A dull pop. A sudden, broken bone. Lorca’s nostrils fill with the dust of an ashtray. He shakes and shakes. Lorca thinks Sonny is helping him up, but he is clearing him from the collapse, yelling at everyone to move away from the guitar. Sonny swivels to face the panting men.
The fracture goes clean down her body. Her neck is snapped off but dangles by the loyal and steadfast E. The room is emergency quiet. The fight is abandoned. Lorca delivers the two pieces of his father’s guitar into the snakeskin case. He kneels and throws up into the trash can by his desk.
The room clears. The Cubanistas go back to the stage. Lorca can hear them launch into a floor-stomper from where he crouches over the can. The room is empty except for Mongoose, holding out a napkin. Lorca uses it to clean his mouth. He will take a stool at the bar and drink until he has erased himself.
Mongoose tucks the envelope of money into his jacket. “I want to say something to you,” he says. “I had nothing to do with Charlie.” Lorca attempts to speak, but Mongoose interrupts him. “You guys forget. He was like my brother. All these years not talking for what?” Mongoose says. “I miss you guys.”
It is not the first time Mongoose has denied involvement with Charlie’s death, but it is the first time Lorca considers it. He nods. Throwing up has made his head feel better than it has all day. “I need a favor,” he says. “For my son.”
The two men stare at the broken guitar.
Mongoose says, “Seems like the least I can do.”
1:58 A.M
Still hidden in the coats, Madeleine and her still-flippering heart.
The band returns from break. The young guitarist taps his boot on the lowest rung of his stool and repositions the guitar on his knee. The piano player pulls from his bottle. They start a song that is so familiar to Madeleine that at first she doesn’t recognize it. When she does, it becomes impossible for her to hide in the back. She knows the song and she wants everyone to know she knows the song.
She elbows through the coats and opens her mouth to sing.
No sound comes. Her throat refuses clear passage. She advances into the crowd and stamps her foot to get it going. “Hey!” she pleads. “Come on!” The crowd turns away from the musicians onstage, surprised to find a new show behind them. One face turns and is immediately delighted. It is Ben, holding a beer in one hand, a drink, his wallet, and a pack of cigarettes in another. Miss Greene is there, too. Her eyes grow as wide as the Schuylkill River, and as muddy, and as hard to pass. But Madeleine is finished with rules. This struggle is between her and her nerves. She batters at herself but her voice will not come.
“Make room,” Ben says.
Madeleine pulses. The first verse has passed; the first chorus is halfway over. Still, she cannot produce a sound. One hand hipped, the other keeping time like she has practiced only instead of on the hard floor of her bedroom, her child size nines are rooted on the hard floor of the city’s #2 jazz club.
So Madeleine has followed them here, to sing on this stage. The morning in church, the apple, the lice, collect in Sarina’s mind as she hatches this wild girl battle herself. She decides that one person will get what they want tonight. She takes Madeleine’s hand, leads her to the front, and halts, perhaps waiting for a rational objection to intercede. When none does, she lifts Madeleine onto the stage in front of a microphone the little girl instinctively lowers to account for her humble stature.
“Madeleine,” Miss Greene says. “Sing.”
1:59 A.M
Madeleine opens her mouth to sing.
1:59 A.M
Principal Randles struggles to batten down the flummoxing corners of her mind. It is not possible the Altimari girl is onstage, opening her mouth to sing.
1:59 A.M
Madeleine smells the figgy odor of perspiring musicians. Anxiety whisks her vision. The moment seems to be skipping like one of her father’s records. She opens her mouth to sing.
Her voice doesn’t show.
2:00 A.M
Who is this scrappy tomato? The band members communicate without words. They know what to do when a singer chokes. They vamp. If this little girl wants to start something, they’ll support it, but if not, they’ll bolt. There’s a difference between people who can sing in their showers and people who can sing onstage.
Max grins at the little girl. “Shit or get off the pot,” he says.
Still vamping. Still nothing from the little girl.
He nods to Gus lift off into another song. But then the little girl insists into the microphone:
Baby, here I am, by the railroad track!
Max motions for the others to stay on the same tip. The tomato is going to try it.
Madeleine is singing!
The caramel apples do not concern her. Her roachy apartment does not concern her. The young guitarist does not concern her, though she senses he is moving his music over and under her singing. The thorny issues of her particular life do not concern her. Even her mother. The only thought Madeleine has is, when she is singing, singing. There is only the way the song feels in her throat.
Waiting for my baby!
In a white room lit by a white candle, Madeleine is the white candle. Madeleine is the white room. Born perfect from her perfect mother and fucked up by her fucked-up father, one holy, catholic, and apostolic song. It is the rest of her life rising to meet her like heat from the sidewalk and she knows it like she knows to take the A train when you want to find yourself in Harlem.
He’s comin’ back!
She sparkles, she goddamns, when it’s time for the highest note, she gathers the reins of her diaphragm and soars. Even the musicians doff their impassive expressions. The song is over and everything around Madeleine gets loud with applause, yet somehow she hears the young guitarist say, “What’s next, little girl?”
Madeleine calls out the song like she’s done it countless times, like she and he have a routine they’ve hammered out in late-night venues. Madeleine calls out “Blossom’s Blues,” then immediately regrets it. No one knows Blossom Dearie except her dead mother who would make her dead too if she caught her here, but Madeleine’s self-lecture is interrupted by the first chords of “Blossom’s Blues” and if she keeps berating herself she will miss her—
My name is Blossom, I was raised in a lion’s den.
My nightly occupation is stealing other women’s men.