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

“Slow it down.”

Mrs. Santiago sets the table for lunch. “Look who’s back.” By the counter, tied to a wine barrel, Pedro sulks. “Jack Lorca found him in Fishtown. Fishtown! That’s half a city away. Until he can control his wandering, it’s a leash for him.”

“I need to use the phone!” Madeleine says.

“Eat your lunch, then you can do whatever you want,” Mrs. Santiago says. Then, to Pedro: “No more people food. No more wandering.”

Madeleine sits. Sandra can’t do anything but sit. Mrs. Santiago sets out plates and silverware and a platter of meats and cheeses. She sits.

“What is The Cat’s Pajamas?” Madeleine says.

Sandra bows her head. “Let us pray.”

“Amen.” Mrs. Santiago hands a basket of bread to Madeleine.

“What is The Cat’s Pajamas?” Madeleine says.

Mrs. Santiago stirs sugar into an espresso and watches Pedro, who sniffs the canine food in his bowl. “The Cat’s what?”

“Pajamas.”

“It’s the club Jack Lorca owns. Pedro was eating from the trash like a criminal!”

“I heard a report yesterday”—Sandra butters a piece of bread—“about a man in London who made a three-bedroom house out of trash.”

Pedro gives the food a suspicious lick. Mrs. Santiago bites her thumbnail. “He doesn’t like it.”

“Where is it? Can anyone go?” Madeleine says.

“It’s near Ireland,” says Sandra. “Of course anyone can go.”

“You’re not going to London,” Mrs. Santiago says. “Yummy, Pedro.” She rubs her stomach. “Good food.”

“Not London,” Madeleine says. “The Cat’s Pajamas.”

“A jazz club is no place for a little girl,” Mrs. Santiago says. “Stop swinging your legs.”

Madeleine stops swinging. “I want to go.”

Mrs. Santiago waves her hand as if shooing a fly. “I want to ride in a hot-air balloon. Hover over the city like a bird would.”

“I don’t know how that relates to me,” Madeleine says.

“Like this: Me is to hot-air balloon as you is to The Cat’s Pajamas. Neither is going to happen!”

“We’ll see about that.”

Mrs. Santiago raises herself up to her full height: five foot two in kitchen clogs. She wipes each hand on her calico apron and regards Madeleine with a patient gaze.

“Madeleine,” she says. “There are roaches at The Cat’s Pajamas. Mean, fist-sized roaches that drink alcohol and latch onto the necks of little girls. They turn all the lights out because no one there is afraid of the dark and they laugh at people who are. The Cat’s Pajamas is a meeting place for gypsies who eat roaches. Gypsies, roaches, and ice cream men.”

At nine, Madeleine is only approaching the summit of understanding that sometimes adults lie to get what they want. “Ice cream men?” she tests.

“Like the ice cream man with the cleft lip who scares you so much when he rings his bell down Ninth Street.”

“Why would anyone go there if it was so horrible?” she says.

“People are strange.” Mrs. Santiago sips her espresso. “But I do have a surprise for you.” She reveals a box from underneath the table. Inside pose several shiny hats. She places one on her head and adjusts its rubber tie around her chin. It is blue with streamers exploding from the top.

“Won’t your friends love these when they come to your party?”

Madeleine excuses herself and escapes into the back room, where everything is bleached senseless. In the yellow pages she locates the listing for The Cat’s Pajamas. Even the name on the page excites her. She runs her fingers over it. It is a place that exists and has a listing in the phone book and it is not in a distant city, it is here, in hers. She dials.

On the first ring, an accented voice croons, “You have reached The Cat’s Pajamas. I am the owner. How may I be of service?”

Behind him, intoxicating, electric nothing.

“Hello?” the man says. Then, in a lower, more intimate tone. “Is this a ghost?”

Madeleine hears several throaty guffaws and hangs up. Richmond Street, Fishtown. If she walks north she will hit South Street, which belts the city. If she takes South all the way to the river, the numbers will recede. If she turns up Second she will eventually get to Fishtown. She’s never been that far. If she wears sneakers and walks fast, she can get there in—

“Madeleine!” Sandra raps against the arm of her wheelchair. “Time to read!”

Madeleine returns to the front room, where Sandra holds a slim volume titled The Edge of Beyond . On the cover, a woman in a safari hat glares into the beyond. Behind her, a man in sunglasses leers.

Sandra ahems, removes her sunset-colored bifocals, and closes her eyes — her prereading ritual. “Page thirty-five.”

Madeleine reads. When she encounters a thorn in pronunciation, normally a vowel-consonant blend, she holds out the book to Sandra, who replaces her glasses, then announces it in her rude baritone.

“… Every time she thought of the way he had kissed her, she shook in—”

“Inwardly!” shouts Sandra, summoning Pedro from a nap.

“… Of course she hadn’t wanted it; she had done her very best to free herself from his—”

“Restraining embrace!”

“She tried to think of something else, anything else, so she didn’t have to admit the …”

“Humiliating truth!”

“… Humiliating truth to herself that in the end she hadn’t resisted him at all. She had clung to him like a drowning man seeking the breath of life.”

Sandra clucks. “Poor, misguided Rosalind.”

They trudge through chapters six and seven. Madeleine yearns to get outside. Pedro saunters by, inquiring about her ankle.

A word about Pedro.

Who keeps his salt-and-pepper hair in a state of managed chaos, jutting out from four nimble legs and hindquarters, muscular from distance walking. Whose brown eyes hold the world-weariness characteristic of a bon vivant. Who is enough Yorkshire terrier to exhibit daffy wonderment, and enough Welsh Scottie to accomplish a goal with focus. Pedro hops up on his hind legs in an effort to secure the candy Mrs. Santiago is currently figure-eighting over his snout. She takes too long to relent so when she does, Pedro respectfully declines. He is a gentleman wanderer who yearns to explore. Madeleine yearns for an exit. Rosalind yearns for a lover.

A blond head with pigtails approaches the store. Jill McCormick enters, in a clatter of bells. Seeing Madeleine, she narrows her eyes. “Did you get your hair cut? You missed lab.”

Madeleine checks to see if Mrs. Santiago is listening. “I was there but you didn’t see me.”

“My eye doctor said these glasses give me better than twenty-twenty vision.” Jill is a practical literalist. On hot days when Saint Anthony’s is too broke to turn on the air-conditioning, the kids fold paper into fans. Jill likes to point out: you expend more energy fanning yourself than you do just sitting there.

“Can you see this?” Madeleine says.

“You’re sticking up your middle finger.”

Mrs. Santiago calls hello from behind the counter.

“Hello,” Jill says. “I’ve come for a pound of coffee for my mom. The Sumatran. She wants to branch out.”

Mrs. Santiago winks at the portrait of her late husband. “Daniel’s favorite!”

“Who’s Daniel?” says Jill. “Oh. Your dead husband.”

A plan forms in Madeleine’s mind. “What are you doing today?” she says.

Jill stiffens. “I’m organizing my stuffed animals into color order and then I’m reorganizing them into size order, why?”

“Can I come over?”

Jill peers at her through her thick glasses. “Are you good at organizing?”

“Who will read to me?” Sandra says.