The Havana Room

Five

The next morning was blue-skied and excellent — if you weren't freaked out. Which I was, coffee-jittery, anxious, driving a rent-a-wreck too fast away from the city toward Jay Rainey's old farm, my terrorized heart pattering, It's bad, they're bad, it's bad. Like anyone, I prefer to forget that I am to die, not be reminded, prefer to think of my last breath as a far-off event, the years measurable in, say, the unit of time it takes to discover, test, refine, approve, and market a major new pharmaceutical. Yes, give me two or three of those epochs, a couple of new brain-boosters and cartilage-thickeners, and I'll be fine; the romping American society I die in will be unrecognizable to me. But meanwhile, the passage of days is ominous. I feel the past dropping away an inch behind me, a dark wind sucking coldly at my ears, yanking on the shorthairs of the back of my neck, gurgling like a suffocating eight-year-old boy. Yesterday is not yesterday, it is lost and gone forever, collapsed, rotten, moaning in the graveyard. Day by day I see that my future holds far less than does my past- ever fewer pieces of chocolate cake, clean shirts, fresh newspapers, hot cups of coffee, the milk swirling in a beguiling cloud. Yes, I scare much more easily than before. I freak more easily. I take threats very seriously. I believe, for example, that when an insane black guy with no pants on pulls out a gun and fires it, then that threat is real. When that happens, you run.

Yes, you run and stumble and have people yell at you and you see the pit bull still hanging from the rope, and you hear kids pointing and laughing and saying Mister! Yo! And you stumble whitely out into the cool air of the street and run with no wind and little form as fast and as far as you can before hailing a cab, which is what I did, arriving back at my miserable apartment and high-stepping it up the stairs to my door with great gratitude for the peeling paint and bald carpeting, the half-clogged sink, the soft-sagged bed- my shithole deluxe, the most wonderful place in the world.

And that was where I'd slept not at all, wondering in the dark if I should go to the police. H.J.'s thugsters had kidnapped me and he'd pulled a gun on me, after all. Many beautiful, time-honored laws had been broken. On the other hand, what was my proof, given that I was unharmed? And no doubt H.J. could produce any number of people in his club who'd say that never happened. And then he'd mention his dead Uncle Herschel and that would point any interested policemen toward the question of his body. And that I didn't want.

But was H.J.'s outrage linked to Marceno's complaint? After all, whatever Herschel had been doing with the bulldozer had occurred before he died. And H.J.'s rage stemmed from the fact of Herschel's death on a bulldozer rather than why he was on the bulldozer. By this analysis, the two problems were potentially unconnected. But I was troubled. I was troubled in the way that makes you sit up and turn on the cheap light by your bed and pick at your fingernail, wondering why Mrs. Jones had seemed to dispute the reason why Herschel was on the bulldozer in the first place. Or why H.J., while ranting at me, had said that he or his people were looking for Poppy. Which was interesting. And maybe logical, given that Poppy had called the ambulance upon "finding" the body of Herschel. But Mrs. Jones had said she'd been pointed toward Jay's building by Poppy. How was this possible? Why would Poppy know the address of Jay's building unless Jay had told him? And why would Jay do that? Poppy was apparently just a longtime farm laborer with damaged hands. Why would he need to know the address of a specific building in downtown Manhattan? And, for that matter, how did H.J. know that the old Rainey farm had even been sold? Well, maybe because the new owner, Marceno, or his workers, had arrived the day before, the morning after the sale. But H.J. didn't seem like the kind of guy to be messing around on an old farmstead. He had a hip-hop club to run. Which meant that someone, probably Mrs. Jones, had told him. But she'd arrived at Jay's building early enough the morning before, around 10 a.m., that it was likely that she'd left the North Fork too early to see the arrival of the new owners, especially if they were driving out from the city at the same time. Which suggested she'd made a subsequent call to H.J. after threatening Jay in front of his building. Yes, that made sense, that was how H.J. had known what I looked like so that his men could follow me. Mrs. Jones, one hundred pounds of righteous determination, had described me to him.

But even if they'd had my photo (a Web search of the back copies of New York City legal publications would probably turn up a cheesy five-year-old black-and-white head shot), how had they known where I'd be? Had they tracked me the previous day from Jay's building to the steak house to my apartment to the Indian restaurant to the school? Doubtful. More likely that they'd been following Jay, then lost himhe had disappeared quickly- seen me come out of the basketball game, recognized me, and then moved in.

Now I came to the rump end of the Long Island Expressway for the second time in thirty-six hours, turning onto the country roads leading to the North Fork, wishing my rental, a beaten delivery van with stenciled letters on the door and Jesus decals on the headlights, had a decent heater. I sipped my coffee and jittered up more tangled questions for myself, feeling driven- not crazy, but into the coldly rational, ultraparanoid part of myself. My old, capable, bastardly law-firm self. I began to see that whatever was going on with Marceno, H.J., Poppy, Mrs. Jones, and Jay constituted, in its entirety, a piece of machinery, call it a gear, that was engaged with another smaller gear, this one sprocketed by Jay, and the building on Reade Street he so badly wanted, a building that housed the business owned by David Cowles, whose daughter, Sally Cowles, apparently so fascinated Jay that he was secretly attending her high school basketball games. Did Jay himself understand these two sets of complications? And where did Allison fit in? Despite her insistence that I help Jay, she'd been pretty vague when describing his real estate deal. The fact that he hadn't explained to me the convoluted purchase of the Reade Street property suggested he was in no hurry for anyone to learn that he'd sought to buy that building and no other. And from Marceno's chronology, it appeared Jay had decided to buy the Reade Street building and then put the acreage up for sale. Looking back now- from whatever miserably chastened perspective I enjoy- I see that the moment Jay disappeared from the basketball bleachers into the Manhattan night marked his acceleration toward his own long-sought imaginings. What he wanted seemed so close that his natural caution had become a burden to him and had been jettisoned. If he had seen me at the game, then he would have suspected why I was seeking him, which meant of course that others sought him, too. And if, on the other hand, he hadn't seen me, he'd nonetheless made a sudden exit, which suggested he felt a vulnerability as he sat watching Sally Cowles run up and down the court. Perhaps he'd sensed he'd overstayed his opportunity. In either case, my relationship to Jay had changed. I was hunting him now.

The single-lane road winding east toward the Atlantic revealed a charming and classically American dreamscape almost too good to be true- three-hundred-year-old saltwater cottages, steepled churches and clapboard farmhouses, silver barns next to ancient, heavy-limbed maples. My glimpse of Jay's dark frozen fields two nights earlier, I realized now, had been insufficient to understand the forces at work on the value of his property. The rolling land was a heart-yanking time warp to a simpler age. People find such authenticity frighteningly attractive, for it lets them forget terrorism and global warming and genetic counseling, lets them forget that time runs in only one direction, at least for those of us still roped to the mast of Western rationalism. Such places conjure a lost psychic era, pre-Nixonian, when Cadillacs looked like rockets and silicone was used only to caulk windows. Back then, when America was the great good place. And people will happily pay for that, they will pay twenty-first century prices. I passed a tractor pulling a wagonload of hay; in the other direction flew three white limousines in sequence, carrying who knows who- corporate executives, pro athletes, movie stars? A few miles farther I swept past two golf courses going in, then half a dozen wineries, each expensively grand structures of shingle and glass centered among precise four-foot-high rows of trellised grapevines that swept backward toward the horizon. In the instances where obsolete farm buildings or modest homes fronted the main road, these were being purchased and demolished. Indeed, the large projects I saw had probably been the result of the consolidation of multiple lots, an expensive and time-consuming way to assemble a land parcel, and typically only done when prices are rising dramatically. But as Jay had said, the prospect of world-class vineyards and wineries within what amounted to a stone's throw of New York City- which, let it be remembered, still holds more wealth than any other city on the globe, even London, even Hong Kong, even Kuwait City- was a surefire bet. Overlay on that proximity various other factors- the cheek-by-jowl development of the Hamptons, the recent local land-use restrictions enacted in an effort to block that very same kind of development, and America's ever-burgeoning retirement-age population- and the surefire bet became a kind of slo-mo bank robbery.

Yet even more proof awaited me when I parked in the quaint town of Southold and found Hallock Properties, one of whose signs, I'd remembered, lay flat in the weeds on Jay's old property. The office's windows were adorned with listings for large pieces of land, complete with aerial photos of woods and field and gorgeous shoreline headlined THE LAST UNCUT JEWEL! and HISTORY DOESN'T REPEAT ITSELF!

I stepped through the agency's door; it was as one might expect, a bustling hive of office cubicles, the walls plastered with house listings. For a moment I mused over the prices. A trailer home on a tenth of an acre? Try $195,000. A clapped-out one-bedroom shack on half an acre? $320,000. Undeveloped mere half-acre oceanfront lots ran $475,000. Two acres of swampy overgrown brush on a brackish inlet? $950,000. A terrific five-bedroom job on the water with gourmet kitchen, "rocking chair porch," tennis court, and "forever views"? At least a million five. Vineyard acreage? Prices started at three million and went to the moon. What had happened to the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and Malibu and Pebble Beach and Coral Gables was happening here. It was America, after all; somebody had to be getting rich.

The brokers stood or sat talking into their headsets, consulting files or computer screens, the women attractive and tough, in their thirties and forties, and the few men older and ruined-lookingclutching the floating logs of their careers.

"Help you?" asked a woman who introduced herself as Pamela. Her hair reminded me of a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

I told her I wanted to talk with someone about the large property in Jamesport they'd recently handled. "Acreage up on the Sound," I added.

"I'm not sure which-?" she said, politely inspecting my shoes.

"It was just bought by some Chilean wine people."

Pamela frowned politely. "We didn't handle that."

"I thought you did. I saw your sign out there."

"No."

I stared at her Frosted Flakes hair, which made her nervous. "Who did then?"

"I don't know."

"Was it listed with multiple brokers?"

She was dodgy, even for a real estate agent. "I couldn't say."

Already I knew enough about the region to see that large properties with ocean frontage didn't come along too often. "I was told, by the buyer of the property, that one of your agents specifically told him"- and here I glanced at some scribbled notes in my hand-"that another bidder was in the picture and that the second party was prepared to bid again if the buyer didn't close."

She was still looking at my shoes, blinking rapidly.

"I should also probably mention, Pamela, that I am a New York City attorney specializing in real estate matters."

Now she looked up at me, a tight smile pinned on her face. "You need to talk with Martha. But first, understand this. That property, the old Rainey farm, was never handled by us. It was never officially listed by us." She lowered her voice. "I don't know what Martha may have said, or done. Maybe she stuck one of the agency's signs next to the road- whatever. She's- she could have said- well, I'm sure I don't want to know."

I made a show of writing all this down.

"May I have your name again, Mr.-?"

"Bill Wyeth."

I followed Pamela through the partitioned offices, down a wainscoted hallway.

"Martha?" she called when we reached a closed door.

No answer. Pamela pushed the door open and the room we entered could not have been more different- a vintage realtor's office at least fifty years old, stuffed with files, yellow topographical maps, and curled tax survey volumes. An old, rather heavyset woman sat sleeping in an armchair, despite the early hour. Her housedress had fallen open a little too far and she was holding a spoon. On the table next to her lay a glass of tea and a thick biography of the Duke of Windsor. Propped next to the seat was a cane.

"Martha!" cried Pamela. "Hello-o?"

"Yes?" The elderly woman blinked awake.

"This is Mr. Wyeth," announced Pamela hatefully.

"How do you do?"

"He's come to discuss the old Rainey farm?"

"Has he?"

The women stared at each other. "I'm going to leave you two alone," Pamela said, "so I can have a quick look for my sanity."

She departed, her heels clicking smartly down the hall.

"Get that, would you?" Martha pointed to the door. When I closed it she waved at the chair opposite her for me to sit. "Pammy's a dreadful woman. A shocking hussy. A tart, they used to say."

"Oh?"

"Yes, we're lashed together, and neither of us likes it much! I taught her everything she knows but there's no respect, no loyalty anymore."

"This was your agency?" I guessed.

"Still is." She nodded defiantly. "Which my father started in 1906." She noticed her housedress and pulled it closed. "I was the baby of the family. I'm eighty-three, Mr. Wyeth, so you can see how long I've been around."

"Seen a lot of things."

"Oh my," she agreed. "I remember when the potato trucks used to go down the main road by the dozens. We had one doctor, paid him with firewood in the winter and produce in the summer. Nobody knew about this place. Most beautiful spot in the world. Everything's different now. I can't begin to tell you. Everybody was on well water. You could eat oysters at every meal when they were in season. And lobster, too. We had a lovely church community."

Humor her, I thought. "What did farmland go for, Martha, when you were a girl?"

"I'd say three hundred dollars an acre."

"And what is it now out here?"

"With the vineyards coming in, maybe fifty thousand."

Jay had been screwed, I realized. I pointed up at a local map. "And the future?"

"Easy," she sighed. "Million-dollar homes on the water. Million-dollar homes off the water. Vineyards owned by rich people. Wineries owned by even richer people. All the big farms will go to grapes. The fix is in on that, see, because of the water-use problems. Vineyards are low-impact agriculture. Low water use, low pesticide use. Government loves that. Lot of these grape growers are environmentalists, too." She put her spoon in her teacup. "Amazing it took the world so long to find us."

I liked old Martha Hallock. "Want to give me the whole pitch?"

"What else is there to say? Eighty-two beaches mixed with vineyards. Napa Valley doesn't have that. And quaint New England capes and farmhouses? And the longest growing season at this latitude? And two hours from New York City? For years it was the Hamptons. No more. They ruined it and this is still here. And we've got strict land-use zoning."

"People in your business must feel pretty good."

"If I were thirty years younger, I'd be selling fifty houses a year myself, easy. I'd be selling cabbages to kings. But I'm too old, Mr. Wyeth. People are scared of old people. Think death is catching, I guess. Maybe it is. I sold my last house three years ago and that was my neighbor's. Doesn't count. Got old. No one to blame but myself, I suppose. I own half this business but I don't bring anything in anymore. They'll get rid of me any day now. Waiting for me to die, mostly. Put me in the wheel-barrow in the shed."

I didn't believe this. She still had a lot of moxie for an eighty-three-year-old. "How long can you hold out?"

"Me? Maybe a minute or two."

"Pamela want to buy you out?"

"She wants to live me out."

"What'll you do?"

"Well, I still have an ace in the hole, as my father used to say."

"Which is?"

"I know the territory." She saw me nodding dutifully. "No, no, I really do. I went out with my father and the surveyors. A lot of things don't turn up on regular surveys, you know. I know the creeks and flood lines. I remembered what happened in 1957, that big flood. I remember what the lot lines used to be." She tapped her head. "That's still worth something, Mr. Wyeth. Less and less every day, but still something."

"And I bet you can talk to the old farm widows."

"Yes, I can. They know me, they trust me. Not these little hussies in their convertibles. Half the girls out there are friendly with the developers and contractors. You know, friendly. Long lunches, who knows where! Come back to the office looking like they went through the bush backwards. Pamela hires her own type." She shrugged to herself. "Which is smart, actually. Easier to control."

"Do you have any children, Martha?"

She lifted her face to me and I knew that I had stabbed her with the question. "I made a lot of mistakes, Mr. Wyeth. Most of them involved men's shoes."

"Excuse me?"

"Men's shoes. I saw a lot of empty ones on my rug the next morning, if you know what I mean." Her eyes twinkled devilishly. "I know that seems preposterous, looking at me now."

"I'm sure-"

"No, no, I'm an old bag. Anyway, when it came time to settle down- well, it's my great regret. On the other hand, I don't burden anyone." She examined her tea. I had little doubt that every word she'd told me was true, yet said with absolute calculation, too. The lonely old woman act. I didn't quite buy it, either. Subtract thirty years from her, and you'd have a very formidable fifty-three-year-old businesswoman- a negotiator, tough, precise, perceptive. So the woman I was looking at was that woman, plus thirty more years' experience.

"Now then," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"What do you know about the Rainey farm?"

"Fine piece. Eighty-something acres. North road frontage, some elevation to the west, very few low areas. Probably could use some regrading in spots. The bluff is not perfectly stable- they've lost a good fifty feet over the last hundred years, probably needs some kind of stabilization. Potatoes for the first part of the twentieth century. Had the blight in '66 and switched to cabbages and flowers, switched crops a few times. Nursery trees for a while, then something else. Russell Rainey was a lovely man. I knew him well. It's a very fine piece of land."

"Was Russell Rainey the father of Jay Rainey?"

She shook her head vehemently. "No, no. Grandfather."

"Where's the father?"

"Somewhere very, very hot," she clucked. "I hope."

"Did you sell the land for Jay Rainey?"

She looked at me. "It was a private sale."

"But didn't you have some kind of contact with the buyer, a Mr. Marceno?" I pressed.

"I'm an old woman, Mr. Wyeth. I fall asleep in my chair. I have one eye that's weak, my feet cramp up at night, and I take a lot of heart pills. It's frankly hard to remember what I've done one day to the next." She stirred her tea. "And you know, even though I'm just a country girl who learned to sell a bit of land here and there, I've met a lot of people in my time. I've met businessmen and movie stars and two senators and three governors and buckets of congressmen on the island, all kinds of people. I met the Shah of Iran when he came here for medical treatment. I met Joe DiMaggio and General Westmoreland and Jackie Gleason. So, you see, Mr. Wyeth, I've learned that people who know their business state their business. Sooner rather than later. It's a habit of successful people. Here you've let me blather on about so many things. And I don't know why you're here."

"I'm Jay Rainey's lawyer, Martha. I live in the city. I examined the contract of sale for him for the farm and told him not to do it. It all looked funny to me. He did it anyway. Now, Jay is in- he's got a problem and the buyer is putting big pressure on him."

"Wants to undo the deal? He can't. Why? It's a beautiful piece."

"No, there's something buried in the land and Marceno is anxious to know what it is."

"And he wants to get the soil ready to plant?"

"Exactly. He's putting in Merlot vines and won't be getting any usable yield for three years."

"I know the game," she said.

"And I suppose you know Marceno as well?"

She casually retrieved the biography of the Duke of Windsor and turned a page. Her hair was rather thin on the top of her head.

"I'm on the right team here, Martha, okay? Marceno said he talked with a broker from this agency saying another buyer had come forward and would buy the property if Marceno's deal fell through. I'm figuring he was talking to you."

She flipped another page.

I took a half step forward. "Was there another potential buyer?"

"The world is full of potential buyers."

"You were just pressuring him, then?"

Now she looked up at me. "Yes."

"Why? Why'd you do it?"

"Why'd I do anything?" she cried. "Because it was Jay's chance to be free! All these wine companies are so big! They can pay to dig up a little sand and truck it away. There's been enough pain in that family. How is Jay, Mr. Wyeth?"

"He seems-" She'd changed the topic, I realized. "He seems fine."

"Oh, that's very good. I saw him a few months ago… he seemed a little tired… He was the most, most beautiful boy. A perfectly beautiful boy, very good at football and baseball as I remember… This was more than fifteen years ago." She closed her book. "His father farmed that piece. Didn't do too well. Not a nice man, not in any way. But Jay got his size from him. Mother was lovely, though, saved him from his father. She poured herself into him. Taught him everything. Jay was charming and did very well with the summer girls, you know. Never boastful. Yes, I knew his mother. Sweet. But sad, you know. Wanted more children. Nervous woman. Tired of terrible fights with her husband. But she had Jay, she was just so proud of him, he was her prize. Consolation for her husband."

Mrs. Hallock uttered this last word as if she were unexpectedly tasting a small bitter object on her tongue. "The accident must have just unnerved her, see. That night… she lost her bearings. The husband"- that tone again-"was no good, didn't stand up, just drank himself away."

"The accident-?"

Martha looked at me hawkishly. "Known Jay long?" she asked.

"No. Just a short time." Three days, I didn't say.

"Oh, I see."

"You mentioned an accident?"

"I shouldn't have. I'm not the one to discuss that. It's his business." She dropped her hands to the arms of her chair and gripped them. "It was very nice of you to visit me, Mr. Wyeth. And I'm sure things will get resolved smoothly. That piece of land's got nothing but three feet of loam over who knows how many hundred feet of beautiful sand below that. It's perfect acreage and I'll give the new owner a call to remind him of that."

But I wasn't quite ready to evaporate. "You seem to know Jay and his family pretty well, Martha," I said. "And it appears you were the agent on the sale of his property. As such, you have a responsibility to the buyer as well as to the seller. I think you know this even better than I do. The buyer has contacted me with the accusation that something was covered up out there, right before the sale went through. Hours before, Martha. As it turns out, there's good reason to think that. The buyer is a busy guy. Making frivolous complaints is not worth his time. He's going to pursue this until he has satisfaction. As it is, he's probably going to sue Jay to get compliance. Let's hope you're not named, either."

"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Wyeth."

"I'm going to call you tomorrow to see if you have more insight into how this problem can get fixed."

"Maybe I'll still be alive to take your call."

I don't like getting mad at old women- generally they have enough problems- but she hadn't been much help. We glared at each other, and then I left.

On the way out of the offices, I saw Pamela. "Thank you," I called behind me.

She glanced over her shoulder. "I doubt you mean that."

"A tough case."

"Anyway, see any properties that interest you?" She pulled off her headset. "But I guess that's not why you're here."

"No." I put my hand on the door to go. "Any advice?"

"You could try finding her nephew, he usually knows what's going on."

This didn't much interest me. But I'd be polite. "Who's that?"

Pamela wrinkled her nose. "A nasty little man. Gives me the creeps. Everybody calls him Poppy."

Back in the city, I returned the van, and on my way to the steakhouse passed some guy hawking cell phone deals. I walked in the shop and signed up for the cheapest deal they had.

"I heard these things give you brain cancer," I joked, fondling the little device.

The clerk, a short black guy with sad eyes, considered the statement. "I believe that's true," he said. "I think they'll find that out, eventually."

"You're probably not supposed to tell me that."

"They want me to lie, they should pay me more."

The steakhouse was slow, the lunch rush done, the staff vacuuming the carpeting. As ever, Table 17 stood empty.

"Allison around?" I asked my waitress.

"She left you a note in case you came."

Which I opened. It said, Meet me in Havana Room.

I declined to order some food and instead got up and found the little door next to the foyer unlocked. The curved stairwell was dark.

"Hello?" I called. "Allison?"

The long room was dim, the smell of cigars lingering. No natural light fell upon the paintings, the black-and-white tile floor. A rack of dirty glasses stood on the bar. Allison sat in the farthest booth.

"Hey Bill," came her voice.

A stack of restaurant paperwork lay to one side of her, a shot glass and bottle of Maker's Mark to the other. Allison gave me an uneasy smile, embarrassed at her vulnerability. "You working or drinking?" I said.

"Drinking."

"And in private, too."

"Didn't see you last night," she ventured.

I thought about telling her about the previous evening, about Jay's appearance at the basketball game, about the lawsuit. "I was detained."

Allison smiled. "Against your will?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

But she didn't believe me. "Well, I think I've been stupid," she announced. "Silly and stupid."

"Jay?"

"Yes. I mean, I probably hoped too much, you know?" She pushed at her shot glass. "He came over last night- I said I'd make a late dinner, like ten-thirty- have a nice evening. So I left here about nine. And he showed up, just what you'd expect."

This meant, I realized, that Jay had left the basketball game straight for Allison's apartment, and maybe not because he'd seen me or H.J.'s men looking for him.

"He stayed in the living room while I made dinner and I saw he left his briefcase in the kitchen with me, and-" She shrugged. "It had papers in it, you know, interesting stuff."

"You couldn't help yourself."

"I know it was wrong. But I sort of saw his date book in there, his schedule, and I opened it." She lifted the shot glass and knocked back the last half inch of whiskey. "I was just curious, hoping to kind of know him better, that's all. He never tells me anything."

"Unlike the other guys."

Allison nodded. "They tell me too much."

"Every human relationship has its power structure."

"Well, Jay has too much power."

"You like that?"

"It bugs me."

"And excites you."

"How did you know?"

"How could I not?"

Allison nodded. "Well, it bugs me mostly. Now, I mean."

"What does he want from you?"

This stopped her. She looked up. "I have no idea."

"Does Jay ask you questions? Does he want to know things about you?"

"Like what?"

"Well, Allison, if I were romantically involved with you-"

"Which would really not be in your best interests."

"— I'd ask why is it that you work so hard when you don't have to, and why you actually live in the same place where your father lived, and why is it that you never mention your mother, or where you grew up, or if your father remarried, or why you are so loyal to Lipper even though you pretend to be annoyed by him, and let's seethose are just the ones off my head- and all right, why are you so chronically dissatisfied when actually it might be that it's yourself you are hardest on, and-"

"Stop."

"— and then I'd ask isn't it true that you want to be known and yet are afraid as to what will happen if you are, afraid someone will reject you when they see the truth, so you fill your head with the exhausting swirl of people and work so that you never-"

"Stop! Please. Please, Bill!"

"Okay."

"That was a little bit cruel."

I couldn't disagree.

"But it shows something…" she mused, pouring another glass.

"It shows I interrupted your story."

"What was I- oh, the date book! I wasn't suspicious or anything. But okay, it was sneaky and wrong. He was watching the news, didn't notice at all. I spent five minutes looking at the thing. Shameless." Allison's eyes brightened wickedly. "Practically memorized it."

"Was it busy?"

"Well, it had all the usual stuff, like going to the dentist, take car to garage, that kind of thing, plus some other stuff…" Allison looked up, eyes brimming. "He's got another woman!"

"Nah, I don't believe that."

"He does! He's got dates with her, regular dates." She pressed a fingernail against her eyelashes. "Here I have to beg to see him and it's because- of course, hello! — he's got a regular girlfriend. He's got dates with her going back months! I flipped through every week, every single one this year!"

"What's her name?"

"I don't know! And that bothers me, too! It starts with O. He doesn't write her whole name down, just O to remind himself. Olivia or Olympia or Orgasmia or something, fuck. "

If Jay had a regular girlfriend, then his behavior at the basketball game, his interest in Sally Cowles, seemed even odder yet. A big, good-looking guy with a steady girlfriend plus a little action on the side with a woman like Allison didn't seem like the type of man who would then stalk a teenage girl. I couldn't put it together. "He sees her pretty often?"

"All the time!" Her bitterness sharpened. "Like I'm not going to figure that out, if I just happen to accidentally see his calendar. Come on, nobody is fooled." But then Allison's voice softened, as if she wished she'd been fooled, would even have preferred it.

"Any chance he left the briefcase there hoping you'd have a look?"

"Maybe. He seemed more distracted than anything else. Whatever. It's that O that bothers me, Bill. O is a very sexy letter, if you think about it, right?" She looked at me for commiseration. "It stands for orifice. It opens up and lets stuff in. It means she opens up and lets his stuff in."

"Guys do things like this," I said.

"I know they do, Bill! They just don't do it to me. So then I thought I'm going to ask him, I'm going to just be brave and go in there and turn off the TV and straight out ask him. I was making this nice paella. I wanted to throw it in his face!" She smiled now. "I got the hot pad and actually lifted up the dish to see how heavy it was, but then I realized it'd stain the rug."

"He didn't figure out you were mad?"

"No… I just took the dinner into the dining room. He wasn't even watching the television, just standing at the window, thinking about Ophelia or whatever her name is."

"You don't know that."

Allison didn't answer, and instead took another sizable sip of whiskey, and when she put down the glass something had changed in her face, her bitter disappointment replaced by the desire beneath it. I was struck by how quiet the room was; all the normal sounds of the restaurant, the vacuuming and chatter, were gone. "Oh, Bill," she whispered, pushing away her hair from her face. "I just don't know." She was, I saw, one of those women whose sexuality didn't embarrass her. That she had discussed one man with another didn't mean she preferred either, or anyone in particular. The man- whoever he waswas temporary, the desire permanent, the emptiness intolerable. The man was something that fit into things for a while- a night, a month, a changeable self-perception. This is a dangerous, attractive thing in a woman. As a man, you see that she is capable of forgetting the last guy quickly. Which is encouraging. She's able to launch into an obliterating passion, a passion capable of forgetting its own depthless nature. Of course this means that you yourself will be forgotten easily too, but that is later, and afterward. I wish I could say that in that moment I held all these things clearly in my head. But I didn't. Instead I watched as Allison cut her eyes back at me, almost daringly, her diffused desire turning to a kind of angry want, which itself might change into anything, her mouth twisted, a little cruel, a little ugly even, but then she closed her eyes and sighed. She opened her lips and breathed heavily. "Bill?" she whispered. Her eyebrows lifted in expectation. "Come here."

I went to her and she lifted a hand, which I took. She squeezed it softly, a smile on her lips. She rolled her head forward, her hair curtaining her face, and this was an invitation for me to touch her, which I did, with one hand, caressing her smooth, firm neck. I let my fingers slip behind her ear. She sighed, then looked up at me, and it was the same gaze she'd given Jay Rainey a few nights earlier, not a copy but the original, wanton and soft and wishing, and in her breath I smelled the whiskey, the sweetness of her intoxication. She did not want me particularly, I knew, she did not want anyone, not Jay, not even necessarily a man, she just wanted. Like all of us. She wanted and needed and I just happened to be there. She was willing to give in to whatever or whoever wanted her. The requirement was mutual oblivion. She had arrived at that moment of possibility. She had been there before and would certainly be there again, many times, and the true arc of her life was constructed of these points. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, waiting, and despite myself, despite all that I knew and now worried about, I myself had been lonely a very long time, yes, it had been a sorrowfully long time since a woman had wanted my affection, and so I bent slowly and pressed my mouth to hers.

It was a long and good kiss, wet and whiskey-fumed, but I ended it, gently. Allison smiled and mouthed Thank you and then dropped her head and I could see that the moment was done.

"So, do you happen to remember what was on Jay's schedule for today?" I said as casually as possible.

"Yes, I do. He goes to a place called Red Hook cages, like once or twice a week."

"Red Hook cages-?"

"Doesn't that sound terrible? Like he hangs from a bloody hook or something? I think he's going there this afternoon. Red Hook cages. Which is fine, just so long as he isn't going to see O. Miss O, whoever she is, the bitch. Red Hook. There are a lot of bars in that part of Brooklyn, whatever, maybe it's some kind of construction business thing."

She was wrong. I knew what the Red Hook cages were, for I'd been there with my son, in fact, on a rainy Saturday. Allison was falling softly back into herself and the right thing to do was to leave her alone. The right thing to do was to leave for Red Hook immediately.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Wyeth."

"What?"

She grabbed my hand, rubbed the knuckles. "I got something to tell you."

If we'd been near a bed, we'd have been in it now, estranged boyfriend or not. "Yeah?"

"But there's a price."

"What?"

"You have to promise not to be judgmental."

"Of what?"

"Of something we do."

"Who is we?"

"Don't you want to know the what?"

"Who, what- I'll take either."

"You'll find out."

"When?"

"Tonight." She kept her eyes on mine. "In the Havana Room."

"Tonight?"

"Ha says he's ready again."

"So soon?"

"Sometimes," Allison said slowly, with drunken amusement, "things happen faster than you ex- pect them to."

"What time?"

"Come round about midnight. I will have sobered up, I promise. I will be in top form. You'll find me very impressive." She wagged a finger at me. "Oh, also."

"Yes?"

"Anyone told you that you are a very fine kisser of women?"

If so, it had been a very long time ago. "You're pretty drunk, Allison. Get some coffee, okay?"

Before I reached the marble stairs, I looked back at Allison once more. In the darkness of the far booth, she hung her head, perhaps despairingly. Perhaps kissing her had been a mistake. Perhaps I had enjoyed it a great deal and wanted to do it again. And perhaps I would. Then I climbed the stairs, turned the door handle, and eased toward the entrance of the restaurant, hoping no one would see me leave.

The waitresses sat at a table at the far end of the main dining room, smoking and chatting, and several busboys were involved with sorting silverware and folding napkins. None of them saw me. Yes, no one saw me save one- it was Ha himself, standing in his baggy overalls on a ladder in the foyer replacing a bulb. He saw me exit the Havana Room and he watched me wait to see if the waitresses or busboys had noticed and he saw me look in surprise, up at him, and when our eyes met, he knew everything about me, it seemed, that I was a lonely, unattached man who ate too often at the steakhouse, in some kind of trouble now, and who had just emerged from within the Havana Room, where Allison, a woman he saw every day, sat drunk and alone in the far booth; that something had happened between us in the room. Yes, gazing into Ha's weathered Chinese face, the folded skin, the wide-set, unblinking eyes, I saw he knew these things about me.

I, on the other hand, knew nothing about him. Especially why it was he who controlled the schedule of the Havana Room's activities.

But I knew something else- I knew that when Robert Moses, the great, bullheaded architect of modern New York, builder of highways and parks and municipal swimming pools, insisted that the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway be constructed to facilitate the traffic flowing around New York City to and from the rapidly growing suburbs in Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey, the elevated highway was erected through and over the working-class neighborhoods of short brick row homes that used to house the men who serviced the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the docks on the East River. If any thought was given to what would happen to the buildings beneath the highway, it did not change their fate, which was to be subjected to the noise and pollution of the road, the constant shower of hubcaps, empty 10W40 oil cartons, milk shake cups, bags of vomit from carsick children, lost Yankees hats, used diapers, cigarette butts, beer bottles, discarded cassette tapes, condoms, watermelons, radiator caps, and God knows everything else that falls out of or is thrown from cars and trucks. Squatting within the shadows of this rusting, rushing superstructure are businesses that depend upon such a marginal location, where rents are lower, squalor ignored, parking ample and unpoliced: porn shops, taxi garages, car service offices, and so on. It's a bad zone; it was here, for example that a New York City policeman, drinking for twelve hours after his shift ended, some of that time in a strip joint, ran over a pregnant Latina woman and her two children with his van going seventy miles an hour, an event which, for those who believe in such places, sent four souls to heaven and one to the front page of the tabloids. The city has these fissures, deep crevices in the landscape that bad stuff falls into, and it was here that I went looking for Jay that same afternoon, based upon what Allison had told me.

The building in Red Hook that I wanted sat on Third Avenue. I pushed through the door in a mood of apprehension, because I remembered how much Timothy had liked the place when we'd been there a few years before, and returning now was a measure of my fall since then. But I kept going. The first room, a murky cave of pinball and video games, sold cheap sports memorabilia and junk food. Boys in mismatched Little League uniforms ran pell-mell. I could hear rock music and every few seconds a loud metallic clang. Through a doorway, a much larger room appeared, under this sign:

35 MPH: All Youngsters Under 9

45 MPH: Youngsters 9 and Older

55 MPH: Youngsters 10 and Older

65 MPH: Youngsters 11 and Older

75 MPH: Teenagers 13 and Older

85 MPH: Teenagers 17 and Older

95 MPH: Special Access, Mgt. Approval Required

Behind a high curtain of netting, the pitching machines were firing baseballs at the batters. I stood for a moment behind the 45 mph machine as a lanky boy of about ten swung at pitch after pitch with an aluminum bat. The balls seemed pretty fast, but he made contact with every third pitch or so. A middle-aged man in a green Jets cap stepped in and adjusted the boy's stance, the ball whizzing past his eyebrows. Baseball is still sacred in Brooklyn, in a way it never could be on the East Side of Manhattan, and the Red Hook cages are part of a world where forgotten old men sit in lawn chairs in the lumpy fields of public parks, eating unlit cigars and catching smoking rockets from young hurlers, boys whose mothers bleach the uniforms the night before a game, a game often as not umped by a cop or fireman and which, if played at the Ty Cobb Little League field near Avenue X, will be watched not only by the black residents of the housing project across the street and the mothers and fathers sitting on the cement bleachers, but by the men who run the maintenance train of the subway's N line, men who park the massive yellow-and-black engines on the elevated track that directly overlooks right field; on the rare occasion when a boy clanks a ball off the home run wall, one of the men climbs nonchalantly into the cab of the engine and yanks the horn as the boy circles the bases. That's Brooklyn, Brooklyn baseball.

I moved on. No sign of Jay. A knot of hollering, hot-dog-stuffing boys clustered behind each machine, and the noise was formidable. At the 75 mph cage, I watched one of the boys lean in too close over the plate and take a pitch right on the temple of his batting helmet; his coach reached inside the steel fence, hit the red stop button, and went to pick up his player, who shook off the injury. Of course I thought of Timothy, ten now, quite capable of swinging a bat as hard as many of these kids.

At the far end of the building lay the 95 mph cage and through the many layers of wire mesh I could see a large figure in T-shirt and shorts taking dramatic cuts at the ball. Others were watching him, and as I approached I realized it was Jay, with something made of green plastic sticking out of his mouth. He clanged an enormous shot. I got closer and saw that the device clenched in his mouth was an inhaler; between pitches he squeezed down on it, shooting whatever chemicals it contained into himself.

I melted in among the others, worried and fascinated. I knew Jay was a big man, of course, but his body had always been cloaked by a suit or heavy winter coat; here, now, I plainly saw a man about six foot three, two hundred and forty pounds, powerful in the arms and chest and back, with a little extra in the gut, and, most notably, heavily muscled legs that swelled below the knee into enormous, veined calves, large as a comic book superhero's, three times normal size, and oddly, even disturbingly, compelling- beautiful fruits of muscle that splayed widely from the downward line of his legs- legs that Allison had presumably had between her own. Jay and I were not sexual rivals, but we weren't exactly not, either. I wondered if Allison measured our deep but solitary kiss in the Havana Room only a few hours earlier against the ongoing pleasures Jay had provided her. The question was silly but the answer was yes, of course, and seeing Jay's obvious vitality, I thought it was possible that Allison would shrug off our brief intimacy as silly or wrong.

"Fuckin' freak," sniggered one of the teenage boys hanging their fingers through the wire fencing. "Sucking on that thing, fucking cocaine gas or something."

"It's brain steroids, like makes your bat speed faster. Major leaguers use them secretly before they come out of the dugout."

"That's totally fucked, man."

"No it's not! Every major league dugout has like this little bathroom next to it. Guys go in there, toke on that stuff, and come out and hit. Why you think the home run records keep getting broken? It wasn't all the muscle stuff, it was the brain stuff."

"You have like no fucking idea what you're talking about."

"Look, he's hitting it, you pussy."

Indeed he was, and not just dinging them back or popping them up but swinging his bat parallel to the ground and driving the ball straight back against the mesh at the far end, one after another. Then he missed, and the ball rocketed against the screen in front of me. He let out a muffled roar of frustration, then gave himself two shots of the drug, seemingly swelling up with them before the next pitch came.

Which it did, and Jay got a piece of the ball, clanking it hard against the screen fifteen feet up. He roared again, and slammed the bat into the earth.

"See?" said the boy, stroking what he hoped was a mustache. "Freakman. Steroids in the brain, making him crazy."

Jay dug his cleats in and took a practice swing, then pulled the bat back to the loaded position, knees bent, head up, right elbow high and a little jumpy. The mechanical arm lifted and Jay rocked and cocked, as the coaches say, and when the ball came he was ready and drilled it into the nets.

"Haaa!" came his cry of satisfaction. The sound was sexual, murderous.

"See?" announced one of the boys. "See that?"

"I see your momma."

" Your momma fucked my baseball bat."

"Yeah, the one your sister gave her after she was done with it."

"You mean the one you licked for three hours."

"Shut up," said a third boy, "he's switch-hitting."

I watched Jay shift from rightie to leftie and swing at another forty pitches or so. Batting from the left, he wasn't nearly as effective, and missed every other pitch. But of course being able to switch-hit well is one of the rarest of skills in baseball, and I was intrigued that he was even trying it, especially with balls coming at major league speed. The back of his shirt grew dark between the shoulder blades, then a red light on the pitching machine popped on, signaling the end of the session.

"No good," Jay snarled to himself. He spat the inhaler out of his mouth, flipping it up in the air before him, and swung at it with the bat. It shattered and its metal canister flew in our direction, skittering over the dirt.

"He always does that, too," said one of the boys, "that's how come I know it's brain steroids."

Jay pushed up his helmet and started to pull off his batting gloves. I slipped back a step, thinking that it might not be right to confront him there, before so many people, while he held a baseball bat and was under the effects of whatever drug he'd been inhaling.

"Yo, mister," cried one of the boys. "What you got in that thing?"

"I'm finding out," said the other boy, and he scampered into the cage. Jay watched him with disinterest. The boy scooped up the canister from the dirt and ran back.

"What is it?"

The boys studied the fine print and I edged closer for my own look.

"Ad-ren-o-something."

"Let me see that, you fucking illiterate."

"Hey, yo mister," one of the boys hooted.

A heavyset man in his twenties in a Rangers jersey suddenly appeared, bent low to the boy, and spoke harshly to him, glancing up at Jay now and then.

"Okay, okay," the boy protested. Then he and the other boys ran off with their prize.

Adrenaline. In aerosol form. Did it really help one's bat speed? The idea made a kind of crazy sense. Jay opened the cage door and lurched forward through the crowd, his Yankees cap down low over his forehead, a coat and sweatpants slung over his shoulder, eyes on the ground, his face angry and determined and oblivious to all, including me. I made sure he couldn't see me, intimidated by his staggering, violent strength, no doubt enhanced by the stuff he'd pumped into his system. He also appeared deeply alone, threatening in his bulk. My planned declarations seemed puny and even imbecile, but I decided to press forward, and followed him from thirty feet back as he disappeared into the front room, saying goodbye to no one, though it had seemed from the boy's comments that Jay was well known there. I fought through a sudden influx of eight-year-old boys, any of whom could have been Timothy a couple of years earlier, and watched Jay plunge out the front door into the cold. When I reached the door he had already crossed the three southbound lanes of Third Avenue and disappeared under the deep shadowed roar of the expressway. Across the street a neon sign promised XXX VIDEOS amp; BUDDY BOOTHS. I'd missed him again, or rather had found him and then let him go. Impossible, impossibly stupid. Or was I just scared of him? Was letting him go smarter?

"Jay!" I called, trying to lift my voice over the river of heavy traffic before me. I stepped into the street, waiting for an opening.

"Yo, man," called a hoarse voice next to me. "Don't mess with that dude."

A face emerged from the doorway behind me, a man a few years younger, his hair brilloed around his head. He might have been white, dressed Latino, talking black. It gets harder and harder to tell these days. I turned back toward Jay, then checked the light.

"Why?" I answered, still watching. "Why shouldn't I mess with him?"

Through the traffic I could see Jay getting into his truck.

"That guy? Lemme tell you about that guy, okay? He's no good. I mean it."

"Come on."

The cab darkened, the headlights went on.

"Jay!" I called again, stepping forward.

"Do I look like I'm messing with you?" the man said.

I watched the traffic slow. "Jay! Jay!"

His truck bumped its way onto the other side of the avenue, heading north, toward Manhattan.

"I'm telling you, don't fuck with him!" He jerked his thumb toward the batting cages. "Fucking gorilla, they ought to throw him out of there. Sucking on drugs, scaring those kids. Shit fucks you up, makes you crazy. The polices, they don't do shit, neither."

"What, what?"

"That guy, he's done some stuff, okay? Let's just leave it at that. You ain't from around here, okay? I would of seen you before." The man bobbed his head assertively, as if I had argued the point. "One time some guy got into a argument with him, and it wasn't pretty. You know what I'm saying?" He stepped forward, grabbed my coat, yanked. Instinctively I stepped backward but it was too late. His face was close to mine, breath warmly foul. "Just like that, huh? Like pulling down the fucking zipper on your coat, ha!"

This seemed unlikely to me. Street rumor, false legend. But I was scared anyway. "How often does he come here?"

"All the time, anytime. Maybe like three times a week."

So he probably lived nearby, I thought. "You know anybody wants to make any money?"

He looked at me like I had a dead fish hanging out of my mouth. "What're you talking about?"

I said, "You heard me."

"Tell me that again?"

"I'm saying I'll pay a hundred bucks to know where he lives. Somebody could watch for him, follow him home."

"Come on, what the fuck." He pulled a galvanized roofing nail out of his pocket and began to suck on it.

I wrote down my new phone number. "Here's what the guy does. He follows that guy home. By car, whatever. Doesn't do anything. Nothing. No talking, nothing. Just the address. Then he calls this number"- I handed him the slip-"and leaves the address. Then he tells me how he wants to be paid. I'll come right back out here, if necessary."

"Come on, you kidding me with that shit."

"You're right," I said. "I am. I'm kidding."

The nail bobbed up and down. "Hundred's not much."

"I'll pay three hundred."

"Get out of here, three hundred?"

"Sure. What's your name?"

"Everyone call me Helmo." He smiled with sly pride. "You know, the hair and all."

I nodded. "Okay, Helmo."

"Who are you?"

"Who cares who I am?"

Helmo made scissor fingers and took the slip of paper from me. "Yeah, who cares?"

There was at least a chance that Jay had driven to his new building, so I got off the train at the City Hall stop and walked down Reade Street, past the Mexican guys cutting flowers in the Korean delis, past the delivery trucks and battered cabs. When I got to the building I looked for Jay's truck. Nothing. But a couple of windows were lit in the building. I rang the various doorbells until someone buzzed the main door. Inside I saw new menus and fliers on the floor, as well as a garbage can filled with plaster bits, lathing, trash. Had Jay already started some renovation? The more I thought about him, the stranger he seemed. He'd just bought a three-million-dollar building and here he was whacking baseballs in Brooklyn? A guy with a girlfriend named O and who attended basketball games at a private girls' school? I checked the door to the basement, which was locked, then headed up the high, steep stairs, hoping Jay might somehow be in one of the offices, still in his sweaty baseball clothes. I knocked on the various doors but got no response.

On my way down, the door to RetroTech opened, and David Cowles poked his big head out. "You ring downstairs?"

"I did, yes."

"It's Bill, right?"

"Bill Wyeth."

He said, "I was wondering whom I'd let in."

"Just me. I'm looking for Jay."

Cowles had one eye on a computer screen. "Haven't seen him."

"Has he been around?"

"Yes, in fact he was earlier and we discussed- oh, hell, hold on, that's the phone. Here, come on in while I get that." I followed Cowles back toward his office and when I got there he was standing at the window.

"That's good," he said into the receiver. "All the way through?" He listened and nodded. "Sure, all right." He covered the phone. "This will just take a second, Mr. Wyeth, bear with me. Just here- have a seat. My daughter wants to-" He uncovered the phone. "Yes, yes, okay, I'm putting it on, go ahead."

Then he turned on the speakerphone and I could hear a piano, some sweet and romantic sonata trilling into the room. I might have said it was Beethoven's "Fur Elise," but the sound through the phone was poor, as was the quality of the performance. But Cowles was enjoying it, smiling and looking at the phone and nodding his head with the music. Then the playing stopped. "Good, good!" he called heartily, in the way of an encouraging father.

"You liked it?" came a girl's voice. "I only messed up once."

Cowles smiled at me. "Very good, but keep practicing."

"Daddy, I practiced it five times already!"

"How many times did you get it right all the way through?"

"None."

"Do you want to mess it up tomorrow night?"

"No! What do you think?"

"I think you should keep practicing, sweetie."

"Daddy! You're so mean."

"It's true," said Cowles affectionately. "Nothing you can do."

"Daddy!"

"I have someone in my office, Sally, so I'm going to have to go."

"A pianist," I said after he'd hung up.

"Well, hardly. But she likes to play, and she's got a little recital at the Steinway store."

"The Steinway store?"

"On Fifty-seventh Street? Have you ever been? Amazing pianos! Dozens of them. Ebony, mahogany, everything. Even one of John Lennon's. You're not supposed to touch it but everyone does. They have student recitals there, and of course they don't mind if you buy a piano while you're there. It's quite the setting."

I nodded but wondered if I should tell him that Jay had gone to his daughter's basketball game. He'd ask me what it meant, and I couldn't tell him. But why hadn't I seen Cowles at the game? Of course, he might have been busy, or his wife could have been in attendance and I wouldn't have known.

"Now then," Cowles said, "you were looking for Mr. Rainey?"

"Have you seen him?"

"He was in this morning. About the lease?"

I searched his face. "The lease?"

"My lease? He said you and I'd go over it the next day or so?"

I made a vague sound of recognition.

"He offered me a better rate."

"He did?"

"I agreed to lengthen the lease, which he wanted, but I got him to bring the rent down a bit- only fair, in this climate."

"Was he accommodating?"

Cowles smiled. "For a rapacious landlord, yes. He seems- is he new to all this?"

"Why do you ask?"

Cowles let his eyes drift over his family pictures and out the window to the rooftops of lower Manhattan. "A sense, that's all."

A minute later, I stepped back out into the street. The cold cloak of evening had dropped. The prudent thing would have been to go home, order in dinner, and write down all I'd learned. Worship Chronos a bit. I used to be pretty good with complex problems but now I was stumped. Too many shards of information. Martha Hallock had handled the real estate transaction between Jay and Marceno, to the dismay of her own business partner. She'd probably lied to Marceno to clinch the deal. She knew a lot about Jay. There'd been an accident. Poppy was her nephew. How did these things connect? Mrs. Jones had described me so well I'd been successfully recognized. Or maybe they had a photo of me. Allison Sparks didn't mind snooping into a man's private business. And didn't mind telling me that, either. What else? Jay hung out in Brooklyn and probably dated a woman named O. He had some kind of weird drug habit that involved inhaled adrenaline. His occasional girlfriend, Allison Sparks, didn't mind getting kissed by an unemployed lawyer who'd been forced to watch some world-class fellatio the night before. She didn't mind having his tongue shoved down her throat and she didn't mind telling him that she'd liked it. Watching the fellatio had probably made him more aggressive, too. Under the momentary behaviors rose the hungers, the looming desires. Jay wanting to kill the baseball, Martha Hallock waiting bitterly for death, Helmo willing to spy on Jay for a few bucks, Allison needing satisfaction. You could drive yourself nuts with these things. Cowles's daughter played the piano. Jay had lowered Cowles's rent, presumably to keep him in the building. Marceno was waiting for his information. H.J. was waiting for his money. Both expected me to get these things for them, both had made their threats well known. What else? What other pieces could I torment myself with? Ha, Allison had basically conceded, controlled the Havana Room- which would be open that night.

Yes, she'd told me that, in her alluring drunkenness. The Havana Room would be open that night. And I was invited.

Six

ANOTHER NIGHT IN THE CITY. Showered and shaved, wallet full of cash. How good can you look, pal? Best shoes, best suit, killer silk tie. Worried H.J.'s men had discovered where I lived. You never knew, until you knew for sure. A quick look up and down the street. Then dart past the gold lettering and potted evergreens, through the heavy door. Immediately, the smell of steak. Then Table 17, as always. Hanger steak, as always. Oil paintings and table linen. No Allison yet. Mexican busboys sailing through the room with steaming trays. Worried about Jay, yes. Determined to have a good time, yes. The joint was topped-off full, an ocean liner of steak-eaters, a fleshatorium. Action upstairs in the private rooms, judging from the lipstick and aftershave heading up the stairs, action at the bar, crossing its legs, checking its watch, shooting its cuffs. I looked around, wondering which of the other men would be heading into the Havana Room. And then there was Allison, coming out of the kitchen, eyes right on me, tongue peeking from the corner of the mouth I'd kissed six hours before, marching toward me in a red satiny dress, which showed me more than I'd seen before. Knees, cleavage, firm attitude. She looked good, Allison, and she knew it as she bent close to my ear.

"Bill!" she whispered. "I'm shocked."

"Why?"

"You took advantage of me!"

"Might have been the other way around," I said.

Allison looked at me fixedly, thoughts kept in reserve, so close that I could see the mascara on her eyelashes, and I didn't know if she regretted the interlude earlier that day. "Midnight," she said. "Door opens at midnight."

I was there on the dot, of course, stepping casually down the stairs and over the tiled floor to the far booth where I'd sat before, wall sconce and painting next to me. Other men followed and I thought I recognized several from the last time I'd been in the room when it was full, including the two large fellows who'd been examining a set of X rays. My eyes drifted toward the enormous black-eyed nude over the bar. The ancient bartender beneath her, his white hair fuzzed to dissipation, took no notice as he set out drafts and highballs and drinks neat and on the rocks and in shot glasses and the last one tonight, I promise. Within ten minutes, two dozen men had arrived, filling the booths and the barstools.

At that moment the aging literary gentleman I'd seen before came lurching in. Somehow he seemed always to know when the room was open. In his suit and greatcoat he was a pile of elegant ruin, but that night's dosing of booze had torn away his mask of droll amusement at the hopeless strivings of men and revealed something more sinister, more hatefully despairing. He reached out and held my arm, tightly.

"I'ma get in here, I'ma see what's going on."

"And what do you think-?"

"I'ma investigate-" But at that he tilted sideways. "It can't be true, just not possible!" He stumbled about and I steadied him, only to confront a leering face whose brows seemed arched in perpetual humor but whose eyes belied unfathomable despair. "You, mister, don't you know what they're doing in here, donya see — is absolutely the final, the last-"

The maitre d' arrived with three busboys, and the man was taken away.

A minute later Allison appeared, having brushed her hair and put on a bit more lipstick.

"Gentlemen," she announced loudly, settling the room, "this is the moment when we explain the Havana Room to new attenders- there are a few tonight- so I am going to go through my entire presentation, which only takes a minute, and then we'll close the door. Good to see so many of you could make it." She nodded at several men- nodded at them in particular, it seemed- and I felt a shot of jealousy.

At that moment the beautiful black woman I'd seen before entered with her blue suitcase. She shrugged off a long winter coat and hung it behind the bar. She was dressed in a frilly cocktail dress with subtle golden epaulets on the shoulders and matching oversized buttons, a getup somewhat theatrical, I realized. She opened the blue suitcase and lifted out a golden tray with two silken straps attached at the sides. These she lifted over her shoulder, raising the tray in front of her like an old-time cigarette girl.

Allison followed her progress, turned back to the men, and began again. "As you may know, the Havana Room has been open continuously for more than one hundred and fifty years, including as a speakeasy, a betting parlor, and even, for a year in the thirties, as an opium den. These nefarious uses would seem more or less obligatory, given its sunken and protected setting, and the fact that there's only one door in. Anything less unsavory would be a bit of a disappointment, don't you think?" The men smiled, happy to feel themselves included in the city's long history of vice and lawlessness. "In more recent years," Allison continued, "it's mostly served as a spare bar for this marvelous restaurant of ours. And except for the routine intrusions of law enforcement, operation of the Havana Room in one form or another has been interrupted only three times in the last century. I know the dates, too. November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and then for two days during the 1977 power blackout in New York City, and for a week following the attack on the World Trade Center. And you, gentlemen"- here Allison smiled at the obviously memorized nature of her speech-"are not the only illustrious patrons of this room. We know that souls who have sat in these very booths include Ulysses S. Grant, "Boss" Tweed, and Babe Ruth. Yes, after he was traded by the Boston Red Sox. We know that Charles Dickens was taken here on one of his celebrated visits to New York City. Mark Twain ate upstairs and was invited downstairs but declined. It was in this room that Franklin Delano Roosevelt first discussed running for governor of New York in 1927. It was also in this room that the details of one of the Joe Lewis title bouts in the old Madison Square Garden were finalized. What else? Billie Holiday met one of her male pals here, and they argued, it is said. Oh, and Eisenhower visited here before he was elevated to power during World War II. The room was opened especially for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis one morning in the 1980s, when she became faint outside."

"What about Elvis?" came a voice. "I heard that he-"

"Yes, that's true. Elvis rented the room in the 1970s after performing at Madison Square Garden only a few blocks away. I could go on and on, gentlemen, but you get the idea. We are proud of the history of the Havana Room, especially its appeal to important and successful men like yourselves."

The beautiful black cigarette girl, if that's what she was, had now started at the far end of the room, presenting her tray to the men.

"Now then," continued Allison, drawing a breath, hands clasped before her, the model of poise, "we know that our clientele lead busy and harried lives, and so what we offer here is a respite from that. Plain and simple, gentlemen. In a moment or two we will lock the door for no more than sixty minutes. You will be sealed in. Quite comfortably, I might add. We have a full bar menu available. Lastly, please note that all our cigars are, of course, Cuban, and are complimentary. We have the very best brands: Cohiba, Montecristo, Excalibur, all of them. Your waiter is knowledgeable, should you need some help with your choice. And yes, you are allowed, encouraged, and invited to smoke here, despite the draconian antismoking laws enforced by the city, which we have managed to elude by way of metaphysical semantics. We hope that you enjoy your brief time in the Havana Room."

I could feel Allison pulling the room of men along a slow logical track, drawing us into an altered frame of reference- changing the rules of perception, perhaps. I didn't mind that she hadn't looked directly at me, for I could feel myself staring in wonderment.

"We do ask that you not discuss the Havana Room outside its confines, for entry is strictly by invitation only, at the discretion of management. This is to ensure an elite clientele and high level of service. Prior to the opening of the doors, Shantelle, our cigarette goddess"- Allison threw a quick glance at Shantelle, who smiled mysteriously-"will come around a second time with a selection of goodies. I'm afraid that she is not one of them. Should you be interested in their purchase, they may be put on your bill but will not be itemized or described in any way. Please enjoy your time with us tonight. Thank you."

And with that the men dropped their heads into momentary conversation. Now Ha entered the room, went behind the bar, and pushed a wheeled glass tank under the bridge and forward into the room. Whereas before I'd always seen him in work clothes, he was dressed in a crisp white uniform and carried a small stainless steel case. A number of the men watched him with curiosity. He whispered something to Allison, then stood back. Meanwhile, Shantelle had set down her tray and stacked a set of porcelain plates on the bar behind Ha.

"Gentlemen!" called Allison. "It looks like we're ready. All right then?" She waited until the room quieted and she had every man's attention. "Each of you is cultured and well traveled, and many of you know of the Japanese fugu fish, a delicacy in Tokyo and rumored to be actually served at one or two places here in New York. The fugu fish, for those who don't know, is famous for being dangerous to eat, if not served by a chef trained in its preparation. Trained ten years, I might add." She smiled playfully. "The next part is a little hard. Let's see if I can get it, okay? The fugu fish is from the family called Tetraondontidae, class Osteichthyes, and order Tetradontiformes. Also known as the puffer fish or globefish or swellfish. Usually it's eaten raw, and when it's prepared in Japan correctly, the diner receives a buzzy, numb feeling around the lips and an interesting light-headedness. If prepared incorrectly, the fish, eaten in significant quantities, will kill you." She nodded vigorously. "Yes, and rather quickly, depending on how much poison you ingest. In Japan, fifty or sixty people die each year from fugu poisoning. The most poisonous parts include the liver, skin, muscles, and the ovaries. These sections of the fish are rich in tetrodotoxin, the principal poison, which is perhaps a thousand times more deadly than cyanide. Tetrodotoxin is heat-stable, so cooking the fish does not make it safer to eat. The lethal dose for an adult would fit on the head of a pin, perhaps one to two milligrams."

"How does it work?" came a voice from the room.

"I'm not a doctor," said Allison, "but my understanding is that the poison blocks the sodium channels in nerve tissue. That means nerves can't fire, can't make muscles contract. There's paralysis, the degrees of which we'll get to in a minute. But full-blown poisoning means respiratory arrest, cardiac dysfunction, central nervous system failure, that kind of thing."

"Do you have the antidote on hand?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"There is none." While the room absorbed this difficult fact, Allison paused, nodded at Ha, then went on. "Where was I? Oh, the deaths. Yes, indeed in the last few decades there've been many hundreds of documented deaths, the great majority of them in Japan. The fish's attraction has always been the genuine chance that it might be one's last meal." She smiled dangerously. "The fugu fish has been generally banned from time to time throughout history, and specifically banned for certain populations at other times. To this day, it remains the only delicacy which cannot, by law, be served to the Japanese emperor and his family."

"I don't see the attraction," muttered someone.

"Oh, I do," came another voice.

"The taste is said to be enslaving," Allison responded. "But beyond the taste there does appear to be a desire in human beings to taste that which is prohibited them." She studied the men before her, as if to see if they possessed such an impulse. "While we appreciate that some people enjoy the Japanese fugu fish, it seems a somewhat tame entertainment, not particularly provocative, not particularly interesting. It has not caught on here in New York City, and maybe that reflects the genuine scarcity of the fish and the chefs who can prepare it, or it may reflect the fact that New Yorkers are inured to certain dangers, the regular dangers, if you will, and are not compelled by the idea of paying four hundred dollars for a piece of fish that may just cause only a little numbness around the mouth."

She paused, and in this interlude each man appeared to privately assess what might represent the regular dangers of life in the city, and whether he had, in fact, become inured to them. No one protested Allison's description, and in this there seemed to be a collective acknowledgment that she was right, and that, moreover, the burden of the usual dangers was itself tiresome and might require diversion.

"When people think of the most dangerous fugu," Allison resumed, "they usually refer to the torafugu, which is caught off the coast of Korea in the winter. But what is not known by many people is that there are more than three hundred varieties of the fugu, with the one served in Japan the most common. Also not generally known is that the delicacy is originally from China, as are many of the fish in the fugu family. In fact the dish has only been eaten in Japan for the last few hundred years, whereas in China the fugu, both in forms still alive and others now extinct, have been eaten for almost three thousand years. So, when I said we were interested in history here in the Havana Room, I didn't just mean good old Franklin Roosevelt and his pince-nez."

She waited and swept her eyes across the room. Several men were leaning forward attentively. "Of those three-hundred-odd varieties of the fugu, there is one very rare variety, the Shao-tzou, which comes from the Jiangsu region of China. It's pronounced show-zoo." Allison stepped next to the tank that Ha had wheeled out and gazed down into it. "For the last twenty years," she continued, "this fish was understood to be so rare- if not outright extinct- that the occasional specimen never made it out of Jiangsu. This despite the famous willingness of the Japanese to pay nearly any price for a prized fish." Allison looked up. "But somehow Ha discovered a source- a story you'll hear in a moment. Even so, the fish is exceedingly rare and exceptionally expensive. It must be delivered live to the cook, and you can imagine the difficulty of getting living fish from some muddy riverbed in China to this room in New York City. We have a standing order with our supplier, but we never quite know when we'll get a fish. Generally we're able to procure only one or two per month, sometimes none, and when we do get a fish, we immediately schedule the event you are about to witness and perhaps participate in." Allison smiled at me directly, and I wondered if she pushed her jaw outward at me ever so subtly in playful aggression. But then she blinked and resumed her presentation. "This month we've been lucky- I think we've gotten two. The Shao-tzou is also only seasonally available, only dependably caught five months out of the year, when it moves in from deeper waters to feed and spawn off the coast of Jiangsu. Sometimes the fish arrive dead or so damaged as to be useless. The cost is close to two thousand dollars wholesale for one fish. I know that's surprising, especially when you consider that the number of culinarily acceptable portions per fish is only two, three, or four. And never more than that. Once above a certain size the flesh of the Shao-tzou becomes almost inedible and the toxins too concentrated to be safe at any dose. But the cost and trouble are worth it, gentlemen. Because to compare the Shao-tzou with regular fugu fish is like- well, it's like comparing one of our Texan long-horn steaks to a burger at McDonald's. There is no comparison. Both are extremely dangerous, but the effects are different and various."

Ha now wheeled a butcher-block table forward. A white dinner napkin covered whatever lay on the table. He appeared more erect and dignified than when I'd seen him earlier.

Allison looked about the room. "Any questions so far?"

"I'd like to know what the fish does to you if you actually dare eat it," called a man.

Allison nodded in anticipation of this question. "There are a number of effects, but only one that interests us."

"Which is?"

"Paralytic euphoria."

"What?"

She spoke more slowly this time. "Paralytic euphoria. For a short period of time, less than five minutes, the diner is rendered nearly paralyzed- he can breathe and blink his eyes but not much moreand yet he feels euphoric. It's the very inability to move that intensifies the pleasure."

The room fell silent as the men weighed the probability that Allison's statements were true. Given her poise and intelligence and forthright presentation, they well might be. But if such statements were true, the men seemed to ask themselves privately, what did that mean? How might such an altered state compare to the remembered effects of the various opiates, amphetamines, psychotropics, stimulants, antidepressants, or hallucinogens they might or might not have ingested over the years? Allison said nothing in these long seconds. It appeared that, as the roomful of men shuffled through what was, if taken as a whole, no doubt a voluminous drug-taking experience, there were many remembered experiences that might have been called euphoric, and even a few in which a near-paralytic state was achieved, but there were none that could be recalled as both paralytic and euphoric, and so the period of individual contemplation recombined to a collective mood of curiosity.

"Is it sexual euphoria?" came a voice. Some laughter followed, most of it worried.

"This is always asked," said Allison solemnly, somewhat like a clinician responding to an overly earnest patient. "My answer is that different diners explain their experience differently, but they do seem to suggest a general effect, a universal pleasure." Her eyebrows shot up. "However, I confess I have read accounts that claim that the testes of the fish, if served in hot sake, is an aphrodisiac."

This information seemed unnerving, at best, for none of us knew if it was true, few of us wanted it to be false, and everyone now had to reconsider the notion of paralytic sexual euphoria, a concept that seemed as paradoxical as it did tantalizing. Yet Allison would not indulge further speculation. She shook her head coyly and said, "Chinese culture makes many such claims- for deer, bulls, bears, all sorts of creatures. But we're not interested in wishful thinking. And anyway, we're seeking high art here, gentlemen, not low sensationalism."

"Oh, stop that," came a voice again.

"Besides, we don't even know what sex this fish is, assuming it's not obviously pregnant. Ha, isn't that right? Can you tell by just looking?"

He shook his head. "Very messy to find out."

A general murmur followed. The room was becoming impatient. "Gentlemen," Allison called loudly, "there's more I need to tell you. Please listen closely to what follows."

The room quieted.

"Those of you with better short-term memories will recall what I said earlier- that compared to eating regular fugu fish the effects of eating Shao-tzou are different and various. The Shao-tzou offers three recipes for pleasure. The Chinese translation of these are Sun, Moon, and Stars. This is where the skill of the chef is paramount, gentlemen. The Sun effect involves more toxin from the fish's kidneys, the Moon involves more from the liver, and the Stars more from the brain. Now then, what does that mean? With the Sun portion, the diner remains nearly paralyzed and senses great heat, waves of it moving up and down the spinal column. The Moon portion is said to involve a perception of darkness interrupted by a moving luminescence, almost like a moon rising and falling in the night. And the Stars portion, which is always served last, involves a feeling of soaring, spinning, and tumbling, a kind of uncontrolled flying, which probably reflects some kind of disturbance to the nerves traveling from the inner ear to the brain.

"I know this sounds wonderful. It is. But I need to tell you a few more things. We only allow our diners one portion of this fish, ever. I keep a list of the names, in fact. There are two reasons. The first is that the toxins have differential rates of clearance from the body, depending on the health and age of the man who has eaten it, especially from the liver. Many of you are in your forties and fifties, and despite the fact- or indeed, because — you are, as one and as a whole, successful and charming and sexy and terrific, your livers are not what they used to be. Many of you are taking cholesterol medication, blood pressure pills, and so on, to say nothing of whatever drinking you might be doing."

"Don't say nothing of it," replied one wit, "it's the drinking that keeps me alive."

"And that's what we want to do, too," replied Allison, not missing a beat. "Short of an enzyme liver test, we are in no position to be able to know how fast or slow your liver clears the poison that you might so happily send it. If you ate the fish again, even a few weeks later, it is possible that the disease would cause permanent damage or death. And that we do not want."

"You said there were two reasons. What's the other one?"

Allison nodded. "The other reason is that it is said that eating the Shao-tzou fish is, or can be, for certain individuals, highly addictive. You may remember I used the word enslaving earlier."

"Addicted to fish?"

"Addicted either physically to the concentrations of the chemical or psychologically to the experience it creates."

"Which is what, again, exactly?"

"Hard to be exact. Patrons describing the experience say they undergo almost complete paralysis, as I said, and within their euphoria, a heightened consciousness of all things- light, sound, the air against their skin. They feel dead yet paradoxically, and exquisitely, alive. Most diners say this- that they felt both alive and dead simultaneously. This seems to be, in retrospect, a very valuable experience for them. A few pass out and wake up with a headache that lasts well into the next day. That could happen to any of you. But those who have a peak experience usually want to repeat it. The problem with being addicted to the fish is that if it doesn't kill you slowly, then it might kill you instantly. Historically, people have been known to eat too large a portion in hopes that the effect will be greater. And it is- they die. There are stories in Chinese literature of nobles stealing each other's portion and falling over dead. Okay, so that's my introduction. It always goes longer than I expect. Now, I'd like to introduce our chef, Mr. Ha, and let him tell you about himself. He will explain how he came to us here in the Havana Room, and then I will come back and say a few things, and then we may begin. Gentlemen, please pay close attention to everything that Mr. Ha has to say."

Ha stepped forward and bowed his head respectfully. I sensed among the men an irritation at this further delay.

"Good evenings every-body. My name is yes, Mr. Ha." He smiled nervously. "I know that sounds like the joke. Ha-ha. Like that. I am from China. I have live here about ten year, so I am not exactly American citizen. But I am very happy here, working for Miss Allison. Now I tell you a story. Before I come to America I live in China all my life and for many of those year I was working for Chinese government. Technically I am working for the People's Republic Army, but that is government in China. I am from the Jiangsu region of China. I was trained in the Jiangsu Institute of Cooking in 1965 and 1966. At this time I go to work in Mao's kitchen in Beijing. My title is deputy assistant inspector of fish. I am learning then everything we know about fish. We learn how to make fish for the diplomats from Soviet Union and North Korea and Cuba. In 1971 I am getting my star chef's hat, so I am official chef of the Chinese government. I am thirty-eight years old. I study Shao-tzou fish. Chairman Mao like this fish. Even though he become very old, he try to have this fish once a month. Mao very careful with this fish. We never make mistake. We clean fish knife after every slice in seawater and vinegar. Then dry in sun every morning. We do it Japanese style, sashi, or chiri, karaage, you know, deep-fry, even hire-zake, very dangerous put fish into hot sake because alcohol make poison travel fast. Also we cook Chinese style in rice and soup. I am very proud doing this for my country. Chairman Mao like my fish very much, say many nice thing to Ha. At this time I remember when Nixon come to China. We joke that we give him Shao-tzou, make him so happy he must die. But that was big joke of course. Mr. Kissinger, everybody say too much trick.

"Then many big thing happen in China. Mao, he die in 1976, China start to change, People's Republic Army change, too, and soon, I am not chef, I am put in office to cook food for factory in small city in western China called Hua Xing, where air is bad because of nickel smelter. I am sent to this city and my children and my wife, they must come and they get dysentery and sad to say now they die. I am a sad man because my children die and my wife has die and I have no good heart. I lost my heart. I spend too much time watching bird, sleep too much in park even though I have good bed. Then I am getting older and I am tired of China. Maybe I am not so old yet but I feel old. Then Deng Xiaoping come to power and I do not know what China is. I know Communism did not work too good but I also do not know new China. So I come to United States, I do not want to say, okay, I come to this country illegally, that is all I say. I never think I am chef again. I come work for Miss Allison. Sweep, fix electric wire, do that. All this big beef is new to me! I never see it before. We do not have this kind of big beef in China at that time. Only some water buffalo. But I say to Allison I know how to cut the fish if she want me to do it. I show her how fillet is done in China and she like this. But I do not have license to be a chef. Then sometime maybe last year I am in Chinatown buying fish for her. I am looking at Chinese fish all frozen. Big bucket, too dirty. Dead fish and dead crabs. No good for you. Fresh fish best. But I see in the dead fish a Shao-tzou. I say it cannot be, I must make mistake. So many year. Shao-tzou very, very hard to find, even in China! Mostly find in rivers. Ugly fish. Shao-tzou mean little pig. But in New York City everything come to city, even funny people I never see before! So why not Shao-tzou fish? Little-pig fish. So, okay, you know, I buy the fish. I think it was three-dollar seventy-five cent even if it is dead. They do not know what fish it is. The woman say she never have see it before. Outside she is Chinese but inside American. Too long in United State. I take little-pig fish to my home and I take very good photograph and I put it in freezer here. Allison not know." He looked at Allison in embarrassment.

She waved her hand, a flourish of indulgence.

"So I hide fish in freezer with my name on little paper in case they find it. Then I go to library with my photograph of fish and they have very big book on every fish in the world. So I find Shao-tzou fish, I look it up, I see picture in book, I see picture in my hand. Same eye. Same gill. Same mouth. I pay for high-quality Xerox copy. I am a little bit happy, a little feel funny. Why does this fish swim to me now?"

Ha looked down at the butcher-block table, took one corner of the white napkin, and lifted it, revealing an array of gleaming knives. He gazed up again. "Then the big French cook here find the fish I put in freezer. He tell Allison. He is very mad at Ha. I am just man who clean up. I say it is no big deal, a little mistake I make. Allison very busy lady, she is not interested in frozen fish belong to old Chinese man. But I go back to Chinatown fish dealer and I show picture. I say can you get me some of this fish and they say let us see picture and we tell you. They send me little paper one month later. They say yes. I say how much. They say if dead, then one hundred and forty dollar, maybe more. Fish is very hard to catch. I say the first time it cost three dollar, seventy-five cent. They say that was big mistake. They say if I want fish alive I pay maybe two thousand dollar. Very expensive for fish to live on airplane. More than for me or you. So I say send me dead fish, biggest one. They send me fish. Cost me two hundred and sixty dollar, because they lie so much to me. But I don't care. I want to see if I can cut it up, if I remember from Jiangsu Institute of Cooking. I get fish downtown. It is big. Somebody has tear off fin. But I take it and I put it in big beef freezer. This time I get good fish knife."

He held up one of the knives. Curved, thin, maybe fourteen inches long. "I let fish get soft and cut up. Allison find me and I say it is nothing just a mistake I am very sorry. But she say why you freezing these funny fish in my beefs? I tell her the story because I like Miss Allison too much. Maybe like you, heh. She says can you cook the frozen fish and make it do funny thing like fugu fish. I say no, only live fish, frozen no good. So she say get live fish, we will see. She will pay. I say fish is two thousand dollar and she says we will pay, get fish. I say I do not know if it good idea-"

"But of course I was curious, gentlemen, very curious," Allison interrupted. "More curious than I have been about many things." And what those things were would be left to our imaginations, her expression said. "When I saw Ha handling the live fish, preparing it, I realized how unusual he was! How skilled! As I said before, there are maybe one or two Japanese restaurants in this entire city that serve fugu, but no one, and I mean no one, serves Chinese Shao-tzou fish. The fish itself may be illegal. Well, yes, it is, technically. But, as I say, I was curious-"

"I am ready," Ha said.

"Gentlemen, if anyone would like to leave now, please feel free. We only want you to stay if you feel comfortable." She looked around. "Everyone is staying? Very good." She nodded at Shantelle, who disappeared up the stairs to close the door.

"Now, a few more words before we begin. This is how the evening works. Ha will kill the fish, clean it, examine it, and then he will tell me how many Sun, Moon, and Stars portions he has. He will have at least one of each. Sometimes he will have an extra Sun or Moon. But only sometimes, depending on the individual fish. The order always goes Sun, Moon, Stars. Those of you who are interested in a certain portion may bid using the slate paddles that Shantelle will provide. Please write your bid with the chalk she will give you, and hold it up. Write in large numerals please. Those of you who are not bidding are asked to remain silent. There is only one round of bidding per portion, which means it's blind bidding, understand? One bid onlyexcept for the last portion, which I will auction off like a conventional live auction, in which bidders bid against each other. Once your bid is accepted, you make a credit card payment. No tipping or gratuity is necessary. As I said earlier, the billing to your card will be the same as any other billing here at the restaurant. It will not say Havana Room, or Shao-tzou fish, or anything else unusual. There's complete confidentiality."

She looked at Ha. He was stirring the water in the fish tank, and a tail slapped the surface. He withdrew his hand, folded back his white sleeve, then pulled from beneath the tank a wide rectangular screen attached to a handle. This he dropped into one end of the tank.

"Okay, what else?" continued Allison. "There will be no splitting of portions between people, and if the diner inexplicably decides not to eat his portion, or part of his portion, then it will be thrown away. The fish will be killed and prepared in front of you, gentlemen, cut sushi style. You may use your hands or a fork or chopsticks, but in any case we suggest that you try to consume the entire portion within thirty seconds or so, for maximum effect."

"What do we do after we eat the fish?"

"Good question. Shantelle?"

Colin Harrison

The Havana Room

Shantelle had retreated to the dark back corner, and now she whisked off a heavy blanket, revealing a luxurious, wide-armed leather chair. This she pushed forward into the square of light.

"Before you eat your portion, or certainly just after, we advise that you quickly sit in this very comfortable chair. You will lose most muscle control, and if you are seated, you will not fall or injure yourself. As I said, the total effect lasts only five minutes or so." She looked at her watch. "Let's get started. First, though, does anyone want to see the fish?"

We obligingly crept forward from our chairs and peered in the murky tank to see a brownish fish about twenty inches long, boxy, and scaleless, with a blunted, indistinct face. Its eyes were set high, and seemed oddly intelligent. The body of the fish was unappetizingly soft, its skin gluey, its dorsal fin and tail shredded. Not a fish built for speed or beauty, a bottom-feeder, a garbage fish. It lazily circled the perimeter of the tank, reversing direction, idling- a fish, I mused, without a country or an ocean or a future.

"Doesn't look like much," the fellow next to me whispered.

Back in our chairs, we watched Ha move the screen gently toward the other end of the tank, trapping the fish against its glass wall. There was a splash of water as the fish fought its imprisonment. Keeping pressure on the screen, Ha lifted a long gleaming pick and placed it above the fish. We waited.

"Must be just right," Ha muttered.

He stared into the water, and we saw him take a breath, hold it, then plunge the pick downward. Instantly he let go of the screen and lifted the pick and the wriggling, impaled fish into the air. The pick had gone straight down into the fish's nose, through its mouth, and out the bottom side. Ha inspected the fish. "Very healthy," he noted.

He nailed the fish onto his board, held its back with his other hand, drew a short knife, and quickly severed the fish's spinal column. "Now," he announced with the affability of a television show gourmet, "we make very good Shao-tzou fish."

He bent at the knees, hunched himself toward the fish. "First we see what you eat." He sliced open the belly and picked through some greenish-black gunk. "Maybe some crab, some clam. In China bad boy in my village feed cat meat sometime, when too many cat in the town you know. Very ugly fish. In China they call this fish 'river pig.' "

Working quickly, he removed the organs of the fish and dropped them into small blue ceramic bowls. Then he beheaded the fish, cut out the brain, and deposited it into another bowl. After each operation he dropped his knife into a wide bucket on the floor and withdrew from his gleaming array another identical one, so that the fluids of one part of the fish did not touch any from the others. With the organs and brain segregated, he dropped the remains of the head into another bucket, lifted up his board, wiped it, dropped the towel in the bucket, then flipped over the board. Now he quickly skinned the fish and filleted it.

Meanwhile Shantelle was passing through the room with sets of slate paddles and chalk. She handed each man one and I could see that most, like me, were torn between our desire to study Shantelle and our fascination with Ha's activities. Paddle in hand, I watched him lift the fillets onto a new cutting board, whisk the skin and backbone into the bucket, then remove the old larger cutting board completely.

"How many, Ha?" came Allison's voice.

He bent forward to examine his fillets, made an adjusting trim on one- the fleck of flesh flying instantly into the bucket- then checked the organs in their separate bowls. "I have just one Sun, just one Moon, and always just one Stars," he announced.

"Okay, this is the usual number. Those of you bidding on the Sun portion, please write down your sums," Allison instructed. "Remember, the Sun is a portion that involves great heat." She looked about the room. The men appeared tentative, not sure of what to do. But I saw several men leaning over their paddles.

"Please lift your bids… I see $75, that will not do, I see $100, that won't either, $50, you should be ashamed of yourself, sir, this fish came from the other side of the world, I see $250, yes, that's better, I'm ignoring the lesser bids, I see- you may drop your $100 bid, sir- I see $300, I see $600, he's the most motivated, clearly, $600, this will be the cheapest portion of the evening I guarantee you, $600, again, and that's it. Sold to the man in the green tie."

Instantly Shantelle was next to him, a balding man of about forty-five, indeed wearing a green tie, and he gave her a credit card.

"Please come forward."

Allison received him, and he stood before us, a bit embarrassed to be the first one, perhaps afraid to be revealed as a fool before the room. Shantelle returned with the credit card slip and a pen. She smiled helpfully as he signed. Ha, meanwhile, was preparing the portion of Shao-tzou sushi, his fingers patting and rolling rice and seaweed and tucking until the tiny delicacy was done.

"Do I get soy sauce?" the man joked.

"I'm afraid not."

"Okay, here I go." He picked up his sushi, held it before his mouth, looked at Ha, looked at Allison, then gently took it into his mouth. He chewed slowly and swallowed.

"How's it taste?" someone called.

"That is rather good," he said.

"Please," said Allison, leading him by the hand to the chair.

We studied him.

"I feel okay," he announced. "I feel really pretty normal."

Shantelle had collected the slate paddles from the unsuccessful bidders, erased them, and given them back.

"I'm- okay, okay- there… it's-" The first winning bidder gripped the arm of his chair, then tipped his head back. His fingers relaxed, his feet slipped forward, and he eased into the comfortable leather, his eyes still open but blank. He breathed deeply through his nose, as though appreciating a fine wine. Then his mouth sagged open, his eyelids heavy. His eyes fluttered closed, his face still tranquil, attentive to some far pleasure, as if he were listening to exquisitely drifting jazz.

"Is he sick?" asked a worried voice.

Allison held up a hand. "Wait."

The man in the green tie slackened further, his head lolling softly on his shoulder. The muscles around his eyes twitched, as did his lips. These movements suggested surprise and deep internal experience, the pleasurable awareness of light across a sleeping form. His face seemed to set itself within a coma of concentration, eager to receive as much sensation as possible. The fingers on both his hands quivered as if it was all too unbearably good, and he moaned indistinctly, the pleasure forcing its release through his mouth.

"For God's sake!" one of the men called. "Is he dying?"

The room remained hushed, the men looking back and forth at one another, uncertain whether to be worried or outraged or entertained. Allison followed her watch closely.

"This man looks ill!" came a protest. "I insist you call-!"

Allison held up a calm finger, following her watch. "One of the training elements for a Shao-tzou chef is to estimate body weight and size the portion accordingly. Mr. Ha is an artist, gentlemen, not a murderer. Please, have a little faith."

Half a minute more went by agonizingly, then the intensity of the man's pleasure began to subside, and we saw the gradual reassertion of consciousness. He blinked, lifted his head, coughed, focused, lost focus, blinked again, munched his mouth dryly, then sat up in his chair, recognizing the room and the rest of us.

"Oh," he said in a low, thoughtful voice. He sighed a noise of contentment. Then he noticed the expectant eyes upon him and nodded. "Yeah, it was unbelievable…"

He started to stand.

"Just wait a minute or so, sir," said Allison, gently pushing him back down in the chair. "Just let your body figure it all out."

He looked up at Allison and smiled coyly. "Can we do it again?"

"No," Allison said, rejecting his innuendo.

"Wait, you don't understand," he protested. "Just tell me what to pay! I'm good for it." Despite Allison's insistence, he rose unsteadily, but his halting steps seemed caused by his amazement as much as by any infirmity.

He was pacified by Shantelle and escorted to his seat.

"We have two more pieces of Shao-tzou fish," Allison announced. "Next we have the piece of Moon, with the blade wipe coming from the liver. Write your bids, please. Let me remind you that the winning bid in the last round was a mere $600."

This time more men hunched over their slates and I could see a few of them look up, study the other men, then erase whatever had been on the slate and write another figure.

"Bids please," Allison said loudly. "Get the paddles up. Here we go. I see $800, $900, $2,000, $1,000 is it? Yes, very nice, the highest so far is $2,000, please, sir, don't change your bid, ah! $3,316, quite an odd bid, I think we have a winner at $3,316."

This time a younger, heavyset man in a blazer came forward, sporty and confident. He nodded back to the men, stepped forward to Ha, grabbed the piece of sushi, pivoted, faced us, and pushed the whole thing in his mouth.

"No hesitation there," Allison narrated.

He swallowed and stepped forward to the chair.

"Do you have anything to say to us?" Allison inquired. "Any chit or chat?"

"No," he said quietly.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Allison stepped toward him, adjusted his head forward and sideways, then turned to the group. "What you're seeing here is art, gentleman. Mr. Ha's art. The poison in the Shao-tzou is so deadly that even a sliver more of the flesh or an accidentally large wipe through the organ- in this case the liver- would kill. But Mr. Ha is a master."

Ha nodded ever so subtly, then inspected one of his knives. Meanwhile the heavyset man in the chair slumped to one side, face slack, his mouth almost closed, a thin line of saliva dripping down one side of his chin. His lips trembled softly, as if privately repeating a liturgy of devotion. This time the group watched with less trepidation. Several men, I saw, timed the process themselves, looking up at the man in the chair and then at their watches. He continued his private prayer, which deteriorated into speechless puffs, a panting of gratification that became winded breathing even as his eyebrows arched upward in appreciation. We were transfixed. No one doubted his transport to realms of unknown sweetness.

And then, just as it crested, that sweetness fell back, fell away, and his legs stilled and his eyebrows dropped. He began to come out of it. He began to remember that he was alive, and opened his eyes in full consciousness, respiration almost normal, his color good.

"Well?" inquired Allison, on behalf of the rest of us.

"Oh God, the light just came up like a giant moon…" He turned toward Ha and shot out his arm. "You are a rock star, man!" He rose to his feet, pumped the air once or twice, then fell back heavily. "All the time I'm seeing the surface of death, man, the rolling surface of bones or the moon or something, just beaming this white death light that feels so good and I can't move, man."

He started to stand again, fell back into his seat, then stood successfully. He staggered toward Ha. "Hey man, just make me a little one of those, just take some of that stuff you threw away in the bucket, look, look! You got plenty of that brown stuff to wipe on there-"

"Excuse me, excuse me!" cried Ha. He brandished the knife. "No, no! You cannot have this fish!"

The young man held up his hands, backed away. "Okay! Right. Sorry. I just, let me just congratulate you, you are the artist, the-"

"Bids please, gentlemen," Allison called over him. "We have just one portion left, the Stars. The winning bid last time was thirty-three hundred and something dollars. One more portion left, everyone, just one, and it may be weeks again, months even, before we can find another Shao-tzou."

Allison reminded the men that it was open bidding, multiple bids accepted, highest bid wins. "Just like Sotheby's," she added. The bids began at $3,400 and three rounds later reached $6,050, two men bidding against each other from either side of the room. The counterbid increments dropped from five hundred dollars to one hundred to fifty until one of the men shook his head in disgust at a bid of $6,750 and gave up. The successful bidder dropped heavily into the chair, loosened his necktie, swigged a glass of water, checked his watch, which appeared to have cost only a little less than his piece of Chinese sushi, and tossed back the morsel.

"Here we go," he said, looking pleased with himself for displaying that he could spend almost seven thousand dollars for a bite of poisonous fish. I didn't like him, I confess, irritated that he was about to have a singular, expensive pleasure and I was not.

Almost a minute went by and the Stars winner looked at Allison in exasperation. "Nothing's happening here."

"Just wait," she said.

"I am. I did wait. I feel fine."

"Just a minute or so," Allison said.

We waited.

"It's a dud," the winner said. "I want my money back."

"Sometimes if you've had a heavy dinner, then-"

But she didn't need to finish. The Stars winner collapsed backward as if he'd caught a pillow filled with sand. His arms retained a sort of sleep-walker's rigidity. The effect of his portion seemed harsher, arriving not only late and not gradually but with a punitive force. Of the three men, this last one appeared to be the closest to pain. His feet paddled a bit, as if he was suffering in silence.

A minute went by; the man displayed none of the behaviors the first two men had showed, and I wondered if he was truly enjoying the experience. Then it seemed too much time had gone by. Allison checked her watch, the smile on her lips a little frozen, a little worried, I thought, and I caught her glancing quickly at Ha, who received her anxiety with a slow, reassuring blink. At that same moment the man's body lengthened rigidly in the chair, legs straight, arms at his side, his nervous system conducting a lightning bolt of ecstasy, and he lifted his face upward at some unseen spectacle and completely opened his mouth, issuing a kind of silent scream- most unnerving. And then the scream came — a lung-loud hollering that filled the room, a man yelling across a canyon, summoning all of nature's attention, calling the gods down from the sky.

"Holy fuck," another man whispered, weirded out.

At that, the man in the chair dropped silent and seized up into the fetal position, having birthed his experience out of himself, and began to wake groggily, apparently exhausted. Allison's posture softened and I saw her exhale.

"It wasn't stars," the man said, opening his eyes.

"No?" Allison came over to be sure he stayed in his seat.

"It was fireworks! Touching my face! I could feel them burning against my face. Three of them went right through me." He lifted his hands and examined his fingers, as if they might have been singed as well. "Swear to God. Burning. Right through me. Little cinders, sparks. One big one went right in my mouth and down through me, right out of my asshole." He addressed the other men. "I'm lying there, my body is dead and I can see these sparks, red little comets coming at me and going right through me. I'll never forget that. I mean, I've done acid and I've done lots of stuff, you know, but nothing like that."

"Was it pleasurable?"

He squinted one eye. "Completely. Total pleasure, yeah."

"And with that admission as to the absolute artistry of Mr. Ha," announced Allison triumphantly, sweeping her arms, "we are done, gentlemen! Those of you who did not have any fish are invited back, and those of you who did we wish well in the future. Remember, please, not to discuss what you saw tonight outside this room. As ever, I will be seeing many of you in the main dining room in the days and weeks to come. Thank you to Mr. Ha, and thank you to our lovely Shantelle. Good night!"

The room broke into polite but ambivalent applause and stayed hushed. The old waiter reappeared, followed by the bartender, and with the prospect of further drinking the room became louder, more relaxed. Several men lit their complimentary cigars. Like some of the others, I wasn't sure I believed what I'd seen, and I studied the faces of the first two men who'd eaten the fish as they described their experiences to the men close to them. I remembered the old literary man's claim that the demonstration was fraudulent, complete with ringers. Could he be right? Short of eating the fish myself, how could I be sure that the whole thing wasn't a charade?

Now the last eater of the fish stood, took a step, steadied himself, then walked to his seat. Shantelle took this opportunity to push the comfortable armchair to its dark corner and I did not mind seeing the back of her, her soft hips going left-right-left. I also did not mind that Allison caught me doing this. She came over and let her fingers fall on my shoulder with a certain proprietary design.

"Was it a good show?"

"Excellent."

"But I hear a tone in your voice."

"You do, yes."

Allison glanced around the room. She still had things to do. "So you may need further proof?"

I was about to answer but she left to talk with Ha as he cleaned up. He worked a bit more on the fish, it seemed, cut something out of it, dipped it in water, wrapped it in a piece of cabbage. I wanted to understand what he was doing and why Allison wanted to watch him, but I was distracted by the arrival of Shantelle next to me, whose golden tray, I saw at last, held a thoughtful selection of minute jars of caviar, premium tickets to Knicks games and Broadway shows, airline bottles of liquor, French cigarettes, ladies' wristwatches, combination condom/ Viagra bubble packs, Swiss chocolate, untraceable telephone cards in prepaid amounts, gift certificates to Victoria's Secret in denominations of five hundred dollars, gold coins, and several baseballs signed by prominent members of the Yankees.

"You have Derek Jeter?" I asked, examining the balls.

"I think," came Shantelle's voice. She pointed. "Yes."

I picked the ball up, liking the way the leather felt in my hand. Jeter's signature was tight, not floridly excessive. The ball felt lucky to me, something my son would like. Yes- something my son would like. "This is authentic?"

"Oh yes," she purred. "They come through a very reputable dealer."

"I'll take it."

Which I did. The price was ridiculous, but not when measured against Timothy's happy surprise, if I could get the ball to him.

When I looked up again Ha was wiping the counter obsessively. He sprayed it with soap from a bottle, then wiped it again. Everything he touched, I saw, went into the green bucket. Knives, rags, bits of fish, pieces of rice ball, everything. Then he reached under the counter and pulled out a bag of charcoal briquettes. A barbecue? No. Ha ripped open the bag and dumped half of it into the green bucket, adding a bit of water. He took a common toilet plunger, thrashed the contents of the bucket, dropped the plunger in, took off his white coat and hat, dropped them in, followed by his plastic gloves and goggles, then sealed the top on the green container. This he then taped shut.

"Charcoal?" I called to Allison.

"It absorbs all the bad stuff," she explained. "He dumps it safely."

"Diluted by the New York City sewage system."

"Something like that."

"One poison among innumerable poisons?"

Allison nodded. "Like men."

"Men being innumerable or poisonous?"

"Both," she said. "Just like women."

She nodded goodbye to some of the patrons as they left. "Yes," she said to one, "I'll let you know the next time."

Now she came over and sat down across from me. "Well?"

"I don't believe it," I told her. "It's got to be a trick."

"It's not," Allison said. "The stuff works."

"I don't believe that for one minute."

"Oh, you do. You don't want to, but you do."

"Nah."

She shrugged. "Try it yourself then, prove me wrong."

"Thanks, but no."

"Afraid?"

"The stuff's poisonous."

"I thought you said you didn't believe it."

"I believe in the poison, but not the brain magic."

"You don't get the brain magic without the poison. If you believe in one, you believe in the other."

"Sorry," I told her.

"You really think it's a fake?"

"It could be a bunch of ringers. Or maybe those bidders were real but Ha did something to the fish, sprinkled LSD on it."

"It's real," Allison said right away.

"I'm just not convinced."

"What are you convinced by, then?"

"Other things. I find other things more convincing, Allison."

Allison sighed, pushed a finger along my collar. "Hey Bill?"

"Yes?"

"Can you convince yourself to get your coat and meet me outside?"

She was all over me in the cab, a leg thrown over mine, holding my cheeks in her gloved hands, and I lay back and enjoyed this- although not without worrying that H.J.'s men were somehow cruising along behind us, having waited for me outside. I could just about convince myself that they were capable of that, too. They'd grabbed me once, so maybe they'd grab me again.

Somewhere in the East Eighties Allison told the cabbie to make his turn, and a moment later we were walking through the lobby of her building; Allison's salutation to her uniformed doorman on his stool was as sharp and quick as a flung knife- and nearly had the same effect; his head slumped onto his chest and he said nothing. I was not, I knew, the first man to follow Allison across the marble chess squares of her lobby, but never would I hear that from her doorman.

Upstairs the elevator opened into an enormous apartment, deep as a tennis court.

"Wow, what a great-"

"I'll show you it in the morning," Allison interrupted. "Come on."

So I did, following her directly to the bedroom. The bed was immense, large enough for three people. Allison stared at me, threw her purse on a chair, then took off her clothes. Shoes- flung over the carpet, dress- dropped in the chair, bra- a quick snap and her breasts were before me, panties- down past the knees, flicked away.

"Now you, mister."

In a moment I was naked as well and tasted the saltiness of her skin, her nipples in my mouth. It had been a painfully long time since I'd held a woman, any woman, and I felt grateful to Allison for giving herself to me, or taking me to her, so very grateful when she pushed me onto my back and sucked me with frank abandon. A moment later I was inside of her, and if I was not exactly heroic, then I was serviceable and of sufficient duration, and besides, Allison was easy- she took it in and made use of it for herself. Like mixing batter with a spoon. There is nothing like the velvety wetness of a woman, and my head swam with pleasure.

"Wait," Allison said suddenly. "Pull out a moment!"

"What?"

"It's okay. Hold your fire."

I rolled off of her in the darkness, baffled.

"I'll be right back, folks."

She grabbed something from her purse and ran into the bathroom. The light flashed on just before the door closed. I didn't know whether to be angry or hurt or amused. Then the door opened and Allison's naked shadow flew through the darkness right back into bed.

I wondered if I smelled something in her breath. "Everything okay?"

"A minor adjustment."

"Ah," I said as if I knew, trying to remember the obscure locations of certain forms of birth control.

"Okay," Allison purred, grabbing me. "Where were we?"

We started again and of course the interval created a new ascent of pleasure. I felt her hands pull me close to her, so hard her forehead bumped my nose. "Bill, if I act a little weird," Allison whispered in the dark, her lips against my neck, "just deal with it, okay? Take care of me, okay?"

"Okay." But I'd have said anything.

"Good," Allison breathed. She pulled me closer and suddenly bit my bottom lip so hard that it bled. "Now," she growled in a strange, panting whisper, a voice I'd never heard from her before, "now fuck me hard, go as long as you-"

I did. But it wasn't that long, a minute or two, perhaps, and then, when I was done, had roared my private roar, I understood that she lay limp in my arms.

"Allison?"

Her head dropped back, eyes unseeing- and I suffered a memory of Wilson Doan Jr.

Cold fright now. "Allison? Hey!"

I sat up. She lay collapsed on the bed, arms akimbo. I turned on the table lamp. She breathed slowly, eyes closed, twitching infrequently. I took her hand, worried that I'd done something wrong, had somehow hurt her, that she was dying or in danger.

"Allison?" Nothing. Then a slow blink, tongue on her bottom lip. If I act a little weird, take care of me.

"You okay?"

Nothing. A tremor of a smile played strangely at the side of her mouth.

It occurred to me that when she'd gone to the bathroom a few minutes earlier she hadn't flushed the toilet.

I jumped up, entered her bathroom and closed the door, fanned the wall for the switch, and was shocked by the sight of a naked man in front of me. He didn't look too good, either. Eyes wild, hair a mess, a bit of a gut. The mirror. I let my eyes adjust to the light, and then searched the bathroom cupboard. Makeup, birth control pills, Tylenol, the usual. Nothing interesting. I stared into the toilet. Nothing there. Nothing in the pocket of the bathrobe on the back of the door. Maybe I simply had- maybe I'd better look in the trash. I knelt down. Yes, there, dropped into a nest of tissues and dental floss lay a little wide-mouthed jar with a lid screwed on tight. I held it up to the bright light and swished around some flecks of white stuff and a piece of cabbage in some sort of vine-gary liquid. I unscrewed the lid and smelled the contents of the jar.

Fishy. Yes, fishy. What was left of a small bit of fish, no doubt. Shao-tzou fish.

If I were a man different from the one I am, I might have taken furious advantage of Allison in some way. She lay insensate on her sheets, deep tremors occasionally playing across her face, utterly undefended, fuckable, murderable. I could have done anything to her, rifled her drawers, shaved her head. And I won't pretend I wasn't angry, either; on the pretense of sexual affection, she'd coldly duped me into being her hospital orderly while she departed on a drug trip. Is this what she did with all her men? Fluffed them up so that she could overlay one pleasure with another? The fish must really be good, I realized, for her to undergo such risk. I rolled Allison on her side, on the off chance she would vomit, and doing this, I saw that she'd urinated a bit in the sheets. This was sad and a little sweet and deeply weird, and my anger toward her melted away. What a lovely, lonely woman. What a waste of her vitality. I covered her with the blanket, made sure that she was warm. She didn't wake. I checked her pulse every few minutes for almost an hour. It was steady. Her respiration held steady, too. How much fish had she eaten? Enough to have a strong effect, much stronger than the effect the men had experienced earlier. But not so much that she was in danger. An amount that was- well, perfect. An art, she'd said, an art.

An hour later I got Allison to sit up once and have a little water, and she muttered something half coherent and told me thank you, she was fine, please forgive her, and fell asleep again, this time holding me tight- as if I mattered to her.

I woke a little after six, bolt upright, and for a moment didn't know where I was. Then I saw Allison next to me, clutching a silk pillow. She breathed easily, and had put on a nightgown. Or had I put it on her? I couldn't remember. I studied her. She was fine now. Warm, breathing easily. I eased out of the bed, feeling a ghost of that old domestic rhythm. Man, woman, bed. Coffee, sunlight, and where are my pants? It had been a weird night, and I wanted to retreat to my apartment, get a shower and shave. In the kitchen I nabbed a few swallows of orange juice in the refrigerator and incidentally perused Allison's books, which seemed to lean toward Catholic mysticism and novels by the tough-chick literary crowd.

I drifted along the bank of windows in the living room, watching the day begin outside, the sun hitting the bricks and rainspouts, the taxis denser on the avenue. I confess my melancholy in this moment. You reach a certain age and you know that jumping into bed isn't as simple as it used to be- not that it ever was. But now reality seeps in more quickly. People grind against each other, expectations limited, patience provisional. She'd lured me back to her apartment so that she could get a fix of her dangerous fish, getting fucked as she dropped off to sleep. Fish-fucked. Did this explain the parade of kindly, ineffectual men she'd seen before Jay Rainey? Guys who could be depended upon not to take advantage of a tripped-out Allison Sparks?

And how much did I mind? I wasn't sure. I dropped my forehead against the cool glass, fogging it a bit, and let my eyes drift to the other side of the street. Across from me I saw a woman in a white robe pouring coffee into a mug. The morning light was such that I could see her rather well. Young, but not that young. She was not my wife. But she might have been, once. The demographics weren't far off. I watched her pour milk into her coffee. She reached into her kitchen cabinet and pulled down four cereal bowls, one after another. Here was a mother, dutifully meeting the day. Not a woman who dragged in lonely fish-fuck partners. Her wholeness saddened me, made me think not only of Judith in the good days but also of little Wilson Doan's mother. I'd killed her son. Who can measure a mother's grief? Who can find its bottom? Now the mother looked at her wall clock and left the kitchen. What had happened to my life? That expected trajectory, the planned vector, was abandoned, a weed-cracked highway to nowhere.

Yes, the domestic tableau across the street filled me with longing and misery- there it was, as close as balcony seats at a Broadway show- and I was about to turn away when I saw the woman enter a room two windows down from her kitchen. She leaned softly over a bed and seemed to be waking someone, who then got up, shrugged on some clothing, and left the bedroom. A light went on in a larger window closer to the park. The figure appeared, wearing a man's oversized plaid flannel shirt, and sat down before a piano. She was a young woman, a girl, really — Sally Cowles.

Yes, that was Sally Cowles, sitting down at a piano, in profile to me. The woman- her stepmother, I assumed- appeared again with a glass of juice, encouraging, nodding, pointing to a page of music. Sally Cowles was practicing the piano. Sally Cowles lived across the street from Allison Sparks. Jay Rainey was obsessed with Sally Cowles. I remembered Allison's story about how she'd met Jay in the little breakfast place near her apartment. He'd told her that he was in the neighborhood because of a deal he was doing nearby. But what reason would Jay have to be in this neighborhood, except for Sally Cowles? He had no deal, other than the building on Reade Street, no reason to be on the Upper East Side.

Now Allison came out of her bedroom in her silk gown.

"Morning!" she called cheerily.

"Hi."

She came up to me from behind, rubbed her hands across my chest. I turned. Allison smiled up at me, searching for my mood, as if in a kind of penance. Don't be mad at her, I told myself. It's just loneliness. The whole goddamned thing. On her part and on mine.

"Oh, you men are all alike."

"We are?"

"Well, mostly."

I made some sound. "And why are we all alike, mostly?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just that Jay used to do this, too."

"What?"

"Stood here and looked right across the street."

Yes, of course, I thought, all my anxieties amping back through my head, of course he did. That's why he let you think you seduced him, so that he could come up to your apartment and watch young Sally Cowles.