There was a reprieve in her isolation in the weeks following her mother’s death when Madeleine, polite with tragedy, allowed Jill to pal around. It wasn’t long before she regained her wits and shooed her away.
Even jerks have mothers who die.
Into the thoughts of every playing child careens the clanging of an oversized bell, rung with gusto by Principal Randles. The children line up according to grade and height. Some of the older ones take their time. Principal Randles eyes these delinquents and rings harder. She will ring and ring until she achieves order. Until the kids standing closest to her clamp their hands over their ears. Madeleine is corralled into line by her homeroom teacher, Miss Greene. Finally, the ringing ends. A chrism of sweat shines on the principal’s neck.
Miss Greene kneels next to Madeleine. On the stage of Madeleine’s school-to-home world, Miss Greene is a main player. Madeleine has memorized every intonation of her teacher’s voice, every possible way she wears her blunt, nut-colored hair, every time she has varied from her black sweater on black skirt wardrobe — twice. Miss Greene always smells like a tangerine and Madeleine likes that she never wears holiday-themed apparel like the other homeroom teacher, who today wears a holly-leaf tracksuit.
Miss Greene keeps her voice low. “Clare Kelly has been involved in an accident and won’t be in today.”
“What kind of accident?” Madeleine says.
“A serious one.”
“Is she dead?”
“She’s not dead.” Miss Greene makes the expression that means: That is a disrespectful question. “I’d like you to sing ‘Here I am, Lord’ at this morning’s mass.”
“Has this been approved?” Madeleine doesn’t clarify because she is daft or aggravating. She clarifies because she is a girl who has had things taken away. Even before her mother died, she was not a girl who assumed her train would come. Last year, for example, she delivered a perfect rendition of “On Eagle’s Wings,” and because of the shit show that happened afterward she had to sit in detention for a week.
Miss Greene’s smile falters. “Approved.”
Madeleine is overcome by the desire to cartwheel, which she overcomes. She wants to sing in church more than she wants a caramel apple. In the shadow of the building, they pray: a shower before entering the house after the beach. Amened, every other grade goes to their classrooms. The fifth grade follows Principal Randles through the corridors to church. Two girls in, behind Maisie’s confused spine, Madeleine tries to control her flopping, lurching heart.
Here I am, Lord. The lyrics batter Madeleine’s brain. All holiness and thank you, Saint Karma, for injuring that plaited kiss-ass Clare Kelly. I will hold your people in my heart. Hit “I.” Hit “people.” Hold “heart,” vibrato, done. Madeleine’s big chance. Time to knock it out of the park, toots. Here I am, Lord. Check this fucking business out.
9:00 A.M
Jack Francis Lorca, owner of The Cat’s Pajamas and what are considered two of the finest ears in jazz, sits hunched on the side of a cot, staring into the uncurious dark. So dark he cannot tell if his eyes are open.
Someone is knocking on the front door, or it is a residual dream sound. Or a stray stone shaken loose from the rock of tinnitus. If it wants to be answered, Lorca thinks, it will have to come again.
In the club’s heyday this room had been a kitchen, but now it is his office and makeshift sleeping quarters for his house musicians. Max Cubanista, bandleader, and Gray Gus Stein, drummer, slumber on the floor by his feet. Sonny Vega, rhythm guitarist and know-it-all, mumbles on his cot in the walk-in freezer. “Christian Street. Faster.” Even in dreams, correcting someone’s route across town.
Lorca has been sleeping here, nubby peacoat rolled for a pillow, because his apartment without Louisa seems dead. He does not remember particulars but is certain the constellation of shot glasses arranged around the bodies of his friends played a role in the headache blooming at the base of his skull. He is a man of average height. Not an attractive man but striking. The three names tattooed on his right arm are Francis, Alexander, and Louisa. The guitar tattooed on his left arm is a D’Angelico Snakehead, the same one that hangs over the bar like a prized swordfish. Lorca wears the same clothes from the previous day: black jeans and T-shirt, a narrow belt of fatigued leather. He bats at the wall for the switch that controls the overhead lamp and braces against the light.
The nucleus of the room is a round, battered table. Lorca’s father, Francis, the bar’s original owner, had bought it, still new, for what he called “family dinners,” and around it many jazz greats had eaten, played cards, out-fish-taled each other. Now the table is covered with parts from the model plane Gray Gus has been negotiating with for weeks, its inner workings propped on empty spools to dry.
The oven is stuffed with old set lists. A glass vase filled with picks. Working and nonworking amps. A trash bag, marked, threateningly: Christmas. A woman’s pearl-colored coat hangs over the back of a chair, too nice for the room.
It is almost a home.
The knocking on the front door returns, insists.
Lorca trudges shoeless through the darkened club. The rapping becomes more insistent. I hear you, he tells it. He hopes it is his son, Alex, who left without saying good-bye the night before. But instead a man in an unfortunate suit holds out a badge like an apology toward the peephole. His voice is close shaven. “Mr. Lorca?”
“We don’t serve until noon,” Lorca says.
The man shifts from foot to foot. “Hello?”
Lorca releases the chain and jolts the door open, revealing the cop and a scene of flurries.
“Is it snowing?” Lorca says to no one.
The cop consults the sky. “Since dawn.”
Lorca pulls a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and shakes one out. “In here it’s always midnight. I guess you want to come in.” He motions for the man to pass him, then follows him into the club.
The club has a carved-out quality like the caboose of a train. A knee-high step separates the room from the stage, where, amid an argument of cables, Gray Gus’s drum set sits, charred. The stools lining the long oak bar are draped in unlit twinkle lights. Lorca recalls a boozy, predawn idea of hanging them. He had overturned chairs on only half of the tables before quitting, he recalls, to get sick in the men’s bathroom. The Snakehead, a 1932 archtop with Waverly individual tuners, is the club’s beating heart. Lorca’s father said he won it in an arm-wrestling match but this was one of his fish tales. He had saved for years to buy it. Next to his picture a sign reads: All musicians are liars except you and me and I’m not so sure about you.
The back of the cop’s collar is not fully folded over his tie. “I don’t want to take up much of your time,” he says.
“Then don’t.” Lorca plugs the lights in. “Ta-da.” They go green then red then blue. “When’s the last time we had a white Christmas?”
“It’s not likely to last.” The cop extends his hand and they shake. “Len Thomas.” He shows his badge again.
Lorca nods toward it. “Jack Francis Lorca.”
The cop pulls a notebook from his blazer pocket. “I’m afraid we’ve gotten several calls about your club. Over capacity, use of pyrotechnics, excessive smoke …”
“Where’s Renaldo? Normally they send him.”
Len scribbles into his notebook. “Renaldo got promoted.”
“Good for him. Deserves it. Excessive smoke?” Lorca says. “The crème brûlée torch?”
The cop points to Gus’s drums. The warped cymbals hang on blackened stands. A singed, licorice smell emanates from them.