'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.
