They began to walk along the bench-lined path. Johnny swallowed and took another bite. The grease dripped down onto his white polo shirt. (He knew it was a polo shirt because in the place usually reserved for an alligator, there was a man on a horse, a mallet raised to strike an unincluded ball.) He aimed his crumpled napkin at the splotches, but Dempsey stopped his hand.
“Cold water. Right away.”
There was a line for the water fountain. “Forget it,” Johnny said.
Dempsey took a dainty handkerchief from her skirt pocket, went directly to the fountain, and stepping ahead of the line, soaked the cloth and came back to Johnny. No one had objected. She wiped the splotches, went back to the water fountain, repeated her intrusion, and gave the shirt another scrub. He could feel the cold water on his chest, running down toward his navel. He could also feel the pressure of Dempsey’s hand against his chest.
A straggle of Dempsey’s hair had gotten itself stuck in a gob of tomato sauce, pasting it to her cheek. It had also lengthened her lips to the smile of a clown and stained the tip of her nose as if she were being made up to play slapstick parts in a circus. Johnny took the handkerchief from her hand and gently restored her to what he considered her previous perfection.
Dempsey took their pizza remains and dumped them in the trash basket near the hot dog stand. When Johnny came toward her, she moved back onto the paved path and began walking again slowly toward the harbor. Johnny followed.
The line for tickets to the Statue of Liberty and to Ellis Island curled out of the old stone fort (which gave Battery Park its name) like the tail of a giant turtle. Two elderly men, short, with gray hair and stern faces walked by, holding hands. The wheels of a stroller sounded like the squeal of kittens being run over. A teenaged boy and girl in torn jeans and floppy T-shirts, rings in their ears and rings in their noses, were taking turns punching each other on the arm. A scrawny woman wearing sneakers but no socks was quarreling with someone unseen and a man herded four exuberant children toward the island boats, holding aloft like winning lottery numbers, the five tickets that would get them to the Statue of Liberty.
Johnny and Dempsey sat on a bench facing the promenade where the tourists had been herded together in a long tightly packed line to wait for the boats. Three men, African Americans, were entertaining the crowd with back flips—one, two, or even three and four flips in quick and daring succession. With nothing more than their will to propel them, they threw their bodies backwards, flipping themselves again and again, with a speed and sureness that for both them and the crowd were quite literally breathtaking. It was as if the immobilized tourists were being taunted for their voluntary stasis.
A woman pushing a child in a wheelchair came along the path. A bright purple balloon tied to the back of the chair kept hitting the woman on the side of her head, but she didn’t seem to mind. The child, a boy, was wearing a Yankee baseball cap, the visor pointing upward, giving the child’s face no shade whatsoever. He wore a yellow nylon jacket over a plain white T-shirt and big khaki pants that seemed far too large. On his feet, braced against the retractable platforms at the ends of the leg supports, were oversized Timberland boots laced to the tops and tied in large bows. The child’s eyes were wide, but the face somewhat pinched. The woman pushing the chair seemed worried about bumping into something. Her eyes were watching the path and she was taking care that not even a pebble or a stone be allowed to jar the chair or its occupant. In front of the bench where Dempsey and Johnny were sitting was a discarded Pepsi bottle. The woman veered in the direction of the bench. The wheelchair, the child, the woman passed a few inches from Johnny’s toes. The balloon, as if in greeting, dipped in front of his face.
It hadn’t been a child. It was a young man wasted to a child’s size. On his face, unshaded by the baseball cap, were the unmistakable spots and stains of Kaposi’s sarcoma. His hands, gripping the sides of the chair as if he were afraid he might be pitched headlong onto the path, were already skeletal. His skin was stretched across the network of bones and the knotted knuckles. There was a quick whiff of urine, then the smell of the woman’s lilac perfume. Saliva drooled down the man’s chin from a slack and open mouth. The wheelchair moved on, the balloon still knocking against the woman’s head.
“Why not him too?” Dempsey whispered. Her face had turned to stone and she was staring straight ahead. Johnny put his arm behind her to draw her closer. Quickly she leaned forward, away from his reach. “No. I can’t. I wish… don’t.” Johnny withdrew his arm.
“Please,” she whispered, “let’s just sit here. At least for a little bit.” She took in a deep breath, then exhaled.
Tentatively Johnny started to reach out again, but stopped himself. “Sure,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
Two of the gymnasts, coming toward and past each other, climaxed their act with quadruple back flips, passing each other directly in front of Johnny and Dempsey. Each of the men twisted his body in a complete turn, midair, then completed the final flip coming down on one knee, arms outstretched, head flung back. There was applause, some whistles, a few shouts. Dempsey managed a smile.
“Can you do that?” she said quietly.
“No. But I can wiggle my ears.”
Dempsey managed the expected small laugh.
One of the gymnasts was passing a pail along the line of tourists, accepting contributions.
But by now the line of tourists was moving, great hordes streaming onto the boat. Most of them ignored the collection by the gymnasts, so urgent were they to embark.
The gymnast looked down into the pail he’d been passing. Obviously disdainful of the meager take, he gave one last swing of the muscled arm, flinging the coins and the few dollar bills out over the heads of the moving throng. Not many responded until the movement in the line stopped and a new crowd pressed against the barrier. To occupy themselves for the wait, they stooped and collected the scattered largesse that seemed to have rained down from the sky so they would have something worthwhile to do during the wait for the next boat out.
Dempsey stood up. “Time,” she said. Johnny, too, stood up. They started along the path toward the ferry terminal.
Johnny stopped. “I’m not going,” he said.
“You are,” Dempsey said.
Johnny reached out toward her, but she, in turn, pulled back. Johnny let his arms fall to his sides. “All right, I’ll go,” he said. “But I’ll be back.”
Dempsey said nothing. “If I’m supposed to say goodbye, I won’t,” Johnny said. “I can’t.”
“Go,” Dempsey said. “You’re going to miss the ferry.”
Johnny grabbed her into his arms and pressed himself against her as tightly as he could. She seemed to resist at first then closed her arms around him and held him more desperately than ever before, no matter where, no matter what. Then she pulled away. On her face was a look of terror, as if what they had done were an act more dangerous than any they had yet performed. The terror vanished, and the bewilderment. Only a small and distant sorrow remained and even that was confined only to the eyes. She looked down. “Please go,” she whispered.
On the top deck Johnny stood and looked toward the promenade, beyond the line of waiting tourists, searching for the shaded seat where he and Dempsey had been, but he couldn’t find it. The ferry made the turn away from the slip, the motors sounding as if they were grinding sand. He looked down into the wake of the boat. Green waves crested with gray froth streamed out behind. Gulls were searching and squealing above the stern over Johnny’s head, mocking him. He saw Dempsey. She was standing near the tree where he’d slopped pizza onto his shirt. He raised his hand but didn’t wave. Dempsey saw him. She, too, raised her hand, then held it there. It was as if each was making a pledge to the other, swearing an oath the meaning of which they had yet to learn.