Page 47

A gainst all odds, previews day had arrived. My housemates formed a dazed line to the bathtub to rinse off the night’s sweat and ready themselves, greeting me with smiles haunted by the unspoken question no one could answer: Would the Menagerie live to see another day?

Would Río?

We arrived at Luna Park an hour before the gates opened. Though the rest of the city had shut down from the heat, the park had come alive. Fresh paint glowed under a potent sun, a cacophony of pipe organ music and outside talkers competed with the growl of roller coasters undergoing their final tests. Sprays of flowers now hung from the bright white archways and canopies overhead.

In the hall to the theater, the newest addition to the lineup of posters on the wall made me stop in my tracks—I’d completely missed it on the way out.

Beside the Prince of Atlantis painting was a shirtless and slighter version of me filling the center of an oval frame. He screamed extranjero , with his straw hat, small guitar, and the words “The Caribbean Balladeer” over his head in the same lavish font as everyone else’s.

After I terminated my stage career to become a criminal, maybe Vera could light a match to it.

“Gosh, this place looks good enough to save us,” Lulu mused as we passed through the theater. “We been so busy, I forgot to notice.”

Madam Navya’s admiring grin caught my eye. “Well done, Mr. Benny. The Menagerie is reborn,” she said, and murmurs of agreement rippled through the company.

“Reborn to die,” Matthias said through the side of his mouth.

Sonia scuffled gloomily toward the greenroom doors. “It’s just as well. You’re gonna have to scrape my melted remains off the stage today when I die standing on my head in this heat,” she said.

“You don’t gotta spend all day strapped to this gamey knucklehead,” Eli said, which Emmett rewarded with a gentle thwap to his chest.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, but you can all feck off,” Vera snapped as she dug around in Sonia’s handbag for lip rouge. “None o’ you is breathing actual fire .”

We dressed in amiable silence after that. Halfway through buttoning my vest, I got my first view of Lulu’s handiwork on everyone at once. The costumes made a bright—and American—complement to my refinished facades. So much red, white, and blue.

I barely recognized myself in the mirror. Lulu resisted Sam’s instructions to “accentuate my heritage” with a straw hat and unbuttoned linen shirt, though a part of me wished she hadn’t now that I was boiling in sticky heat like a human sancocho . She dressed me in a billowing off-white satin thing with a drawstring collar over earthy-brown pantalones cinched at the waist by an ocean-blue sash.

I looked like a damn pirate.

Vera plucked Eli’s pocket watch off the table and held it up. “Speech time, lads.”

Waiting for us in the renovated museum, clean, pressed, and a little deranged in his lime-green suit, was Sam Morgan, who’d finally dropped the frayed scowl he’d worn all week in exchange for a toothy Steeplechase smile of his own. With the promise of mutiny on the literal horizon, everyone tried a little too hard to look excited—except Matthias, who stood on the edge of the circle like a man reliving his most boring memory.

“Gather round, everyone, gather round,” said Morgan, hastily corralling Eli and Emmett who moved like molasses stuffed together in a single pair of pants.

“Prepare yourselves for an historic day,” he began. “I am told that beyond the gates wait nearly two hundred spectators, braving sun and deadly heat to experience an attraction unlike any the world has ever seen—and you can rely on that number to double by the time the doors open!”

Everyone’s eyes widened—even Matthias’s—which I guessed boded well for Morgan’s profits.

“Never again will anyone regard Morgan’s Menagerie of Oddities as some common stick and rag show,” he went on. “After today, we will forevermore be the standard-bearer for all sideshow amusements. After all”—he gave a slightly manic chuckle—“the future of this production depends on it.”

Lulu caught my eye, inhaled deeply, then looked away, her anxiety safely hidden under the fuzzy peluca on her face.

“Now then. Who’d like to recite the code of conduct?” Sam continued.

Sonia raised her hand. “Smile wide, don’t speak unless spoken to, and if someone gets handsy, it’s no refunds.”

“Capital. Today’s schedule: You will be out on the promenade for the morning, exerting your world-renowned talents and appeal to ensure that all of Luna Park’s patrons are reminded of the where and when of our show. Curtain goes up at two o’clock. The Menagerie act is first, followed by the Prince of Atlantis.”

I tugged at my shirt and pulled out San Cristóbal . The later in the day Río had to perform, the worse his condition would be.

“Now then. Smile wide and keep them coming back for more! Our most esteemed patrons will be”—he tugged on his bow tie—“watching.”

Everyone turned to head for the stage, where I was headed too before a gloved finger to my chest stopped me.

“ You are not in the Menagerie performance,” Morgan said. “Hence, while the rest of the company is advertising the show, you’ll open all the theater windows to ventilate the space, and then it’s back to the ticket counter. Fifty cents a head. Tear the tickets, place the stubs in the box. And don’t forget to relocate that eyesore of a circulation pump outside the barn doors before the performance. Can you handle all that?”

My eyes bulged in my attempt to resist rolling them. “I can handle it.”

“Good. Return the box to my tent for counting later. If for any reason the ticket stubs do not match the number inside the box, it will come out of your pay. Understood?”

From craftsman to hired hand to common thief. I was so goddamn tired of people deciding who I was.

“Yes, sir.”

By the time I took my place at the front door, the line to enter had wrapped around the promenade. More surprising than the sheer count of people was the variety of them—ladies in plumed hats and white lingerie dresses next to working-class immigrants with giggling children clinging to their knees. Clusters of young men and women fanned themselves in the shade of their parasols, laughing and bochinchando in each other’s ears. I wondered if they’d even known each other before they met at the—

Wait a second. I knew those faces.

That lemon-peel smile belonged to Farty Walsh. And across from him was Dan.

“ Sea la madre ,” I cussed under my breath.

Already wheezing in the heat, I glanced down at the spectacle I made in my Caribbean pirata getup and growled another stream of profanity under my breath that Tití Luz would have sent me to church to repent for.

There was nothing to do but tear the tickets and pray Farty and Dan were still a couple of unobservant idiotas .

Which, apparently, they were. When I took their money, their eyes didn’t so much as trip over my face, occupied as they were with the bosoms of the ladies they’d brought with them, those sinvergüenzas .

My nerves hadn’t even begun to settle when I recognized another set of faces. Three men dressed neatly in three-piece linen suits, with matching bowler hats between them.

Frankie Agostinelli—Righty and Lefty beside him in their respective spots—had arrived.

“Fifty cents, please,” I mumbled, holding out his ticket stub with my palm up for the change.

“Nah, kid.” He reached over and plucked the ticket out of my fingers. “Morgan knows me and my brothers get in gratis.”

He touched the rim of his bowler in salute. They disappeared into the museum.

Que Dios nos ayude.

Morgan’s theater could seat three hundred and fifty people and hold four hundred with standing room open. I’d torn almost as many tickets before the light over my head started blinking and I had to turn guests away. I locked the doors and made my way through the museum, the spectators packed like pickles in a very hot barrel as they scoured for open seats inside the auditorium. “Two quarters says the merman’s a fake,” came a deep voice from over my shoulder.

“It’s obviously a fake,” laughed the voice next to it. “I just wanna see ’em try to hoodwink us.”

I gripped San Cristóbal all the way to the greenroom and tried to clear the whistle from my chest. Between trading words with mobsters and my near brush with Farty and Dan, my anxiety wasn’t giving up its stranglehold on my windpipe any time soon.

At five minutes to start time, Morgan flashed the house lights. With the pump removed, the theater went deadly quiet as the company gathered in the wings. I poked my head behind the curtain hoping to see Río but couldn’t make him out. The hopper window was shuttered, casting everything in darkness except for a thin band of yellow light where the red velvet met the stage.

The Menagerie performance would unfold in front of the curtain, preserving the surprise of Río’s presence. From the proscenium, I watched Vera stride confidently onto the apron to a swell of applause holding an unlit torch and a tin cup, which she placed at her feet. Out of a pocket in her bustle came her lighter, which she flipped open with a flourish to produce a small flame, inviting the front row to touch it before snatching it away with a teasing grin.

Once she’d stirred up the audience’s craving for a demonstration of her might, she took a swig from her tin cup, and foom! Fire blasted out over the cowering crowd, inciting a surge of cheers.

“Behold our fire-breathing phoenix, Miss Vera!” Morgan shouted. “Isn’t she a marvel with a flame?”

The crowd answered with more whoops and clapping.

“Welcome, one and all, to Morgan’s Menagerie of Oddities! And, speaking of marvels,” he said ominously, “I know what you are all here to see. What lies beyond this curtain will do more than shock and astound you. It shall rend the fabric of reality as you come face-to-face with a creature of myth and legend: the very Prince of Atlantis himself!”

The words blew out a candle in my chest. Peeking around to the front side of the curtain, I saw Morgan on his podium, top hat in one hand and cane in the other, gesturing widely to an audience lavishing him with roaring cheers and laughter.

“But first! Here to delight and entertain you—your favorite and mine—the Menagerie of Oddities Shooooowwww!”

Lulu, who couldn’t be on her feet for long in the heat, was next on the program, so she pulled her shoulders back, tilted up her bearded chin, and walked elegantly out onto the stage in her queenly attire. Timmy sat atop a stack of salt crates between Sonia and me, quiet as a mouse—or rather, quiet as a boy who’d been raised by sideshow performers and knew not to make a racket while his mother was working.

“Some folks wear scarves during the winter,” she announced haughtily. “Me? I grew my own. Do you like it?”

She stroked her fake beard as laughter pealed through the crowd. My heart ached to hear it, but her smile didn’t waver. She simply lifted her chin higher and strode about the stage until, as they’d rehearsed, she invited Morgan to give her beard a pull to prove it was real.

One by one, the company took the stage, putting on their respective máscaras before venturing in front of the crowd to be gawked, giggled, and pointed at. It’s exactly what everyone on the stage had invited them to do—for fifty cents a head.

What a strange country America was.

After Matthias’s final act ended the hour-long show with his signature feat of strength paired with Sonia’s feat of flexibility, Morgan returned to his podium and Sonia and Matthias returned to the wings. There, Lulu, Vera, and Madam Navya hurried to help Sonia into her next costume—a little red boat that hung from straps over her shoulders with a hole cut out for her stockinged legs.

“Thank you, thank you, mightiest of men,” cried Morgan, “but! We’re not done yet! Brooklyn may be hot, but I daresay the fun is sizzling here in Coney Island! Are you enjoying yourselves?”

Cheers. Always more cheers. Like a magician, Morgan put a finger to his lips and the sound ceased.

“Behind this curtain lies what you’ve all journeyed from the farthest reaches of New York to see. And I have one question! Are you ready to behold this wonder of the deep?”

Four hundred people screamed “Yes!” and my heart plummeted into my bare feet.

“Only at Morgan’s Menagerie of Oddities will you witness this miracle of God’s own creation: a living—breathing— merman !” bellowed Morgan, and the audience, ravenous for more, squealed with delight. “I give you, the Prince of Atlantis !”

Igor pulled on the rope. The curtain swung smoothly open.

Front-row spectators let out a collective gasp at the sight of Río in the tank. Behind me, Navya whispered, “God forgive us.”

Río lay in a heap against the glass. His tail was limp, his back turned to the audience and heaving with the effort of breathing. I smothered my mouth with my fist to hold in a noise that would give away my horror.

The crowd gawked in silence with no idea what to make of what they saw in the cloudy water.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your eyes do not deceive you,” Morgan called out grandly from the podium before stepping off with a flourish of his cane toward the tank. “He is flesh and blood—the rarest beast in the ocean—lured from the Caribbean Sea. Shall I tell you the tale?”

What would it take to break the glass? What would trying do to my fists?

“Benny. Benny ,” hissed Sonia, making panicked guitar--strumming gestures with her hands.

“Shall I tell you the tale ?” Morgan repeated.

Cono , my cue! I dropped my hand from my mouth and placed it on the frets of my instrument. Morgan watched me out of the corner of his eye as I stepped numbly onto the stage.

Wooden as I was, standing there in a stupid pirate outfit with my cuatro , I found I had no stage fright; the audience had become a mass of faceless heads. I started playing “La Palomita,” and Morgan’s shoulders relaxed.

“Imagine palm trees. Golden sand. Not Long Island, but another island left to bake in the equator, the air oppressive and thick. You stand in the eye of Phoebus,” he said in a voice dripping with drama. “If the young lady only knew she would never reach her destination!”

Behind me, I knew what was happening without turning to look. Sonia had stepped out in her barquito costume, her chest out and arms arching wide toward a crowd revived by her presence. Just like we rehearsed.

“On a stormy night, her steamship capsizes”—cue Sonia climbing the rungs to the roof of the tank—“and lo! She is adrift! Alone in the Devil’s Triangle with no food, no water! No hope for return!”

Clinging to the iron bars with a single stockinged leg, she turned herself upside down, the back of her hand over her forehead in a swoon as the audience gasped.

I continued to play, but I was counting too. Each chord, each spoken line registered in my mind like a tick of the clock while Morgan laid the drama on thick under the full moon I’d built. Sonia made her way onto the lattice, pretended to call for help, and swooned some more. Morgan was about to say, “And then, she saw the creature.”

That was Río’s cue. He was meant to rise to the top of the tank. To swim in a wide circle before breaking the surface to reach toward Sonia, who would regard him with false terror.

“And then , she saw the creature!”

Still strumming my cuatro , my eyes flitted toward the tank.

Río’s back stayed turned to the audience.

Morgan tittered nervously. “Aha. Just like a prince. It wishes the lady would not disturb his slumber! Poor maiden!”

Sonia, ever the consummate show-woman, feigned impatience and tapped her foot, prompting trickles of laughter from the crowd. The rest of the company watched warily in the wings. My fingers played. My eyes scrutinized Río’s back.

Still breathing...

“Hey, King o’ Queens!” a man called out. “Are ya dead?”

Whispers and giggles swept through the audience like noisy spirits. Morgan laughed jovially along with the heckler, taking several steps backward until he was level with Río’s tank and me. When he turned to face the glass, his face was lit with fury.

He knocked on the iron bars with his cane. “Look alive, merman,” he growled under his breath. “Your public awaits.”

The music stopped. I looked down at my hand and realized it had grabbed Sam’s wrist.

More astonishingly, words were coming out of my mouth.

“Don’t. Do. That.”

Morgan’s eyes flitted toward the crowd, then back to me. Panic or fury or both had reduced his pupils to tiny black points.

“Oi, that’s Benny!”

No sooner had I registered the sound of Farty’s voice than the sharp fin on Río’s back flared out. Four hundred people gasped in unison.

Water burbled as Río pulled himself up on his arms, his shoulders hunched, eyes squeezed shut, and teeth gritted with effort.

“My God,” breathed a tearful lady in the front, her hand at her throat. “He’s real.”

I let go of Morgan’s wrist. “Let me,” I whispered.

He said nothing but pulled his cane back. I knelt next to the tank and let my fingers move across the strings in their familiar dance.

And I began to sing: “ Llévame, Río, hasta el mar, sobre las olas de agua cristal ...”

Río turned his face toward me with deep shadows cut into his cheeks and eyes.

“ Porque soy un muchacho al que le gusta cantar. Con tritones y sirenas, me gustaría bailar. ”

I had no assurances that he would perform as Morgan had hoped. That wasn’t my goal. I simply sang to comfort mi amado . To remind him where he was going as soon as the path to his liberation was clear.

“ ‘Acercate más, amante del mar,’ ” I sang. “ Dijo las olas de agua cristal ...”

With a strained breath of water, he pushed off the floor and began to rise toward the surface.

His body had lost its strength, yet somehow retained all its majesty and grace, leaving the entire theater frozen in the grip of awe as he moved. Slowly, slowly, his hand reached up toward Sonia.

“ El ritmo que sientes, la tentación fluvial, el latido de mi corazón es tu cantal. ”

The moment his face broke through the water, Sonia’s persona vanished. With wet eyes, she threw off the red barquito strapped to her shoulders and lowered onto her belly so she could thread both her arms through the bars.

As their hands touched, a wall of sound—applause and cheers—shook the stage under my feet. It wasn’t done; there was more to the act, but even Morgan couldn’t deny the impossibility of expecting more from Río at that moment. It didn’t matter anyway. By the deafening noise, it was clear enough that the Prince of Atlantis debut act had already succeeded.

Sonia’s tears fell through the bars into the cloudy water. Morgan’s lips curled in triumph.

And Río...

His head dipped back under, and he turned slowly toward the crowd. Through the glass, he regarded them, not with judgment, but with a distant sort of confusion in his eyes. This human crowd could never think of him in terms of flesh and blood, thought and feeling. His existence was wrapped in a story they could consume far more easily than the truth of his enslavement.

Like every foreigner, Río seemed to become more imaginary in person.

Ten minutes later, I found myself back outside the Menagerie, blinded by sunlight and wheezing from the heat. Morgan, somehow both pleased and irritated with my role in engaging Río’s participation, had shoved me out the door to guard against loiter-ers or folks trying to sneak back in for a closer look at the star attraction. Already, a massive crowd had formed on the promenade to accost anyone who’d been lucky enough to get a ticket for the preview.

“Please, I have to know—is it worth coming back tomorrow?” one lady asked another on her way onto the promenade.

“Deary,” she replied breathlessly, touching the other woman’s arm. “You’ve never seen anything more be- yoo -tee-ful in your life!”

At least I agreed with these yanquis on something.

“Well, if it ain’t the Porto Rican pox,” said a voice over my shoulder. “How’s it goin’, Wheezy?”

I swiveled to discover Farty and Dan linked to a pair of ruddy-faced girls about Sonia’s age, all of them grinning like they were about to make a meal out of me.

“Didn’t recognize you in them pirate togs. Thinkin’ we should change your name to Black Beardless,” Farty sniggered.

“Yeah, did you bury your treasure out there on Brighton Beach?” asked Dan. “Been donkey’s years since we seen Wheezy, eh, Marty?”

“Seems like only yesterday he’d got hisself sacked for being sloppy on the furnace.”

I gestured mechanically to the promenade. “Time to clear out. Show’s over.”

“What’s the matter?” laughed Farty. “This here’s a happy reunion! It’s nice to see you embracing your true nature, Benny.”

“Yeah, who’d’ve thought a manky freak show would suit him so well?”

Farty elbowed Dan in the side, sneering. “I did, ya eedjit.”

Over a good-natured grin, my eyes narrowed to slits. “Shame Dreamland’s closed today,” I said. “They got a ride there called Hell Gate. Two dimes says you’ll feel right at home.”

The girls started sniggering, and Farty shook his arm free to stride into my face, leaving Dan scowling behind him.

“What was that Spanish tripe you was singing, Wheezy? A love song?” he sneered. “That thing in the tank your sweetheart? Did you lob the gob with the dolphin in there?” He grabbed my shirt and started making kissing noises in my face.

Without consulting my brain, my hand drew back, closed in a fist.

Then it buried itself in Farty’s stomach.

The girls yelped as he doubled over, gasping, and crumpled to the floor. Between them and Farty stood Dan, his face slack with astonishment at what I’d done. I was pretty surprised, myself.

My first leveler.

“Come on, Dotty, let’s scram,” said Farty’s companera . Tugging on the other girl’s arm, they hurried away while Dan called after them and looked like he couldn’t tell whether sticking by his fallen friend was worth it if entertainment of the feminine persuasion was gonna split.

“Y-you... y-you’re gonna pay f-f-for that,” Farty gasped at my feet.

“Out of my way,” shouted Madam Navya, who wove nimbly through the crowd to stand next to me. “What nonsense is occurring out here, Mr. Benny? Do you know these men?”

“I used to work with these two pendejos , or as you would call them”—I gestured down at Farty, then up at Dan—“two khoti’am da puttar blocking the damn door.”

Beaming, Navya bumped her elbow into my knee. “Remind me to teach you more Hindi.”

Dan wrinkled his nose. “What’d you call me?”

“Means sons o’ donkeys.” Matthias parted the crowd like Moses to join Navya and me.

He eyed Farty and Dan like they were stains on nice upholstery. “Or as I prefer to say, a couple o’ meaters with dung for brains making their last stupid decision before I punt their asses back to Erin.”

Farty and Dan’s faces both went paper white. “Now, w-we don’t want no t-trouble, strongman,” stammered Dan, standing over his friend like a shield.

“We was just having some fun, f-for old time’s sake,” added Farty in a strangled voice. “Wasn’t we, Benny?”

“I say we light up the little gobshites.” Vera materialized on the other side of Matthias with a newly lit cigarillo. “That’d be fun for me.”

She casually flicked it onto Farty’s lap.

“Oi! Argh!” Farty and Dan flapped and flailed at the smoking thing, yelping like pups—just as an enormous figure engulfed them in shadow.

They gazed skyward and froze.

“Only pridurki will be making trouble where trouble is not welcome,” growled Igor.

Caramba, I’d never seen Igor mad before. He bent at the waist, hands on his hips, and brought his long face down from its place in the clouds to glower in Russian at my old coworkers. “ Vremya vesel ? ya zakonchilos! ”

“Allow me to translate.” Vera got down on one knee and grabbed Farty by the collar. “If you want to keep your wee peckers in your pants, you’ll bugger off. Or Igor here is gonna make borscht outta them.”

Farty and Dan’s necks retracted into their shirts. Without another word, Dan helped Farty to his feet and they stumbled off together, scowling daggers over their shoulders at me before disappearing into the crowd.

“That’s right! Off with you, ya shite-hawks, and stop giving the Irish a bad name!” Vera shouted after them. “ Go ndéana an diabhal dréimire de cnámh do dhroma ag piocadh úll i ngairdín Ifrinn! ”

I gaped. “What’d you just say?”

“‘May the devil make a ladder of your backbone while he picks apples in Hell’s garden.’ Don’t worry. They got it, even if you didn’t.” Then she plucked the lit cigarillo off the ground and stuck it back between her teeth.

“Mr. Benny,” said Madam Navya, suddenly standing at my feet, clutching the drape of her shawl. “The men in suits remain. Inside the house with Sonia. They seek Mr. Morgan.”

My face fell. “You mean, they’re not going back to the hotel?”

“That is why I came to find you! It seems they do not want to leave!”

“Miércoles , of course they don’t,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my sweaty face. “Where is Morgan?”

“He has already taken the earnings to the Albemarle,” she said fretfully. “What are we to do? We cannot steal a merman in sight of the criminals who paid for him!”

“All right... I gotta think...” I stepped away, my head swimming in panic and perspiration. I heard Tití Luz’s voice call from the edge of my memories. Solo es un problema, Benigno. When you don’t have solutions, pretend that you do.

Claro. That was it.

I spun back. “Madam Navya, Igor, if I take care of the Agostinellis, do you think you can manage keeping Morgan away from the park?”

Their gazes met across the seven feet between them. Igor clapped his hands together as he rumbled, “Is how the Americans say: duck soup!”

Matthias took a step toward me. “Whaddaya got in mind, brother?”

I closed my eyes. Molded my throat around the sound I wanted to make. And when I opened my mouth, the voice that came out was genteel. Snobby. Tainted with an accent befitting a persona, not a person.

“I’m thinking it’s time I put my hidden talents to good use. What say you all?”

Vera’s rompepecho fell out of her mouth. Around her, three sets of eyes bulged in shock.

I grinned.

“Capital.”