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

club.”
    Alex runs off. Louisa stacks a pile of creamers. “You’re rough with him.”
    “I’m real with him. He’ll grow up knowing what’s real.”
    “Or he’ll grow up hating you.”
    Lorca feels the day falling off a cliff. “So,” he says, “how does someone get into the snake lady business?”
    She allows him to change the subject but registers it with a tilt of her pretty eyebrows. “The original snake lady is a friend of mine. We were dancers together, legitimate dancers, in a burlesque show. She said it would be easy money. She was right.”
    “How do you get them to stay on you?”
    “Practice,” she says. “I hold my arms in the tank and they wind around.” She pantomimes holding her arms in a tank. “When I come onstage, the snakes’ heads are down by my hands. I shimmy around, show them to the boys.” She sways in the booth to demonstrate. “Then, I go like this.” She gyrates on the diner seat. Lorca’s neck warms. “They crawl around my belly and legs. I do splits, shimmies, the whole shebang. The snakes are pros. They’re the stars and they know it.”
    “The whole shebang.” Lorca is getting a sad feeling. “Do you mix it up every time?”
    “I do not,” she says, “mix it up.”
    “What kind of future is in snake dancing?”
    “It supported my friend for years,” she says. “She’s quitting because she has cancer and she wants to be with her kid, but if she didn’t, she could have done it indefinitely.” She reacts to his grimace. “I like it, Lorca. It’s fun.”
    “Fun,” he says. “Do the snakes have names?”
    “They have names.” She seems less willing to share their names than to talk about the dancing.
    “Give.”
    “Don’t laugh,” she says. “Hero and Leander. Like the Greek myth?”
    “I know like the Greek myth.”
    Alex returns from the bathroom and asks his father to win him a prize from the claw machine in the lobby. They slip into their coats. Every other table’s jukebox works. They walk through several eras of rock and roll, each table its own sad painting: the church crowd, a family, a couple, an old maneating alone. Lorca hears Alex call out the tunes. “ ‘Fill Me Up, Buttercup,’ ‘The Twist,’ ‘God Only Knows,’ ‘Chances Are.’ ” Louisa sings along, her voice Marlboro and terrible.
    At the register, Lorca waits to pay while Louisa and Alex examine the pie cases. “Coconut custard,” she says. “You ever have that?”
    Alex wrinkles his nose. “Bleh.”
    “That’s how I feel about it, too. What about that one, Black Forest? I’m a chocolate girl.”
    Alex’s voice is sober. “I’m a chocolate girl, too.”
    She tousles his thick curls. Alex tries to hide how happy this makes him.
    A gleaming bank of machines in the lobby promises prizes in exchange for skill. Alex points to what he wants: a stuffed owl. Lorca feeds a quarter into the machine and nothing happens.
    “Two quarters, Dad.”
    He feeds another quarter. “This only took one when I was a kid.”
    Louisa says, “Tell it to your plants, old man.”
    The claw, activated, lurches over the pile of toys. Before Lorca can figure out the buttons, it takes a directionless swipe and misses. The machine shudders to a halt. Lorca feeds it two more quarters.
    The claw jerks to life again. This time he is able to position it over the owl. He lowers the claw; its metal hooks close over the animal but drops it when it ascends.
    “You suck at this,” Louisa says.
    Again he feeds the machine two quarters. Again the claw holds the owl for a moment, then drops it. “Is this fixed?” he says. Alex avoids his eyes.
    Lorca has one quarter left. He asks Alex for another one. The boy digs through his pockets. “Well?”
    “Jesus.” Louisa tosses him a quarter from her purse. Lorca tries again. Another failure. He shoves a dollar bill into Alex’s hands and tells him to get it changed behind the counter. “Do you want the toy or not?” he says, when the boy