2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas (13 page)

He tries to force his body to cooperate. He reminds
himself of her neck, her nipples. It’s no use. They stay together for another moment, making a wishbone on the hard floor. Then she breaks away and he slumps in the corner near the toilet.

“It’s no biggie,” she says, before he has time to apologize. She pulls up her underwear and skirt and reapplies lipstick in the mirror.

“Where do you live again?” he says.

“A town near Princeton.”

“Lucky town near Princeton.”

“Yeah.” Her voice is filed down, bored. Shame heats him. Someone pounds on the door. Lorca and the girl fix themselves.

Sonny stands in the catastrophe of the hallway. “We need to get Max out of here now.”

M
adeleine is dreaming. Her apartment is a funeral parlor/​nightclub/​coffee shop, and also the waiting room at her doctor’s office. Her mother lies in a casket filled with apples. Onstage, Billie Holiday sings into a microphone. Her head is a caramel apple.

After announcing her intention to do so, Madeleine walks from the dream kitchen to the dream bedroom to find a roach the size of a fist smoking one of her menthols at a café table on her bureau.

She runs for a can of bug spray, but the cabinet is empty.

“I’ve already taken it,” the roach says. “Along with your paper towels, napkins, and shoes.” A yawn scrabbles his multiple sets of legs. “It appears we are on equal footing.”

The hair on Madeleine’s arms rises. “Are you the roach I killed today?”

“I’m the roach you thought you killed today. I’m Clarence and I’d like to have a chat.” His legs reflect in the mirror behind him, making it seem like there are two of him, one carrying on a conversation with her, and one carrying on a conversation with her reflection. “You are one friendless Susie Q.”

Madeleine says she has plenty of friends and Clarence pshaws. “Like who?”

“Like Pedro.”

“Pedro!” Puffs of angry smoke. “Who you put on a leash!”
A shiver runs through his antennae. “Toots, it’s sadsville around here. You’ve been crying all night with that thing on your nose. What is there to be so miserable about?”

Madeleine’s hand covers her clothespin. “I got yelled at by everyone today,” she says. “I want to sing and no one will let me.”

A sound like a clarinet reverberates from what she assumes to be his head, a jeering, mocking sound. “Where do you think I would be if I listened to every ‘Get out of here’ or ‘Call the Realtor, we’re moving.’ You’re just a human being. Pathetic, stiff. Not one of you is worth even the tiniest grain of rice. It’s time to grow a set of balls. Learn how to say, ‘fuck it.’ Otherwise, you’re never going to leave the house, like Old Mr. So and So …” He hitches a foot toward her father’s room. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Madeleine says no.

He glowers. “It used to be fun here. Music all the time and singing.”

“My mother died.”

Clarence sighs. “Just because your mother is dead doesn’t give you the right to suck.”

“How do you know Pedro?” she says.

He shrugs several shoulders. Madeleine shrugs, too.

“Everyone knows Pedro.” He extinguishes his cigarette on the top of Madeleine’s bureau and, with a sound like a paper tearing, dives into a crack in the wall.

C
ertainly, however (an older couple asks, is this Spruce Street?), Sarina thinks, he didn’t have to (Sarina says yes) say my name. He could have called out an unaddressed (Spruce Street, they ask, not Spruce Road?) salutation in the night. Every night (Sarina says yes, there is no such thing as Spruce Road) hundreds of people call out good night to no one. (Thank you, the couple says, have a good night!) Good morning! Good afternoon! The word
Sarina
was a choice. Good night, Sarina. Good night.

Sarina walks to the station. She will process the party only when she has secured a seat on the train. In the relief of her home, she will throw her keys into a bowl, gather her hair into an elastic, and eat ice cream and cherries while watching the news. His lucky scarf. How his neck bears a freckle the shape of Florida that specifies his neck as his. The years had clarified his handsomeness, hadn’t they? When he said good night he sounded regretful, didn’t he?

Outside the store, bucketed roses grin under heat lamps. The man behind the counter tosses her the cigarettes without looking up from his newspaper.

Two teenagers shuffle up and down the aisles. “It’s my mom’s boyfriend,” one of them says, “and I work for him. But I said, ‘You tell me what to do on-site, you can’t tell me what to do at home.’ ”

“Matches?” says the man behind the counter.

“Please,” Sarina says.

“It’s cold out,” he says. “Do you enjoy the winter?”

“I prefer the hot.” She organizes the coins in her coin purse, the bills in the billfold.

“I did too when I was young.” He goes back to his paper.

“I wish I’d hit him with that pipe,” says the teenager whose mother dates his boss. “But then I’d be in jail, I guess.” They sidle up behind her and their talk ceases. This means they are sizing up her ass. She turns to catch them, but they are engrossed in a comic book. No one is admiring her ass.

Outside, Sarina considers buying a sleeve of roses. She evaluates each bunch then walks to the station.

There is time before the next train, so she has a cigarette on the platform. She can see the brick homes of Olde City. The dumb scratch of moon. When the train heaves and pumps into the station, Sarina realizes she has forgotten her wallet at the store with the roses and teenagers. She runs. Her low heels thwack against the pavement.

Ben, frowning over a pack of Camel Reds, looks at the girl who has entered, a beautiful girl who is flushed from running, she is familiar, it is Sarina: he is still frowning, so Sarina pauses in the doorway thinking he is upset with her until a smile he could not have planned opens on his face.

He raises his hands in mock penance. “I needed a cigarette.”

“I forgot my wallet,” she says.

Ben pays. Sarina wants the store owner to wink or refer to their previous exchange so Ben thinks she has charming conversations throughout the night with whomever, whenever. The store owner does not participate.

Outside, the teenagers read the comic book under a streetlight.

Sarina nods toward them. “Those guys are trouble.”

Ben considers them. He lights her cigarette before his own. “I’ll walk you to the train.”

Sarina wants to walk with Ben to the train more than she wants peaceful old age. “No, thank you,” she says. “It’s only a few blocks.”

“I can either stand here and have this cigarette or walk. It’s all the same.”

“Then walk me,” she says.

They walk.

“Parrots live in this neighborhood,” he says. “I saw one a few weeks ago. Honest-to-God parrots.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Annie didn’t believe me either. But still, they’re there. Someone must be feeding them.”

“Right there?” She points to a tree. As if on command, no parrots appear. Ben takes a drag of his cigarette.

Sarina takes a drag of hers. “Michael’s singing is getting better.”

“Yes, let’s talk about Michael’s singing.”

Is he drunk or just being silly? Sarina plays along. “He reaches notes only dogs can hear.”

“He came over last week and sang at my house,” he says. “When he left, my clocks were two hours slow.”

“His tone sends helicopters off course.”

“But his delivery is perfect.”

“Flawless,” Sarina says. A limo slinks by, the shouts of a
bridal party. “I have a special fondness for Michael. He was my only dance at senior prom, you realize.”

Ben winces. “I know.”

They reach the station and extinguish the hope of their cigarettes. Ben collects both and deposits them into a nearby trash can. That was a careless thing to do, she thinks, bringing up the prom. If he wants to talk more, she will talk. Even though that means she will miss the 10:30 and have to wait for the 11:00.

Saying good-bye to Ben is Sarina’s least favorite activity. So sad the number of times she’s had to do it. Ball games, recitals, the homes of friends, rented shore houses, through car windows after dropping off some forgotten camera to Annie.
Good-bye. See you later. Nice seeing you
. She has mastered it: A dismissive peck on the cheek. A hug like an afterthought. Telling herself,
Do not watch him walk away
. Watching him walk away. Watching him drive away. Watching him descend the stairs to the subway. How many times have they said good-bye to each other? Already tonight, twice.

He interrupts her before she can get the second good-bye out.

“How would you feel,” he says, “about missing your train?”

Once at the beach, Sarina watched a crane bathing in a gully at dusk. It used its wings to funnel the water over its back, then shook out the excess in a firework of droplets. After several minutes it took off, arcing out over the fretless sea. That felt like this.

M
ax Cubanista is a liar’s liar and no matter what he tells you he did not invent the radio. He is not “Chuck Berry’s only living pupil.” He’s never waylaid an armed robbery by playing music for the thieves. He was not the inspiration for the song “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” He does not own a bungalow in Havana. He and the Cubanistas are as Cuban as a pack of hot dogs. On most nights Max sleeps on the floor of Lorca’s back room next to a pile of his own sick.

Now he dozes in a booth at The Courtland Avenue Club. Every so often his chin finds a resting place on his chest, bringing him back to life, hurling insults at the girls standing over him and at Sonny and Lorca, who attempt to rouse him.

One of the dancers covers her naked breasts with her hands. “Tell your friend he’s an asshole.”

“He’s right here.” Lorca hitches his arm under Max’s armpit. “Tell him yourself.”

The girl leans into Max. “You’re an asshole.”

Max’s eyes are closed. “You’re a dear to say so.”

Lorca and Sonny hang Max between them and make slow progress through the room. The topless girl follows them, still yelling, stopping when they reach the door to the lanes, as if cordoned off by an unseen fence. Her friend tosses her a shirt.
Cape May
, it reads,
the most haunted town in America!

They carry Max past Barbara, who waves the fingers of one
hand as they go by, and through the doors to the parking lot. When they reach the car, Lorca realizes they are being followed by a girl in yellow heels.

“I’m Daphne.” She points to Max. “He promised me a ride.”

“A ride to where?” Sonny says.

“The Cat’s Pajamas.”

“What a coincidence,” Lorca positions Max unkindly in the backseat. “That’s exactly where we’re going.”

During the ride, Max outlines his thoughts: He wants a sandwich, he is getting the Christ scratched out of him by the seat belt, he doesn’t see what the big deal is.

Lorca smells Barbara on his hands. Desk chair and heavy cream. He went limp on her, so he will go back to his club and get drunk before Mongoose arrives. A flute begins in his gut. Every light on the street turns green.

The tables are filled when they return and Valentine is halfway through her second set. She lifts her eyes from the violin strings to watch them haul Max through the club. They deposit him onto a cot in the back room and Sonny gallops down the hall to join Valentine onstage. Lorca removes a flask from his top drawer. Max pulls a joint out from an unseen place under the cot.

“You go on in twenty minutes,” Lorca reminds him.

Max exhales. “I might be a little late.”

“We close at two tonight. Not one second later. If I have to turn off the electricity and pull you from that stage, I will.”

Max leaps from the cot and growls into a hanging mirror. “You’re scared, brother. But we’ll figure out a way to pay that citation.”

“Sonny told you?”

“I guessed.” He slaps his face and yowls. “Is anybody ready to rock and roll?”

Lorca leaves Max yowling in the back room to catch Val’s last song. She is an old-timer violinist and had been one of his father’s closest friends. Her hair is arranged in its familiar braid. Her considerable hands and arms make the violin appear dainty. She plays Stéphane Grappelli while Sonny chugs underneath her. “I’ll Never Be the Same.” There are enough people in the club so that not everyone has a seat but not enough that you can’t see the stage. This is Lorca’s favorite part of the night.

Valentine’s pianist rolls octaves at the top of the piano. Her gaze lifts to meet Sonny’s, but he’s not a smiler. Here and there he gives her a civilized tremolo. There is no better technical guitarist than Sonny. Tight, chaste solos. Reasonable quotations. City musicians regularly call on him for studio sessions because he is reliable and even. If he promises something at the beginning of a riff, he delivers. However with age his hold on the pitch has slackened. It started with a note or phrase, occasional enough to seem like a fluke. Now it happens regularly. Lorca can jibe Sonny for his retreating hairline, his bullshit parking, his emphatic, misguided directions, but never this: that when his old friend plays he holds his breath, anticipating an errant sound, the way he does when newbies try the stage.

Cassidy swings a bottle of rum to meet a glass.

“Swing one around for me,” Lorca says.

Alex sulks on one of the stools with Aruna Sha, in another
mutinous dress. The ash on her cigarette grows and menaces over the clean floor. Their occasional Main Line hanger-on is with them, a friend whose name Lorca always forgets. The kid yearns to be Alex, this is clear in the way he orbits him, undercutting anything he says. He jaws on about jazz, the one time he saw a famous musician.

“You can’t smoke in here, honey,” Lorca says.

Aruna drops her cigarette into Alex’s beer. She searches her bag, then she and the Main Line kid disappear into the back. After a moment, Alex follows.

Val swings her bow up for the final, shivering G. She holds it for several seconds as Sonny picks out the final chords. The audience applauds and makes demands but Val ignores them, so many of them go outside to smoke in the lull between acts.