The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(13)
“The Manhattan Bridge,” Nix corrected. “The Brooklyn Bridge is maybe half a mile south.”
“They say it’s a marvel of engineering, and the longest suspension bridge in the world.”
“It was the longest when it opened, back in 1883,” Nix began. I elbowed her in the ribs before she named for him each successive bridge that had taken the title. It was bound to be an interesting side trip through history, but not, perhaps, for someone still reeling from a similar journey.
“Maybe we can walk back to Brooklyn,” I suggested—not only for him. The walk over the bridge was reportedly a lovely one, very romantic. Less so, perhaps, with Mr. Hart along, but beggars couldn’t always choose. “There’s time.”
Nix nodded, and Mr. Hart smiled. Then he took a deep breath through his nose, taking in the dock smell of fish and oil, and the warm scent of summer. “I could almost imagine being back in 1884, if I were to close my eyes.” A car honked; he startled. “And my ears.”
“If you close your mouth, I could imagine you back there too,” I teased with a grin; his eyebrow went up, but so did the corners of his lips.
We meandered through the crowd to a bakery on Mott, where Nix filled two boxes with little confections—custards and cheesecakes and miniature pies. But, leaving the bakery, she turned north again, away from the bridge. “Amira? Where are we going?”
“One more errand,” she threw back over her shoulder as she wove between a DVD seller and a passel of pale tourists. “It won’t take long.”
She moved quickly, as though she could escape the fact that she hadn’t really answered my question, stopping a few doors up at a shop selling trinkets and baby turtles. The windows were plastered over with hand-lettered signs on neon paper, written in both English and Chinese: PHONE CASE, BELTS, T-SHIRTS THREE FOR TEN. What errand did she have?
“Wait here,” she said, slipping her cell phone from her back pocket and touching the screen. I tried to get a glimpse over her shoulder, but all I saw was a picture of the captain’s tattoos.
Mr. Hart watched her go, as did I. “Wait here,” I told him after a moment.
“The hell I will,” he replied, so we both walked into the shop.
She was standing before a counter at the end of a narrow aisle, her back to us; I could tell she was tense by the set of her shoulders. Behind the counter, an old man sat on a folding stool wearing a mint-green shirt—a terrible color under the fluorescent lights. “Your fortune?” he said, loud enough to be heard over the blare of the portable TV on a shelf beside him. “I’ll tell you!”
“No, no.” She stabbed the screen of her cell with one finger; she’d set it down on the counter. “I need you to read this fortune.”
I chewed the clove on my tongue—a fortune? The pieces were starting to come together. But the old man had already taken a blue plastic basket from below the counter. When he tipped the contents onto the glass, I saw they were bones. “Hmm,” he said to Nix, not even bothering to look at the vertebrae as they came to rest. “Your heart is pulling you in two directions!”
“No, it’s not.” She stiffened then—she must have followed his eyes—and when she turned and saw us, she scowled. “I told you to wait outside.”
I cast about for an excuse, but it was Mr. Hart who responded. “But I wanted one of these.” He plucked something at random from the shelf—a plush doll of a white cat in a red dress—and his expression turned from credible to puzzled. “What the devil?”
“Please, Blake. And that was clearly a sham reading,” she said, glaring at the man behind the counter, who didn’t even bother looking guilty.
“Okay, fine.” He glanced down at the bones. “A stranger will ask for help. Say yes. Five dollars.”
“I didn’t want you to tell my fortune!” she said, raising her voice. “I wanted you to translate—” Nix pulled herself up short, glancing back at me, but the man had already taken up her phone.
“Ah, translation!” He squinted down at the screen for a moment, and his face fell. When he glanced up, he wasn’t looking at her, but at Blake and me, and his eyes were full of pity. “Which one is it?”
Nix snatched back her phone. “Never mind,” she said, digging in her bag and tossing a crumpled bill among the bones. Then she swept past us toward the door.
Mr. Hart shoved the doll back onto the shelf and we both scrambled after her. “What was that about?” I asked her; there was no point now in masking my curiosity.
“Something for Slate,” she said, not meeting my eyes, and anger leaped like a flame in my chest.
“Why do you hide things from me?” I said, finally blurting something out. So much for discretion.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Hart take a hasty step back. But I kept my focus on Nix. Her cheeks were pink, but her gaze was clear. She sighed, resigned. “I’ll tell you on the way back. Brooklyn Bridge, right?”
We trudged south in silence, making our way along the summer streets, and this time it was Mr. Hart who trailed behind Nix and me. Although she did not speak, this was not the silence of still waters, but that of the gathering storm. In the pit of my stomach, the fire of my anger had burned out, leaving behind a lump like coal: did I truly want to know what she was hiding?