Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

I waved it toward him. He pulled the plate close and chewed diligently for a minute, then drained one of the water glasses.

At that moment, the barman approached. He nodded at me apologetically and addressed Poppy.

"Sir, this is a private room."

"The door was unlocked."

"The door was closed, sir."

"I opened it."

"Sir, they're telling me that there's a big truck full of potatoes parked on our sidewalk."

Poppy nodded. "That's mine."

"Sir, they're asking you to move it."

"I will." He smiled at me, teeth smeared with dark cake. "When I'm ready."

"Sir, it's very inconvenient for-"

Poppy swiveled. "It'll be very inconvenient if I dump those potatoes in front of this place, don't you think?"

"Sir, I expect that we'll need to call the police."

"Fine, call them."

"Sir?"

"But don't expect them to pick up something like nine thousand frozen potatoes."

The barman eased away.

"You got a pen?"

I did. He slid an embossed HAVANA ROOM napkin in front of himself and tried to write. "All right, I'll-" The napkin tore.

I handed him another. He tried again.

"What's wrong?"

"Circulation's gone. This one"- he held up his right hand, wiggled the fingers stiffly-"got run over by a loader sixteen years ago, which lemme tell you hurt like the devil." He lifted the left. "And this one- I got the repeating motion thing. Tendons all gummed up. Got no power, no grip."

With the second napkin, Poppy was successful, moving the pen slowly, like a boy carving his initials into a tree. His eyebrows lifted with each finished letter. "Here. Give this to him."

"Can I read it?" I asked.

"I ain't stopping you."

The napkin said:

JAY- We got a probelm w/Hershul amp; the cat. Its not my faullt. Get out there quick. I cant do nothing. I'll wate all night.

Poppy

He pulled his cap back on, stood up. "I can trust you to get it to him?" he asked.

I slipped the note into my pocket. "I'll see what I can do."

He swiped a handful of cold french fries and slipped them into his coat pocket. "You'll try, right?"

It was then that I noticed the beautiful black woman I'd seen before in a blue evening gown at the other end of the room. The men looked alert now. Was she the one they'd been waiting for?

"You'll try, right?" Poppy repeated.

I looked back at him. "Sure."

"I mean tonight, fella," he coughed. "As soon as goddamn possible."

"Yes, sure," I mumbled. The black woman, so tall and elegant, was greeting each patron with a handshake and warm smile. The literary man had slipped forward off his stool in anticipation.

"Hey, hey, I'm talking to you!" said Poppy. "I got this feeling you can find him, see, like you know his girl, where she can be found. They told me she ran this place." He pointed at the napkin. "Jay'll understand that, he's got to."

I nodded. "Okay."

He was wary. "I can't explain it all to you. It's one hundred percent confidential."

"I get that, yes."

"Tell him I had to go back."

The woman listened to the literary man's banter. He felt himself to be very drunkenly clever, I could see, but he fumbled his cigarette onto her shoes and she glided away, ready to greet others.

"I have to get back, I said."

"Right."

"Because of the snow." Poppy zippered his coat, eyeing me, and seemed already hunched against the cold outside. "If you don't tell him, it's all on you. He'll know. He'll find out."

I didn't like the sound of this.

"And tell him I don't know how it happened."

"Okay." Ha, I noticed, had set a rolled white cloth on the bar. He unrolled the bundle and lifted a flap. Something gleamed from within the folded cloth.

"I still got coffee in my truck."

"Okay, Poppy," I said.

"You got to get the message to him."

Now Ha was filling a plastic bucket with water in the sink behind the bar. "I will."

"You tell him it involves Herschel."

The elegant black woman knew almost every man in the room, I realized. "I said I would."

Poppy saw my distraction. "I had to go back, he has to understand that. When he sees what happened, he'll understand."

"Right."

"He's probably going to need to bring someone to help. My hands are no good. It's a big problem, you got to say that, too."

"Okay."

"You look like a decent guy. I'm trusting you."

Poppy stood and left, but not before noticing the bowl of nuts on the bar, which he sampled liberally. I read the subliterate napkin message again, unable to make sense of it. How could I get it to Jay? If he and Allison had gone out to celebrate, they could be anywhere. Both probably had cell phones, but I had neither number. But I could call information. She'd said her home number was listed. She had to be, when you thought about it, needed to be reachable if the restaurant burned down in the middle of the night.

"Listen," I said to the waiter, "I'll be right back. I need to use the pay phone upstairs. Hold my table here, okay?"

He shrugged. "I'd make it real quick, pal."

The comment seemed unnecessarily rude, but I ignored it and hurried toward the Havana Room's hunched doorway, past the literary man, who had just been forcibly presented with his check by the bartender. I climbed the worn marble stairs, my shadow rising in front of me. In the foyer, while calling information, I noticed Tom Brokaw arrive for a late bite. Impressive man, Brokaw. Smooth, articulate, reassuring, deeply American in his persona. Bet he never killed anybody with a glass of milk, either. Allison was listed, and I left a perfunctory message about Poppy and hung up. The phone rang back almost instantly.

"Oh hell-o- ho, Bill," came Allison's voice- amused, silky, relaxed.

"That was fast. You know the pay phone number?"

"Of course. Got it on speed-dial, too."

"You're at home?"

"No. I have this fancy phone thing that rings me wherever I am."

"I called your apartment."

"I know."

"But you're not there?"

"Oh, no. I'm with Jay. In his big, masculine SUV. You can pronounce that suv, which is provocative, don't you think?"

"I need to tell Jay-"

"Like, let's suv. Or maybe you'd like to come up for a quick suv. Or, like this, all they did was suv, just constantly."

"You a bit inebriated, Allison?"

"Sort of. We're headed back there right now. I'm running late. But the men will wait. We just went for a spin."

"Things seem about ready to start."

"Not without me," she said. "We'll be there in three minutes. Here's Jay."

He came on the line. "Hey guy," he breathed. "I want you to come to my office tomorrow so I can settle up, show you-"

"That's not why I'm calling."

I told him about Poppy, and the potatoes as well. He asked me to read him the message.

"Oh, shit," he muttered, then muffled the phone. I thought I heard a tone of female argumentation. Then the open static returned, the sound of traffic. As I listened I noticed an elderly woman in a long fur waiting to use the phone.

"I don't own a cell phone," she told the maitre d'. "My sister had one, gave her brain cancer."

The maitre d' nodded at her good sense.

I kept listening. "Thanks a lot," came Allison's voice away from Jay's phone.

"Bill?"

"Jay, I think I should have a look at some of that paperwork tomorrow. At the deed history in particular."

"Sure." He wasn't listening.

"Good night, Jay." I wanted to get back into the Havana Room. "Congratulations again."

"Bill, you got plans tonight?" Jay said.

"I plan to sleep, eventually."

"I've got some kind of a problem. I need a hand."

"I'm a tired guy, Jay. Really. It's almost one."

"Wait, wait, hold on-"

I heard muffled noises, Allison saying something, arguing perhaps, rushing static. Around me people were still arriving at the steakhouse, despite the hour. The great old literary man, however, was being escorted with his entourage from the Havana Room by the waiter. "But the night is still young!" His knees buckled with each step. "Everything's about to begin! I saw the knives!"