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The fish is going to die anyway. It’s a sickly little goldfish; its tail already droops in a way that Riff is pretty sure isn't, like, healthy—not that he knows what a healthy fish looks like, but he doesn't think they're supposed to spend half the time floating upside down and he's pretty sure goldfish are supposed to have two equal-size fins on both sides of their tiny fishy bodies, rather than a normal-looking fin on one side and, on the other side, a tattered shred of… whatever fins are made of.
The carny at the ring-toss had handed him the bag before he’d had a chance to say he didn't want the goddamn goldfish, he'd been playing for a stuffed bear; when he tried to hand it back the guy had already turned towards the next customer (a leggy brunette) with an expression that suggested he had forgotten about Riff in approximately the same amount of time it took him to size up the girl’s bra size. Riff can’t compete with a C cup so he takes his fish and leaves. Now he's standing over a trash can by the funnel cake cart wondering if it's even worth taking the fucking thing home and dumping it in a bowl, or if he should just put it out of its misery here, toss the thing in with the funnel cake wrappers and pop bottles, leaving his hands free for the Hammer Throw game. It's going to die anyway, he thinks petulantly. But he can't quite bring himself to throw the fish away.
It gulps at him, baleful. He glares at it. “You’re a fish,” he says, out loud. “You’d probably only live a week anyway.” The fish continues to stare back at him, like it understands what he’s saying, and agrees, but, you know—life, and all that. Hard to give it up, when you’ve got it.
Riff is still wavering over the trash can when Ice walks up; he’s just finished eating something pink and sticky, Riff can see it in his teeth. Taffy, probably. “Oh,” he says, and pokes the plastic bag. “A fish! He’s so cute!”
“You think?” Riff says, then course-corrects quickly. “I mean—yeah. He is, isn't he.”
“I always wanted a pet.”
“I hear fish make great pets. Real loyal.”
Ice looks deeply skeptical at this, but it doesn't prevent him from looking covetously at the little plastic bag. The fish—whom Riff has privately nicknamed ‘Floaty’—performs a heroic last-gasp act of dogged perseverance and remains floating right-side-up while Ice is watching. Riff says, hopefully: “Want him?”
Ice’s face lights up. “Really?”
“Really,” Riff says. “You’ll be a better fish dad than me, anyways. His name is—uh—Swimmy."
Ice winces. “Can I change his name?”
Riff grins and hands him the bag. “He's all yours, buddy-boy.”
Ice is poking at Floaty’s bag happily when Riff’s eyes are caught by a couple walking by: eye-catching for multiple reasons, not least because of the girl’s bright blonde hair, curls springing jauntily under the fairy lights. They’re both laughing: the sparkling high notes of the girl’s laughter floating over the boy’s low, deep chuckle like leaves over the surface of a pond. They’ve both got expressions of complete carelessness, like the world is spread out in front of them for the taking, and they’re looking up at the ferris wheel.
“Graziella,” Ice says, behind Riff.
“What?” Riff turns to look at him.
“Graziella. Grazi. That’s the chick you’re ogling—the blonde,” Ice adds, nodding towards the couple. “She’s new in town—from New York City.”
“City gal, huh?” Riff looks over at her, appraisingly. That’s why his eyes had caught on them, maybe—they both look a little too sparkly for small town South Carolina. “Why’d she move down here?”
Ice shrugs. “Something ‘bout her pa. Died or something. Her ma’s family is here, I guess.”
“She bring her man with her?”
“Who—you mean Tony?”
“The lunk on her arm?”
“Yeah. Tony. No, he’s local. He works down at the dock. You ain’t ever seen him?” Riff shakes his head. “Lives with Valentina?”
“Man—you know I’ve been banned from Doc’s since eighth grade.”
Ice laughs. “Oh, yeah. Well, he moved in with her ‘bout a year ago now, I guess.” Riff raises an eyebrow, and Ice hastily adds, “Not like that. He’s living in her basement.”
“Well, sure, he says that.” Ice shudders theatrically. “So this is their first date, then. If she’s new in town.”
Ice eyes him. “Yeah? Why?”
Riff grins. “Well, she ain’t committed yet. No harm in introducing myself.”
“You’re such a fuckin’ dog.”
“Just sayin’—she might as well know her options.” Riff smirks and pushes a hand through his hair, then sticks his thumbs in his pockets and saunters towards the ferris wheel. He can practically feel Ice rolling his eyes behind him, but doesn’t look back to catch it.
He follows Graziella and her date at a distance, watches them climb into one of the ferris wheel cars. It’s a warm night, but not too warm; the girls are in dresses without cardigans and the guys mostly have their shirtsleeves rolled up. Grazi’s dress is a brilliant, jewel-toned blue and she’s grinning like the paparazzi are watching: eyes bright and cheeks pink. She’s laughing at something her date has said as they settle into the seat, tucking a blonde curl behind her ear before saying something back, none of which Riff can hear.
The ferris wheel creaks, then begins to move. As Grazi’s car slowly, then more quickly, moves around the circumference of the wheel, he watches them. Grazi is touching her date lightly on the arm like she’s reminding him that she’s there, close enough to kiss. Her date doesn’t need reminding: he doesn’t seem to have eyes for anyone else. He looks like she’s lighting up his personal night, like she’s the lightning bug he’s trying to catch in a jar. Grazi’s smiling at him, too, but she looks up and away more often—eyes scanning the crowd, maybe for a friend she came with.
Her eyes catch on Riff as the wheel comes around the top of the arc. He smiles up at her, across the heads of people waiting in line for the tilt-a-whirl. She looks away. Looks back. Watches him until he’s obscured by the frame of the ferris wheel again.
The carny at the operating booth of the ferris wheel looks just as bored as the one at the ring-toss had looked, although this guy is in control of heavy operating machinery and probably shouldn’t also look as high as he does—red-eyed and slack-jawed—plus he’s not leaving the booth to make sure the bars are coming down, and Grazi definitely hasn't put the bar down, maybe both of them forgot or maybe they’re both looking for the little rush of adrenaline that comes from swooping to the top of the wheel’s arc without anything but the seat’s stubborn willingness to stay upright and your own thigh muscles keeping you from plummeting to the ground. Either way, Grazi and her date are sitting close in their shared seat but there’s no bar between them and Riff, and there’s nothing in the world except common sense to prevent Riff from doing what he does next.
He’s never had much common sense.
He waits until the chair has swooped down and back, then he makes a run for it, jumping on just as it begins its ascent. He clambers up and spins in place to plop himself down between Grazi and her date, dropping his arm around Grazi’s shoulders and elbowing her date in the side. It's a perilous and risky move: dependent on his own balance and the bet that Grazi and her date won't wiggle too much. If Riff was any heavier it might have been disastrous; as it is, he nearly topples out mid-twist to face front and by the time he's situated in the seat his heart is beating hard enough to make him grateful for his rib bones.
Grazi is shrieking the whole time and her date shouts something that sounds vulgar—fair enough, the chair is swinging wildly to and fro; Riff might have been shrieking too, had he not been trying very hard to project nonchalant confidence—and Riff can hear yelps of shock from other cars as he gets comfortably settled, pushed thigh-to-thigh with both occupants of the too-small seat. When he pulls himself closer to Grazi, she shoves him back and away from her.
“What are you doing?” she shrieks, smacking at his arm.
“Thought I’d join you.”
“By risking your neck?” Grazi sounds mostly horrified, but—crucially—a little bit impressed. Riff grins: he knows he's already made the impression he wanted to. The chair has stopped rocking quite so jarringly and the other ferris wheel occupants have mostly stopped yelping but Riff can see people in other cars and on the ground craning their necks to watch the scene unfold, and he’s lived in Seaport long enough to know that this will be gossip by the time the ferris wheel has made another rotation—he plans to make the most of it.
“It looked like you needed someone to save you from a boring date.”
(“Jesus, man, I’m right here,” says aforementioned Date—Riff ignores him.)
“I don't need saving,” Grazi says, with haughty disdain.
“You're at the lamest night out Seabrook has to offer. Even I can do better than this lunk.” Without looking, he elbows her date in the stomach to punctuate the sentence; the guy grunts. “Let's blow this joint, huh?”
“No, thanks.”
"Grazi,” Riff says, and smiles. “Go out with me.”
Grazi looks startled at the use of her name. “How did you—”
“Girly-girl, when somebody as pretty as you shows up in this shithole I make a point of knowing her name. Go out with me.”
Grazi’s mouth tips up the corner. But she still splutters, “No!”
“Aw, c'mon. Just once. I'll show you a good time.”
Grazi laughs, as if in disbelief. “No way, pal.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don't want to?”
“I'll show you otherwise.” Grazi scoffs, but she doesn't look as annoyed as the scoff would suggest. Rather she looks reluctantly intrigued. “We'll make a night of it.” Riff leans a little closer, says a little more quietly: “I know all the best places in town.”
On his other side, he hears Grazi's date say, just as quietly: “Got kicked outta most of ‘em, though.” In the back of his mind Riff thinks: How did you know that? But he keeps his eyes on Grazi.
“What if I don't want to go to them with you?” she asks, crossing her arms.
“I don't see it,” Riff says thoughtfully. “I think you're curious, at least. ‘Bout what my side of town looks like.”
Whatever Grazi is going to say is interrupted by the jolt of the ferris wheel coming to an abrupt stop. All three of them look down to where the carny at the control lever has yanked it back, stopping the wheel. Now he's glaring up at Riff, waving the arm that isn't on the lever. Riff sighs. The guy had looked so useless. Why was he choosing now to be good at his job?
“You can't be three to a chair, man!" the guy yells, his face visibly reddening even under the strings of colored lights.
"Aw, c'mon," Riff shouts back. "I ain't heavy."
"Can't do it, guy. My boss'll have me to hang!"
"Jesus," Riff mutters. He pushes off the seat, gets to his feet by balancing on the cross-bar beneath them. Without giving himself much time to think about it, he jumps forward, grabbing onto one of the metal struts of the ferris wheel frame. Behind him, Grazi gasps; Riff doesn't look down, he keeps his eyes firmly on the metal between his own hands.
Carefully, trying to make it look casual, he turns around to face them again, flipping himself around one hand at a time. His feet dangle disconcertingly far from the ground; there are cross-bars level with his knees in front of him and behind him but he ignores them both, preferring the drama of the position—suspended over nothing but air and yelling faces. He sends a brief, fervent thank you to the construction job he had been working all summer, which had given him just enough shoulder and grip strength to be confident in his ability to stay hanging for a while.
“Go out with me,” he says.
“You’re crazy,” Grazi responds, eyes wide.
Riff laughs. “That’s what’ll make our date so fun.”
“That’s what’ll get you thrown out of your first bar in Seabrook, actually.” This from Grazi’s date. Riff looks at him, finally: Tony, Riff reminds himself. He had expected Tony to look angry, maybe. Annoyed, anyway. Indignant, at the very least. But Tony doesn’t look annoyed at all: he looks amused. “Be careful where you go on a date with Riff,” Tony continues, leaning back in his seat, arms over the back of the chair. “You’ll never be allowed back.”
Riff frowns at him. As far as he knows, he’s never even met the guy. “I know you, man?”
Tony looks back placidly. “Don’t think I’ve been formally introduced.”
“Are you gonna?”
“Do you care?”
“Well,” Riff says dryly, dangling from the metal beam. “I’m kind of a captive audience here, bud. Maybe it doesn't matter if I care or not. Plus,” he adds. “I guess I better know the name of my girlfriend’s ex, huh?”
Grazi makes a sound like: Ugh! and shakes her head with disgust, but Tony just smiles, leans forward, and sticks out his hand. “I’m Tony.”
Riff looks at the proffered hand, then back up at Tony. Tony is still smiling at him, guilelessly, like he couldn’t even begin to guess what was unusual about the situation. Like Riff isn’t dangling over a dropped-stone fall and a broken neck, like that fall isn't a whole lot more likely if he’s hanging one-handed. Like Tony hasn’t just challenged him; like he hasn’t just done something Riff wouldn’t have expected the blandly handsome date on Grazi’s arm to do in a million years.
Maybe not so bland, Riff thinks, looking at him more closely now. Tony has an all-American broad-shouldered carpenter look going for him, sure, but he's looking at Riff with sharp-edged humor and challenge, something vivid and pointy. His hand, held out in front of him, is very still. He might—Riff thinks, confused—be nervous.
After a slight pause, Tony raises an eyebrow. His hand is still out. Well? the eyebrow seems to ask.
Riff releases a breath and accepts the challenge. He grips the metal harder with his left hand, sends a prayer into the warm night air and lets go of the bar with his right. Now he’s dangling from just one arm, slightly angled towards both Grazi and Tony, right hand out. Grazi lets out a helpless little mew of protest and brings her hands, shaking, to her mouth. Riff grabs Tony’s hand and says: “Nice to meet you, Tony. I’m Riff. You gonna let me take your girl out?”
Tony’s face breaks into the warmest smile Riff thinks he’s ever seen. For a second, Riff thinks he has fallen, after all.
But, no. Tony lets his hand go and Riff grabs back on to the metal bar over his head, secure again—or, as secure as he can be, dangling from a ferris wheel. Riff adds, with a smirk: “I’ll show her a better time than you could, big guy.”
Tony snorts. “I’d like to see you try.”
Riff can think of a million comebacks to that, but before he can respond Grazi breaks in to say, voice strained, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, would you get down?”
Riff tears his eyes away from Tony. “Go out with me then,” he says, to Grazi.
“Come on, man!” the carny on the ground yells. “I’m gonna lose my job!” A crowd has gathered, all of them gazing up at the scene. Grazi looks between Riff and Tony, baffled. “I—” she starts, looking tortured. “Can you just—”
Riff’s arms and shoulders are starting to feel the strain. “Make up your mind, girly-girl. You gonna make my day or watch me fall?”
Tony leans back in the seat, placing his hands behind his head in a posture of indifference. It might have been convincing, if his shoulders weren’t quite so stiff. If his mouth hadn’t tightened. If his whole body isn’t tensed to spring forward—just in case. Riff feels a surprising—and confusing—rush of elation, knowing that Tony is ready to leap to his aid.
“Call his bluff,” Tony says, to Grazi. “He ain't gonna drop. Nobody’s that stupid.”
Grazi’s face is pink from neck to hairline. She bites her lip, clearly torn. “You’re an idiot,” she says, with an ineffectual little stamp of her foot on the cross bar under her foot; the seat rocks slightly. “You’re an idiot and you’re maddening and this is manipulative and—and—” Riff lets his grip loosen, very very slightly, slipping down an inch. Grazi jerks in her seat, hands open pleadingly in front of her. Tony leans almost imperceptibly forward.
“Fine!” Grazi’s voice, slightly shrill now, has crept up in volume, too. “Fine, fine—I’ll go out with you—will you please, please, please get down?”
Riff immediately swings himself forward so that his feet are resting on the cross-bar just in front of him. “Jeez, Graz, don’t freak out on me. Sure, I’ll go out with you.” He drops into a seated position, knees hooked around metal, and looks up innocently. “Pick you up tomorrow? Eight o’clock sharp?”
Grazi’s mouth is open; next to her, Tony looks simultaneously annoyed—finally—and impressed. “You fuckin’ bastard,” he says, wonderingly. His expression is complicated, but his eyes shine with the same warm radiance of the carnival lights—bright and blazing, candle-lit. “You’re such an asshole.”
Riff shrugs. He lowers himself down through the gap in the frame and begins to clamber down the wheel, using the nearest spoke connector as a ladder. “See you tomorrow, girly-girl,” he shouts up to Grazi. “Don’t bring your friend, there.”
Hopping the last six feet, he salutes the ferris wheel operator with two fingers. “Thanks for your help, man. Go easy on the weed, huh? My future wife’s on this thing.” The carny splutters at him, at a loss for words. Riff slips into the crowd before anybody remotely in charge can waylay him.
He’s back at the funnel cake stand before he risks turning around; the wheel has finished its slow turn and Tony and Grazi are climbing out of their chair at the bottom of the ride. Riff watches as Tony helps Grazi off the seat with a gentle, considerate hand. He watches Tony steer her through the dispersing crowd, palm on the small of her back; he watches them make their way across the fairground, Tony leaning close to say something into Grazi’s ear, fingers still spread across the fabric of her dress. He watches them pause at a picnic table, Grazi opening her purse.
When Tony glances up, his eyes find Riff’s immediately. Like he already knew where to look. Like he’s been looking at Riff—for Riff—for a long, long time.
Riff has never been particularly spiritual. He’d believed in God for about the same length of time it took for his ma to be taken by cancer, after which he’d decided that God probably wasn't watching, and if he was, he wasn't being particularly generous with his omnipotence. He has never believed in past lives, reincarnation, karma, nirvana—any of it. He's pretty sure nothing more than the heat death of the universe is written in the stars, and “destiny” is just a fancy word for coincidence.
But he does wonder—just for a second, when he’s watching Tony watch him from across the grounds, when their eyes have caught and held and he’s thinking I know you —he does wonder, just then, whether he's been looking for Tony for as long as Tony seems to have been looking for him. If love could be so easy, after all.
“Uh, Riff?” Ice’s voice comes tentatively from behind him.
“Yeah?” Riff responds, without taking his eyes off Tony.
“Are fishes supposed to be upside down?”