The moon is higher and brighter now, silvered blue, and over the roof of the Avalon Ballroom Stanley can make out structures on the amusement pier: a rollercoaster, a tiltawhirl, a magic carpet ride with painted-on minarets and onion domes. They’re getting close. Charlie’s directions were a drunken mess, but Stanley knows exactly where they’re going. He remembers Dudley Avenue from earlier, and he spots the coffeehouse as soon as they make the corner: ahead on the left, bright and bustling. They cross the street. Stanley tugs open the door.
It’s a long room, lit from above, with an aisle up the middle and small octagonal tables along the sides. The whitewashed walls are painted with words and phrases in jagged black letters, and elsewhere hung with stretched canvases: splashed-over, squiggled-on. A narrow counter topped by a copper espresso machine juts partway across the far end; an old stove, a buzzing refrigerator, and a bespectacled man in a coffee-stained T-shirt slouch behind it. The hipsters from the boardwalk are scattered through the room: musicians in the back, blond girl against the left wall, giving him a heavy-lidded stare. Nobody else seems to notice him. Coils of cigarette smoke rise from every place at every table. The milky air seems gradually to solidify into the white globe lamps that hang from the ceiling.
A drumkit is set up in front of the counter. A young man in bluejeans and a sweater stands in front of it, facing the tables, reading aloud from a folded-over notebook. He clutches a pencil in his right hand, as if he’s just written the words he speaks. I see the holy city through your eyes, Herman Melville, guy says. This new moonlight is your moonlight, Herman Melville, and my feet always find your cadences.
Poetry, Stanley thinks. Then he wonders why he thinks this. It’s nothing like the language in The Mirror Thief, and apart from a few lines he used to hear the 42nd Street grifters quote to rope in Columbia kids, The Mirror Thief is the only poetry he knows. So how come he’s so quick to peg this stuff as verse, and not just as some hipster talking?
The guy in the sweater goes on for a while—ranting and jiving about Buddha and Zoroaster, Sputnik and General Motors—and Stanley tunes out, scans the room. The tables are three-quarters full; people are still filing in, shouldering by to find seats. Stanley squints through the smoke like he’s blindfolded with waxpaper. At a table by the drumkit he spots an older man in hornrims and a Donegal cap; he’s maybe sixty, twice the age of anyone else in the room. He’s listening to the poet, nodding along. A fierce-looking character with a black beard and thinning hair sits to his right. The chair across from him is empty.
Stanley nudges Claudio. Wait here, he says. I’ll be back.
The path to the empty seat is blocked by the guy reading, so Stanley steps around him, crossing in front of the drums. The poet looks up from his notebook, shoots Stanley a baffled glance, stumbles to find his place again. Stanley glides into the empty chair. The bearded man glares at him, bunches his heavy eyebrows, and looks away.
Stanley leans across the table toward the older guy. Excuse me, mister, he whispers.
Shhhhh, the older guy says, putting a finger to his lips. Tut tut.
The poet has hit his stride again; he’s shouting something about towers and pyramids, about a new Renaissance, about Atlantis rising from the Pacific. People in the crowd cheer and shout go go go, but it sounds phony to Stanley, rehearsed. He taps his heel on the smooth concrete floor as the guy builds to his big finish and the hipsters all snap their fingers in applause. Then he leans across the table again. Excuse me, he says.
The old guy gets in a few more slow snaps before turning to Stanley and arching an imperious eyebrow. Young man, he says. How may I help you?
Are you Adrian Welles?
The eyebrow sinks, and the guy’s face knots in irritation. The bearded man stifles a laugh, looks at the ceiling. My dear young friend, the old guy says. I am Lawrence Lipton.
He says it like Stanley’s supposed to recognize the name right away. Over Stanley’s shoulder, somebody’s lurking: the poet, wanting his chair back. Stanley gives the old guy a thin smile. Okay, jack, he says. Do you know Adrian Welles?
Lipton stares at him for a second, doing an affected slow-burn, then raps twice on the white formica and pushes himself away from the table. I know everyone, he growls. He looks past Stanley and calls to the poet. Here, John, he says. Take my seat. I need to have a word with the musicians.
Stanley’s rising to intercept him when the bearded man gently but firmly takes his arm. Wait up a minute, he says. Adrian Welles comes in here sometimes. He comes to hear the jazz canto.
Is he here tonight?
Not yet.
What’s the jazz canto?
Lipton, circling the table, comes to a stop in front of the drumkit. He turns and spins in a slow circle, spreading his arms like a stage magician or a gameshow host. His open hands seem to indicate the room, the scene, the entire waterfront. This! he says. This is the jazz canto!
The bearded man holds out a thick, square hand to Stanley. I’m Stuart, he says.
Stanley, Stanley says.
So what do you want with Adrian Welles, man? Are you, like, his long-lost son or something? Here to claim your legacy?
I read his book, Stanley says. I want to meet him.
He published a book?
Across the table, the poet is lowering himself into Lipton’s seat. Who published a book? he says.
Adrian Welles.