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

“You got that right, bud,” Sarina says. “Life is short.”

“Call me Martin.”

“Life is short, Martin.”

Ben shakes his head. “Infuriating. Going to the club day and night with her girlfriends.”

“Snorting blow,” the cabbie offers, watching them in the rearview mirror.

“Mountains of it,” Sarina says.

“Guys’ phone numbers falling out of her pockets like rain,” Ben says.

“Like a hurricane,” the cabbie says. “Like that one we had last year. You guys around for that?”

“My car flooded,” Ben says.

They drive in silence. Sarina watches the boarded-up market flash by.

After a while, Ben speaks. “She won’t let me tell anyone. She’s worried what everyone will think. Who’s everyone, I keep saying.”

“The Joneses,” Sarina says.

“Exactly. Everyone is everyone. She said if we divorce, I won’t get any of her money.”

“Well, you didn’t marry her for money.”

“I did not.”

A bus glides toward the jazz clubs on Girard. “Why did you marry her?”

“I married her,” Ben says, “because I thought she was a nice person. That we would have a nice life.” The cab clatters over a pothole. “Turns out, she’s not that nice.”

Martin drums on the steering wheel. “You want to see me do the expressway with no hands?”

“I’m a big fan of driving with hands,” Ben says.

“You’re no fun. I can see why she won’t marry you.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Ben says, by way of explanation.

“Don’t curse at me, buddy.”

“He’s a writer,” Sarina says.

“Cockle-doodle-doo,” says Martin. “A writer.”

“That’s right,” Sarina says. “Cluck cluck. Now, turn on this street, count to three, then stop ’cause we’re there.”

Martin brakes at the archway leading to Sarina’s horseshoe-shaped building. The whiskey has made her optimistic. She smells baking cookies. It is Christmas Eve Eve and she doesn’t have to work tomorrow. No matter what happens she has already had a good night. She points to her courtyard, where a waterless fountain loiters, producing nothing. “Do you see what I see?”

“Oho,” Ben says.

“Race you?”

“Lady, you have no idea what you’re in—”

She takes off. He chases her into the courtyard. She is winning then he is winning then she is winning. He grabs for the strap of her bag. She lunges for his scarf. It is an urgent, silly display. He leaps the wall and is inside the fountain. One of her heels has come off in the race. She hops on one foot while throwing the other heel off.

“The winner!” he cries.

Sarina feigns dramatic, faltering loss. Ben feigns accepting bouquets from an audience. She feigns cutting her own throat in agony. He feigns running to her: resuscitation. She feigns death. He feigns imploring heaven for answers. Receiving none, he stabs himself in the chest. Then they are both dead.

“Good luck,” Martin, tired of waiting, calls out as he drives away.

Sarina and Ben watch him leave from the fountain. “Martin!” Ben says. “You traitor.”

“I think saying good luck to someone is the meanest thing,” Sarina says. “I’ll call you a cab. You suck at dying.”

From one of the apartments above them, a Frank Sinatra song. They help each other up. Their breath in the fountain.

“Where is that coming from?” Ben’s eyes are bright. “Should we dance?”

Sarina puts her hands at twelve and three, like Madame Jennings instructs her children to do at Saint Anthony’s. “Donce?” she says, performing a deep plié.

“Dance.” Ben encircles her with one arm.

Sarina rests her chin on his shoulder. All of this is between his hand and her bare skin: her thick coat, blouse, camisole, black lace bra, citrus lotion.

The song keeps going. The courtyard smells like bike grease and Ben’s skin. He holds her hand in his gloved hand. There is no wind. Ta tum, ta tum, Ben sings into her ear. Ta tum.

Several streets away, Martin slows at a stop sign. Over an abandoned lot, the PSFS building looms. An elevator climbs its spine. The lot is filled with old bar signs and truck parts. Martin lets out a low whistle. “Get a load of that pretty city.”

The song comes to an end and a faster one begins.

Ben releases Sarina and performs a wild one-two-three he hopes will make her laugh. But the neighbors rethink music; it ceases with an unceremonious click. A television turns on.

“I guess that’s it,” he says.

On her porch, Sarina roots in her bag for her keys. The dirty light from her neighbor’s porch makes everyone on hers seem shoddy.

Ben’s mind is peaceful and blank. The whiskey has made his jaw feel achy and sparkly, as if he has blown up a balloon.

If she asks him to come in, he will say no. To ask to come in would not only acknowledge but cross the line they have been skirting all night. Since he cannot ask to come in or accept any invitation to do so, he wants the whole thing to be over. He yearns to leave so he can think about her. He will buy himself a pear at one of the twenty-four-hour places so he has something to toss to himself as he walks. He will reference the hand that held her like an important emissary. In his mind, he is already crossing the courtyard. He is buying the pear. He is saying to the vendor, “Love pears. Red Anjou, green Anjou, An Jou-st don’t care.”

Find your keys, Sarina .

He can no longer stand on this porch in agony. He can no longer sit in that car, on the night of that dance when he did everything wrong. He heard a few days later that her father had left her family, so on prom night she had been newly abandoned. How many girls did he take out in college and law school to atone? How many relationships did he solidify, even when his investment was weak to wavering?

“Do you want to come in? I make a killer martini.” She cringes. She is not the kind of girl who calls martinis killer.

“I can’t.” He sounds early for his cue. “Busy day tomorrow.”

“I found them!” She jangles her keys.

“At last.”

“There is something I want to say.” It’s a lie. She only wants to keep him here, on her porch, for another moment.

“Anything.” He worries she will say something that will drag the night’s meaning into full view. He worries even more that she won’t. Her neighbor’s television is loud enough to hear that it is a rebroadcast of the game, but not loud enough to hear the score.

“I forget what I wanted to say.”

“I’ll wait.”

“You might be here a while,” she says. “My memory is worse than a goldfish’s.”

He pauses in the yellow light. “No hurry.”

There is rustling next to them, the sound of a window being thrown open. A girl wearing a Santa hat and a clothespin on her nose climbs out. “Miss Greene?” she says, as if standing in front of a deep forest, calling out for anyone she knows.

Sarina’s jaw slackens with surprise. “Madeleine?”

After their wedding, Ben and Annie buy a town house in Olde City and protect it with a top-of-the-line security system. Every night, Annie smooths moisturizer into her elbows and lists the following day’s To Do items. Depositions, recycling, the post office. Ben watches her as if from the other side of a bay. Who is this tall, freckled woman and why has he done something as important as marriage to her? He makes excuses to linger in his home office, tapping at his manuscript. She seems relieved. The sexless weeks pile up.

He tries coming at her from behind, in the shower, like a predatory fish. This dissolves into polite intercourse. He moves into her as if he doesn’t wish to disturb her. Any interruption, a loud commercial or a passing siren, derails their tenuous physicality and they fall asleep, separate and worried.