The Round People - a Novel - 2. III. Ten o'clock

III. Ten o'clock

The D.J. was preparing for the music to start. Benedict ran an index finger over the spines of The Round People's record crates. He pulled one out, his finger continuing along the line till he found another one he wanted, and he pulled that one out too. Benedict was a twenty-one-year-old Ivy League student of Southwest Native American origin who was taking a couple of semesters in Tokyo in an exchange program. He disrobed a record, holding it up between his palms as his eyes scanned it for scratches in the raking light. Benedict was tall with long slender arms and a faultlessly balanced torso, while his legs were well proportioned in breadth, length, and the impression of effortless power. The line of his thighs ended at the top in a shapely posterior that not a few ladies had been admirers of, but if they found themselves enamored of the confident way he moved beneath his jet-indigo jeans, it was his face they remembered. His beauty was charged by the very way his dark eyes would look at a person. There was something innocent and startling in his unwavering approach to others; he never flinched, and yet if people were sensitive they saw in his looks a question asking if they could love him. To some, the coming of this much purity into their everyday lives made them close up to him, as if the center of their soul had been poked by a stick. In some, this emotion caused resentment, in others a sorrow to avoid, and in a few cases, a love for Benedict that he could not return. But those 'sensitive' ones were the minority. Mostly people met him and thought they saw a guy incapable of lying, and in some inexplicable way, a person able to love beyond their own capacity.

He set the record down. Bending over the turntable, his silken black ponytail swept off the back of his neck to hang freely in front of his shoulder. He placed the stylus in position, eyes later checking the spot for accuracy. Then he took his headphones off their waiting hook, and held one of the mini-speakers to his ear while his hand moved the disc to the groove he wanted. Benedict's forearms showed strength from the rolled up cuffs of his white corduroy shirt. He listened intently through the noise of the music already playing; Dean always put something on before the nine o'clock opening. Slowly he lowered the volume on the 'old' music and set the turntable spinning. The Round People came to life with a new and intrinsically compelling dance beat.

Benedict, satisfied with the evening's first selection, danced around in the booth, clapping his hands, and waving at Pearl as she passed by. She did not wave back, nor did she have anything to say to him. As she climbed the stairs to the balcony, she held a menu under her arm, and an order pad in her hand.

The door opened a bit. A beautiful Japanese girl stuck her head in. Benedict's was the first face she saw, and his features lit up the moment she was seen.

Emmy came in, almost sauntering over to the D.J. booth.

"Hey Ben. Nice to see you." She held out her hand.

He took what was offered and with it pulled her into him, wrapping his arm around her waist, and drawing her up, into a sustained kiss.

"Hey Emmy, I'm glad you decided to come tonight."

"Why's that?"

"So even though I'm working, I can snatch an occasional dance from you – that is, if you let me."

"I will…" her expression became coy, and she pulled herself free of his embrace, "…don’t worry, all you have to do is ask – and I will."

"Oh!" Benedict smiled, "Don't tease!" He shook his hand back and forth mouthing: 'That's hot.'

"I'm going over to the bar. I'll catch up with you a little later." Emmy held up a waving hand, leaving him with a last vestige of herself as she walked away.

Benedict watched her go, feeling the radiance of his expression going quietly profound. He recognized that he had fallen hard for that girl. She was what he had been thinking of all week, their date only a few days ago driving him deeper into the reflection of his own consciousness, vowing no attention unless it was to her. There was a sense of urgency to his longing too, because Emmy was just in Tokyo on a college break. By spring she'd be back in New York at Columbia, and by then he'd be back at Yale. He desperately wanted to start a firm relationship while they were together here. Here at least they had the affinity of a distant New York to keep them united. On their date they had discovered common Gotham haunts, but Benedict worried once she had returned, she would melt back into her old friends and forget about him. A languorous dread of a lack of time intermingled with his burgeoning love.

˚˚˚˚˚

Emmy thought to herself as she went to the bar, 'Men are too easy. Just tell them what they want to hear, and they'll do anything.'

Emmy was twenty years old. She had a face composed of delicate features, and if Kunisada were still alive to look at her, he'd find a new ideal. That noble artist of stunning nineteenth-century women would have loved to draw Emmy's nose as no more than a feather's stroke between high and rounded cheeks. He would have thrilled to render her lips as but a sensual division of blossoming flesh, her eyes as seductive and glinting out from beneath perfect brows as in life, and as if from one of his portraits. But Kunisada also delighted in showing the most beautiful of his women as the specters that haunt men's waking dreams and worst nightmares too; taunt them with a beauty all the more cruel for it being so perfect and unobtainable. With her physical attributes she made friends quickly, gathering them nearer with her vivacious sense of humor, and with the subsequent laugh that sometimes stayed in men's memories as the very recollection of her. That laugh of hers had a hard kind of femininity in it, not one of affection, but one of chance; a bit of danger dangled out before she slapped it down with her dainty hand, there to rest on the young men's knees as she drew out a teasing 'No.' Japanese girls envied her way with the guys; Western girls thought she was ludicrous.

Her name was Emmy, that being her real name – unlike Dean, who's name was a gift of an Australian, who after a couple of rounds found it impossible to remember the one Dean's parents had given him, so he eyed the boy's 50's styling and called out: "Hey! James Dean, give me a beer," and the Dean part of it stuck. When Emmy was still in the womb, her father worked for the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa, and in the last months of the pregnancy, he flew both mother and Emmy back to Japan. He wanted his offspring to be as Japanese as possible, if only born there it would make the eventual integration of the child into its mother culture that much easier. It was he who chose the name Emmy, feeling it would make it through both English and Japanese without much molestation. Nearly twenty-one years later, the father was in Moscow, and the daughter in the Ivy League where she had discovered many ways to be rid of him. She had found the wonders of music, of philosophy, of the history of the oppression of women, art through the ages, and the fact that the impulse that led to these passions, in all of their varieties, was the same one beating in her too; she discovered the source of desire was life itself. All of these marvels she found at Columbia, and then on a balmy July evening, she found herself and a psychology sophomore together in bed. What she recalled most vividly about the whole night was the garlic on his breath and the sweetly revolting taste of his kisses as she was forced to relive again and again their spaghetti carbonara. On the few following occasions she had sex with him, there were other unpleasantries that got in the way of her actual enjoyment, but she told herself she liked sex, the problems were entirely his.

Emmy came into the bar section, 'Arriving' all over again for the people gathered there. She gave a great big "Hi!" to Mark, a "Genki?" to Dean, but then she saw Jonathan, and what remnant of naturalness that was still flowing got cloyed into pure womanliness. She tried to act sexually aloof, as if her first glance in his direction had somehow failed to take him in. Jonathan, on the other side of this game, did not want to play. He hoped she really had missed him, but – as he knew she would – she 'saw' him, and screeched "Hello!" as if to an old friend in the supermarket.

"Jonathan…" she dragged out every vowel, "…I didn't see you sitting over there all by yourself." He was forced to turn his back on Ichiko to realign his orientation to the newly placed Emmy on his left. She continued, "Where have you been hiding yourself!?!"

"Oh, I've been here and there. And how have you been doing?"

"Oh, I've been here and I've been there…" she mocked, "I love it – it sounds so old fashioned!" She laughed as if she had said something funny.

Jon just stared at her.

"I'm fine," she added pointlessly.

He silently acknowledged this was going to be a long and difficult evening.

Emmy asked, "Have you seen Nobuko tonight?"

"No, but she told me last night she was coming around ten."

"Did you see her last night?"

"We talked on the phone." Jon glanced at Dean with a playful smirk. "But Dean saw her last night. They were deep in conference."

Dean laughed.

Emmy stammered. "Oh…" and there was a moment of silence. Jon got only a half-turn of his head back to the neglected Ichiko before Emmy let out an enormous sigh, saying wistfully, "Yeah, I really like her – Nobuko, that is."

"And why do you like her so much?"

"Because, she's honest. And, because, she's strong."

"Is that what you want to be," he choked back, "when you grow up?"

Emmy laughed as if the joke was not on her: "But Babe," her hand playfully slapped his arm, "I already am."

"I see," he said, a sly grin coming helplessly, "it's a like-attracts-like kind of thing."

"Of course! Now you're starting to get the picture."

"But," Jonathan was curious, "what do you want in a man?"

"Oh," her tone grew serious, and she practically sang, "that's different. In a man I want someone who'll always be sweet and considerate, one who won’t take crap from anybody, and, and…" she tapped out the beat on his knee, "…I want one who's not afraid to tell me he loves me."

"Why would he be afraid?"

"How do I know?" She got huffy, "I'm not a guy, but you men just don’t like to say it. Women always have to ask, 'Do you love me? Are you sure you love me?'" She demanded to know, "Aren’t we? Aren’t we constantly saying that kind of stuff?! But, I want a man who'll be man enough to tell me all the time."

"But, if he tells you all the time, how do you know when it stops being true, and when it starts to be a lie?"

Emmy thought it over only briefly.

"Love," she said, "should be taken as it is, something easily given and taken back again. I just want him to say it."

Jonathan was forced to consider this. He pictured some dark room with a poor lovesick lad professing a genuine, all-consuming ardor for her; maybe he'd be on the point of tears, maybe he'd be jubilant, but he'd definitely be scared to death of her rejection. And she? She'd react just as flip as at this very moment, and the victim's love would be squashed like an insect. "Say it even when he means nothing by it? Say it when he would be on the verge of desolation to think that you could not love him back?"

"Say it even when he doesn't mean it. Say it even if he hates being around me. Say it even if he'd die from embarrassment – or – die from rejection."

"Why? Why would you want that?" Jonathan dreaded her reply.

"Because, then he'd be a real man."

"He'd be a liar."

Emmy pondered this a moment with a puzzled scowl, then confidently shrugged with her whole body: "Who ever said men are truthful?"

Now it was Jonathan's turn. He looked her coldly in the eye, saying frankly, "The women who love them."

˚˚˚˚˚

To the still-forming matrix of the night, the regulars were added; either formally arriving with or without companions, or sneaking their way in quietly under the staff's booming 'Irasshai!'

So to the brew, an infusion of celebrities trickled in: the rare garrulous Japanese female that was the envy of the vast unnumbered timid; the young men who 'knew' the D.J., and as manly as possible, inflicted the introductions of their chums on him. And these boys would eventually gather permanently around the D.J. booth, or loiter on the steps looking down into it, to watch the way the music got delivered. For them it was fun; they scarcely noticed the local female population at all. On the other hand, these boys would cast shy glances at the 'foreign' female element. They were in fact curious; the same kind of curiosity that impelled them to the D.J., only towards the others, there was at least an unambiguous sexual interest.

And so they gathered and mixed or failed to do so, and time, the only foreman of all, moved slowly on within each of them.

˚˚˚˚˚

"Dean, could you make a Martini, and two Bloody Marys?" Mark scratched the order with a pencil, then smiled as he took the customer's money. The little silver key danced for a moment in the green cellophane light before descending into the cash register. Mark turned it, elated at the fact that he was the assistant manager.

Dean tried not to watch, but the sounds were enough to paint a vivid picture in the dull gin he poured.

Mark glanced over, he felt he had to bring Dean around to reality so the both of them could move on from there. He dampened his mood because he really didn't want to gloat, but Dean could see that smirk even through the back of his head.

"Dean," Mark had moved next to the industrious young man, "I just want to say, I think Pearl made a mistake in not letting you – have the key." He avoided the antagonizing 'Assistant Manager' phrase. "She just made a snap decision, and there's nothing we can do about it, but go on as before." He saw no response.

"Well," he started to move away, "I'll leave it in your hands."

Mark did want to reestablish their old friendly relations, and his motives were simple. He did not like it when his own life got away from the course of his will, and that included work. He had plans that others should adopt or be prepared to drop off, but also he realized as a foreigner he couldn't afford to throw people away that might be of use later. As the old saying goes:

"A friend kept fast through the lean time of needs,

Values a dozen that excess concedes."

Mark's dark eyes turned on Dean's profile. He wanted some sign of reconciliation.

Dean offered none; he only concentrated harder on the task before him, his mind trained on the customers to block the Australian out.

A friendly voice startled both of them. They turned to see Seth just arrived, who greeted each in turn, the winter night still radiating off his body. Seth was from Wisconsin, and the cold that seemed to follow him, he laughed off as puny. He was big – six-foot-three, two hundred twenty pounds – and African American. He frankly knew he scared the life out of the local sixty-and-older generation, who would sneak quick and frightened glances at him on the trains; their ingrained fear temporarily overcome by the sudden occasion of untamable curiosity. Simply, many had never seen a black person before, so they looked. In the beginning it bothered him deeply – that feeling of being an exhibit in a moving circus – but five years later, his Japanese good, his ego settled, he scarcely let himself notice their innocent form of racism. Sometimes though, this prejudice was anything but easy to ignore. Like when walking through Sinjuku's Kabukicho at ten o'clock, and sickly teenage boys were pulling comrades out of the gutters where they had vomited yakisoba with a pint of Sex-on-the-Beach, or some other needlessly strong concoction. At those moments, the 'N-word' echoing behind him, he pretended not to hear, and beat himself up rather than face the juveniles representing the people he suddenly doubted that he liked. But how long could that go on without release?

Seth went to the kitchen to put up his stuff. As he passed the bar he knocked Dean good-naturedly on the shoulder, who turned and smiled at him. Seth threw a stack of flyers rustling onto the bar. When he came back, Dean had gone to work the floor, and Mark had taken Pearl's usual position.

"Behind the register, this don't look good!"

"I'm glad you're here. I feel like I'm in the middle of a war, Dean on one front, Pearl on the other."

"The kid take it hard, did he?"

Mark shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know – He won't talk to me."

"And where," Seth's voice got low, "is our little Argentine Commandant?"

"You know," he looked around, "I don’t know. She must be out on the floor somewhere."

"Well, you take it easy man." Seth took a menu and an order pad. "I'm gonna talk to Dean."

Seth had amiable mannerisms that were always relaxed, and put others at ease too, yet his eyes were sad; the line of pupil and iris melting together into walls that separated them as softly as velvet, but solid enough to keep private things private. He had a manner of speech just slow enough to seem sorrowful, and in some ways strike an instant affinity in the hearer. Seth, though he didn’t try, was likeable. And since he never really noticed this, it never occurred to him to exploit it, so he stayed likable.

˚˚˚˚˚

Dean was very adroit whenever he worked the floor. He had to prick up all his senses to counter the slowly dulling ones of the customers. When he walked, carrying a tray for instance, he had to be very aware of anyone suddenly bumping into him; a spilled beer came out of his own paycheck. He walked now with a stack of glass ashtrays, the soiled ones collected on the bottom, fresh replacements on top.

He moved through the crowd poised, with that boundless energy radiating here and there wherever he went. Dean went up to a table where three college-type girls and one boy were laughing and talking heartily. All of them were smoking; their packs formally arranged in front of each like place settings, with lighters on top.

First Dean checked for empty glasses, finding none, he saw to the ashtrays. With his right hand he took a fresh one from his stack and deftly lunged in among them to get the soiled one. Swiftly the one on the table was covered with both a clean ashtray and Dean's stretching hand. He pulled them away together; the stale one temporally getting to be king of the pile while a fresh one made the return trip back to the table. No one stopped him to order, so he left them to their noisy chatter, apparently none the wiser that he had ever been there.

Dean was good at whatever he tried to do, and thinking of his own value, added a bitter contempt to thoughts of Mark, and more especially, Pearl. They were trying to constrict his natural growth, but he didn't want to hate, so he concentrated all the harder on his work. Next to the 'college booth' he spotted a regular who had just sneaked herself in and sat.

Pat drew a cigarette to her lips; the lighter held waitingly in front of it was already aflame. Her eyes were hesitating on the college boy in the next booth; she liked him, and he seeing her interest, had responded with a single bashful glance.

"Good evening Pat!" Dean jumped to stand right before her table.

"Oh my God." The lighter flew dangerously up, the flame extinguished. "Dean, where did you come from?" The Canadian insisted: "You scared the crap out of me!"

"What?" Dean was all blamelessness. "Were you scared? I didn't mean to do that." He suppressed his delight in a: "What can I get you?"

The cigarette bounced between her lips as she lit it and mumbled: "A boy like him. No, on second thought, he'll do."

Dean bent closer to hear her repeat what she had said.

She blew smoke out of the side of her mouth, deflatedly sighing: "Damn you're cute. A Gin Tonic."

Dean nodded, slightly blushing, and compulsively checking her ashtray. And then he was gone.

Pat, alone, resumed her subtle flirting in the direction of her college boy.

Pat was thirty, and from the oil-rich prairielands of Alberta. Tonight she wore all black as she sat with her legs crossed, her mid-length suede skirt wrapping her thighs tightly, the small extra length of garment tucked judiciously under her leg. She was no longer slender, and she counted her age over twenty-five by the number of extra half-inches on her hips, but when asked about her age, her stance wavered somewhere in the upper twenties. She had a whole mental file of her differing ages as beknownst to sundry friends. The hair on the top of her head was a solid, sharp yellow; however, the eyebrows under it were not. She had her mother send her the brand and box from which her favorite color came. She did it herself because no salon that she had found in Tokyo carried that particular kind of hair treatment. Her mother was also the one who had taught Patricia, as a girl still in her teens, that some women are attractive by default, some by design. Then to her daughter she taught the art of makeup and the best attitudes to wear underneath it. Pat worked from that moment on to achieve the allusive 'Allure' her mother had said was the birthright to only a few. She tried, but because of these words, she never in her whole life felt 'beautiful,' which was a shame, because her matron had been too quick and too severe a judge. Pat was lovely, and ironically through excessive artifice and worry, she had finally given the face of her thirties a kind of poignant, nostalgic allure.

Her nose at first sight was perfect, but a lingering inspection would see a precision unnatural. She had had it worked on over and over again, each new nose pleasing her in the mirror, but proving disappointing in the long run. As an end result, the nostrils were too small, and too evenly copied; the flesh around them shaved off too much, while the rest of the nose was slightly sunken, in a forced delicacy. Under her greenish eye shadow, her brown eyes mainly rested in repose but occasionally sparked to life. She was smart enough to know that every person who looked, did not have the right to 'see' her, so the real self she carefully reserved to distill little by little, as she pleased. Otherwise, she had that hardscrabble glint that her fellow countrymen associated with the roughneck West of their nation, and instantly liked her for it.

Above her suede skirt her blouse was raven black and silk, having long sleeves and elaborate ivory cuffs that turned up and back like flowering lilies. The collar was loose, the wide flanks of it coming down to point out the lay of her breasts; they were still good and she made the most of them, especially towards the young man she now flirted with.

Pat glanced over to the opening door, and she had mixed feelings seeing her friend was the one who had done the pushing. She knew Nobuko would come and sit with her, making it impossible for the shy boy to do the same. She glanced at Nobuko, then at the young man, as if she had to make a choice…but, it was too late, Nobuko spotted her and waved herself over.

After pushing the door closed behind her, Nobuko went to Pat as if she were drained of energy to the dregs. Under her coat she wore pants that clung to her hips and thighs, disappearing down her shins into calf-high boots. A gray salt-and-pepper sweater gradually showed itself as she laboriously slipped the outerwear off her frame. It wasn't that she was really tired, but she nurtured a habit of reminding herself, hers was a life always on the go.

"Nobuko, you look tired."

"A little," Nobuko confided with a head rock.

Pat watched her sit down across from her. Now she could see the newcomer and the college boy behind her in one glance.

"Did you have a nice day?"

"I went to the doctor."

"Why?" Pat snubbed out her cigarette.

Nobuko didn't want to say why, so she paused to wrestle a fresh pack of Hope out of her coat pocket. Her face was round, and so too were her brass rimmed glasses that glinted faintly while she searched. Nobuko was about thirty-five, but nobody knew exactly. She liked to wear her hair pulled up in a tight bun that rode the crown of her head with a few artless hair stragglers rebelling from the nape of her neck and temples. She got her lighter, then her pack. A moment later, a shudder of relief and well being swept over her face as the smoke seeped into her blood and mind.

Patricia raised her rakishly plucked brows. "You were saying?"

"I went to the doctor because I'm having trouble sleeping at night…" her tone changed to one of question, "…how can I say that?"

"Insomnia," Pat instructed, rounding out each syllable. She was an English teacher and didn't even try to be more than informative with the tone of her voice.

Nobuko bobbed her head, saying it sounded familiar. Because of the general roundness of her face, and her circular spectacles with their gleaming metal bite, she looked altogether wise and owl-like. Her eyes were a rich bronze color, the whites a little muddy from too much smoking and life-experience. She was not gregarious, but made friends easily. Nobuko was often the confidant of uninquired-about troubles owing to the fact that when people liked her, they saw in her weary eyes experiences from which they could draw. Her owl-like wisdom spilled out in blunt, honest advice; her head nodding sadly as she was forced to relive her own life-mistakes again.

"Why do you think you're having trouble sleeping?" Pat's sight slipped, addressing the last half of the question to the boy.

"I don't know. Thinking about the problems of others." Nobuko ungracefully glanced over her shoulder, ashes snowing on the table.

Dean came back, this time with a tray balancing half a dozen drinks on his forearm. He set a beer before Pat. Taking her bill, he simultaneously retrieved change from his newly donned short black apron, and spoke to Nobuko in a brusque Japanese.

"Hey, how did you get in here?! No soliciting allowed unless you buy a drink." His harsh words were accompanied by a positively glowing smile at his customer and good friend.

"Well," she pretended haughtiness, "if this is the way you talk to your regular customers, I think I'll go over to the bar so I can order from Mark. He's always so nice to me – In fact, he's always so nice to everybody. Why can’t you be more like him, huh?"

The joke was suddenly on Dean, and it stabbed him without Nobuko knowing or intending; she was innocent by ignorance, but for the injured, pain is pain. The grin stayed locked on his face, only a barley discernable intensity creeping into his voice as he told her: "Either way, hurry it up."

"Bring me a Corona."

Dean moved away with a jocular stride, then stopped and came back. He was suddenly serious. "Thanks for last night."

Nobuko asked, "Is he here?"

"At the bar."

"You going to talk to him?"

"Later."

"Good."

And then Dean nodded and moved off towards the D.J.'s side of the bar. Pat's ogle loitered on Dean's Levi pockets every inch of the way there. "Look at that." She balanced her voice between utter sorrow and schoolgirl giddiness.

"You like them young, hey Pat?"

"I like them 'fit,' my dear, fit."

"Fit, like Seth?"

Pat nearly dropped her cigarette. She did like Seth. How did Nobuko pick the one person in The Round People she could never deny a liking for? Instead, Pat shrugged. A helpless grin then tilted her head.

The Japanese woman laughed: "Not my type."

Patricia scorned her for not recognizing beauty, "Oh yeah, I know your 'type,' it's Mark, isn't it?"

"No," she insisted, "what makes you say that?"

"You said it, not me. Just a moment ago you told Dean he should be more like Mark, and then you said you were going to order from him and all."

"And, professor?" Nobuko demanded.

"And…" Patricia leisurely elaborated, "…people often say exactly what they mean to, without ever meaning to say it."

Nobuko sat back in her seat, one finger unconcernedly tapping ashes. "So tell me how, what I said before, means I like Mark?"

Pat's greenish eyelids fluttered knowingly: "All the evidence is there. I just put it together."

"But you know I like American boys."

"Do you?" Pat feigned national pride.

"Of course. I like selfish, always-complaining, stubborn, know-it-alls, and – how can I say it – Skin Flicks?"

"Skin Flints."

"And best of all, they are rough." She began to smirk. "There, did I say anything I didn't mean to say?"

Pat ignored the question, and asked, "What was that about 'last night,' with Dean?"

"Before work, he stopped by my place. We had a nice chat. I like Dean, he's a nice boy. And our mutual friend needs…" Nobuko frowned in concentration "…how do you say it? – Mutual Aids?"

"Mutual Aid."

"Yes," smoke wafted from her pincer fingers, "our mutual friend needs our mutual aid." Her head bobbed, refracting light in her round lenses. Nobuko could just see Jon and Dean joking around at the bar. She considered Jonathan's plight, and how much she liked him. A week ago, they had left The Round People early, gone to her place, and talked through most of the night. Jon came out to her, and said how isolated he felt, and she then had an explanation for the lack of sexual tension coming off this American for her, which was usually thick enough it could be cut with a knife. She felt closer to 'her brother' than ever, totally released to love him fully as such. She immediately told Jonathan they should spend this Saturday – tonight, in fact – in Ni-Chome, the Gay section of Shinjuku, and that she would take him; that there was no point staying lonely in a 'straight' bar in Kichijoji when Gay ones were so near. Then Jon stunned her. He accepted her invite with a heart-felt hug, but said he must say goodbye to The Round People, and to Dean, in his own way. Then he confessed just how much he liked Dean; how the boy set his heart on fire with his sweet-balanced energy. Nobuko pitied him, and warned: "Don't fall for straight guys." He smiled and shrugged: "We don't pick who we love; Love picks whom we must love, or we have to learn to suffer without Him."

Pat had lost interest. She drew another cigarette. "And, Japanese guys, for that matter, can be pretty rough too." She lit it, her eyes drifting dreamily over Nobuko's shoulder.

˚˚˚˚˚

Seth smiled broadly as he saw Dean approach, telling him he was going to be working the floor too. Dean returned the smile as he walked past.

Seth grabbed his arm. "Hey Dean," he explained with compassion, although his grip was hard, "you don’t have any right to be mad at Mark. He didn't do anything to you, so don’t act like he did. You can be mad at Pearl, but Mark, hey – he's one of us – and you should be happy for him." Seth probed the boy's face for understanding. Dean did not meet his gaze, nor did he struggle under his hand. Seth could only wonder if Dean understood. So, even without any reaction to go on, he was forced to release him. Seth turned and walked nonchalantly away.

For the first time since the bar opened, Dean stood still. Again the quiet induced him to contemplation. Only this quiet was entirely in his head. Pulsing on his arm, like the ghost limb of a soldier, lingered Seth's powerful presence. He felt alone, felt nobody understood him at all, and most of all, as the emotions surged over him, he felt like a child struggling in the world he must live in to be as open and accomplished as the parallel one of his imagination.

˚˚˚˚˚

Jonathan tightly gripped his glass. Emmy was boring him mercilessly with pointless and endless stories. Worse yet, she was having an obviously good time delivering them in coquettish fashion. He had to look at her, it was only polite, and although he tried hard not to listen, at least there was consolation in the fact that she was pretty. Jon saw Emmy's expression grow abruptly very serious, and she was staring at something behind him. He turned on his stool to see a tall young man coming up to them.

"Hi." Benedict smiled and nodded at Jon before turning to Emmy. "How's it going over here?" His tone was warm, and meant for them both.

Jonathan was amazed at the difference in Emmy's voice, from the bubbly nonsense of before to the nervous and strained way she said to Benedict: "Have you guys met before?"

"No. Hi, I'm Benedict." He bent a radiant beam on him, thrusting out his hand.

Jon took it. "Nice to meet you. I'm Jonathan." He watched Ben's ponytail flip as the D.J. turned attention to Emmy.

"And, I think I've met you before – What was that name again?" Benedict was playful, making all the more jarring the girl's flat reply of: "Emmy."

Benedict didn't feel anything for her vexation, other than it was 'cute.' He went back to Jonathan. "So where are you from?"

"Chicago."

"Oh yeah? I'm from New Mexico."

"Really? Where abouts?"

He settled onto the edge of a chair behind them. "It's a small town, I don’t think you've ever heard of it. It's called Deming."

Jonathan beamed: "I do know it! When I was a kid my dad used to pack us up and head to Tucson – we always stopped in Deming."

"Really?"

"Yeah. He's got good friends there. Maybe you know them, Jack Hancock and Christopher Burrows."

Benedict was amazed: "Yeah, I do. They own the antique shop." He tried to draw Emmy into the conversation and his pleasure. "It's a small world, ain't it?"

She shrugged that it was.

"Are you of Japanese descent?"

"No, Native American."

"Wow, you know, I hope I'm not being rude, but you really look Japanese – I mean, not really Japanese – but you certainly could be."

"Yeah, that's what I hear." He wanted to talk to Emmy.

"Are you Navajo?" Jonathan persisted.

"No. I'm Zuni."

"Oh, 'cause I know the Navaho Nation is right near Deming." Jon quite suddenly felt the vibe of Benedict's attraction to Emmy; he knew he was talking too much.

"Well, you know, it's not like the old days. We can move around now." He didn't want to be annoyed, but somehow Emmy's coldness egged him on at Jonathan.

"You're right. Sorry." And Jonathan was sorry. He didn't mean to suggest the old stereotypes he knew firsthand were not true.

"Well," the New Mexico boy jumped up, "I've got to get back to work. See you later Jonathan." He patted him on the back. "And, you too Emmy." There was a definite sweetness in the last half of his farewell. But Emmy only nodded before he moved away.

Jon turned on his stool again to watch Benedict go.

"He's really a nice guy, isn't he?" He returned his attention to her.

"He's OK…" she said, the nervous energy miraculously departed, and the former Earthier flirtatiousness back in her, "…But not as nice as some other people in this bar." Her hand touched his arm.

Jon stared at his glass again. He felt sorry for Benedict; sorry that he liked this creature that Jon, if he wanted to, could so easily lay.

˚˚˚˚˚

By an early part of the evening most of the regulars had arrived and sorted themselves out; friends in groups, and the friendless alone and jealous of the noisy camaraderie that seemed to swirl only for their degradation. In this way the mixture built, divided and rebuilt again and again as in a Petri dish of personalities. And very early on, the keeper of the night, Time, lost its bearings. In the daylight hours, time is as much kept by the window as by the clock, and a face turned to the sun can get the very feel of the hour at hand. But the dark ones are all the same, their prison turnkeys only being the tick of the watch, and the deep hidden rhythms of the individual's circadian timepiece. What happens in one hour often carries sleepily over to others. The night works in this way to provide the space for deeds to grow into malicious acts that would simply wither in the saner light of day, and how close the day approaches is every moment known to the inner regulator, ticking and ticking to the alarm and daybreak when relief to the night's anxieties can finally be found.

˚˚˚˚˚

Pearl was alone on the balcony. She sat slouched against a booth seat, fearing every moment would be her last; sooner or later a customer would stumble upon her, and she'd have to go back to work. She didn't want to be around them, she didn't want to look at Mark's gloating face, the very person she had shown favor on had turned against her for Dean's sake.

"All for one – " she scoffed.

Her muscles involuntarily constricted, she lurched to attention, eyes scanning the stair landing. Heavy footsteps were falling, while she waited and watched.

Seth bounded onto the balcony, a menu tucked under his arm, and an order pad riding his pelvis in his short black apron. He looked around, but there was only his boss sitting tense and wild-eyed. He approached her cautiously, slowly asking, "Are you sick?"

She relaxed into a slouch again. Seth sat down beside her, and she answered listlessly: "I've had a rough day." She half-laughed at the irony, her cheek aching to remind her why.

Seth scanned her pretty, if a little shabby, face, and felt some sympathy for her. He inspected to see if that callous little spirit she showed to the world was the real one housed within her. He thought that when Pearl was younger, Seth could have fallen for her, and her character contradictions; a tender outside, a fiercer center. But now that she was several years his senior, he feared the vicious way she treated people was ingrown; if untreatable, a curse for the rest of her life.

Seth tried to comfort. "Buck up girl, we all have rotten ones sometimes." He set his hand on her leg. "What happened?"

Pearl methodically and ominously looked at his hand. Seth became self-conscious of it too. He delicately withdrew it, almost fearing she was going to bite it off to a stump.

Pearl glared at him; her mouth parted and dry, eyes wide and attacking. She said in a low and intense voice: "It's none of your fuckin' nosy business what happens to me."

Seth gulped audibly; other than that, he could only stare at her.

"Get back to work," she snapped authoritatively.

Seth trod the stairs down more lightly than when he had come up. He mumbled under his breath: "Ungrateful bitch." He hoped she hadn't heard.

Pearl was left alone again, this time with the memory of her actions. As soon as Seth was gone, his steps no longer beating, she was sorry for him. She recognized he wasn't really being nosy; he just wanted to make her feel better.

She bent down and pulled from between her leg and sock a small silver flask. It was filled with vodka. She took a swig, leaving the metal bottle hanging in her hand.

She thought vague, formless thoughts, almost laughing that she was an 'ungrateful bitch' – for she had heard Seth after all – and one that would never let herself be the plaything of another man ever again. She vowed never to feel powerless to them, to men, again.

Pearl screamed in her head, 'Never!'

The flask came up for a second swig, a longer, more earnest gulp. Afterwards she examined it without interest, and her face shone dully back to her as if in a carnival mirror. Nobody understood her. Nobody knew what she wanted of people. They all thought her only concern lay in being the boss, but that was only because she just wanted people to know she could not be messed around with.

Along with thoughts of deceit and betrayal, Buenos Aires, Pearl's hometown, came to her; the smells of it, the community of a tight knit English-speaking minority, and of course of Porteño, a word Pearl hated to think about because it summed up the whole of the city's culture – that culture of the Tango, reeking of cocky male domination, with its word to glorify everything masculine. She wasn't ready to think about that, and about her family; isolated Britons keeping ridiculously 'civilized' ways in the center of a Latin city. She wasn't ready to think about Roberto, the first boy she had ever loved. But the subject was deceit and betrayal, so she had to.

Her father hit her; without warning would hit her for no reason. "Thrashings," she said out loud, that is what he called his black-and-blue beatings of her, thrashings. 'This will teach her the ways of the world,' he would tell her mother whenever she occasionally protested at the severity of his blows. 'Stay out of it,' he warned, and she did. A stain on her dress was reason enough, and a poor mark on a school report was a hell for the small Pearl. 'Do better next time,' he would say as he struck, 'and we won't have to go through this again!'

She hated him, and as soon as she could escape him, she did, not by running away, but because of Porteño, by finding another man for protection. She was seventeen, and she remembered the first night with Roberto, a twenty-five year old lawyer. He was shyly showing her around his small but freshly cleaned apartment, when she turned around into his embrace. He was so kind, she wanted to move away from him, but he was so sweet, as his lips caressed her neck, and cheeks, and mouth. Later in his soft and forceful arms she watched him love her, and she never had been so moved, never came so near to the soul of what it meant to be loved.

Pearl looked at her face in the flask. She smiled in sardonic humor: "He was kind to a lot of girls." Including the one she saw in their bed only a few days later. When she flew into a fury and told the girl to leave, Roberto, not caring that he was naked and excited, backhanded Pearl telling her she did not have the right to throw guests out of His bed. When Pearl, who had crumpled on the floor, got up and started for him again, he simply batted her down. That hand that had held her so gently before, was then the instrument of her humiliation. She left him, never seeing him again; the love she had sprouted, slowly dying in her by the sheer force of her will.

"Never again." She bent the bottle over her lips.

But her boyfriend here she thought was different. How could Hiro have hurt her? He was the gentlest person she thought she had ever known, so how could he have done that to her? She disdained how apologetic he had been after the fact, but she was too old to fall for that ploy. Even through her shock, her rationale told her to get her handbag, her passport, and go without a look back or a single word. Pearl did love him, loved him like she hadn't known she could, and this was what he goes and does? Here, she knew, was another love she would have to kill off, before it killed her.

She held up the flask, cheering the empty balcony, "Here's one for the 'Ungrateful Bitch' that I am, loveless, and hopeless. Cheers!"

She drained what was in the bottle. After a hateful pause, she disgustedly threw the empty to the floor with a metal crash.

˚˚˚˚˚

Downstairs the door opened and a very inebriated Japanese man came in. He stumbled; he stood. The few renewed paces always brought him back to where he began his movement. The entire time it seemed like he was desperately trying to find something through his internal fog.

Benedict bent his tall frame over a record crate on the floor, his back to the door. He never saw the man come in. He was shocked, when out of the periphery of his sight, he saw a hand come over the Plexiglas divider and plop onto a playing record. He leapt forward, but it was too late. Instantaneously the music screeched off, and everyone in the bar was painfully aware of the drunken man.

Benedict grabbed the intruder's arm; his eyes were in stunned and horrified awe as the drunk grabbed the microphone and started shouting a single unintelligible word over and over.

Seth came running up from behind the man and grabbed him around the waist. The drunk looked down on what was pulling him away – one hand still clutching at the microphone – and began to change his single phrase to the 'N-word.' His freehand ineffectually batted at Seth's grip on him, and by the time the Japanese man was dragged off the mic, he reverted to his old call at the top of his lungs. His moans resolved themselves into a clear and traumatized: "Pearl!"

Both men stopped struggling.

Standing at the first landing, like an apparition above them all, Pearl stood calm and self-assured. She looked like an actor who knew her lines in the midst of an improvisational spectacle. The whole club watched her, and her words to him were simple, "Go home, Hiro."

He pleaded: "I have to tell you something."

She laughed once through her nose. "There's nothing I have to hear from you."

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean it…" his begging melted into sobs.

"Get out."

"I made a mistake Pearl, but give me another chance. I'll never hurt you again, I swear!"

"Go Home!" her voice was becoming unnerved, less under her control. She momentarily glanced at the crowd, becoming equally annoyed at the man making the scene and the audience enjoying it. "You don’t belong here," she added.

"But Pearl," he was half supplicant, half a man of sobs, "I – I love you."

"Liar!" she screamed. "Fucking liar, get the fuck out!!"

Seth struggled to move Hiro through the door that Benedict held open.

On the outside landing, the cold air embracing them, the man from Milwaukee bear-hugged Pearl's boyfriend from behind, so he could push the elevator call button. It was waiting and the doors opened instantly. He flung the drunk in, pushing the first floor button from the inside. As he righted himself and stood back, he said, "Sorry man." On his face he offered warm and folksy commiseration. He didn't know what else to say, but he wanted him to know he was on his side. Seth smiled a little, feeling the other would understand.

Hiro stood there, his shoulder crouched and driven into the corner of the elevator. Snot dripped from his nose, and the hand raised to wipe it, only highlighted the hateful glare coming from the eyes that he trained on Seth. Under them, plenty of white exposed itself under the brown pupils and along the bottom lids. The man stood perfectly still as if he had had nothing to drink. As the door began to close, he shouted through his dimensionless grief, "Nigga, get back to the ghetto!"

The elevator doors placidly closed in front of Seth's face. He was left facing his own reflection in the polished stainless steel door covers. The air around him was quiet and crept into him with a profound chill. A set of emotions came crashing into each other: disbelief, humor, and lastly, rage came and sat within his chest. 'Aren’t we all alone enough,' he thought, 'without rubbing each other's face in it? Fuckin' name-calling – why? As if any of us are better than any other.'

The mirror finish of the doors-to-nowhere before him showed his hurt and angered face.

"Why?" he demanded of it. "Why?!" and his fist slowly drew back and formed a tight knot with his fingers to approximate the tightening of the fury in himself. The fist gradually came to strike the man he saw, then back again to pound, and this time with force. The pain in his knuckles felt good, felt like he was getting someplace. Again the fist drew back. Again the fist struck Seth's reflected avatar, but this time the resistance of the metal was enough to send his shoulder back reeling and pained.