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
