Back on stage, he told the audience, “The Black Cat is taking a short break. She’ll be back. What a night! One you are never gonna forget.”
This was a woman used to getting her own way.
“Where is Rob?” asked Calvino.
Mya Kyaw Thein looked away like a black cat seeing motion in the shadows.
“Tell his father that Rob doesn’t want to see him.”
“Rob can tell his father himself. Then it’s over. Done.”
“Rob said that you used to be a lawyer in New York,” she said. “My brother has a lawyer, but he’s useless. Ohn Myint must have told you.”
“She didn’t tell me I’d find you tonight.”
“She wouldn’t know.”
The Black Cat had that right; Ohn Myint wouldn’t have fit into the 50th Street Bar crowd. None of these people looked like runners.
“She said you’d help my brother.”
Calvino nodded, drank from his whiskey.
“I said that. We also discussed the money. She doesn’t want to get involved in that part. I can understand.”
“I’ll handle the money.”
Calvino thought about the way the men around the bar looked at her. She could handle money, men and audiences. It was too easy in a way, and Calvino saw that for men like Mya’s brother and Rob, smaller souls, less capable and less sure of themselves, not everything in life had handles. For them it was like catching fish barehanded; most of the time they slipped away.
“I’ll bring it tomorrow,” Calvino said.
“What about tonight?”
“Tomorrow is better. We meet at the courthouse. Ohn Myint picks me up in the morning. You do whatever you
have to do there. Afterwards, whatever happens, you arrange for me to meet Rob.”
She snuffed out the cigarette. “You know the amount?”
Calvino nodded. “Four and a half.”
She got up from the table, looked back at the audience and flashed a smile—that “you belong to me” smile that entertainers who move audiences to tears turn on whenever they get the feeling that the world is flying away from them. The Black Cat wanted her world. Calvino could imagine her as a political activist. This crowd would have burnt down paradise to please her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“And afterwards I’ll see Rob. Unless you have some secret reason why that shouldn’t happen.”
“If you knew anything about Burma, you’d know there are no secrets. Everyone talks to everyone else.”
She went back on stage, picked up the mike and sang an Etta Jones classic, “Don’t Go to Strangers.” She looked at Calvino as she sang, until his glance broke away. He had a sense someone was watching him from the audience.
Bianca stood on the staircase. She flashed him a smile as he turned in his chair. He took a drink from his whiskey glass, got up from the table and walked to the stairs, climbing to the step where Bianca waited.
“You made it,” he said.
“You and the singer…”
She broke off in mid-sentence.