2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas (22 page)

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—

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

“Y
ou 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.

B
en 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.

T
he world is fair tonight, so fair that Madeleine is filled to her ears with fairness; it is fair, fair, fair. She prances 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?”

“Friend,” Sarina says.

“He’ll have to go.”

“I’ll wait outside,” Ben says.

“No one will be allowed to wait outside,” the officer assures him.

He opens the door and lets people go one by one. The crowd steals glances at Madeleine as they heave toward the door. Ben takes Sarina’s hand to steel them against the current.

“Wait,” he says. “This can’t be the end.”

Sarina searches his eyes as if in them she has misplaced a set of keys.

Madeleine wants to tell them to hurry it up but her teacher’s pained smile stops her. It is the one she uses when a student struggles for an answer, to tell them she believes they have it in them. Even Madeleine knows to stay silent. If you
are anything other than humbled in the presence of love, you are not in the presence of love.

“Keep me updated on the status of your everything,” Sarina says, and releases Ben’s hand. The space between them fills with other people.

A
serious-faced boy approaches the bar, where Madeleine and Miss Greene wait to be interviewed. “Do you remember me?”

Madeleine nods. “You’re the guitarist.”

“I’m also the son of the guy whose club you helped close.”

Madeleine shifts her weight to her right, leading foot. She will spring through the club and out the quilted door if shit goes down.

“Girl.” He reaches out an arm to pin her. “No one’s mad.”

“Your dad is.”

“He’s always mad.” The boy grins. “How did you end up here?”

“I snuck here,” Madeleine says, “because I wanted to sing.”

His eyes register recognition but when he speaks, his tone is unfriendly. “Why?”

Madeleine is too tired to be tough. “Because they never let me sing at church,” she says. “Or at assemblies. Or anywhere. It’s always Clare Kelly. They say she’s the best singer in school, but her phrasing and pitch are bullshit.”

“Madeleine,” Miss Greene warns.

The boy works something over in his jaw. “You should worry less about whoever-the-hell and more about the fact that you can’t pace yourself. You almost blew it in the first verse.”

Madeleine knows he’s right. “Will you teach me?” she says. “I can sing while you play.”

“How old are you?” he says.

“Fourteen.”

He spits on the ground.

She is unaccustomed to wanting someone’s approval and can’t shear the desperation from her voice. “Nine,” she says. “But my birthday’s in two days.”

“I don’t play with children,” he says.

One of the officers emerges from the back and calls her name. “Screw off then.”

In the back room, an officer named Len Thomas assures her that there will only be a few questions. A man she does not recognize takes the chair next to her. “I have some questions, too.”

“Mr. Vega, this is not appropriate.”

“Call me Sonny.” He winks at Madeleine. “I won’t make a peep.”

“Name?” Officer Thomas begins. “Address and age?”

“Who do we know?” Sonny says. “Who’s your family?”

“My father is Mark Altimari,” Madeline says. “He used to be a vendor on Ninth Street.”

“That’s not it.” Sonny frowns.

“Mr. Vega,” Officer Thomas warns.

“Madeleine Altimari,” she tells him. “Eighteen South Ninth Street. Aged nine years and three hundred sixty-three days.”

“How did you come to find yourself here tonight?”

“It’s a long story,” she says.

Officer Thomas’s eyebrows jolt toward the ceiling. “I’ve got time.”

“I climbed out my window and walked.”

“You walked from Ninth?”

“It’s not that far if you take South all the way,” Sonny says. “Who’s your singing teacher?”

Madeleine turns to face him. “I don’t have one.”

“You sing like that with no teacher?”

“My mother taught me.”

Underneath Officer Thomas’s collar, a flush of red. “Mr. Vega, in many courts of law what you are doing would be considered interfering with police procedure.” He turns back to Madeleine. “What you’re saying is that tonight you climbed out of your window and walked across the city, to this club, got onstage, and sang of your own volition?”

“I wanted to sing,” Madeleine says. She is not afraid of police officers. Her only fear is roaches. At home on a recipe card labeled MISCELLANY, under NEVER SHOW UP TO SOMEONE’S HOME EMPTY-HANDED and DON’T TRUST A GIRL WITH NO GIRLFRIENDS, were the words: DON’T TRUST COPS.

The cop looks baffled, but the man named Sonny seems satisfied. “Your mother must be a great singer,” he says.

“My mother is dead,” Madeleine says. “Rose Santiago takes care of me.”

Sonny leans back in his chair, beaming. “Bingo.”

Officer Thomas makes furious scratches onto his pad.

Madeleine waits for Miss Greene to be interviewed at the front of the bar, where young people smoke and curse.
She finds a cigarette in the front pocket of her vest. The young guitarist strikes a match and lights it for her.

“All right,” he says. “I’ll teach you.”

She chokes on an inhalation of smoke. “I don’t have any money.”

“I don’t care about money.”

She offers her hand and they shake.

“What’s it like to be born on Christmas?” he says.

She thinks about it. “It sucks.”

Sarina and Madeleine
walk to Market Street to find a cab. A car slows next to them; its passenger-side window descends and through it Principal Randles calls their names. “I’ll drive you home.” Her tone is official, as if she is announcing the results of CYO games over the PA.

“No, thank you,” Madeleine says.

“I can’t have you walking by yourself,” the principal says.

“We would love a ride.” Sarina climbs into the front seat and gives directions. The principal turns the heat higher and adjusts the vents so they point to Madeleine, who climbs into the back.

“Seat belt,” the principal reminds her.

The girl sighs and clicks her belt into place.

Sarina eyes her boss, who wears lipstick the color of cotton candy. “How lucky you happened to be driving by.” A satiny dress peeks through the opening of her coat. Are those pearl earrings? The principal does not seem willing to explain. Sarina is not willing to explain either, so they are even.

They drive in silence. Crisp lawns, an overturned plastic Santa.

“Is that ‘Wonderwall’?” Principal Randles says.

Sarina’s phone is ringing in the bowels of her bag. She doesn’t recognize the number and dumps the call into voice mail.

Madeleine sulks in the unlit swell of the backseat. “Why do you hate me so much?”

“Madeleine,” Sarina says. “That’s not polite.”

They stop at a red light. In a store window, a sign promises furniture sales in the new year. Principal Randles clicks on her turn signal. She clears her throat. “It was hard to be young with your mom.”

The light changes to green. They have almost reached their apartment complex.

Madeleine can feel the principal staring at her in the rearview mirror but refuses to acknowledge her. She is no longer a student at Saint Anthony’s.