Whisper to Me(54)

She held my eyes for a moment. “No.”

“Oh. Sorry. Of course. So why didn’t you go on your own? Or with Julie?”

“I don’t know. I think I was waiting for you to come along.”

Silence. I didn’t know what to say to that.

Then she grabbed my arm. “Anyway, it’s awesome. The guys doing little poems, to draw in players, you know? It’s like … Like something out of a story. But it’s real. You know?”

“It’s just patter,” I said.

“Pat—”

“Patter. Everyone has a different one. I—”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

We’d stopped now. There were people separating and streaming around us, like those illustrations of air going around a plane’s wing.

“You were going to say you could do it, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“You were.” Her eyes were flashing in the electric light of the stores and stands. We were right in the middle of the pier; it was like being inside a pinball machine. People and music and games all around. “You totally worked one of these things, didn’t you?”

My shoulders slumped. “Basketball hoops. Two summers.”

“Oh, Cass. You’re doing it. Your patter. You’re doing it for me right now.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Paris, there are people.”

“Pretend they’re not there. I do it all the time, with clients. It’s easy.”

An uncomfortable moment.

“Yeah, okay, TMI,” said Paris. “But you’re still doing it.”

“No way.”

“Please. I’ll be your friend.”

“You’re already my friend.”

“Curse your fiendish intelligence. I’ll buy you a pony.”

“I don’t want a pony.”

“I’ll buy you—”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “If it’ll shut you up.”

Paris clapped her hands. She pulled me over to the side of the pier, by one of the circular stands that are dotted all over—some of them with games, shooting galleries, some of them selling ice cream and hot dogs and whatever. “Go,” she said.

“I’m rusty,” I said. “Wait.”

I took a breath.

“Hey,” I said, “don’t walk on by, Come on in and give it a try,

It’s a simple game

If you’ve got aim,

Split a buck

To double your luck,

A quarter won’t break you

But it might just make you.”

I gave a little bow.

“Wow,” said Paris. “My little carny.”

“They’re not called—”

“I know. I’m ****** with you. That was amazing. Thank you.”

“Uh, yeah. Okay.”

“Gracious as an Austen heroine.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“As Elizabeth Bennet herself declared.”

“Paris. Let’s ride the Elevator now.”

“Oh, yes. Let’s.”

We skirted around the stand—it was a rings-on-the-jars game—and worked our way to the end of the pier. Then we passed Hook-the-Duck in its circular island. The water was bright green under neon lights; the sky above almost entirely black now. Katy Perry was blasting from the speakers hung above. Also hanging were all the toys you could win—the plush and the cheap stereos and stuff. Every color in the spectrum, just pulsing at you, and the music too.

“—this,” said Paris, and I realized I’d missed the start of whatever she had said.

“What?”

“I want to play.”

“You want to hook a duck?” I was kind of shouting over the music.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like hooking a duck.”

I did a not-real sigh and handed her one of the ten-spots. I don’t know why I just wrote “ten-spots.” That’s not how I speak. I think it’s writing about Paris. I mean, she was just so cool, you know? And she didn’t even mean to be. She was just a hundred-watt bulb in a world of forty-watt bulbs. She shone. When she walked by, you saw people following her with their eyes, like it would hurt them to look away.

Anyway.

She got a fishing rod and she was terrible. Pretty soon I was laughing as she knocked the ducks together, sent them spinning, flipped their backs under the water. Eventually she hooked one sad little blue duck and yelled with triumph and the girl on the stand said, bored, “You can have anything from the outer ring.”

Paris looked up. “I’ll take that red monkey thing.”

“That’s Elmo.”

“Yeah, him.”

The girl pulled down the little Elmo stuffed toy and handed it to Paris. Paris clutched it to her chest. “It’s mi-i-i-ine,” she said dramatically. “It’s finally mi-i-i-ine.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Come on.”

She pretended to be a chastised kid, kind of moping along behind me, pulling a moue of exaggerated sadness, lips pushed out.

“Stop that.”