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

Alex returns from the bathroom and asks his father to win him a prize from the claw machine in the lobby. They slip into their coats. Every other table’s jukebox works. They walk through several eras of rock and roll, each table its own sad painting: the church crowd, a family, a couple, an old man eating alone. Lorca hears Alex call out the tunes. “ ‘Fill Me Up, Buttercup,’ ‘The Twist,’ ‘God Only Knows,’ ‘Chances Are.’ ” Louisa sings along, her voice Marlboro and terrible.

At the register, Lorca waits to pay while Louisa and Alex examine the pie cases. “Coconut custard,” she says. “You ever have that?”

Alex wrinkles his nose. “Bleh.”

“That’s how I feel about it, too. What about that one, Black Forest? I’m a chocolate girl.”

Alex’s voice is sober. “I’m a chocolate girl, too.”

She tousles his thick curls. Alex tries to hide how happy this makes him.

A gleaming bank of machines in the lobby promises prizes in exchange for skill. Alex points to what he wants: a stuffed owl. Lorca feeds a quarter into the machine and nothing happens.

“Two quarters, Dad.”

He feeds another quarter. “This only took one when I was a kid.”

Louisa says, “Tell it to your plants, old man.”

The claw, activated, lurches over the pile of toys. Before Lorca can figure out the buttons, it takes a directionless swipe and misses. The machine shudders to a halt. Lorca feeds it two more quarters.

The claw jerks to life again. This time he is able to position it over the owl. He lowers the claw; its metal hooks close over the animal but drops it when it ascends.

“You suck at this,” Louisa says.

Again he feeds the machine two quarters. Again the claw holds the owl for a moment, then drops it. “Is this fixed?” he says. Alex avoids his eyes.

Lorca has one quarter left. He asks Alex for another one. The boy digs through his pockets. “Well?”

“Jesus.” Louisa tosses him a quarter from her purse. Lorca tries again. Another failure. He shoves a dollar bill into Alex’s hands and tells him to get it changed behind the counter. “Do you want the toy or not?” he says, when the boy hesitates. He turns back to the machine. “They want you to lose all of your money in this thing.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Louisa says, shifting in her heels.

Alex returns with the change. Lorca loses the dollar in less than a minute. On the second attempt, the claw snatches the owl by its wing but at the last second, releases it.

Lorca elbows through the crowd that waits for available tables in thick coats and stockings. The pies in the case shine. He reaches the cashier. “Can someone talk to me about the machine in the lobby? How can I get my son the owl he wants?”

“One minute,” says the cashier.

“I’ll pay you for one,” Lorca says. “I can’t spend all day playing a game.”

The cashier’s smile is thin with aggravation. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“How about it works that way today?”

The manager is there, asking how he can help. “Why is everything in this place broken?” Lorca says. He leads the man to the lobby, where Louisa and Alex stand by the machine. Alex holds up the stuffed owl. “Louisa got it.”

“Lucky, I guess,” she says.

Louisa Maya Vicino. Louisa from her Italian grandmother, Maya from her Spanish mother, and Vicino which means “near,” because her distant ancestors lived in the vicinity of something important, like an olive grove.

Two weeks later, Lorca’s father, Francis, pauses in the middle of a story to readjust his grip on the pilsner he fills. When his head hits the ground, it makes a metallic sound Lorca can hear from the other end of the bar. His father is already dead by the time Lorca reaches him, beer unspooling around him, eyes fixed on some fascination under the bar. Lorca gathers him in his arms.

Gathers him in his name — Jack Francis Lorca.

We carry our ancestors in our names and sometimes we carry our ancestors through the sliding doors of emergency rooms and either way they are heavy, either way we can’t escape.

Sarina tries a barrette on her dark hair. She tries the expression she will use when she sees Ben Allen for the first time in four years. Surprise tippling the sides of her mouth. She runs perfume along her collarbone. Getting ready is a series of negotiations with herself and her meager set of prettying items. She settles on a black skirt, champagne blouse, no barrette. She won’t do much walking tonight so she makes one final bargain with herself: heels in exchange for a cab ride there.

Thinking about him requires so little effort that she can do it while performing mindless activities. Soaping the dishes, replaiting Clare Kelly’s hair, drying the dishes. The part of her brain that plays his ongoing reel is unconnected to the neurons and synapses that control things like conscious thought and logic. Ben turning to her at a party. Ben turning to her. Ben turning. What human being deserves to be the nucleus of such high esteem? Certainly not Benjamin, middle name Hal, last name Allen. Five-nine in boots. Who has a car that doesn’t start on cold mornings, an unfinished screenplay, a law degree he doesn’t use, a romantic’s tendency to save movie stubs, and a mannered, unsmiling wife.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

The trash bags are gone, the bar wiped clean. The lights have been hung; they line the stage and loop around the Snakehead, making the old axe glow. Stalled in the doorway, Lorca experiences a stomachache he can only call Christmas.

Sonny leans against the bar, arms crossed. “The good news,” he says, “is that Christmas has come to The Cat’s Pajamas. It’s like a holiday card in here. Cassidy hung them. The mouth on that one. I sent her to get dinner before we open.”

“The bad news?”

“We’ve lost track of Max. He was here, now he’s not. He’s not at his place and he’s not answering his phone.”

“Do you understand that he is the bandleader of the Cubanistas?”

“Do I? I do.”

“Does he understand that we can’t have the Cubanistas play when the lead Cubanista is not here?”

“Like I said, he won’t answer his phone but when he does, I will certainly ask him. Did you call your uncle?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“No. But I thought of another option.”

“I’m all ears.”

“We could sell the Snakehead.”

Sonny’s hand instinctively moves to protect the guitar hanging over the bar. “Not an option.”

“If we want to keep the bar, we have to make sacrifices.”

“Your father would roll in his grave,” Sonny says.

Lorca pulls on the beer and stares at the guitar. The S-holes, dashing mustaches. The neck and body the color of syrup.

“Who would even buy it, Lorc? Who has that kind of money, or loves guitars that much?”

Lorca doesn’t answer.

“There is one more update,” Sonny says. “And I don’t know if this is good news or bad news. I say it’s good news, with bad aspects. Louisa’s in the back.”

“Why would that be bad news?” Lorca halts in the doorway. “You didn’t tell her.”

“She guessed!”

In the back room, Louisa sorts through a box of paperwork. She is always more petite than he remembers. For a moment, he lets himself believe he is still her boyfriend and they are having one of their Sunday night disagreements.

“Is he ever going to clean that up?” she says, gesturing to Gus’s half-constructed plane.

“He’s making progress,” Lorca says.

“What’s this?” She holds up the citation, the color of prison jumpsuits.