'It isn't.'
I asked her to continue the tour, so she did. Next came the produce walk-ins, filled with chopped vegetables ready for salads and quail eggs stacked by the dozen. All the supplies came in through sidewalk doors. I couldn't tell where we stood in respect to the Havana Room, whether it was above us or beside us, or if its location was what somehow made the room restricted. But I saw nothing unusual, just pipes and ceiling tiles and rough wiring. I was eager to ask Allison about the Havana Room, but suspected I'd learn more if I didn't.
'Then there's upstairs,' she said.
'Oh?'
She meant the second floor, which housed three big private party rooms. The largest had a piano and seating for sixty, and was often used for corporate gatherings, wedding dinners, and the like. The second, also large, was furnished with better sofas and favored by married, middle-aged women for social events. The third room, considerably smaller, was rented almost exclusively by Wall Street men at night. This was where the strippers worked. The limit was twenty-five men. The more men, Allison told me, the more problems they had, and sometimes the stripper would run out of the room having been bitten or plundered in some indecorous way. 'What does she expect?' Allison asked.
I followed her to the third and fourth floors, which contained furniture storage, an accountant's office, a main office where Allison worked, and employee locker rooms. Along the way I counted three dozen security cameras, and when we paused in the main office, I watched six black-and-white television screens cycle through their respective views of all that I had just toured, as well as views of the main dining rooms, the bar, every cash register, and even the street outside. I realized that Allison could watch people from her office, including me. Was the Havana Room similarly monitored? I studied the cycling screens but didn't spot any room I hadn't seen before.
'Well, that's it!' said Allison, perhaps noticing my interest. 'Except for Ha's penthouse, which we can't see.'
'Ha?'
'Yes,' said Allison. 'Ha. You know Ha.'
'The handyman.'
'Yes. The only man I completely trust.' Perched above the bright inferno of the restaurant, Ha lived in a tiny room on the top floor. No one knew exactly where he came from or just how old he was, she said, and no one who depended on him insisted on being informed. He may have jumped off a ship in Seattle, he may have walked over the Mexican border. What was known about Ha was that he could fix anything- broilers, air conditioners, meat slicers, any of the restaurant's twenty-six refrigerators, the freight elevator, the washing machines, fire alarms. 'He's quite brave, too,' Allison added.
'Brave?'
'Absolutely.' At night, she said, Ha navigated the dim catacombs of the restaurant by touch; one evening years back, after the night porter had left, a thief jimmied the sidewalk doors and crept in. Ha, lying on the kitchen floor wiggling a gas line, heard the intruder and surmised his route toward the kitchens. Immediately he darkened the narrow hallways, turned on the lights in the liquor walk-in, and waited. The intruder lurched along the hallways, drawn to the brightness like an insect, and when he scurried into the cave of expensive booze, Ha swung the door shut, secured it with a length of metal pipe, and called the police. Allison adored him, and believed, I think, that he was more spirit than man.
'He's the only one who has my cell number,' she joked. 'The rest of them can't have it.'
'How do your sad supplicants call you, then?'
'They can look me up in the book.' We took the stairs down to the dining room. 'Actually, there's a new guy these days,' she admitted. 'Not that it's necessarily going anywhere.'
I watched her bounce down the steps in front of me, and felt better for having not declared my affections for her in the meat room. 'Go ahead and tell me, just to make me jealous.'
'Well, you know I don't eat breakfast at home.' Allison sat down at one of the back tables and I joined her. Two busboys were vacuuming at the other end. 'I have breakfast at this little place on the corner near my apartment. You'd think I wouldn't want to be in a restaurant, any kind of restaurant, but I like this place- and my apartment is kind of big and drafty, you know, kind of empty, even though I love my kitchen, so I go to this little place, and have an egg and toast, something to get started.' Her voice was animated, excited by the story, and she'd already forgotten our intimate moment in the meat room. 'So I was minding my own business, just sitting in my booth, reading the newspaper, when this big man sat down next to me with his newspaper, and he was wearing this beautiful suit, very conservative, and I said to myself, Well, okay, I might be having a little bit of a problem.'
'I know where this is going,' I said, secretly miserable.
'I looked at his hand and saw no wedding ring, although you can't always be sure. But I didn't say anything or look at him, I just kept reading, sort of hoping, and then I watched him order and eat his meal and he had perfect manners.' She sighed, remembering. 'I see a lot of people eat, I know what perfect table manners are. And then the waitress brought my check because she wanted the table. And I kind of kept sort of looking at him but he didn't see me and I had to go.'
'Which you didn't like.'
'No, I didn't. And he wasn't there the next day. But the day after that he was, he was sitting behind me, back to back, and I could smell him, and that- I admit it, I was having a little problem. Then he pulls out a phone and he calls someone up and I'm trying to listen as much as I can, you know.' Allison smiled guiltily. 'I want desperately to hear him, I want to know who he's talking to! It could be some woman, Of course. And I hear him say, 'Two-point- six million, I'm willing to do that.' That was all he said. And then he just listened and nodded and hung up. And I thought, All right, this guy is for real, you know?'
'You smelled the big money.'
'I guess. I mean, I can't tell you how many fakers and braggers and jerks are out there, Bill, with their little gold pinkie rings and rented Jaguars. So now I was even more interested, I admit it. A girl has to watch out for herself, right? So I twisted around to see what he was reading. It was the Financial Times of London, which is the sexiest newspaper there is to read. Don't ask me why. Those pink pages. It's so European. So I liked that, too. I was trying to think of something to say and then he looked at his watch and got up and left. Afterward the waitresses talked about him. They liked him, too. So I was thinking, Come on, Allison, you're a smart girl, you're a catch, you know what to do. So the next day I decided I was-'
She stopped, gave me a devilish smile.
'Go on,' I said. 'I can take it.'
'Oh, Bill, you don't want a woman like me.'
'How do you know?'
'You just don't. I do terrible things. I even flirt with strange men in meat lockers.' She pushed at the spoon in front of her. 'I really am very, very bad, you know. Fickle and irresponsible and manipulative.'
'I doubt it.' And I did.
'Maybe you'll find out sometime.'
'Maybe. God help me if I do. Go on with the story. You decided to-?'
'Yes. I got up early, picked out a good dress, and got down there a little early, trying to match his time of arrival. And I did! He looked up when I came in and gave me a smile. That was it. I mean I said hi or something. But I sat down feeling victorious! It's silly, but okay. Then I turned around and asked if I could borrow some of his paper. He said yes and handed it to me. And I said something like it seemed like he was starting to be a regular. Something stupid like that, totally obvious. And he said he'd just been eating there because he had meetings in the neighborhood. But soon would be done. I basically panicked and told him I ran a steakhouse downtown and would love for him to try the place as my guest.'
'Very subtle.'
'I didn't have a choice! I gave him my card and said please, puhl-ease call me ahead of time and-'
'You didn't say it like that.'
'No, but almost. I said I'd see that he got a good table. He looked at the card and said that was great and introduced himself and we shook hands and it was all I could do not to put his thumb in my mouth.' Allison smiled. 'Isn't that awful?'
