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After a few minutes of wandering, Bunny bought some pink cotton candy and tried to nibble around the outside without getting her face all sticky. Soon she gave up and dumped it in a trash can. “I want to try a game,” she said.
We came to a small, open tent, set in a clear space, so groups of people flowed around it. The tent covered a huge, pastel pyramid of little fish bowls, each filled with colored water—pink or yellow or blue. The pyramid was lighted from within and made a spectacular display, like some otherworldy rainbow hovering in the dust of the fairgrounds. To win at the game, you had to toss a Ping-Pong ball into a bowl. In the top few layers, each bowl contained a goldfish. If you landed in a bowl with a fish, you won the fish. Landing in a fishless bowl earned a water whistle, shaped like a chick, or a thick, hot dog-sized pencil with a hula skirt on it, or a hollow straw tube that locked your fingers if you stuck them in both ends and tried to pull out. The water whistles were something new and were proving quite popular. I’d already heard six or seven of them bleating around the fair.
“You want to try?” Bunny asked, after we’d admired the pyramid for a few seconds.
I shook my head. I’ve never been very good at games.
“Well, I’ll try, then,” she said.
A thin woman with dyed black hair was running the concession. She was wearing a money apron and standing inside a wood railing. “Try your luck,” she kept calling out. “Three throws for a quarter. Try your luck.”
“How can you miss?” whispered Bunny. The pyramid seemed to be nothing but yawning bowls.
The woman noticed us. “Come on, blondie, try your luck,” she yelled. “Show these folks.”
“All right,” said Bunny. She gave the woman a quarter and got back three Ping-Pong balls.
“That’s the spirit, blondie,” said the woman. “Win a goldfish.” A number of people who’d been listening to the lady’s spiel now moved closer.
“Here we go, Martha,” said Bunny. “This one’s for you.”
She leaned across the railing, lifting her left leg to help her keep balance. Her dress was pulled tight against her body. Her bottom stuck up in the air. The woman behind the railing frowned. Bunny brought her arm back behind her ear and let go with a hard, overhand throw. The ball ricocheted off the side of a bowl and bounced way out to the side and onto the ground.
“Awww,” said Bunny.
“Throw it underhand, honey,” said a man standing behind her. “Nice and soft.”
Bunny leaned forward again, stretching to get closer, wiggling her hips the way she does to get into her girdle. I would have been embarrassed, except that every eye was on her. No one even knew I was there. She held her arm out straight in front, gripping the ball with her fingertips. With a sudden, herky-jerky sweep, she tossed it underhand. The ball floated high above the pyramid, then looped down. It hit the lip of a top bowl, then bounced, plunk, plunk, plunk, off three lower bowls and onto the ground.
People groaned. “Hey,” said Bunny, “this is hard.”
“Come on, honey, nice and soft, you can do it,” said the man who’d spoken up before. He was thin, with a wine-colored face and a blue shirt that buttoned up the front. The top few buttons were undone, exposing a perfect wine-colored “V” down his chest. The man was angling, trying to edge forward in the crowd. “Nice and soft, honey,” he repeated.
Once again, Bunny leaned over the railing. Everyone was watching her and no one was buying a chance. Bunny held her last Ping-Pong ball in front of her eye, sighting the route she wanted it to travel. Then she stretched still further. With a quick thrust, she catapulted the ball toward the top of the pyramid. The little white sphere shot in a fast, straight line and plopped exactly into a bowl filled with pale blue water and one frantic orange goldfish.
“Hey!” said Bunny, sounding as if she expected the ball to pop out again.
People whooped and clapped. “Way to go, Bunny,” yelled Mr. Fanzone, the man from the hardware store, who was standing in the back with his wife. I tried to slip behind a few of the people who’d pushed up front, but Bunny turned to find me. “Come on, we won a fish,” she called.
The woman behind the counter hurried over to the pyramid and lifted out Bunny’s bowl. The fish was swimming around in a tiny circle. Using two fingers, the woman scooped out the Ping-Pong ball and handed the bowl to Bunny. “Here you go, blondie,” she said tightly. Then she shouted, “All right, who’s next? Win a goldfish. If blondie can do it, so can you.” Several people dug into their pockets and pulled out change. Suddenly, the woman was doing a brisk business. She didn’t like Bunny, though. “Come on, blondie, move on,” the woman said. “You got yours, now let some of these other folks have a chance.” Bunny just stood there, holding the bowl up to her nose and trying to see eye-to-eye with the fish. Finally, she slid over to me.
“He’s cute, isn’t he?” she said. “He’s got little tiny lips.” She thrust the bowl toward me. “Here, you carry him.”
“Oh, no. You won him. He’s yours.”
“Well, what am I going to do with it?”
Suddenly the man with the wine-colored farmer’s tan appeared over Bunny’s left shoulder. “Don’t you girls want to take that good-lookin’ fish home?” he asked. He had an angular face and a thin smile that moved diagonally from the right corner of his mouth to the left.
Bunny stared at him without saying anything.
He continued to smile. “Well, how about if I carry it, then?” he asked. “If you two don’t want it, I’ll take it home and give it to my little girl.”
“You’ve got a little girl?” asked Bunny, screwing up her face in disbelief.
“What’s the matter, don’t I look like the kind of man who could have a little girl?”
Bunny shrugged and shoved the bowl into his hands. We walked away, but he followed right behind. “You got a name for this fish?” he asked after a few steps.
