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

of her father’s jazz books would have an entry on The Cat’s Pajamas. Why hadn’t she thought of this? She could sneak in there, but she must be quiet, like cancer. Madeleine’s father insists on silence. Except for bringing his meals, she doesn’t disturb him.
    She opens his door and breathes in: pecorino, Havarti. His mussed bed near the window. He dozes on one of two camel-colored chairs in the center of the room, clasping each arm as if in sleep he might take off. His chin rests on the collar of his satiny sweater. By his elbow, a tube of pills. It is possible he changed the record in a dream. Every day the line between his reality and sleep blurs more. Every day more roaches.
    Madeleine sees the book she needs:
History of Jazz, Volume Two
. She tiptoes across the room and coaxes it from its place on the bookshelf. Nina Simone goes on singing, unaffected.
    Black is the color of my true love’s hair
.
    The record skips.
    Black is the color
    Black is the color
    Madeleine lunges toward the record to move the needle but miscalculates the distance. Nina Simone yelps. Her father stirs, issuing a blubbery command.
    The color
    The color
    Madeleine fixes the needle too late. Her father’s eyes launch open.
    Who is this girl, Mark Altimari wonders, flapping big eyes at him? He bats at the coffee table for his glasses and securesthem over his ears with shaky hands. His daughter comes into focus.
    “Madeleine.” His expression sweetens. “Where have you been?”
    “In the other room.”
    He invites her to sit in the other chair. The song changes to a faster one. Nina Simone says there’s a lot of trouble with a brown-eyed handsome man. “Have you heard this one before?”
    Madeleine nods.
    “Can you hear it? Should I raise the volume?”
    “I can hear it.”
    “You’d like this recording. It has your singers and your stand-up bass. Wonderful stand-up bass player … I don’t remember his name.”
    Music fills the space between them. Mark wants to take the pill that keeps him awake, but not in front of his daughter. Instead, he flirts. “There’s a lot of trouble with a brown-eyed handsome man. In your travels have you found this to be true?”
    This is Madeleine’s favorite game. His role is to ask silly questions and hers is to answer as if he is serious, neither one acknowledging the other conversation that goes on wordlessly around them, in which some other, better version of themselves say: Isn’t it nice to be father and daughter?
    “Oh yes,” Madeleine says. “Once I lost both my arms in a wrestling match to meet a brown-eyed handsome man.”
    “That is a lot of trouble!” He folds his hands, pleased. “Are you enjoying school?”
    “Yes,” she fibs.
    “Good. It’s in your blood, you know.”
    “What’s in my blood, Dad?” Madeleine speaks carefully, not wishing to disturb the tenuous crochet between them. She does not swing her legs.
    “All of it, dear.”
    The teapot’s whistle barges in from the other room.
    Madeleine hops off the chair. “It’s my tea. I’ll take it off the stove.” She opens the door and Pedro pounces in.
    Her father’s eyebrows jolt toward the ceiling. “What is that?”
    Madeleine calls Pedro back into the other room but he ignores her, sniffing the legs of her father’s chair. Pedro has had a rough day that involved, among other things, incarceration via leash. He wants to bound and spring and hope and the time is now. He leaps onto a bookcase shelf but finds no solid ground. He pedals against a stack of comic books. Dog and shelf crash unceremoniously down, narrowly missing Madeleine’s father. A journal catapults, tizzying the record needle.
    There’s a lot of trouble with a brown-eyed handsome man
    Brown-eyed handsome man
    Madeleine’s father shrieks, atonal with fear. She debates whether to go after the record or Pedro or the teapot. Her father picks up an alarm clock and throws. It hits Pedro on his side. The dog squeaks in pain and leaps through the