Night Owls: Chapters 4-8

She had dreaded it the entire afternoon, spending far too long dithering over the sun-faded magazines in the newsstands before she settled on a copy of Vanity Fair featuring the latest it boy actor, a young Brit with dark curls, an olive complexion, and a dimpled smirk.

Tucked between a derelict bodega and a restaurant supply store, the door would, to most, appear only as vacant space.

The more discerning would see an entrance to the best nightclub in New York City, the premiere gathering place for anyone without a heartbeat.

She’d kept it pinned in the same neat chignon she wore in the theater.

Beyond the nondescript door was a long, winding hallway, impossibly long and entirely useless.

She knocked, but in lieu of answer, the door swung open.

From what Clara could tell, he liked to wear fresh faces, required variety, and, given that he could not leave the confines of Gehinnom, needed them delivered.

“I like my nest,” she said tersely.

When they reached the outskirts of the park, Molly made a point not to look at the buildings that bordered the park, instead staring resolutely at the neat trees and the path leading down to the fountain.

It was a beautifully maintained version of the kind of building that playwright Eugene O’Neill probably got drunk in, where the sense of ghosts was thick, but nothing went noticed among the revelry of the future finance bros and trust-funded artists of America.

It was big for the Village, with nice high ceilings and gleaming parquet floors...or floors that probably did gleam, when they weren’t sticky with spilled alcohol.

“Oh my god, you’re here!” said the first girl, who was willowy and towered over both her and Anat.

She could decipher about half of what these alleged friends said to her, and Molly realized too late she had smiled and nodded her way into disaster.

The accent, the cadence, the theatricality...She didn’t sing like she’d practiced for hours in her dorm room.

When he put the bags down to get to the doorbell, one of them clanked ominously.

“You know why I’ve made it this long? Because I don’t wear the ring whenever I feel like it. The ring isn’t a smart phone. When I wear it, I see into Olam Ha-Ba. It is a dangerous thing to do. I don’t use it to chase every whim and regret, no matter how much it hurts.”

He’d been a little too enthusiastic, sending most of the coffee dregs flying at her.

She had rummaged through their cabinets of perfunctory china, all the dainty, decorative plates Molly had hoarded over the years but that they scarcely used, combing through the cabinets for any more bread, even though she knew it was of little use.

It did nothing but whet her appetite, setting her senses roaring, her thoughts consumed with the need for something that could satisfy her.

Ordinarily, she preferred hunting outside the theater, perhaps finding an evening minyan she could join or a wedding to crash.

Usually, Clara’s charmed men were befuddled more than anything else, and only with effort.

He ambled toward her, still wearing the glazed expression she’d left him with at the box office.

That shift of his own body nearer to her, that he came even though she hadn’t even charmed him, that he was kissing her, the real her, of his own volition—that was enough to break the spell.

The stars in front of the Chase Bank were the last remnants of the Yiddish Walk of Fame, a project by the long gone Second Avenue Deli in an optimistic effort to memorialize the decades when the most exciting work being done on any American stage was happening not up on Forty-Second Street, but here.

“Why would I take method acting? I’m not that insufferable.”