“Sure,” I said. “At the zoo in New York. Haven’t you?”
“Uh-uh,” she said, and as we started fishing, I began hatching a new plan. I could save some money and take Wanda—and maybe George, if he was nice to me—on the train to New York and we could spend the whole day at the zoo. If Wanda had never seen a giraffe, she’d probably never seen an elephant or a rhinoceros or any other wild animals. It would be so much fun to introduce her to that whole new world. I was trying to figure out how I could get away from the house for an entire day when George interrupted my thinking.
“So,” he said as he baited his hook, “why’s your big sister’s boyfriend talkin’ to a raggedy little child like you?”
I guessed he had seen Ned and me talking in my yard.
“He happens to think I’m the most,” I said, my nose in the air.
“The most
I ignored him. “What if someday soon, the three of us go to the zoo in New York?” I suggested.
“How you gonna get your daddy to let you do that?” Wanda asked, and George shook his head.
“You two on your own,” he said. “I ain’t gonna get my ass caught taking some white girl across the state line.”
Our banter went on that way for nearly an hour, with me plotting our trip and the two of them telling me why it wouldn’t work. Salena and the men were a distance away from us, and I could hear them singing along with the songs on the colored radio station they listened to. Nothing was biting, but none of us minded.
The canal provided plenty of entertainment with the Sunday swarm of boats in all shapes and sizes. A few of the taller ones rocked in place in front of us as they waited for the bridge to open and let them through. More and more of the larger vessels clogged the canal, and finally, the bridge began making its familiar clanking sound as the roadway above the water slowly swung open. I wasn’t used to seeing the bridge from that side of the canal, and I was watching in fascination when a speedboat pulled up alongside the bulkhead right in front of me.
“Hi, Julie!”
I looked down, surprised to see Bruno Walker sitting below me in his boat.
“Hi, Bruno,” I said. His nearly black ducktail was a bit windblown which made him look even sexier than usual, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. You could see every bulging muscle outlined beneath his tan skin. Even lifting his cigarette to his mouth was enough to turn his arm into a brawny network of hills and valleys.
“What are you doing over here?” He looked at Wanda, then George, then back at me again. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses and he could barely mask the surprise in his eyes at finding me fishing with colored people.
“Fishing,” I said, not answering the question he was really asking. “These are my friends, Wanda and George. That’s Bruno,” I said, nodding toward him.
Wanda and George said nothing. They knew my world did not mesh well with theirs.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Bruno said. His boat bobbed on the wake of a passing ship, but he held it steady in front of us. “Are you and Isabel real close?”
I shrugged. “Sort of,” I said. “Why?”
“How serious do you think she is about Ned?”
Although the boat ride I’d arranged for my sister, Ned and Bruno didn’t seem to have sparked the triangle I’d been hoping for, I could see another possibility opening up in front of me. “I think she’s losing interest in him,” I said.
“You don’t say.” He barely moved his lips when he spoke, like the words weren’t very important to him. But I knew that was just his style, and I grew bolder.
“You should talk to her about it,” I suggested.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think I’m her type.”
“Well, maybe she hasn’t really figured out her type yet.” I sounded like Dear Abby, giving advice to the lovelorn.
“It’s hard to get to talk to her, though,” he said. “I hardly ever see her without Ned or one of her girlfriends around.” He was playing right into my hands.
“I know how you can talk to her alone,” I said.
“How?”
“Sometimes around midnight, she swims out to the platform in the bay and just sits there, thinking,” I said. “She likes that alone time, you know? Just to think about things.” Isabel actually hated being alone. I was really talking about myself, how I relished my time in the runabout on the bay at night. But it didn’t matter. This conversation was not about the truth.
“That’s weird,” he said. I doubted Bruno was the type to appreciate moments of quiet introspection, either. He and Izzy would be perfect for each other.
“She just likes to be alone sometimes,” I repeated with a shrug. “You could find her there tonight. Then you’d be able to talk to her without anybody else around.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Ned’s a good buddy.” He looked toward the open Lovelandtown bridge, the sun in his gorgeous green eyes as he gnawed his lower lip. It was funny to see such a powerful guy look so unsure of himself. “It’s a neat idea, though,” he said, nodding as the plan grew on him. “She goes almost every night, you said?”
“Uh-huh. And I’m sure she’ll be there tonight.”
“Why are you so sure?” he asked.
“It’s Sunday night,” I said. “Dad goes home to Westfield on Sunday, so she always feels a little freer.You know,
