No one says I want you to wait and no one says I’ll wait.
Ben enters the club and Sarina follows. A concussion of guitar and drums pauses them. “I’m going to …” He points to the bar. She points to the ladies’ room.
In front of the bathroom mirrors, women administer to themselves. One draws her eyebrows on. One bemoans a botched waxing. One says into her phone that she is out of here if he doesn’t show. The hoops I’ve jumped through, she says, balancing the phone and washing her hands. Another woman combs and recombs her bangs. A vase of fake flowers brightens up an old bureau. Sarina slumps against it, sees herself unglossed in the mirror. She removes her coat, her sweater. She finds a compact and tube of lipstick in her bag. She takes down her hair. She puts it back up. She takes it back down.
Do you know I think about you every single day?
“Down,” the woman who has jumped through hoops says to Sarina about her hair.
“You think?”
The woman stabs at her pucker with a shade of peach. “I know.”
Sarina locks herself in a stall and plans. She will find him at the bar. He will be angry — drinking a scotch, neat. She will say his name and pause for the amount of time it takes to unsnap a bra, so he can process her lips, her hair, before she moves into him. She will open his mouth with hers. She will lead him through the club, into the men’s room. He will lift her onto the sink’s counter and slide his hands down her thighs. She will catch glimpses of him in the mirror. Her mind will be her childhood road in early morning; the breeze in the weeping willow.
Back in the club, musicians play on a blue stage. Sarina has never heard music like this. A quick guitar and a bank of drumming. Black coats and red lipstick. The crowd at the bar is three deep. The floor beneath Sarina’s heels pulses.
When she finds him at the bar, Ben is talking to Marcos and a redheaded girl. The night has contained so many chasms it has achieved an echo. An overcologned reprise. This is fucking bullshit, Madeleine had screamed in the principal’s office, and she was right.
My God, Sarina thinks, this terrible night.
1:35 A.M
This goose-pimply, gold star of a night!
While every other girl in the fifth grade is asleep, Madeleine is finishing a hoagie in the electric air across the street from The Cat’s Pajamas, meeting place of witches and ice cream men. The club is nondescript in a row of warehouses the color of potato sacks. A gust from the river. A couple pushes through the club’s doors, choking with laughter, and bounds toward Girard. Gypsies, thinks Madeleine. She crosses the street and stands in front of the club. She places her hand against the door. Wood. Her bed is made out of wood. So is her mother’s recipe box. Wood is not scary. She uses both hands to open the heavy door, hears music, and slips inside. The vestibule smells like cinnamon gum. There is a stack of phone books and another door, this one quilted and red. She peeks through it for the length of a glimpse: a red room with tables and chairs, each of them filled with people. A woman sneezes. Madeleine says, “God bless you.” She lets the door close and is once again a secret in the vestibule.
Two men enter from outside. One of them wears a stiff-looking suit lined in sequins. They seem to want to get to the main room as fast as they can. Madeleine tells herself—go! She uses their current to enter the club unseen.
Coats bulge out from an overworked rack near the door. A bar runs along the wall on her right, lit at the top by twinkle lights. The ceiling is tin with designs punched into it. At the end of the bar the room swells into the dome of a stage where a young man with a red scarf plays a guitar pointed forward on his knee. His fingers move so quickly the sound seems delayed. If anyone notices her, she will disappear like Clarence through a crack. Hidden in the coats, Madeleine’s heart does the rumba.
1:40 A.M
The girl, introduced as Cassidy, can’t be more than eighteen, Sarina thinks. In the crook of Marcos’s elbow, she looks like a niece corralled into an affectionate hug during a family football game.
“I work here!” the girl yells. “We’re going to dance!”
It is too loud to talk. Ben avoids Sarina’s eyes as Cassidy says something into his ear. Sarina assumes it is a general bar request, a napkin or more ice; however, Ben slides off his stool. Holding her hand, he leads her into the crowd of people on the dance floor.
“She likes to make me jealous!” Marcos says, taking Ben’s place on the stool.
“How thoughtful of her!” Sarina recrosses her legs. Ben doesn’t dance, she thinks. At their prom, at every wedding they’ve suffered through at different tables, she doesn’t remember him dancing. Sarina had to live through fifteen years of friendship to dance with him in a fountain, but this girl did it with a quick message delivered to the vicinity of his collar. No matter. It will be a clumsy display. The song is Latin, demanding passion and hips. The girl will get frustrated. People will become uncomfortable. The sprinklers will turn on.
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.
1:43 A.M
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?”