"You meet nice people," Amelia said.
"He was," Roger said. "A nice person, I mean."
"My mother has told each and every one of us in our house," Amelia said, "that if we ever touch any of that stuff, she will personally cripple us. She means it. | My mother is a very skinny woman made of iron. She ' would rather see us dead than on junk."
"Is it that easy to get?" Roger asked.
"If you have the money, you can get it. In this city, if you have the money, you can get anything you want."
"That's what Ralph said." [
"Ralph knows. Ralph is a very wise man."
"Anyway, here's what I've got left," Roger said, and I reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded packet of bills and transferred those to his left hand, and then reached into his pocket again for his loose change. The change totaled seventy-two cents, and the bills were two fives and four singles. "Fourteen dollars and seventy-two cents," he said.
"A millionaire. Just like you said."
"Right."
"Right," she said.
"What would you like to do?"
"I don't know," she said. "Show me the city. Show me your city."
"My city? This ain't my city, Amelia."
"I mean the white man's city."
"I wouldn't know his city from your city. I'm a stranger here."
"Looking for a friend outside the police station," she said suddenly.
"Yes," he said, and watched her.
"Who you never found."
"Who I never bothered looking for."
"Bad place to look," Amelia said. "Where are you going to take me, mister? Uptown, downtown, crosstown? Where?"
"I know where," he said.
"Where?"
"There's a place I've always wanted to go. My mother brought me to the city for the first time when I was ten years old, and we were suppposed to go then, but it rained that day. Come on," he said, and took her hand.
"Where?" she said.
"Come on."
The Ferris wheels were motionless, the roller-coaster tracks hung on wooden stilts against a forbidding February sky, devoid of hurtling cars or screaming youngsters. The boardwalk stands were sealed tight, shuttered against the wind that howled in over the ocean and raised whirling eddies of sand on the beach, leaping the iron-pipe railing and hurling itself hopelessly against the weathered boards. Last summer's newspapers fluttered into the air, yellowed and torn, flapping wildly like alien birds and then soaring over the minarets of an amusement called The Arabian Nights. The rides huddled beneath their canvas covers in seemingly expectant watchfulness, waiting for a sparrow, silent, motionless, the wind ripping at the covers and making a faint whistling sound as it caught in metal studs and struts. There were no barkers touting games of chance or skill, no vendors selling hot dogs or slices of pizza, no sound but the sound of the wind and the ocean.
The boardwalk benches were a flaking green.
An old man stood at the far end of the boardwalk, looking out over the ocean, unmoving.
"You've never been here before?" Amelia asked.
"No," Roger said.
"You picked the right time to come."
"It's kind of spooky, isn't it?" he said, and thought of Molly the night before.
"It's like standing on the edge of the world," Amelia said, and he turned to look at her curiously. "What is it?" she asked.
"I don't know. What you said. I felt that a minute ago. As if there was just the two of us standing on the edge of the world."
"The three of us."
"What? Oh, yes, the old man down there."
"He's really my duena," Amelia said.
"What's that?"
"A duena? That's Spanish for chaperone. In Spain, when a young girl goes out with a boy, she has to take along a duena, usually an aunt or some other relative. My father told me about that. He's Spanish, you know, did I tell you?"
"Yes."
"I mean, he's not Puerto Rican," Amelia said.
"What's the difference?"
"Oh, in this city, there's a big difference. In this city it's pretty bad to be colored, but the worst thing you can possibly be is Puerto Rican."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know,' Amelia said, and shrugged. "I guess it's more fashionable to hate Puerto Ricans now." She laughed, and Roger laughed with her. "My father's name is Juan. Juan Perez. We always kid around with him, we ask him how his Colombian coffee beans are coming along. You know, have you ever seen that television commercial? It's Juan Valdez, actually, but it's close enough. My father loves when we kid around with him that way. He always says his coffee beans are doing fine because he's got them under the tree that is his Spanish sun hat. He really is from Spain, you know, from a little town outside Madrid. Brihuega. Did you ever hear of it?"
"Brihuega Basin, do you mean?"
"No, Brihuega."
"Oh yes, Brihuega Depot."
"No, Brihuega."
"Near Huddlesworth, right?"
"Near Madrid."
"Where they fight camels."
"No, bulls."
"I knew I had it," Roger said, and Amelia laughed. "Well, now that we're here," he said, "what are we supposed to do?"
Amelia shrugged. "We could neck, I suppose."
"Is that what you want to do?"
"No, not really. It's a little too early in the day. I got to admit, though . . ."
"Yes?"
"I'm very curious about what it's like to kiss a white man."
"Me, too."
"A colored girl, you mean."
"Yes."
"Yes."
They were both silent. The wind caught at their overcoats, flattening the material against their bodies as they looked out over the water. At the far end of the boardwalk, the old man was still motionless, like a salt-sodden statue frozen into position by a sudden winter.
"Do you think the old man would mind?" Amelia asked.
"I don't think so."
"Well . . ." she said.
"Well . . ."
"Well, let's."
She turned her face up to his, and he put his arms around her and then bent and kissed her mouth. He kissed her very gently. He thought of Molly the night before and then he moved away from her and stared down at her face and she caught her breath with a short sharp sigh and then smiled mysteriously and shrugged and said, "I like it."
"Yes."
"You think the old man would mind if we did it again?"
"I don't think so," Roger said.
They kissed again. Her lips were very wet. He moved slightly away from her and looked down at her. She was staring up at him with her dark brown eyes serious and questioning.
"This is sort of crazy," she whispered.
"Yes."
"Standing here on a boardwalk with that wind howling in."
"Yes."
"Kissing," she said. Her voice was very low.
"Yes."
"And that old man watching."
"He isn't watching," Roger said.
"On the edge of the world," Amelia said. And suddenly, "I don't even know who you are."
"My name is Roger Broome."
"Yes, but who?"
"What would you like to know?"
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-seven."
"I'm twenty-two." She paused. "How do I know . . ." She stopped, and shook her head.
"What?"
"How do I know you're not ... a ..." She shrugged. "A... Well, you wanted to know where the police station was."
"That's right."
"To meet a friend, you said. But then you came back to the drugstore and you hadn't met this friend of yours at all, so how do I know . . . Well, how do I know you're not in some kind of trouble?"
"Do I look like somebody who's in trouble?"
"I don't know what a white man in trouble looks like. I've seen lots of colored people in trouble. If you're colored, you're always in trouble, from the day you're born. But I don't know the look of a white man in trouble. I don't know what his eyes look like."
"Look at my eyes."
"Yes?"
"What do you see?"