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

This time, she doesn’t refuse. “A vodka cranberry.”

“Barbara,” one of her friends calls. “It’s your turn!”

“I’ll come back,” Barbara says.

There is still no sign of Sonny or Max. Lorca says, “I’ll probably be here.”

Barbara jogs back to her friends and hurls the ball down the lane. It brings down a few pins. As she waits for her ball to return, one of her friends collects her into a huddle. They giggle, and separate. She throws the ball again with a sound of effort. It brings down the rest of the pins. Her group cheers. In the middle of their hugs she leaps and twirls.

She marks her score and returns to Lorca, hitting a pose. “Was that something or what?”

“That was something.”

“My friends are getting jealous.” Her breath is sweet with cranberry. “I have to stay with them, or people will say we’re in love.” She’s young, and thinks she has to say pretty things to seem interesting.

“You go with your friends,” he says.

“I wish I could stay and talk to you. I sounded ungrateful before. I don’t like to feel indebted.” At the crux of her collarbone, perspiration grows. She loosens her scarf.

“You were perfect,” Lorca says. “Really.”

The bartender yells, “Night bowling!” and the lanes are plunged into black light, revealing iridescent cartoon rabbits high-fiving on the walls. Everything white Barbara wears is glowing. Lorca wears all black. He checks his watch. Val will be into her second set already. They need to get back to the club.

He enters the back room and the door behind him closes, sealing out the noise of the lanes. Topless women wag themselves around a sparkling dance floor. A girl undulates over an elated coed, her expression fuzzed out. In a corner booth, a dancer works on Sonny, his hands clamped on her ass. A pop song belches out of the speakers. Lorca doesn’t see Max.

“Where is he?” Lorca mouths.

Sonny points to a farther booth and signals that everything is okay.

Hurry up , Lorca mouths, and leaves. In the bathroom behind the lanes, he pats water onto his forehead. In the hall he collides with Barbara. “Goody,” she says. She clasps his wrist and leads him into the ladies’ room, where everything is the color of salmon.

She presses her mouth into his neck, feeling for his arms and hair.

“This is much nicer than the men’s room,” he says. She slides her hands underneath the waistband of his jeans. “Whoa,” he says, as if he is bringing a horse to a halt.

She tilts her head. “You don’t want to?”

“Do I want to?” he says.

He tries to undo her shirt, but the buttons are too small. She does it for him. She hitches up her skirt and spins so he can see her ass. He unclasps her bra. The bathroom’s lamp casts dirty blond light onto her bare skin. She wrenches his belt off, his pants down. She holds the top of the stall with delicate hands and he pushes into her.

A nagging sound from the fluorescent bulbs and the hard thrum of the club’s music.

“How are you soft everywhere?” he says.

“I know a guy.” She wants him to move into her hard. Her lips fill with blood. “Wait,” she says.

They are pressed against the stall but sliding toward the ground. Something inside him waits, but something else continues. It gathers and advances.

“Good things come to those who wait,” she says, in the pretty way that suddenly seems cruel. His shoulders tremble with effort. Then the quaking recedes and becomes one limitless thing. His thoughts jump off a cliff.

She says, “Go.”

It’s too late. He is slack.

“No,” she says. “Really?”

He tries to force his body to cooperate. He reminds himself of her neck, her nipples. It’s no use. They stay together for another moment, making a wishbone on the hard floor. Then she breaks away and he slumps in the corner near the toilet.

“It’s no biggie,” she says, before he has time to apologize. She pulls up her underwear and skirt and reapplies lipstick in the mirror.

“Where do you live again?” he says.

“A town near Princeton.”

“Lucky town near Princeton.”

“Yeah.” Her voice is filed down, bored. Shame heats him. Someone pounds on the door. Lorca and the girl fix themselves.

Sonny stands in the catastrophe of the hallway. “We need to get Max out of here now.”

Madeleine is dreaming. Her apartment is a funeral parlor/nightclub/coffee shop, and also the waiting room at her doctor’s office. Her mother lies in a casket filled with apples. Onstage, Billie Holiday sings into a microphone. Her head is a caramel apple.

After announcing her intention to do so, Madeleine walks from the dream kitchen to the dream bedroom to find a roach the size of a fist smoking one of her menthols at a café table on her bureau.

She runs for a can of bug spray, but the cabinet is empty.

“I’ve already taken it,” the roach says. “Along with your paper towels, napkins, and shoes.” A yawn scrabbles his multiple sets of legs. “It appears we are on equal footing.”

The hair on Madeleine’s arms rises. “Are you the roach I killed today?”

“I’m the roach you thought you killed today. I’m Clarence and I’d like to have a chat.” His legs reflect in the mirror behind him, making it seem like there are two of him, one carrying on a conversation with her, and one carrying on a conversation with her reflection. “You are one friendless Susie Q.”

Madeleine says she has plenty of friends and Clarence pshaws. “Like who?”

“Like Pedro.”

“Pedro!” Puffs of angry smoke. “Who you put on a leash!” A shiver runs through his antennae. “Toots, it’s sadsville around here. You’ve been crying all night with that thing on your nose. What is there to be so miserable about?”

Madeleine’s hand covers her clothespin. “I got yelled at by everyone today,” she says. “I want to sing and no one will let me.”

A sound like a clarinet reverberates from what she assumes to be his head, a jeering, mocking sound. “Where do you think I would be if I listened to every ‘Get out of here’ or ‘Call the Realtor, we’re moving.’ You’re just a human being. Pathetic, stiff. Not one of you is worth even the tiniest grain of rice. It’s time to grow a set of balls. Learn how to say, ‘fuck it.’ Otherwise, you’re never going to leave the house, like Old Mr. So and So …” He hitches a foot toward her father’s room. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Madeleine says no.

He glowers. “It used to be fun here. Music all the time and singing.”

“My mother died.”

Clarence sighs. “Just because your mother is dead doesn’t give you the right to suck.”

“How do you know Pedro?” she says.

He shrugs several shoulders. Madeleine shrugs, too.

“Everyone knows Pedro.” He extinguishes his cigarette on the top of Madeleine’s bureau and, with a sound like a paper tearing, dives into a crack in the wall.

Certainly, however (an older couple asks, is this Spruce Street?), Sarina thinks, he didn’t have to (Sarina says yes) say my name. He could have called out an unaddressed (Spruce Street, they ask, not Spruce Road?) salutation in the night. Every night (Sarina says yes, there is no such thing as Spruce Road) hundreds of people call out good night to no one. (Thank you, the couple says, have a good night!) Good morning! Good afternoon! The word Sarina was a choice. Good night, Sarina. Good night.

Sarina walks to the station. She will process the party only when she has secured a seat on the train. In the relief of her home, she will throw her keys into a bowl, gather her hair into an elastic, and eat ice cream and cherries while watching the news. His lucky scarf. How his neck bears a freckle the shape of Florida that specifies his neck as his. The years had clarified his handsomeness, hadn’t they? When he said good night he sounded regretful, didn’t he?