2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino

hesitates. He turns back to the machine. “They want you to lose all of your money in this thing.”
    “It’s not a big deal,” Louisa says, shifting in her heels.
    Alex returns with the change. Lorca loses the dollar in less than a minute. On the second attempt, the claw snatches the owl by its wing but at the last second, releases it.
    Lorca elbows through the crowd that waits for available tables in thick coats and stockings. The pies in the case shine. He reaches the cashier. “Can someone talk to me about the machine in the lobby? How can I get my son the owl he wants?”
    “One minute,” says the cashier.
    “I’ll pay you for one,” Lorca says. “I can’t spend all day playing a game.”
    The cashier’s smile is thin with aggravation. “It doesn’t work that way.”
    “How about it works that way today?”
    The manager is there, asking how he can help. “Why is everything in this place broken?” Lorca says. He leads the man to the lobby, where Louisa and Alex stand by the machine. Alex holds up the stuffed owl. “Louisa got it.”
    “Lucky, I guess,” she says.
    Louisa Maya Vicino. Louisa from her Italian grandmother, Maya from her Spanish mother, and Vicino which means “near,” because her distant ancestors lived in the vicinity of something important, like an olive grove.
    Two weeks later, Lorca’s father, Francis, pauses in the middle of a story to readjust his grip on the pilsner he fills. When his head hits the ground, it makes a metallic sound Lorca can hear from the other end of the bar. His father is already dead by the time Lorca reaches him, beer unspooling around him, eyes fixed on some fascination under the bar. Lorca gathers him in his arms.
    Gathers him in his name—Jack Francis Lorca.
    We carry our ancestors in our names and sometimes we carry our ancestors through the sliding doors of emergency rooms and either way they are heavy, either way we can’t escape.

5:00 P.M.
    S arina tries a barrette on her dark hair. She tries the expression she will use when she sees Ben Allen for the first time in four years. Surprise tippling the sides of her mouth. She runs perfume along her collarbone. Getting ready is a series of negotiations with herself and her meager set of prettying items. She settles on a black skirt, champagne blouse, no barrette. She won’t do much walking tonight so she makes one final bargain with herself: heels in exchange for a cab ride there.
    Thinking about him requires so little effort that she can do it while performing mindless activities. Soaping the dishes, replaiting Clare Kelly’s hair, drying the dishes. The part of her brain that plays his ongoing reel is unconnected to the neurons and synapses that control things like conscious thought and logic. Ben turning to her at a party. Ben turning to her. Ben turning. What human being deserves to be the nucleus of such high esteem? Certainly not Benjamin, middle name Hal, last name Allen. Five-nine in boots. Who has a car that doesn’t start on cold mornings, an unfinished screenplay, a law degree he doesn’t use, a romantic’s tendency to save movie stubs, and a mannered, unsmiling wife.

5:15 P.M.
    “D o you want the good news or the bad news?”
    The trash bags are gone, the bar wiped clean. The lights have been hung; they line the stage and loop around the Snakehead, making the old axe glow. Stalled in the doorway, Lorca experiences a stomachache he can only call Christmas.
    Sonny leans against the bar, arms crossed. “The good news,” he says, “is that Christmas has come to The Cat’s Pajamas. It’s like a holiday card in here. Cassidy hung them. The mouth on that one. I sent her to get dinner before we open.”
    “The bad news?”
    “We’ve lost track of Max. He was here, now he’s not. He’s not at his place and he’s not answering his phone.”
    “Do you understand that he is the bandleader of the Cubanistas?”
    “Do I? I do.”
    “Does he understand that we can’t have the