2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas (21 page)

S
am Mongoose, owner of the city’s #1 jazz club, surveys The Cat’s Pajamas. With him as always is Rico, the Max Cubanista of Mongoose’s. The real Max Cubanista pumps and mugs onstage. Seeing these men cross the bar like a storm cloud, Max dons an unnatural smile, leans over to Gus, and purrs: “What is this phenomenal bullshit?”

T
he band goes on break.

Lookie loo and how do you do, Principal Randles is on a roll. She sits at a back table at The Cat’s Pajamas, one shoulder thrust out of her one-shouldered dress toward heaven, with the tax attorney, who has a pointed Main Line nose and hulking arms. Arms that make a girl feel slender. This man has been chortling at her school stories all night—and she always thought they were boring! He would be happy to do her taxes, he said.
My taxes?
she had breathed, allowing her inflection to reach its most sultry hilt so that he’d get that she was not talking about taxes. Yes, he said, so no-nonsense, so pointy-nosey, submitting them early is money in your pocket. Take that, glue-covered, poop-tongued children! Take that, female pattern baldness! She angles her neck to reveal more of what was once described as ivory skin. By her grandmother, to the family doctor. She says, “When the band comes back, let’s dance!” “What?” he says and she insists, “dance!” “Did you say something, it’s so loud in here!” “Dance!” she says. “Dance!”

The tax attorney panics. “Dance?”

T
he band goes on break.

Sarina and her ex-husband stand outside on the curb, sucking on Parliament Lights.

“What is it?” Marcos says. “You love him? You don’t care that he’s married?”

“They’re separated,” she says.

“Well.” He takes a drag. “Shit.”

“I like spending time with him.” She kicks at the building’s bricks.

“Nothing clarifies feelings faster than jealousy.”

“You and Cassidy serious?”

He shakes his head. “As serious as you can be with a girl who has never heard of Steely Dan.”

“You’re kidding.”

“She thought it was a dish cleaner.”

Ben and Cassidy appear in the doorway.

“Who wants a drink?” Cassidy says.

“I do, darling.” Marcos toes out his cigarette.

“I’ll fix you one.” Her volume startles a trio of texting girls. “Am I talking to you?” she says, before disappearing inside with Marcos.

Sarina should be happy to be back in what has become their ready position of the night; however, Ben seems like a different person, one who has danced capably with someone else. Twenty years have passed since the night of their prom
yet he is the same. His ludicrous way of smiling all the time. The cheap green of his eyes, not the color of shamrocks (something lucky) or emeralds (something valuable), but of dying field grass, chestnut wheat. The figure of his pupil moves like a horse amid these lousy, dry grains. Are they hazel or brown? DECIDE. His untried lawyer’s hands. Unable to build a bureau. The cavity of his morals: leaving her over and over, for this theater girl or that wife. Flat-footed on the pavement. His eyebrows assist in all of his famous expressions, the one where he hopes the magic trick will please the little girl: magic tricks for kids, the preoccupations of a never-do-well, never do for her, never a groomsman, always a groom. Look at him, one hand pocketed, the other flirting around the base of his sand-colored hair. Look at him: the rose color creeping into his cheeks—the first signal he is about to laugh. Look at him. She looks at him.

“Would you like another drink, Miss Greene?”

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.

T
he 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.”

S
till 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. One 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.”

M
adeleine opens her mouth to sing.

P
rincipal 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.

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.

W
ho 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:

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.

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.