The Havana Room

by Colin Harrison

"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?"

  "We
ll, 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.

  Seven

  I HURRIED OUT of Allison's apartment a few minutes later, wondering which was more disturbing, Allison's calculated seduction, or the fact that Sally Cowles lived directly across the street from her. Allison had seen me stare at the girl, seen it all too well, and after her initial banter about Jay doing the same thing— a naked attempt to reassure herself— I'd said nothing, had only glanced stupidly at her, then stared again across the street. At this, Allison took two shocked steps backward, arms suddenly crossed in front of her, eyes jittery and defensive, as if she'd been struck in the face. Why had the two men who'd recently come to her apartment both been fixated on a teenage girl living across the street? For a moment I thought Allison was going to run to the phone and call the police. But she was frozen where she stood. We were both stunned, in fact— revealed as strangers to each other, silhouettes caught in Jay's strange psychic machinery. I almost blurted out that the girl was the daughter of one of his tenants, and that he appeared to be obsessed with her, but I stopped myself.