These same patrons tended to linger at their tables as midnight drew near, long past signing the credit card receipt, and after a furtive glance at their watches, perhaps followed by a last swallow of dessert wine, they stood up and eased almost secretively over the creaking boards toward a small, unmarked door to the extreme left of the foyer, quite mistakable as leading to a coatrack or service closet, and kept closed. Affixed to the door was a tiny brass plate, and on particular nights a yellowed card appeared in this plate; on the card was typed a modest instruction: PLEASE KEEP DOOR CLOSED. When the card appeared, the room was found to be unlocked, and the men entered, pulling the door shut behind them. Table 17, so far to one side of the dining room, afforded me a direct if distant vantage on this quiet transit, and on the infrequent nights when the door opened, I saw that no unusual noise or light escaped. The patrons appeared to step down and to the left, and whatever brightness reached their faces came from below, finding only the undersides of their jaws and noses while so darkening their eye sockets that it was as if each man had just pulled on a mask of his own face. Naturally I wondered what went on down there. Were the persons entering any different from the others who stayed in the main dining room or at the bar? Not at first glance. Not necessarily.
But over time I could say with reasonable certainty that the men passing toward the doorway were undeniably prosperous, as I myself had once been, and in particular understood themselves to be still on the upside of the evening. Despite ample food and drink, there was more to learn or wager or steal. During my now wrecked law career, I'd spent quite a bit of time with such men. Their eyes seemed dilated with the conviction that Manhattan was an existentially transactional machineone person's fate went in and another's came out. Well dressed, rocking on their heels perhaps, tapping a finger against a pant leg, they were eager, these men, they possessed unspent energies and wanted something new, something more. Something dangerous, perhaps. And it was not about sex, not directly, or not primarily. The city was full of call girls and strippers and escorts and bar-stalkers, there for the buying and the flying, and anyway, many of the men passing through the doorway kissed their wives or girlfriends goodbye at the foyer, promising to be home in a few hours. But I could not be completely certain of their fidelity, for several times I saw a lovely, unattended black woman carrying a blue suitcase enter the restaurant and proceed directly to this same wooden door, as if acting on previous instructions, and after Allison nodded wordlessly at the maitre d', she was always let in.
"What's down there?" I asked a waitress one night when the card appeared on the door.
"The Havana Room?" she said. "It's sort of a special arrangement."
"You mean by reservation?"
"Not exactly. Almost, kind of."
This made no sense to me. Perhaps she didn't actually know. "What do they do in this room?"
She shrugged. "I've heard some things, but I don't believe them."
"Have you ever gone down there?"
"No."
"No?"
"Only a few members of the staff are allowed. Ha, mostly."
"Ha?"
"He's the old Chinese guy? You've seen him. Bald? The handyman?"
Yes, I had seen him, I realized, slender and stooped with a big Adam's apple and bloodshot eyes, somewhere between sixty and eighty years old. Usually he went by holding a wrench or a piece of tubing. But still I didn't understand. "Is there any reason I can't go into this Havana Room?"
The waitress looked around to see if anyone was watching. "It's sort of restricted," she said quietly.
"So I can't just stand up right now and walk in?"
"They'd ask you to leave."
"Why?"
"Because it's totally private." She looked at me, perhaps with pity, then lowered her voice further. "You're supposed to, like, know somebody."
I nodded. Of course. After all, I didn't know anyone. I had no business, I had no connections, I lacked even a decent operative liethe one we all need.
Was it inevitable that Allison Sparks and I would fall into conversation? No. Or yes, definitely. She felt me looking at her as she passed back and forth through the restaurant, I'm sure, just as I felt her awareness of my arrival each day, her sidelong contemplation of my books, my solitude. We didn't smile at each other; rather we nodded, as if in silent agreement that although the interest was mutual, the moment was not yet ripe. Of course, I tried to hide my attraction to her, for I had no reason to hope that she felt any toward me. Yet I noticed that she made sure I received very good service at Table 17, and I made a point of never sitting anywhere else. People have such ways of communicating, of course. It was simply a matter of who would speak first, and when.
In the meantime I quietly studied Allison Sparks, and, having encountered many people in my work, imagined that I knew something about her. New York has many avenues to success, but there's a particular kind of young woman who sails upward through businesses (ad agencies, weekly magazines, real estate offices, big restaurants) that are naturally frenzied and unstable. Because she is well organized, industrious, and initially modest, such a young woman reassures those around her; other women feel she is attractive because of her personality, and older men- older than fifty-five, say- see in her a respectful and attentive daughter. So she prospers- at first. And she dates, although often the men are too weak for her and she discards them. Within a year or two her title changes and she has more responsibility, only to find that the parameters of her job now include conflict and neurotic personalities. For a while she tries to deal with these challenges with kindness and tact, yet finds that these strategies often don't work. By now she has identified superiors whom she considers allies and those she does not. She becomes more interested in the end, as opposed to the sweet-voiced means. Is she ready to admit this to herself? Not quite. Meanwhile she becomes adept at all the forms of workplace intimacy, with older men, younger women, people on the phone, and so on. She learns to use her voice, to be playful, teasing, affectionate. She can manufacture energy or humor as necessary, as well as disinterest or rank fury. These qualities of manipulation begin to help her score important successes. She makes money for the operation, she solves problems. The younger women in the business look up to her, but the men of the same age have started to realize that they must compete with her. Her natural ability is intimidating, especially as it seems she is often one step ahead of them in anticipating some small, essential detail. About twenty-nine now, she is at a crucial developmental moment; she is about to plateau or become extremely successful. If she has been working very long hours, the years of toil and loneliness have started to harden her. Men have come and gone; there'll always be another, she thinks. Like a good movie- sooner or later. A year goes by. She senses that the younger women could fear her. Another year passes. She has learned to negotiate aggressively for her raises. She begins to change the stores where she shops and to spend money on luxuries and services that make her feel better, that soften her private suffering. She starts to travel alone, not minding that she will appear available- because she is. The spectrum of men with whom she spends time lengthens on one end. She will see older men, in part because they are more patient listeners, but even more so because they have secrets of survival, invisible techniques of power that she wants to master. Is she ready to admit this to herself? Of course not. But she is no longer ashamed to say she is interested in men for their position, their connection to the greater ganglia of wealth and influence and information. The available males now fall into three rough categories for her: handsome boys who are poor, often less intelligent, and surely self involved; barracuda-men in their early forties, usually divorced, who might already be lying about their ages by a year or two; and, lastly, the moguls, small and large, who are now rich enough to die. They are ever more grateful for basic things: untroubled digestion, hair in most of the expectable places. They know they have only ten or twelve good years left. Our woman, nearing thirty-five, sees that the few remaining husband-types are having a rather good time with women ten years her junior. She tells herself she doesn't hate them. She tells herself she needs no one.