicking walls. “ Madre de Dios , I should’ve gotten him out when I had the goddamn chance!”

Sonia gaped at me like I was concussed. “It’s just a whistle , you maniac!”

I whipped around, and she shrank back.

“You’ve never seen me be a maniac. But just wait until I hear that sound again.”

The thud of the partition doors announced Morgan’s arrival. I turned to find him staring at me with an irritated dent in his mustache, his new torture device swinging loosely from his neck.

“For a green performer, you’ve certainly learned how to make an entrance,” he intoned.

I had to cool my head. Without a grip on my rage, I’d lose something a lot more precious to me than my job. “I’m just a little... confused,” I said haltingly. “See, I thought I was the merman’s keeper. Wasn’t that why you wanted me in the show?”

He turned a scolding eye on Sonia. “Miss Kutzler hasn’t told you?”

My eyes jerked in her direction to find her standing behind the reupholstered dragon.

“She telephoned last night,” Morgan continued. “Helped me realize it might look a bit odd for our newest member to debut as a merman tamer. Thought it might send something of a mixed message to see the creature obedient to an unknown when it’s my surname on the awning. Isn’t that right, Sonia?”

Morgan’s words seemed to wrap around my windpipe and squeeze. “But he won’t obey you.”

“You think not?” he said in mock consideration. “Because it’s certainly been very responsive to this little gem I picked up downtown.” He held up the whistle, and a fresh wave of revulsion spider-crawled down my neck.

“Now, I understand the natural desire to be important ,” Morgan went on with icy detachment. “You’ve broken the beast in, well done for that. But I’ll advise you not to let your head get too big lest you lose it next time you question my methods.”

“I’m sorry,” I said without defining what I was sorry for, or to whom. “But if it’s all the same, I’d still like to be in the show.”

“And do what? Put on a tail and make yourself a member of the prince’s royal court?”

“I’m a musician. I’ve got my cuatro . The act might benefit from some Caribbean”—I broke off in search of the right English word—“atmosphere?”

He shot me a cynical smirk. “‘Caribbean atmosphere.’ By that you mean humid and oppressively hot?”

“With all due respect, New York City’s already humid and oppressively hot.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Sonia chimed in suddenly, her mouth already plastered in her trademark sonrisa . “We could set the scene in the tropics, couldn’t we?” She turned to me. “What can you play?”

“Boleros, mostly,” I said warily. “Music from my homeland.”

“Don’t sell me a dog, Sonia,” huffed Morgan. “What on earth would Coney Island tourists know about... whatever he’s talking about?”

“Nothing, of course!” Sonia was reviving a bit now that she was solving problems again. “And all the better. Anything they’re dancing to down in Cuba—”

“Porto Rico,” I inserted.

“—is exotic! And exciting!” she continued. “I’m imagining palm trees, an ocean backdrop. We’ll build a sandy beach right on the stage...”

Incredibly, Morgan looked poised to take the bait. “A nighttime scene, perhaps...”

“With a moon! And this way, Benny gets to stay in the show without having to worry about”—she glanced at me—“anything else.”

What the hell is her angle?

Morgan’s frigid gaze passed between Sonia and me as though he was seriously questioning whatever wisdom had compelled him to employ us in the first place. Finally, he blew out a sigh reeking of pipe smoke and brandy. “You’re both lucky I’m in a good mood,” he muttered. “We’ll try it. Goodness knows we could use the extra flair when our special patrons decide to visit.”

I faked a tight smile. “I’ll just go back for my cuatro —”

“No,” he said tersely. “We need the second greenroom cleared to house those exotic set pieces before we can start building. Move the food and salt to the stables. And keep away from the tank lest the merman forget who its master is. Understood?”

Carajo . I might have seen that coming. “Understood. But...” Whatever I said next had to tread that thin line between persuasive and pushy. “Couldn’t you try something less painful than a whistle?”

“Mr. Caldera.” His mustache twitched. “The pain is the point.”

He straightened his waistcoat and strode back through the doors and down the hall, away from us.

Sonia relaxed next to me. Or a girl who looked a lot like her, anyway. After that maldito dance in the ballroom, someone had hollowed her out and installed a scab in her place.

“You don’t know what you’ve done,” I whispered.

“I was only thinking of you—”

“No, you were only thinking of you . You must think I’m an idiot. I could see it on your face before Timmy busted in on us like a pint-sized tornado. You know exactly what Río means to me!”

“Benny,” she whispered with forced patience, “he’s not human. No matter what you think you feel, it ain’t real.”

“What do you know about what’s real?” I hissed. “You spend six months out of the year pretending to be someone else in a plaster fantasy land! Your name’s not even Sonia!”

Her frown hardened, adding years to her face. “That’s rich coming from you! Getting steamrolled every day by a buncha sooty ruffians in a Red Hook factory—was that where you felt more real?” she snapped, tears brimming. “You think you can stick someone like me in a kitchen somewhere with eight kids hangin’ off my apron strings while my old man digs ditches? That life’s the bigger lie, Benny! Look around you. Luna Park might be a fantasy land, but this show is where I live , and it don’t work if you’re sweet on the headliner!”

“ Santa María, there won’t be a show if Río dies!”

For once, Sonia didn’t have a smart retort. “What’re you saying?”

“I’m saying to hell with this goddamn Menagerie.” My broken voice grated against my own ears. “And to hell with me too.”

Sonia stood there with wide, wet eyes. I pushed past her into the hallway, past the empty rectangle where my stupid poster would be hung, while the tinny screech of Morgan’s whistle echoed off the Grecian friezes right into the marrow of my bones.

But between my ears, I was louder. Screaming inside my own head, as Río swam in an obedient circle at the top of the tank. On the next turn, he spied me through the bars—from across a universe, it seemed—then looked quickly away before Morgan could catch him.

I didn’t have to wonder what had changed. In a body that was turning against him, Río’s last recourse for survival was to do what I’d become an expert at doing my whole life.

Comply.

There was no anger in his face. I wished there was. Rage meant he still had fight in him, and God knows I deserved it. I locked the door behind me in the windowless greenroom and gripped the sides of the nearest crate as my stomach convulsed. The burn of vomit followed, surging up my throat like phosphoric acid on rusted steel.

And, like every urge to let out what I felt, I choked it back down.