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

The musicians sweat. The song changes without stopping to one that’s more urgent. Ben and Cassidy reach the middle of the floor. Sarina takes absentminded sips of her whiskey and waits to see what they will do.

Cassidy begins a textbook salsa she returns to after spinning or completing a controlled slide. Sarina can see her bra winking from under a low-backed tank top. Par-rum-rum. Slide. Flashing gold charm near her collarbone. Par-rum-rum. Slide. Strands of hair plastered against her neck. Her gummy smile.

“She’s hot, right?” Marcos says.

“Ben can’t dance!” It is the only thing Sarina can think of to say that isn’t a lie. Though it appears to be a lie tonight. When the girl spins, he catches her and moves his feet in time with hers. He does his own spin. He hits appropriate postures. He laughs because he is having fun.

“Sometimes it’s about having the right partner!” Marcos moves his feet in time. “You look like you swallowed a rat!”

“I’m having a ball!” Sarina yells. “Your chest hair is distracting!”

He emancipates another button on his shirt. “Be a bitch!” he says.

The guitarist introduces a slow, gritty segue. The percussion simmers. Ben and the girl transition into an almost dirge: both of their arms are slack, his head buried in her neck.

Sarina removes her glasses and places them on the bar. She calls for another whiskey. An invisible god with strong hands squeezes her head. It is the senior prom again, only now she’s wearing natural fibers.

Ben: Be cool. Coca cola. Be cool. What am I doing? Be cool. Coca cola. Plug her in! Step, step. Tell her no! What am I doing (missed one, catch it up, parry step ([for the love of]!) Tell her no! Everything is — plug her in! Everything is. Step, step. What am I doing, think about it, date her cousin, mix it up and don’t get boring (this girl smells like Comet cleanser) — pelvis jut! Coca cola. Pelvis jut! Everything is. Comet cleanser. Tell her no. Everything is. Plug her in. For the love of. Sarina, Sarina, Sarina, Sarina.

Sam Mongoose, owner of the city’s #1 jazz club, surveys The Cat’s Pajamas. With him as always is Rico, the Max Cubanista of Mongoose’s. The real Max Cubanista pumps and mugs onstage. Seeing these men cross the bar like a storm cloud, Max dons an unnatural smile, leans over to Gus, and purrs: “What is this phenomenal bullshit?”

The band goes on break.

Lookie loo and how do you do, Principal Randles is on a roll. She sits at a back table at The Cat’s Pajamas, one shoulder thrust out of her one-shouldered dress toward heaven, with the tax attorney, who has a pointed Main Line nose and hulking arms. Arms that make a girl feel slender. This man has been chortling at her school stories all night — and she always thought they were boring! He would be happy to do her taxes, he said. My taxes? she had breathed, allowing her inflection to reach its most sultry hilt so that he’d get that she was not talking about taxes. Yes, he said, so no-nonsense, so pointy-nosey, submitting them early is money in your pocket. Take that, glue-covered, poop-tongued children! Take that, female pattern baldness! She angles her neck to reveal more of what was once described as ivory skin. By her grandmother, to the family doctor. She says, “When the band comes back, let’s dance!” “What?” he says and she insists, “dance!” “Did you say something, it’s so loud in here!” “Dance!” she says. “Dance!”

The tax attorney panics. “Dance?”

The band goes on break.

Sarina and her ex-husband stand outside on the curb, sucking on Parliament Lights.

“What is it?” Marcos says. “You love him? You don’t care that he’s married?”

“They’re separated,” she says.

“Well.” He takes a drag. “Shit.”

“I like spending time with him.” She kicks at the building’s bricks.

“Nothing clarifies feelings faster than jealousy.”

“You and Cassidy serious?”

He shakes his head. “As serious as you can be with a girl who has never heard of Steely Dan.”

“You’re kidding.”

“She thought it was a dish cleaner.”

Ben and Cassidy appear in the doorway.

“Who wants a drink?” Cassidy says.

“I do, darling.” Marcos toes out his cigarette.

“I’ll fix you one.” Her volume startles a trio of texting girls. “Am I talking to you?” she says, before disappearing inside with Marcos.

Sarina should be happy to be back in what has become their ready position of the night; however, Ben seems like a different person, one who has danced capably with someone else. Twenty years have passed since the night of their prom yet he is the same. His ludicrous way of smiling all the time. The cheap green of his eyes, not the color of shamrocks (something lucky) or emeralds (something valuable), but of dying field grass, chestnut wheat. The figure of his pupil moves like a horse amid these lousy, dry grains. Are they hazel or brown? DECIDE. His untried lawyer’s hands. Unable to build a bureau. The cavity of his morals: leaving her over and over, for this theater girl or that wife. Flat-footed on the pavement. His eyebrows assist in all of his famous expressions, the one where he hopes the magic trick will please the little girl: magic tricks for kids, the preoccupations of a never-do-well, never do for her, never a groomsman, always a groom. Look at him, one hand pocketed, the other flirting around the base of his sand-colored hair. Look at him: the rose color creeping into his cheeks — the first signal he is about to laugh. Look at him. She looks at him.

“Would you like another drink, Miss Greene?”

She nods.

“Let me guess. Whiskey?”

He pauses, framed in the doorway. She sees how he will be as an old man. Finely shaped calves in gray pants. The sallow, lightable cheeks. This is the meanest thing he can do: know her drink and act tenderly. To show her the exact form of what she can sit beside but not keep. In the jaundiced light of a streetlamp, Sarina realizes why people have children: to see the face of the one they love at the ages they’ve missed, to see his eyes on a son she could teach to use scissors.

The guitar case is already laid out on the table in the back room. Lorca unzips it and reveals the golden body of his father’s 1932 D’Angelico Snakehead. Its tanned back and S nostrils are graceful on the ugly table, making everything else in the room seem shopworn.

Mongoose caresses the guitar’s smooth face. Veins on his nose and cheeks map out the course of his drinking. “You’ve kept her in great shape.”

Sonny, Max, Gus, and Alex enter the room, significantly increasing the sequin ratio. Max strikes what he thinks is a threatening stance. “Why is Francis’s guitar out?”

“Why aren’t you onstage?” Lorca says.

“We’re on break, buddy.”

Mongoose picks up the guitar. Nausea runs through Lorca. Except for cleanings, the Snakehead hasn’t left its wall case for fifty years. The guitar belongs to the club, sanctifying its sinners, but if he loses the club, she’ll be slumped against the wall of his apartment, sanctifying the roaches.

“You guys sound good tonight,” Rico says. “But I’d play the fourth finger on that B flat.”

“You know where you can put your fourth finger?” says Max.

“Up my ass?” Rico says.

Max says, “Up mine, buddy.”

“Would you like that?”

The room smells like deli meat. Sonny’s bald spot flushes. Flecks of perspiration dot the sides of his mouth. Lorca tells him to sit down but instead he stands behind him breathing thickly onto his neck, a presence Lorca realizes he appreciates. Mongoose plays a chord on the Snakehead, the first sound Lorca has heard her make in years. It’s not possible for her to be in tune after these years, yet she is. Mongoose passes the guitar to Rico, who fondles her strings.