Marie-Helene Bertino - 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

“I’m getting washed!” says Jodi. “Then I’m coming to see you, Vince.”

“I wait with bated breath.” Vince starts the hair dryer. Madeleine can’t hear anything over its din. “Stop squirming or I’m going to burn your ears off.” When her hair is dry he rotates the chair so she can see herself in the mirror. “Check out that pretty girl.”

The ends of her hair brush her ears. The coarse bangs.

“Here’s the deal.” Vince hands her a paper bag. “Take this shampoo home and use it until it’s gone. Every day. Don’t throw it out before you use it all, and don’t think you can skip it and trick me.” He dusts stray hair from her neck as they walk to the front. When they reach the desk, Darla says, “The tiger ate the alligator, is how they found him.”

Vince says, “The guy with the alligator?”

Darla swipes at her frosted bangs. “The asshole with the alligator. Only the tiger is still alive and the guy wants it back because he says the tiger and the alligator were his best friends.”

“Takes all kinds,” says Vince.

“I’ll say,” Darla says. Then, to Madeleine: “It’s paid for. Get out of here.”

Madeleine replaces her boots. Vince zips her coat. “Straight home,” he says. “Don’t punch any boys on the way.” He grimaces toward the windows. “Is it getting dark already? It was light for like five minutes today.”

Darla rolls her eyes. “Welcome to winter?”

Madeleine leaves. The door slams in bells. Outside on the cracked pavement her breath billows around her. Above her, the painted pink sign bleats against the sky: BEAUTY LAND. She pulls on her mittens and considers her next step.

In the endless array of mirrors, one thousand Darlas follow one thousand Vinces back to his station. She reads questions aloud from a magazine’s holiday survey. Jodi is already sitting in Vince’s chair, thin hair washed and held in a clip.

“What would you most like to find under the tree?” Darla reads.

“I’d like to find some goddamned time to think,” Jodi says.

Vince says, “A TV that doesn’t go out every time a plane flies by.” He asks Louisa what she wants for Christmas. Louisa says, “I don’t want anything, I’m fine.”

“You have the disease my mother had,” says Jodi. “Nice-itis.”

“Is it contagious?” Vince says. “You should rub against Darla.”

“You know what I want,” Darla says. “You know what I really, really want?”

Vince says, “Tell us already.”

Darla speaks with gravity. “I want to see Mark Recchi coming out to get the paper with a cup of coffee in his hand. In a shorty robe. That would make my Christmas. That would make my goddamn year.”

Vince pauses in cutting Jodi’s hair so he can laugh. “I’d like to change my answer.”

Jodi says, “How would you know where he lives, Darla?”

“My cousin has a police scanner,” Darla says. “I know exactly where he lives.”

A tin of cookies Louisa baked returns from making a revolution around the salon. Everyone is eating cookies.

Darla nods, approving of the gingersnap in her hand. “I’m writing a novel,” she says. “So many people tell me my life would make a great book. I figure I’ll give it a shot.”

“Like who tells you that?” Vince says.

“Like everyone.”

Jodi says, “You should put Louisa in your novel. Ex-dancer who bakes delicious cookies.”

Darla considers it. “Louisa would be a good, what do they call it, background character. Not the main one. Main characters are more … I don’t want to say interesting, but more, dynamic? You can be the main character’s friend, Louisa.”

Louisa concentrates on the magazine in her lap.

“Maybe I’ll put you in my novel, Jodi.”

“Give me hair like Louisa’s,” Jodi says, “and a husband who doesn’t speak English.”

“I will if I can,” Darla says, “but the creative process is tricky. I’m at the mercy of the muse.”

“I get that,” Jodi says.

Cassidy, the new bartender, sweeps the floor. Cigarettes, dirt, stray earrings, a pick, glimmer in the dustpan. When she told Lorca during their brief interview that she was named after the song, Lorca asked what song, and she rolled her eyes and said, “ ‘Cassidy’? By the Grateful Dead?”

“I don’t know new music,” Lorca said.

“It’s like forty years old!”

Cassidy lines up stuffed trash bags by the door. Her hair is brick-colored and she has a way of making every word sound like a curse. “You guys set a fire in here last night?”

Lorca passes her a bucket of soapy water and a pile of dry towels. “You start there, I’ll start here.” He lowers himself onto his knees. The hammering in his shins begins in earnest, but if he supports himself on one fist, he can manage. He plunges the rag into the water and works it over the corner of floor. The heat feels good on his hands. He moves the rag over the unseen parts of the bar, gathering clots of dust and debris. The work satisfies him and he likes that he can see the result, the wood returning to near its original color. He and Cassidy back toward each other until they meet in the center of the room and he can no longer ignore his humming knees. “You got it from here?” He chucks the rag into the pail.

Cassidy surveys the floor and nods, content. “Only way to clean a floor is on your hands and knees,” she says.

In the back room, Gray Gus uses a magnifying glass to paint orderly stripes on the wings of his plane. Sonny reads on his cot in the walk-in freezer, slippered feet pulsing to the jazz coming from an old radio. The very day he and the guys returned from Chicago to help Lorca run the club, Sonny claimed the walk-in for his bedroom. He removed the bottom row of shelves to fit his cot and a night table that held a slim pair of reading glasses and whatever he was reading, these days Chekhov’s collected stories. Sonny is particular in his solos and in his sock drawer. His pants make prim stacks on the shelves; his shirts line the meat racks on hangers. A Dopp kit of soaps for when he half-showers in the kitchen’s industrial sink.

When Lorca enters, Gus looks up, eyes still narrowed in focus. “Can we talk?”

Lorca detects a note of gravity unusual for the easygoing drummer.

“He guessed,” Sonny says.

Gus replaces the cap to the bottle of paint and wheels his chair up to Lorca’s desk. “I can help,” he says. “I have money.”

“You have thirty thousand dollars?” Lorca says.

“Jesus.” Gus pushes himself away from the desk. “I don’t have that much.”

Sonny marks the page in his book. “I told you it was a ridiculous amount.”

“I thought you meant, like, a couple hundred.” Gus brushes excess filings from the plane’s body, the remnants from sanding a wing or a door.

“A couple hundred could not be classified as ‘ridiculous.’ ”

“Depends on who you ask,” Gus says.

Lorca leaves them to debate. He hoists two trash bags from the line and carries them outside. By the Dumpster, a dog the size of a standard amp wrestles a milk carton.

“Dog,” he says. “Come here.”

The dog abandons the battle and runs over. It throws itself onto the ground to announce its belly. “I know you.” Lorca fishes around its neck to find the tag.

Ciao! I’m Pedro .

I have a case of wanderlust .

If found, please call …

Cassidy stands behind him holding two more bags. “What’s that?” she says. “A dog?”

Already evening is blotting out the city. Shadows web in the alleys on Ninth Street. The illuminated crew houses of Boathouse Row reflect in the unimpressed Schuylkill. The factory near Palmer belches filth toward New Jersey. Clouds flinch across the mackerel sky, bottoms silvered by the retreating sun.