Nathan tugs at the doorman's elbow. "Where are they?"
Ivan opens his eyes with a snort. "They are away for the rest of the weekend. But of course you knew?" He looks at Nathan. "Do you need a doctor?"
Nathan thumbs down the door latch and sets himself free.
11 P.M.
Barbados drapes over the steering wheel, peering up.
"This is where he does his fun?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"You ever go in?"
"Just the one time."
Gleaming sports cars and long sedans circle a hunched building with blackened windows and no markings but a line of purple neon above the door. Behind and on either side, chop shops, blocks of buses packed in herringbone patterns, school yellow, Greyhounds; hangars marked with the cyclops seal of the Department of Sanitation. This could be an old diner, or a bus depot, refitted and camouflaged as a garrison to hide atop the pavement on the outer edge of all this industry.
"I always wondered about this place."
"You don't want to know," Santos says.
The door opens on another door within and a tall woman descends the steps flinging a stole around her neck. Despite her great height she has a floral delicacy, the purple light a halo for her teased hair. As she walks toward them Barbados's hands stay gripped to the wheel. His eyes follow her but not his head.
"She's a man."
Santos nods.
Barbados can't help it. He turns in his seat and watches her climb into the back of a limousine. "Chinese, or something."
They're Filipino. That's part of the thing."
"I don't get that."
"Don't think too hard about it."
They sit a while in silence. Santos watches the door, blinking steadily.
"What if he's already inside."
Santos looks at his watch. "We'll wait until twelve."
A stream of false women comes and goes. The novelty of the parade wears thin, and they are quickly bored. A car pulls up across the street, out of which Krivit steps and looks about, hesitant. He walks quickly toward their car and Santos opens his door and Krivit stops, expressionless. Without a word he opens the back door and slips in. His hair redeployed across his head in countable strands. Eyes watery and half closed. He wipes his forehead with his handkerchief.
"I didn't think this was your style," he says.
"I like talking to you," Santos says.
"Not that much."
"Enough."
"You have fun in there?" Barbados asks.
Krivit holds his stare until Barbados looks away. "Fuck you," he says.
Barbados holds up a palm. "No offense. It's just that I never thought-"
No one says anything.
"It doesn't matter," Santos says.
Krivit nods out the window, into the night. "Look at these fine cars. They say it's going to snow like hell tonight, but the lot's full. Think about that. You'd be surprised."
"I guess I would," Barbados says.
"Enough," Santos says. "I want to hear about Coney Island."
Krivit nods. "My deepest sympathies," he says flatly.
He doesn't mean it, Santos knows. He doesn't mean it and it doesn't matter. "You met Stein today."
"Which one?" Krivit asks lazily.
Santos stills.
"I saw you with Nathan Stein."
“You want to talk about Stein or to Stein? Because you can join me inside."
Santos looks up at the blank door of the club. Noiseless, hermetically sealed.
"In there?" Barbados asks.
Santos blinks. Nothing this night will surprise him. "Nathan or Milton? "
"Either. Both. Like father like son?"
"I didn't think the South Pacific was their flavor," Barbados says.
Krivit shrugs. "The Steins have generous and shall we say heroic appetites."
Barbados waves. "Give me a break."
"I'm a merchant. I buy what I think I can sell. I sell what I have. I always sell what I have, and what I have is always real."
Santos passes his hand over his face. "I'm listening."
"What do you think I can tell you?" Krivit asks. "All I have is a little news. It may be neither here nor there."
Santos feels Krivit looking at him but he doesn't move.
"Okay.”
"Someone is a very large player right now. Let's call it a high-profile-yet delicate-place to be. A place where unwanted news would do damage."
"What kind of news?"
"I'm not doing your job.
Santos lifts his eyes to the pilled ceiling of the car. "This is not a game.”
"Here's the broadcast: open your eyes, Errol. You don't have to look far. Nothing is a coincidence, nothing is chance. What Milton is doing, what Nathan has done. These are not unrelated things."
"You're talking about Isabel. What is it with you, what are you saying? First Schreck, now you-"
"Schreck? That fuck-"
“He tried to sell me Nathan."
“He'd sell his mother. Listen to me, Errol-" Krivit slides forward. "What he did, what Nathan did-”
"What did he do?"
"And who is who. We don't always know who we are."
"Give me something, give it to me, something real." "What I have is always real. I sell real."
"Fuck it, Krivit, I'm buying real." "It's not nice."
"Fuck you."
Krivit sits back, hands folded in his lap. "Secrets own those who never wanted to know-"
Now Claire is alone, has been for some time. Her elbows on the bar, her eyes up toward the murmuring TV but not seeing it. The Frangelico and Ouzo behind the bar green from the TV light and the vodkas blue and the whiskeys the color of thin mud.
Her fingers around an empty martini glass glumly, she steps back with the gin inside her at chest level and stands at the middle window. She can see only the streetlight and Where it ends and where nothing begins, and she traces the progress of the liquor downward and outward. A high, optimistic C from a song on the radio lifts behind her and holds for the big finish, then turns tinny and hollow, then only the snap and rain-like rattle of the pool rack breaking, and the liquor bottles and shot glasses flashing like jewels.
She makes a drippy circle in the glass with the heel of her palm and can see now no tracks on the sidewalks. The Witnesses are safe at home with their Bibles, safe here in Brooklyn, witnessing away. Up and down the street she is sure she is the only waking consciousness, despite the little Greek plunging glass after glass into the glass washer and the boys playing pool.
Why hasn't Errol come for her? After all, didn't she know Isabel, too? Doesn't Errol need her now, now that they-the both of them-have to publicly mourn? And she, of course, deserves-she wants-the chance to need him.
Looking out across the street, into the harbor, looking but not finding all the things she and Errol have not yet done, she recalls that as a girl, as Nathan's girl, often up at that earliest hour in an apartment not a mile from where she now stands, she'd been unable to bear the thought of her consciousness being so alone, positive she was the only person in the world alone at night. She'd stay up with her consciousness to give it a companion, until Nathan came home. From night court. Or so she'd thought; such was her logic then. The streetlight falling from the window on the bottom of the stairs, the heat in winter or the fans in summer rattling on, the settling foundation sending creaks through the walls, she'd squat as if by her parents' door as the noises and various lights moved over her. Eventually, whispering to herself, she'd fall asleep, more often than not atop her and Nathan's disheveled bed-on top because to go under signified to her her submission, to the house, to him-always with the light on, not for him to see but for her to see him when he returned home, and so she would have herself for company if she should wake.
Claire senses someone behind her. "Nathan," she says, hopefully, she realizes; she heard the little jump in her voice. She turns, not toward that one but toward the specter of the infant, who, when born, moved the doctor to silence. A nurse had gasped.
The bar stools have emptied. Though a bar never seems to sleep, Claire believes, it should never be so deserted, or so quiet, or the bottles so straight, so ready. A bar empty and quiet seems to her too much the terminal abode.