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“To give you my name is to give you the last of myself, and humanity has taken enough from me. My name is my own. You may not have it.”
A river can be both devastating and beautiful. I shrugged. “It suits you.”
Sam just assumed it was out to get him. Which oughta tell you something about how that man sees the world.”
“It is the simple truth of every creature with a soul. You are not your body, Benigno.”
should not have helped him. Our elders would have surely condemned it. But I felt you closer to me when I did.
“I always hear that word, ‘kidding.’ There is not a juvenile goat for miles. What does that even mean?”
When he finally broke the surface, he didn’t emerge past his chin. “You sing,” he whispered. Gracias a Dios. I nodded. “You would truly free me?” he asked, an edge of disbelief in his voice. “If you could?” “Sure I would.”
“You are a rather pleasant sort of barnacle.”
He glanced over my shoulder at the theater doors to make sure they were closed. “Benny,” he said in quiet disbelief. “He ain’t my brother.”
“See, he’s got this crazy idea,” he said carefully, “that maybe we three got something in common.”
“What ridiculous savagery,” he breathed in English, “would make humans spurn a person for something so . . . so . . . ordinary?”
“Safe,” I repeated, looking down at his conviction with envy. “In my whole dumb life, I’ve never felt as safe anywhere as I feel sitting on a metal grate twenty feet above the ground with you.” As soon as I said it, I wished I had the good sense to stop spilling my guts into that tank. The habit would be hard enough to break later. But Río just raised an eyebrow and said, “Spoken like a true barnacle.”
Perhaps you were right. Perhaps the Currents brought us here because they knew we would meet.” My face flushed. “Why do you say that?” He looked pityingly up at me through the iron bars. “Because we are both caged.”
Despite the wisdom of my harmony, despite everything I believed possible, my heart is cultivating a pearl. For a human.
“Primitive, eh? There a word for ‘comemierda’ in your language?” He smirked. “If I stare at you long enough, I am sure I can come up with one.”
Shivering, he presses his palm against it in a wordless bid—for what? Forgiveness? Consolation? My very heart? He can have them all. Beautiful
“’Cause the prettiest girl in Brooklyn wants me, but my heart wants someone else. Someone who knows me better than any human alive—including me. And I don’t even know his name.” Tears were forcing their way into my eyes again. “All I know is that he misses the moon. If I could, I’d ride a roller coaster to the sky just to steal it for him.”
“Your heart in my keeping,” he whispered, “would always be safe.”
“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?”
“Benigno, surely you know,” he breathed. “You are my heartsong.”
What I want to know is why you and your sweetheart are stuck. This is Coney Island, not Connecticut. The Brooklyn waterfront’s got more fairies than Neverland.”
“We plan escape for merman?” He raised a finger. “I get the vodka.”
“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?”
“If you want to keep your wee peckers in your pants, you’ll bugger off. Or Igor here is gonna make borscht outta them.”
Son of Neptune, I answer. I am your harmony.
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