The Havana Room

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm looking for Allison Sparks."

"She's here, somewhere."

"In her office?"

"I think she's in one of the lockers downstairs."

"Will you take me to her?"

"Is it-?"

"It's quite serious, yes."

I followed the waitress down the stairs and along a corridor hung with pipes until I saw the open door to the meat room.

"Allison?" called the waitress.

"Yes."

The waitress nodded at me and scurried away.

"Yes?" came Allison's voice, exasperated.

I stepped inside the room. As before, it was hung with perhaps fifty beef carcasses, each stamped and dated for aging. Allison stood examining her clipboard, back to me. She turned, and drew her breath. "Bill."

I nodded. "I almost called you."

"You should have."

"You painted the Havana Room," I said.

"I wouldn't use that exact word."

"No?"

"I destroyed the Havana Room, Bill."

"Scrubbed it away."

"I hate how it looks. Hate it."

There was an uncomfortable tension between us.

"Are you going to tell me?" I said.

"What?"

"What happened."

She shook her head. "I don't know. I told you before. Ha had some men come."

"Men in a van, I know that. I mean what happened to Jay."

Allison stared at me, something passing through her eyes.

"I mean, how did he die? You told me he walked out of there but I know he didn't. He didn't go to his truck, he didn't go to his apartment, he died in the very same clothes he was wearing that night."

"I really don't know what happened, Bill."

"Did he eat any fish?"

"I don't know."

"Did you see Jay eat any fish?"

"No."

"You saw him collapse?"

"No."

"Did you see him after he collapsed?"

"Yes."

"Did you see him after he died?"

She wouldn't answer.

"You did."

"Yes."

"Then you saw Ha's men take him away?"

Nothing.

"And me, too?"

Nothing.

"I was left for fucking dead, Allison!"

She'd been willing to let go of the chance that I might be saved, and I might have hated her for that, but here I was, after all. I'd been at fault like the others, in my own way, and the rope of mutual betrayal had been braided from the desires of all of us.

"Tell me how Jay really died, Allison."

"I don't know."

"Allison, remember. Ha made eight portions of fish. Denny and Gabriel had two each. H.J. had two. I had one. One was left. It was in front of Jay when I passed out. Did he eat it or not?"

"No."

"And he was fine?"

"Unsteady, but fine, I guess."

"What do you mean, unsteady?"

"He was bent over, like he got sometimes. Tired-looking."

I waited.

"I went upstairs to open the restaurant for the night. The cooks were there, the waitstaff, everybody. Ha came with me."

"Did Ha think he'd killed me?"

"Yes. By accident. He said he gave you too much of it. He said your brain was destroyed and that you would die in the van."

"Seems to me he got it just right," I said. "Where's Ha now?"

"I told you before, I don't know."

"Left?"

"Right away. That same night."

"Did you think about looking for him?"

Allison shook her head- sadly, I thought.

"Why not?"

"I have no idea where he could be, that's why."

"What's his complete name?" I said. "You could do a search for him by-"

"Don't know."

"You don't know? Is Ha his first name or his last?"

"Don't know."

"But you hired him."

"I paid him under the table. We never did any paperwork."

"Is Ha his real name?"

She smiled. "I don't know."

"No more funny Chinese fish."

"Nope."

"All right." I wanted to resume the sequence. "Where was Jay when you and Ha went upstairs to open the restaurant?"

"He had a cigar in his hand."

"You saw him light it?"

"No."

"That's the last time you saw him, saw him alive?"

Allison's eyes filled and she blinked.

"Come on!"

She nodded. "Yes. When we came back maybe, I don't know, maybe ten minutes later, he was dead. On the floor, dead. It was awful."

"Had he eaten the last piece of fish?"

"No. I didn't understand how-"

"Was a cigar there? Was it lit? Did it burn out?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I got kind of hysterical, actually."

She wasn't telling me something.

"I saw the girl the other day," Allison mused, eyes downcast. "I'd seen her in the neighborhood. She looks just like him."

I still wondered why I didn't believe Allison's story about Jay and the cigar. Or how I could believe it.

"You knew?" she asked. "That night we-?"

"I was figuring it out, yes."

"She lived right across from me." Allison was telling it to herself now. "He was trying to find her-"

"Wait," I said. "What happened to the last portion of fish?"

Allison slumped forward and fell against me. Despite myself I held her. "I kept looking at it," she said. "Then I ate it."

She wept against my chest. Yes, Allison Sparks, hard and tough and rotten, sobbed against my chest. "Jay was dead, I thought you were dead, you had foam in your mouth, and there was that Lamont guy, he was dead, too, and I panicked, Bill. I was so upset about the girl and I understood why Jay did it, why he- I wasn't angry with him anymore, it was just so sad, so terribly sad, and I wanted to just die, to die there with him."

"So you-?"

"I took the fish and ate it and Ha yelled at me and he dragged me down and stuck his fingers down my throat and I fought him and hit him and he wouldn't let me do it, Bill, he took the spoon and shoved it down my throat and made me vomit."

She collapsed against me again. I had eaten the fish of my own accord, but I had trusted that it was a benign portion. And it had not been, not quite- or just barely? But Jay's portion had been poisonous. Had Ha meant to kill him? Why? Because of his betrayal of Allison? For bringing trouble to the steakhouse? Or maybe a portion of the fish just right for a big man of Jay's size would have been lethal for Allison, and she'd realized this. I'd never know.

I left Allison there, collapsed against the wall in the meat locker, and found my way back upstairs, through the kitchen and out of the restaurant. I could not resist one more peek into the Havana Room, which, I now saw, had been renamed the Flower Lounge, and when I came to the door, I conjured the room for myself- the mahogany wainscoting, the black-and-white tiles, the volumes on the shelves- and there I stopped. I could hear the clever voices of the Women in Dialogue group and I realized it'd be best for me never to go down the stairs again.

I turned toward the exit, and it was at that moment that the elderly literary gentleman I'd seen twice before arrived, dressed in an excellent suit. Sober, he was quite the distinguished lion.

"I'm giving a talk," he announced, assuming I'd recognized him. "I'm expected."

I noted the haughty gray eyebrows, the lifelike teeth. "You're the guest speaker?" I asked.

He was in a hurry. "Yes."

I pointed at the Havana Room door. "You've been down there before."

"Yes," he answered, "and I see they finally abandoned their silly little charade."

I couldn't smile. My mood was not good. I pushed out through the heavy front door. If you live long enough in New York City, there are places you avoid, and now the entrance of that steakhouse is one of mine.