Colin Harrison: The Havana Room

"Oh, Daddy!" Sally Cowles cried in exasperation. "I'm so bored!"

That was all I needed to hear, forever, so I slipped away down the steps and outside. The weather was getting warmer and I walked the streets for an hour feeling the strange emptiness of it all. Jay, I said to myself, I did it to protect her. She didn't need to know who her father was, because if she found out, it would crack her relationship with the man she thought was her father and because her own father was lost to her now. It was a truth within a lie or a lie within a truth- which, I wasn't sure. But I suspected I might have done the right thing. It didn't weigh on me. I'd lied on behalf of a greater good, and though it was not anywhere close to bringing poor Wilson Doan back to life, it was a small offering of penance, one that might perhaps count.

In time I found myself walking by the steakhouse on Thirty-third Street, but not turning in. The second ceramic pot had been replaced, complete with evergreen. It needed to weather and didn't quite match. One night, finally, as the nights began to warm, I stepped inside the heavy door, past the gold lettering, and all was the same, the mahogany woodwork and oil paintings. As ever, as if nothing had happened. It was perhaps an hour before the dinner rush. I saw a busboy vacuuming at the far end of the dining room, the maitre d' checking the reservation book. The door to the Havana Room hung open, I noticed, and before anyone could object, I darted through it and down the nineteen marble steps, expecting to see the painting of the black-eyed nude above the bar, the books on the shelves, the ancient barman wiping a glass, the dusty sconces above the wainscoting.

But the room had been painted an improbable yellow, cheery and harmless as a child's bedroom, with all of the paintings and old books removed. The tile floor had been carpeted over beautifully and the booths and men's room removed- torn out. Two long banquet tables had been set up, with folds of linen tablecloth, and each bore a printed placard that read: Women in Dialogue/Monthly Guest Speaker Dinner. On cue I heard voices coming in through the door and found myself confronted by fifteen or sixteen professional women eagerly taking their seats.

"I'd like three bottles of sparkling water at each table, please," one woman said to me. "Thank you."

I didn't bother to explain her mistake and instead slipped out the doorway and up the stairs into the main dining room. I walked straight through the kitchen looking for Allison. I saw cooks and busboys and waitresses, many of them familiar, but no Allison.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm looking for Allison Sparks."

"She's here, somewhere."

"In her office?"

"I think she's in one of the lockers downstairs."

"Will you take me to her?"

"Is it-?"

"It's quite serious, yes."

I followed the waitress down the stairs and along a corridor hung with pipes until I saw the open door to the meat room.

"Allison?" called the waitress.

"Yes."

The waitress nodded at me and scurried away.

"Yes?" came Allison's voice, exasperated.

I stepped inside the room. As before, it was hung with perhaps fifty beef carcasses, each stamped and dated for aging. Allison stood examining her clipboard, back to me. She turned, and drew her breath. "Bill."

I nodded. "I almost called you."

"You should have."

"You painted the Havana Room," I said.

"I wouldn't use that exact word."

"No?"

"I destroyed the Havana Room, Bill."

"Scrubbed it away."

"I hate how it looks. Hate it."

There was an uncomfortable tension between us.

"Are you going to tell me?" I said.

"What?"

"What happened."

She shook her head. "I don't know. I told you before. Ha had some men come."

"Men in a van, I know that. I mean what happened to Jay."

Allison stared at me, something passing through her eyes.

"I mean, how did he die? You told me he walked out of there but I know he didn't. He didn't go to his truck, he didn't go to his apartment, he died in the very same clothes he was wearing that night."

"I really don't know what happened, Bill."

"Did he eat any fish?"

"I don't know."

"Did you see Jay eat any fish?"

"No."

"You saw him collapse?"

"No."

"Did you see him after he collapsed?"

"Yes."

"Did you see him after he died?"

She wouldn't answer.

"You did."

"Yes."

"Then you saw Ha's men take him away?"

Nothing.

"And me, too?"

Nothing.

"I was left for fucking dead, Allison!"

She'd been willing to let go of the chance that I might be saved, and I might have hated her for that, but here I was, after all. I'd been at fault like the others, in my own way, and the rope of mutual betrayal had been braided from the desires of all of us.

"Tell me how Jay really died, Allison."

"I don't know."

"Allison, remember. Ha made eight portions of fish. Denny and Gabriel had two each. H.J. had two. I had one. One was left. It was in front of Jay when I passed out. Did he eat it or not?"

"No."

"And he was fine?"

"Unsteady, but fine, I guess."

"What do you mean, unsteady?"

"He was bent over, like he got sometimes. Tired-looking."

I waited.

"I went upstairs to open the restaurant for the night. The cooks were there, the waitstaff, everybody. Ha came with me."

"Did Ha think he'd killed me?"

"Yes. By accident. He said he gave you too much of it. He said your brain was destroyed and that you would die in the van."

"Seems to me he got it just right," I said. "Where's Ha now?"

"I told you before, I don't know."

"Left?"

"Right away. That same night."

"Did you think about looking for him?"

Allison shook her head- sadly, I thought.

"Why not?"

"I have no idea where he could be, that's why."

"What's his complete name?" I said. "You could do a search for him by-"

"Don't know."

"You don't know? Is Ha his first name or his last?"

"Don't know."

"But you hired him."

"I paid him under the table. We never did any paperwork."

"Is Ha his real name?"

She smiled. "I don't know."

"No more funny Chinese fish."

"Nope."

"All right." I wanted to resume the sequence. "Where was Jay when you and Ha went upstairs to open the restaurant?"

"He had a cigar in his hand."

"You saw him light it?"

"No."

"That's the last time you saw him, saw him alive?"

Allison's eyes filled and she blinked.

"Come on!"

She nodded. "Yes. When we came back maybe, I don't know, maybe ten minutes later, he was dead. On the floor, dead. It was awful."

"Had he eaten the last piece of fish?"

"No. I didn't understand how-"

"Was a cigar there? Was it lit? Did it burn out?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I got kind of hysterical, actually."

She wasn't telling me something.

"I saw the girl the other day," Allison mused, eyes downcast. "I'd seen her in the neighborhood. She looks just like him."

I still wondered why I didn't believe Allison's story about Jay and the cigar. Or how I could believe it.

"You knew?" she asked. "That night we-?"

"I was figuring it out, yes."

"She lived right across from me." Allison was telling it to herself now. "He was trying to find her-"

"Wait," I said. "What happened to the last portion of fish?"

Allison slumped forward and fell against me. Despite myself I held her. "I kept looking at it," she said. "Then I ate it."

She wept against my chest. Yes, Allison Sparks, hard and tough and rotten, sobbed against my chest. "Jay was dead, I thought you were dead, you had foam in your mouth, and there was that Lamont guy, he was dead, too, and I panicked, Bill. I was so upset about the girl and I understood why Jay did it, why he- I wasn't angry with him anymore, it was just so sad, so terribly sad, and I wanted to just die, to die there with him."