2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

11:30 A.M

Alex Lorca enters the club: hollering, clapping, popping his knuckles, kissing Sonny on the cheek, kissing his father on the cheek. Always with Alex these days is the girlfriend, dress half off, lips pouting around a Parliament. Alex sings. Tonight! Most holy, sacred night! Alex pretends to play a drum set that explodes, he pretends he is exploding too, grabs onto his girl who shrieks at him to get off. She has a name like Aruna Sha. Her name is Aruna Sha. They are sixteen and skinny. Their collarbones vault in upsetting directions.

Alex gives the Snakehead a reverent tap. He insists on being treated like a man yet maintains a boy’s tendency to test the height of every hanging thing. He pummels Lorca with fake punches. “It snowed, Pops,” he says.

“It’s done, though,” Aruna says.

“Aruna left her coat here last night.”

“It’s silk,” she says.

“Ooh la la,” says Sonny.

Alex’s cheeks are flushed the same color as the scarf he wears winter or summer. The same shade as Aruna’s lipstick: fire hydrant red. These kids are the only colors in the bar. “Tonight’s the night.”

“I give up,” Lorca says. “Why is tonight the night?”

“I’m playing with the Cubanistas. You said.” More punches, more snapping. Sonny and Lorca exchange a glance. Alex goes to the back to retrieve the coat. They hear him in the hall, yes-yesing and slapping his thighs.

Aruna scrutinizes her nails. “Is there a salon around here? Is there anything around here besides warehouses?” She pulls a cigarette from a purse tucked under her armpit and lights it.

Sonny says, “There’s no smoking in here, honey.”

Her gaze slides from the ashtrays to the floor, where last night’s cigarettes are murdered. “We were smoking last night.”

“It’s a new day, I guess,” Sonny says.

She drops it, kills it. Alex returns with the coat and places it over her shoulders with a delicacy that surprises Lorca. Alex lives in the suburbs with his mother but is forever escaping to the city, begging to stay with his father, begging to play at the club. “You think Max will let me solo or will I just be backing tonight? He’ll let me solo once, maybe?”

Sonny sighs. Alex reads his face and turns to his father. “What’d I miss?”

“You’re underage,” Lorca says.

Alex laughs. “I was underage last night too, when you promised.”

“A cop came by this morning—” Sonny begins, but Lorca interrupts him. “Things have changed,” he says. “Last night I said you could play. Now you can’t. I said I was sorry.”

The mirth in Alex’s face vanishes and a murkier expression replaces it — the one Lorca is more accustomed to evoking in his son. “You didn’t say you were sorry.”

“Of course I’m sorry!” Lorca’s tone is rougher than he wants. He tries to think of something softer to say. Alex lifts Sonny’s guitar from the table and takes a seat, his back toward the men. Aruna sits in the chair next to him. She thrusts a lip toward a compact and reglosses it while he noodles around a melody.

Francis taught Alex how to hold his guitar the way Django Reinhardt did, like the guys in Italy and Spain do, forward on his knee like he was playing to it. It reminds Lorca of Babe Ruth, pointing his bat to left field. Lorca watches him pin chords to the neck. Django was his Spider-Man. When he was nine Alex read that Django played every gig wearing a scarf, and he had worn one ever since. He slept clutching his guitar like a teddy bear. Lorca misses his father so acutely that for a moment he is unable to gather breath.

Alex settles on a melody.

“Is that ‘Troublant Bolero’?” Lorca says. “When did you learn that?”

Alex ignores him. Expressionless, he picks through the hardest progression, staring at the wall. Suddenly disgusted, he returns the guitar to its case. This jag will go on for a day. Lorca innately knows his son’s moods and tendencies the way you know on a flight, even with your eyes closed, that a plane is banking.

Aruna shuts her compact and replaces the cap to her lipstick. She is a little girl with a lot of eyeliner, Lorca thinks. He tugs a twenty from his pocket and thrusts it toward his son. Alex pushes past him into the vestibule. “Let’s go,” he says to Aruna.

Lorca hands the money to her. “Get dinner tonight. You both look like skeletons.”

“I will.” She folds the bill into her bag and touches the snarled twinkle lights. “Are you going to hang these up today?”

Lorca nods. “That’s the plan.”

She looks up to the tin ceiling, the eaves, the walls. “It’ll be awful pretty when you do.” It startles Lorca how different she looks when she smiles. It seems to hit Sonny too. The men straighten up.

“Merry Christmas,” she says.

“Merry Christmas,” they say. Then, in the direction of the front door, Lorca calls: “Merry Christmas, son.”

Alex’s voice sulks in from the vestibule. “It’s not Christmas yet.”

“He told all our friends,” Aruna says, “… is the thing.”

They leave. Lorca and Sonny watch them walk away through the window. Jeans and sneakers. Aruna’s floral dress with winter boots. Then the window returns to the gray static of the street. A stray flurry.

Alex’s mother had been a casual girlfriend of Lorca’s. When she found out she was pregnant, he vowed to pay half of everything. When he couldn’t, his father made up the difference. Or, Sonny did. Or, after they started dating, Louisa. Alexander was the strongest name Lorca could think of and Alex grew up strong, even if he was a little bratty, a little hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Sonny says.

“I don’t want him to worry.”

“That worked well, then.”

“We tell no one,” Lorca says. “Not Alex or Gus or Max. Not Valentine.” He knows keeping it quiet will be as hard as getting the money. Gab is what Sonny likes to do most besides play.

“Nail place!” Sonny slaps the inside of his wrist. “Girard and Susquehanna!” He clamors to catch them. The heavy click of the door.

Lorca pulls himself a pint. He fishes out the last egg from the fridge and cracks it into the beer. The citation shines on his desk in the back. He uses it as a coaster. A watery ring grows and dilutes the cop’s signature.

He picks up the phone by his elbow and dials. After a few rings her machine clicks on. Even her recorded voice unmoors him. He coughs for the first few minutes of his message. He says, “A Good Morning is what you used to call an egg cracked into a beer, right?” Drinking at barely noon will not refute her claim that he spends too much time at the club. “It’s almost Christmas,” he tries. His voice is not the one he wants. He shores it up before he speaks again, searching the room for anything helpful: the citation, Gus’s unfinished plane, Sonny’s crisp, folded bedsheets. There was a joke years ago that had her howling, but he can only remember the punch line.

He says, “You know damn well I can’t read.”