The Havana Room

"It wasn't his fault, Daddy."

"I don't know that I believe that."

"Jay Rainey was not well," I began. "He had people after him."

"What does my daughter have to do with that?"

"He was-" I wanted to be careful. "He was unstable."

"What the hell did he think he could accomplish by kidnapping my daughter?" Cowles bellowed.

Oh pal, I thought, you should stop now.

"It's very hard for me to say what he was thinking."

"Sally," said Cowles. "I want you to leave my office so Mr. Wyeth and I can talk privately. But if you want to ask anything of Mr. Wyeth first, or tell him anything, then now is the time."

"Okay." She stood up. "I guess I want to know if it was dangerous to me. Being in the car, I mean. Was I in any real danger?"

"Yes." I nodded. "But how much I don't know."

"Why were you there?"

"I didn't want to be there."

"But why were you?"

"I was trying to get Jay Rainey out of the mess he was in."

"Did you?"

I waited for words to come to me.

"What happened, I mean?"

"He died, Sally." Your father died, I thought. You'll never know him now.

"That man? How?"

"Mr. Rainey had a breathing problem. He was ill."

"He was killed?"

"No. As I said, he had serious health problems."

"Was he a nice man?"

"He was a man who had been hurt," I answered. "He meant well."

"Did he want to hurt me?"

I looked at Cowles before I answered. "No. In no way did he wish to hurt you, Sally."

She heard this and something seemed to relax in her. "So it was more sort of a big mistake, kind of?"

I nodded. "A huge mistake, yes."

Sally shrugged. "Okay." She looked at Cowles. "Dad, I'm going to go check my e-mail, okay?"

"Sure, sure."

"Will you be long?" she asked.

"No, but why?"

"I was hoping we could go past the sports store on the way home."

"You got it," he said.

She left and Cowles closed the door and faced me, unable to contain his anger. "Which part of your sick story is bullshit?"

"What do you really want, Mr. Cowles?"

"I want to know why Rainey was obsessed with Sally."

"I'm not going to tell you."

"What?" He held his fists tight and I thought of Wilson Doan Sr., and how I'd been destroyed once already. "I can go to the fucking police, Wyeth. They'll-"

"I know. And then, unfortunately, I'd have to tell them."

"Unfortunately for you, you mean?"

I had an obligation here, an obligation to Wilson Doan and his wife, from whom I had taken a child, and I had an obligation to my son, whom I'd allowed to be taken from me, and I had an obligation to Jay Rainey, who, let it be remembered, never revealed himself to his daughter as her father, despite how painful it was for him not to do so. I also had an obligation to Cowles himself, and most importantly I had an obligation to Sally. I had an obligation to her because she was a child, still, and I was an adult, simple as that. My obligation to all of them and my obligation to myself was that I would never again be the agent that separated a child from a parent. Never, never again.

"Unfortunately for whom?" Cowles repeated angrily. "Who would be hurt if the truth got told?"

I looked at him and into him and stared down his fearful righteousness. He blinked several times, then looked away. "Those who love you very much," I finally said. "Those who need a loving father."

Cowles stopped at that. I don't think he quite understood. But he understood that he didn't understand. He knew he didn't need to know something. He slumped a bit, and sighed. "You're asking me to trust you," he said.

"I'm asking you to trust yourself. Trust in what you know."

He pondered this. Finally he nodded to himself.

"All right. My daughter seems okay. It helped her to ask those questions."

"It was wise of you to suggest that," I said.

He made a noncommittal humming noise. "I'm breaking my lease," he announced. "We're moving back to London."

"All right."

"Are you the executor of Rainey's estate?"

"I might be," I realized, "by default."

"You wouldn't be trying to enforce the lease."

"Of course not."

"You'll give me an address and number in case there are any further questions?"

"Yes."

"Let me just ask-"

"Sure."

"How long did you work for Mr. Rainey?"

"Just a few weeks."

"So you barely knew him."

"Barely."

"Did he have a wife?"

"No."

"No family?"

"No," I said. "He had absolutely no one."

He pondered this, his basic decency getting the better of him. "Bit of a sad story, then."

"Yes."

He stood and shook my hand. "I hope you understand I was scareda father gets, you know- protective when-"

"You don't have to apologize for that."

I followed him out. Sally was sitting at one of the office's computers, typing away. She noticed me leaving and stood. She had Jay's wide shoulders, the dark eyes, his long legs. But Cowles didn't see it. "Bye," she called politely.

"Bye."

The office door closed behind me and I never saw David or Sally Cowles again. But I lingered behind the door and listened.

"Daddy!"

"What?"

"It's boring here!"

"You want to go home?" Cowles asked her.

"You said we could go get the new hockey stick!"

"We will. Let me just pull together my papers, sweetie, won't be a minute."

"Oh, Daddy!" Sally Cowles cried in exasperation. "I'm so bored!"

That was all I needed to hear, forever, so I slipped away down the steps and outside. The weather was getting warmer and I walked the streets for an hour feeling the strange emptiness of it all. Jay, I said to myself, I did it to protect her. She didn't need to know who her father was, because if she found out, it would crack her relationship with the man she thought was her father and because her own father was lost to her now. It was a truth within a lie or a lie within a truth- which, I wasn't sure. But I suspected I might have done the right thing. It didn't weigh on me. I'd lied on behalf of a greater good, and though it was not anywhere close to bringing poor Wilson Doan back to life, it was a small offering of penance, one that might perhaps count.

In time I found myself walking by the steakhouse on Thirty-third Street, but not turning in. The second ceramic pot had been replaced, complete with evergreen. It needed to weather and didn't quite match. One night, finally, as the nights began to warm, I stepped inside the heavy door, past the gold lettering, and all was the same, the mahogany woodwork and oil paintings. As ever, as if nothing had happened. It was perhaps an hour before the dinner rush. I saw a busboy vacuuming at the far end of the dining room, the maitre d' checking the reservation book. The door to the Havana Room hung open, I noticed, and before anyone could object, I darted through it and down the nineteen marble steps, expecting to see the painting of the black-eyed nude above the bar, the books on the shelves, the ancient barman wiping a glass, the dusty sconces above the wainscoting.

But the room had been painted an improbable yellow, cheery and harmless as a child's bedroom, with all of the paintings and old books removed. The tile floor had been carpeted over beautifully and the booths and men's room removed- torn out. Two long banquet tables had been set up, with folds of linen tablecloth, and each bore a printed placard that read: Women in Dialogue/Monthly Guest Speaker Dinner. On cue I heard voices coming in through the door and found myself confronted by fifteen or sixteen professional women eagerly taking their seats.

"I'd like three bottles of sparkling water at each table, please," one woman said to me. "Thank you."

I didn't bother to explain her mistake and instead slipped out the doorway and up the stairs into the main dining room. I walked straight through the kitchen looking for Allison. I saw cooks and busboys and waitresses, many of them familiar, but no Allison.