2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas Read online

  She nods.

  “Let me guess. Whiskey?”

  He pauses, framed in the doorway. She sees how he will be as an old man. Finely shaped calves in gray pants. The sallow, lightable cheeks. This is the meanest thing he can do: know her drink and act tenderly. To show her the exact form of what she can sit beside but not keep. In the jaundiced light of a streetlamp, Sarina realizes why people have children: to see the face of the one they love at the ages they’ve missed, to see his eyes on a son she could teach to use scissors.

  1:46 A.M.

  The guitar case is already laid out on the table in the back room. Lorca unzips it and reveals the golden body of his father’s 1932 D’Angelico Snakehead. Its tanned back and S nostrils are graceful on the ugly table, making everything else in the room seem shopworn.

  Mongoose caresses the guitar’s smooth face. Veins on his nose and cheeks map out the course of his drinking. “You’ve kept her in great shape.”

  Sonny, Max, Gus, and Alex enter the room, significantly increasing the sequin ratio. Max strikes what he thinks is a threatening stance. “Why is Francis’s guitar out?”

  “Why aren’t you onstage?” Lorca says.

  “We’re on break, buddy.”

  Mongoose picks up the guitar. Nausea runs through Lorca. Except for cleanings, the Snakehead hasn’t left its wall case for fifty years. The guitar belongs to the club, sanctifying its sinners, but if he loses the club, she’ll be slumped against the wall of his apartment, sanctifying the roaches.

  “You guys sound good tonight,” Rico says. “But I’d play the fourth finger on that B flat.”

  “You know where you can put your fourth finger?” says Max.

  “Up my ass?” Rico says.

  Max says, “Up mine, buddy.”

  “Would you like that?”

  The room smells like deli meat. Sonny’s bald spot flushes. Flecks of perspiration dot the sides of his mouth. Lorca tells him to sit down but instead he stands behind him breathing thickly onto his neck, a presence Lorca realizes he appreciates. Mongoose plays a chord on the Snakehead, the first sound Lorca has heard her make in years. It’s not possible for her to be in tune after these years, yet she is. Mongoose passes the guitar to Rico, who fondles her strings.

  “You’d think you would save this for him,” Mongoose says, meaning Alex.

  Alex’s lip curls like he might spit. “Screw off, old man.”

  “I see the family resemblance.” Mongoose laughs. “I’ll take it.” He acts as if buying one of the greatest guitars ever built for thousands less than it’s worth is a favor. He pulls an envelope from his pocket and hands it to Lorca. “It’s a shame, is all.”

  Rico fidgets: velvet lapel, a continent of dirt on his neck, thick calluses on the pads of his fingers. “First Louisa, now your guitar.”

  Sonny advances. “What’d you say?”

  “I said, first the girl, now the guitar.”

  Max’s eyes are slick with excitement. “Are we getting in a fight?”

  “We’re not getting in a fight,” Lorca says.

  Alex stands in the semicircle around the body of the Snakehead. In the overhead lamp, his black hair shines blue.

  “What’s up, kid?” Rico says.

  Alex brings his fist into Rico’s jaw clean like a poem. Rico flops and spits.

  Lorca steadies the guitar on the swiveling table.

  Rico’s trajectory pins Sonny against the wall. Alex’s body is arched in the follow-through of his punch. Whatever follows will hinge on what Rico does when he gets to his feet. Trepidation stubbles the air. Alex doesn’t wait. Head bobbing to some unheard music, he hits Rico again. Sonny’s mouth falls open. No one wants to fight, but now the kid has made a promise. The table swivels again as Rico slings all of his weight against Alex. Their fall launches a folding chair across the floor. Mongoose tries to stop them and inadvertently elbows Sonny. They lose their footing. The room becomes a wash of sequins and polyester.

  “Jesus,” Lorca says. “We’re a hundred years old!”

  The swinging lamp throws half-moons onto the fray. No man in the room is a fighter. They are barely men. Their jabs and dives are put-ons, versions of things they’ve seen in movies. Alex is the only one with aptitude.

  “Alex,” Lorca yells. “Watch your hands.” Max leaps onto the table, pumping his fists and yawping. He overturns a napkin holder onto the scramble of flesh below him. Mongoose and Sonny skitter on the floor and careen into Lorca, who has time to say “Shit” before his ankle relents, sending them hurtling in an unholy wreck toward the table. The force of their impact jackknifes the table’s legs. For a moment everything in the room halts, as if even the table is unwilling to eject Max and the Snakehead. Lorca reaches pointlessly toward the guitar. The Snakehead vaults, hits ground, and slides toward the wall (“Vanilla,” Louisa said when he bought her that first milkshake at the Red Lion Diner, pronouncing it with the telltale “ella” that marked her as a city girl, the beveled glass reflecting the arcade, reflecting the bumpers in the parking lot, reflecting new love’s bald pate) before being skewered by the table, several chairs, Max, a handful of outdated napkins, and two middle-aged men fumbling for the punch line of a joke that has gone too far.

  A dull pop. A sudden, broken bone. Lorca’s nostrils fill with the dust of an ashtray. He shakes and shakes. Lorca thinks Sonny is helping him up, but he is clearing him from the collapse, yelling at everyone to move away from the guitar. Sonny swivels to face the panting men.

  The fracture goes clean down her body. Her neck is snapped off but dangles by the loyal and steadfast E. The room is emergency quiet. The fight is abandoned. Lorca delivers the two pieces of his father’s guitar into the snakeskin case. He kneels and throws up into the trash can by his desk.

  The room clears. The Cubanistas go back to the stage. Lorca can hear them launch into a floor-stomper from where he crouches over the can. The room is empty except for Mongoose, holding out a napkin. Lorca uses it to clean his mouth. He will take a stool at the bar and drink until he has erased himself.

  Mongoose tucks the envelope of money into his jacket. “I want to say something to you,” he says. “I had nothing to do with Charlie.” Lorca attempts to speak, but Mongoose interrupts him. “You guys forget. He was like my brother. All these years not talking for what?” Mongoose says. “I miss you guys.”

  It is not the first time Mongoose has denied involvement with Charlie’s death, but it is the first time Lorca considers it. He nods. Throwing up has made his head feel better than it has all day. “I need a favor,” he says. “For my son.”

  The two men stare at the broken guitar.

  Mongoose says, “Seems like the least I can do.”

  1:58 A.M.

  Still hidden in the coats, Madeleine and her still-flippering heart.

  The band returns from break. The young guitarist taps his boot on the lowest rung of his stool and repositions the guitar on his knee. The piano player pulls from his bottle. They start a song that is so familiar to Madeleine that at first she doesn’t recognize it. When she does, it becomes impossible for her to hide in the back. She knows the song and she wants everyone to know she knows the song.

  She elbows through the coats and opens her mouth to sing.

  No sound comes. Her throat refuses clear passage. She advances into the crowd and stamps her foot to get it going. “Hey!” she pleads. “Come on!” The crowd turns away from the musicians onstage, surprised to find a new show behind them. One face turns and is immediately delighted. It is Ben, holding a beer in one hand, a drink, his wallet, and a pack of cigarettes in another. Miss Greene is there, too. Her eyes grow as wide as the Schuylkill River, and as muddy, and as hard to pass. But Madeleine is finished with rules. This struggle is between her and her nerves. She batters at herself but her voice will not come.

  “Make room,” Ben says.

  Madeleine pulses. The first verse has passed; the first chorus is halfway over. Still, she cannot produce a sound. On
e hand hipped, the other keeping time like she has practiced only instead of on the hard floor of her bedroom, her child size nines are rooted on the hard floor of the city’s #2 jazz club.

  So Madeleine has followed them here, to sing on this stage. The morning in church, the apple, the lice, collect in Sarina’s mind as she hatches this wild girl battle herself. She decides that one person will get what they want tonight. She takes Madeleine’s hand, leads her to the front, and halts, perhaps waiting for a rational objection to intercede. When none does, she lifts Madeleine onto the stage in front of a microphone the little girl instinctively lowers to account for her humble stature.

  “Madeleine,” Miss Greene says. “Sing.”

  1:59 A.M.

  Madeleine opens her mouth to sing.

  1:59 A.M.

  Principal Randles struggles to batten down the flummoxing corners of her mind. It is not possible the Altimari girl is onstage, opening her mouth to sing.

  1:59 A.M.

  Madeleine smells the figgy odor of perspiring musicians. Anxiety whisks her vision. The moment seems to be skipping like one of her father’s records. She opens her mouth to sing.

  Her voice doesn’t show.

  2:00 A.M.

  Who is this scrappy tomato? The band members communicate without words. They know what to do when a singer chokes. They vamp. If this little girl wants to start something, they’ll support it, but if not, they’ll bolt. There’s a difference between people who can sing in their showers and people who can sing onstage.

  Max grins at the little girl. “Shit or get off the pot,” he says.

  Still vamping. Still nothing from the little girl.

  He nods to Gus lift off into another song. But then the little girl insists into the microphone:

  Baby, here I am, by the railroad track!

  Max motions for the others to stay on the same tip. The tomato is going to try it.

  Madeleine is singing!

  The caramel apples do not concern her. Her roachy apartment does not concern her. The young guitarist does not concern her, though she senses he is moving his music over and under her singing. The thorny issues of her particular life do not concern her. Even her mother. The only thought Madeleine has is, when she is singing, singing. There is only the way the song feels in her throat.

  Waiting for my baby!

  In a white room lit by a white candle, Madeleine is the white candle. Madeleine is the white room. Born perfect from her perfect mother and fucked up by her fucked-up father, one holy, catholic, and apostolic song. It is the rest of her life rising to meet her like heat from the sidewalk and she knows it like she knows to take the A train when you want to find yourself in Harlem.

  He’s comin’ back!

  She sparkles, she goddamns, when it’s time for the highest note, she gathers the reins of her diaphragm and soars. Even the musicians doff their impassive expressions. The song is over and everything around Madeleine gets loud with applause, yet somehow she hears the young guitarist say, “What’s next, little girl?”

  Madeleine calls out the song like she’s done it countless times, like she and he have a routine they’ve hammered out in late-night venues. Madeleine calls out “Blossom’s Blues,” then immediately regrets it. No one knows Blossom Dearie except her dead mother who would make her dead too if she caught her here, but Madeleine’s self-lecture is interrupted by the first chords of “Blossom’s Blues” and if she keeps berating herself she will miss her—

  My name is Blossom, I was raised in a lion’s den.

  My nightly occupation is stealing other women’s men.

  It is Christmas Eve Eve and Madeleine is singing on a stage and you can shove your caramel apple up your ass, Clare Kelly.

  2:00 A.M.

  “You hear the one about the talking dog?” Lorca says. He and Mongoose are in the hallway, walking back to the bar. “A man and a dog walk into a club. The man says to the club owner, ‘This here is a talking dog. We’ve just come from Europe where we killed every night, so you have to give us a gig.’ The club owner says sure, but he’ll have to test the dog. ‘You’ve just come from Europe,’ he says to the dog. ‘How was your trip?’ The dog says, ‘Ruff!’ The club owner nods. ‘How was the flight?’ he says. The dog says, ‘Ruff!’ The club owner thinks a minute. ‘What were the headlines of today’s paper?’ he says. The dog stays silent. ‘See here,’ the club owner says, ‘tell me what the headlines were on today’s paper.’ No dice. The dog doesn’t answer. The club owner kicks them out. They go home and the man is furious. He screams at the dog, ‘Why did you not tell the man what the headlines were on today’s paper?’ And the dog says, ‘You know damn well I can’t read.’ ”

  Mongoose snorts, nods. Then he lifts his chin, listening. “Who’s that singing, Lorca?”

  They muscle through the standing crowd. Onstage a young girl (eleven? twelve?) is singing. “Christ,” Mongoose says. “Child labor.” Then, impressed, “She’s tearing it up.”

  This girl isn’t tall enough to see over the audience. Alex jags in and out of her runs. He stomps his foot and guffaws toward Gus. He seems to be unable to stop smiling. Something about the facility of his wrists flexing over the fretboard. Something about his upturned face. Lorca sees his son the way a stranger would who happened in from the street, and realizes there can be no life for his son other than the one music will make for him.

  “We have to stop them.” Sonny’s eyes are panicked. “It’s two A.M. Christ, Lorca. Wake up.”

  Sonny is right, but Lorca doesn’t intervene or even move toward the stage. He listens to his son play, and a feeling settles over him that is at once so whole, so undeniably itself, it has to be joy.

  2:00 A.M.

  Ben places his lips against Sarina’s. She raises her chin to make it easier for him. It’s more of a press than a kiss. A place marker.

  The feeling at the base of Sarina’s stomach is akin to the promise of snow. Ben releases her but does not move away. Sarina touches her bottom lip for reference.

  Madeleine is singing.

  Principal Randles sits in a booth by the window, her will climbing and falling against the cage of her decorum. Something about this girl and her song is so rapturous, so influential, that even the tax attorney begins to move the lower half of his body. She will not cause a scene. She will not rise up from where she sits. It will not be the Winter Assembly again. But then the girl hits one pure note that shimmers into vibrato and the principal’s dominion over her actions slips. She’s standing, but she will not leer over the table. Fine, it is permittable to leer if only his attention stays on the stage. But the tax attorney, twitching with rhythm, feels her movement behind him. How can she explain? How can she battle the urge to hold him? She will say a cheerful remark and sit back down. She cannot think of a cheerful remark. The girl alights into an array of short notes, each one hammering a rib in the principal’s rib cage. The tax attorney’s cheeks are the color of sheets she can’t afford. Three thousand thread count. She clutches at them. She will not put her tongue on him. She will not put her tongue on him again. He tries to shake her grip with a stilted laugh.

  She will let him go. After this lick. After the next. But his skin tastes like olives and she loves olives. She takes unhurried, indulgent licks.

  It is the Winter Assembly again, only this time instead of mauling Kevin, the unfairly muscled janitor, she mauls the tax attorney, who under “Special Interests” on his profile wrote, Your wok or mine?

  Release him, she begs herself. He is openly struggling. But her ancestors were electricians and plumbers. She can devastate chestnuts in her grip. She moans into his ear. The tax attorney bats at the ground with his feet. People at other tables gape. She cannot stop, dear God let me stop, she cannot stop. She drags her tongue from the base of his chin to the corners of his petrified eyes.

  2:01 A.M.

  The world is fair tonight, so fair that Madeleine is filled to her ears with fairness; it is fair, fair, fair. She pran
ces back and forth on the stage, delivering this line to that person, and that line to this. The audience looks delighted except for this man who has pounded onto the stage and is cuffing her forearm past the point of fairness.

  Madeleine recoils.

  “Attention everyone,” the man says. No one listens. The man “Attentions” again.

  His gruff words do not match the gentle disposition of the audience. The guitarist stops playing and the drummer stills. The cheering subsides.

  It is Len Thomas, flanked by plainclothes officers.

  “What time is it?” Lorca says. A cursory survey of the club tells him it is over capacity by roughly seventy-five people. A musician onstage is smoking. He is smoking. It is past two A.M. A minor is singing. In addition to the fine he already owes, who can imagine what kind of improbable debt is being calculated on the notepad of Len Thomas.

  “This club is being closed by order of the city. Everyone is expected to leave immediately except those I will keep for questioning.”

  Madeleine shakes the man off. She has nowhere to go but into the bank of people who part as she jumps. They clog her running path. She counters, jockeys, double jockeys. Who are you who is that who was that? Toward the tonsil of pale night that peeks into the club at every entrance or exit through its heavy doors, Madeleine runs and Madeleine runs.

  Miss Greene and Ben catch her at the door.

  “I sang,” Madeleine says, but that doesn’t get to it as deeply as she feels so she says it again, harder.

  The door is blocked by an officer. “She’ll need to speak to us. Are you her mother?”

  “I’m her teacher,” Sarina says.

  “You can stay.” He points to Ben. “Is this your husband?”