Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  She was peppered all over with brown birthmarks, a small cluster of them down the center of her forehead like a worry crease. More realism. Her eyes were too far apart but, again, like with her body, the other features compensated and complemented.

  Big red hair in a youthful ponytail. And pale, like her skin had been blanched in chlorine.

  She put her cigarette out in the table’s ashtray and took Calder by the hand. He heard Loose Tie groan.

  They ended up by the long velveteen couch in the back. She sat Calder down. He was aware of another bouncer in the shadows to his left.

  The Nicotine Queen swayed in front of him, shoulders keeping time with the new song, “Baby I Love You” by Aretha.

  “You are new, aren’t you,” she said.

  “I been around,” Calder said with a crooked grin.

  She laughed — not the false laugh she was so tired of, but a real laugh. “I’ve been around, too.”

  “Not as much as you pretend,” Calder said.

  “A mind reader, then.” She put her hands on his knees, leaned inwards. “Tell me what I’m thinking.”

  Calder didn’t bother. “You upset that guy I was sitting with.”

  “What can I do to get you to squirm? Touch me.”

  “Touch you? Not unless I wanna get thrown out of here.”

  “I haven’t even asked you to buy me an overpriced drink. I’m not even gonna charge you this dance. Go ahead and touch me, just mind the bathing suit areas.”

  Calder slid his hands down her arms, what seemed the safest place. She was cold with sweat. He’d been expecting feverish skin, as if it had absorbed and would radiate the heat from the lights. Next he touched her knees, the only part of her body where he could see any bone.

  “That’s enough,” she said, removing his hands. She bowlegged up and onto his waist. “So you’re enjoying this.”

  “I guess the body doesn’t lie,” he said.

  She rocked her waist against his. Calder’s arms felt useless at his sides, like they ought to be doing something erotic to equal the way she moved. Her naked breasts were taunting his face.

  “You don’t like these places,” the Nicotine Queen said.

  “Now you’re the mind reader.”

  She laughed again. “I hope you’re not one of those thinks I’m degrading myself.”

  “No.”

  “Because I’m the one with the power here.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “I’m the one started it, and I say when it ends.” She put her arms around his neck. “You are cute. And compliant. And no whiff of need or desperation.”

  There was a ruckus in a lower corner by the stages. Three men fighting. One was Rook. The other two — one was black as coal, the other a sleazy white man wearing a clerical collar with his albe tucked into his jeans. Calder wanted to help but he was under orders, so he watched.

  The bouncers descended. The black man looked up and the first bouncer walked away in a daze. The second bouncer, despite the black man’s interference, kept coming. The fight grew.

  “Come back tomorrow,” said the Nicotine Queen as she dismounted. “Tomorrow night, like two in the morning. We’ll date.”

  “I have to admit I’ve no idea where I am or how to get back here.”

  “So make a friend and ask them.”

  “I can’t come back here and call you the Nicotine Queen straight-faced.”

  “Tamm,” she said.

  “And my name?” he said.

  “Tell me tomorrow.”

  She left Calder, who waited for his body to subside before getting up.

  The lights dimmed, Echo & The Bunnymen’s “The Back Of Love” could be heard. A hidden crane was lowered from the ceiling like some Euripidean mechane. On the platform was a woman with long, fine, black hair. All one length and so dark it looked like it was streaked with neon blue. She was crouching, her back to the audience. Her hair was divided forwards over her neck, her bare shoulders tattooed with red angelic wings.

  The fighting stopped. It had to. Everyone was watching the Winged Lady. She was the most beautiful woman Calder had seen all day.

  SEVEN

  WEDNESDAY, early Prime

  Briggs was a dubious Catholic priest affiliated with no actual church since teaming with Lundin. He used to love hearing confession, that’s the sort of priest he was. When he was younger he learned how to fight by starting bar brawls. And also attempted and learned from a variety of violences. This was before he joined the priesthood. Once he had been forced to kill a deranged repentant. That youthful training came in handy, the two sides of him working together.

  Difference with Lundin is Lundin didn’t need training, didn’t have to use his hands. For obvious reasons. On those rare occasions when he had to, he had an edge over Briggs: he knew what his targets would do before they acted.

  Not that it had helped much against Rook. Lundin touched his cheek and winced.

  “He had some fast hook, didn’t he,” Briggs said.

  “How are you so fast for sixty?”

  “Fifty-nine.” Briggs picked at the steering wheel’s rubber coverlet. They were in Lundin’s ’66 Dodge Coronet. Maroon, hardtop, four-door sedan. Parked on a side street diagonal to Council Speaker Adelard’s office on Queens Boulevard. The Boulevard of Death.

  What, Fish? Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t remember. Queens Boulevard, rechristened the Boulevard of Death by the local media, so many people get run down every year.

  It was Lundin’s car they were waiting in, his head hurt too much to be driving.

  “I’d like to know what it is about me’s so appealing.”

  “The man likes to fight, Rook does.” Briggs twisted to examine Lundin’s face. “Too bad you’re such a weakling. Can’t see any bruises, you’re too fucking black.”

  “I just wanna know why he likes it so much,” Lundin said.

  “Does it matter? He likes you or he hates you.”

  “I only get involved out of defense. I only ever get involved cause of that, when it’s necessary.”

  “So Rook’s the opposite. There’s your answer,” Briggs said.

  “That’s no answer.”

  Five young professionals walked into Adelard’s office. Briggs wrote down their descriptions and the time. Seven-forty a.m. He was using a Moleskine notebook. He used Moleskines because they made him feel cultured.

  “Did you see Pearly last night?” Briggs said. “I know ladies aren’t your thing but she was looking every flavor of sexy.”

  “What do you expect me to say? And I can’t stand hearing that kind of talk, you wearing that priest’s tunic? It’s absurd.”

  “I’m a man, I can’t help being a man.”

  “A man of God, right?”

  “But a man. We have time for a story?”

  “I want eggs, coffee,” Lundin said. “This car could stand to smell like coffee, it’s a good smell.”

  “We have time for a story,” Briggs said. “This one’s about the Winged Lady.”

  “Better not be about how she got her wings cause I heard that one already. A dozen times, and all different.”

  “None of them are true, you know,” Briggs said.

  “And I don’t wanna hear another.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Fine,” Lundin said, reclining his seat as far back as it would go. “But you keep an eye out. My face hurts.” He gently rubbed the point of his chin.

  “She’s been in clubs since she got to the city. Early on she’d do some extra work outside of work. Coming to where they live, giving them extended private dances.”

  “She fuck them?”

  “The Winged Lady? C’mon, no touching. She’s strictly to be looked at. I can’t imagine anyone having sex with her.”

  “Not Faraday?”

  “Not Faraday, not me. She’s above sex. Goddam ethereal is what she is,” Briggs said.

  “Except for those tats,” Lundin said. “Those make her downright human. A
woman, like you’re a man and can’t help it.”

  “A man of God,” Briggs said, smiling. “So she comes over, does her slow strip, maybe gives them a kiss. I don’t know, I’d like to think she did.”

  “So she’s not so ethereal she can’t kiss, then,” Lundin said. People were walking by with coffees. He fantasized about mugging one of them. For their coffee.

  “Collects her money,” Briggs said.

  “Pays the rent.”

  “Pays the rent, life goes on. Until she meets one of these mousy powder kegs. Kind whose mom beat him with a paddle or dressed him up in his dead sister’s clothes. You have to wonder about guys with this sort of upbringing. I heard it in confession. They were made to sleep in the yard or got locked in closets.”

  Briggs worried out a small piece of the rubber coverlet. He thought Lundin had fallen asleep, so he raised his voice. “So she starts taking her clothes off, you know, to the music, and so does he. She stops at her panties but he keeps going, down to nothing. She’s telling him to get dressed, it’s over, but he’s all of a sudden deaf.”

  “And mean,” Lundin said. “I’m guessing he gets mean.”

  “He doesn’t want sex,” Briggs said, “he wants to hurt her. There’s no one she knows to call and she can’t get to the phone anyhow. He lunges. The Winged Lady kicks him in the nose and here come the red waterworks.”

  “Dancers can kick. These guys forget that,” Lundin said.

  “He pounces and spins her and lands on her shoulders, scraping them up something fierce. Biting. Are you even awake?”

  “I’m kind of listening.”

  Briggs’ hands were now tight on the steering wheel, as if he was reliving a memory of his own. “She falls into the next room, the bedroom, and he pins her to the mattress. Kissing her chest, scratching her. She’s struggling and also she’s bleeding on the bedspread from her back. Finally manages enough wiggle room to free her legs and starts kneeing him down there.”

  “In the crotch,” Lundin said.

  “That’s what I meant. She gets outta there. It’s her last private session. Moves somewhere with lower rents so she won’t be in a position like that again, needing money for the month’s. Dancing solely at a club is different, there’s protection.”

  “That’s why she likes her crane?” Lundin said.

  “Her shoulders scar up ugly,” Briggs said. “She can’t have that, so she gets her tats.”

  “You lied, that was a story about her wings.”

  “But you never heard this version before. Hoone swears it’s the truth.”

  “It’s a fact that Hoone’s a liar,” Lundin said.

  “Sounds true, though.”

  Some more people went inside the office. Briggs scribbled them into his notebook.

  They listened to the AC rattle the car. It was a hot summer that summer.

  Lundin’s breathing was even, like in sleep. Briggs, a hater of long empty silences, said, “She’s been with Faraday longer than any other woman, though, right? Longer than you even.”

  “She’s too nice for him,” Lundin said. “He spends more time with his Dad. The thing with Faraday — and I know I’ve said this before — he’s real clever fitting a punishment to the offense.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Like you never repeat yourself.”

  “Hoone,” Briggs said.

  “I was thinking about him. He was here,” Lundin said.

  “We missed him?”

  “Back out on the road.”

  “Would’ve been nice,” Briggs said, “he stayed long enough, say Hello.”

  “What I mean,” Lundin said, “great punishment, him in that car, byways and highways.”

  “But me and you.”

  “We never do no wrong,” Lundin said and held out his hand.

  Briggs gave it a fraternal slap, then crossed himself. “Did Sotto ever punish Kinkaid for defecting?”

  “Never trust a traitor,” Lundin said.

  “I find it surprising, Faraday didn’t give us instruction on this one,” Briggs said.

  “I’m not sure he decided to take this contract,” Lundin said.

  “What? Then what the hell are we doing in this car? Two days.”

  “I got a glimpse of the contract, Faraday must’ve left it out on one of the tables mistakenly.”

  “A glimpse?”

  “Skimmed,” Lundin said. “It was short, very clear. And it only mentioned one guy’s name.”

  “Adelard,” Briggs said.

  “Correct, so how hard can it be?” Lundin said. “Plus it was for a large amount of money. I saw.”

  “We’re here, Faraday hasn’t decided, didn’t tell you. He usually gives us instruction.”

  “You’re the one,” Lundin said, yawning heavily, “the one complained he was bored. You, bored, not Faraday. Now we got something to do. It never hurts to show him we’ve got, you’re always worried he doesn’t like you, show Faraday we’ve got, hell — ”

  “Initials,” Briggs said.

  “Initiative. Initials. Everyone’s got initials. The fuck you get initials from?”

  “It’s in there, scrambled.”

  “You’re shit help as a dictionary,” Lundin said, sitting up, adjusting his seat.

  “It helped,” Briggs said, “gave you what you needed. A prod.”

  “Slight help.”

  “Take it back,” Briggs said.

  “Take what back?”

  “That I’m shit help, what you just said, take it back.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I take it back,” Lundin said. “In fact, I take back anything bad I ever said about you.”

  “You’re an asshole, Lundin.”

  “You take that back,” Lundin said.

  They both laughed.

  A town car pulled up in front of the office and Council Speaker Adelard stepped out.

  “Eight-ten, same as yesterday,” Briggs said.

  “Don’t bother making another notation. There’s too many people going in and out. Have to get him at his house,” Lundin said. “Let’s get going. I been up since last night.”

  back to top

  EIGHT

  Wednesday, early Terce

  Paper, that’s what the office smelled like. Hot paper. Something was always being printed out or photocopied.

  Adelard strolled down the center aisle and was greeted warmly from all eight cubicles, the inhabitants rising with their “Hello” as if commanded. His majordomo Majella was at the Xerox. Someone was always at the Xerox. Adelard hadn’t requisitioned another because he liked keeping people waiting, even his own staff.

  Council Speaker Adelard had inherited the office, figuratively and literally, from a man with less integrity and purpose. Adelard’s constituents elected him to a third and last consecutive term, all of them landslides.

  He didn’t worry. He never worried about anything because everything seemed to work itself out. Worry causes stress, stress makes you uncomfortable and gets you sick. These were all unnecessary as far as Adelard, Council Speaker, was concerned.

  Until the looming of Int 3001. Now he worried, he had stress, even had a slight cold.

  Majella knocked on the door and came in with assumed consent.

  Adelard was behind his desk, hanging up his suit jacket. “So what’s today like?”

  “A lot of calls to return,” Majella said, tablet in his hands, hunched over the thing like it was priceless. “Council Member Willibrord — ”

  “Can wait,” Adelard said. He sat down.

  “Senator Jogues — ”

  “First call.”

  “State Senator Fiacre.”

  “Make her my second call. Well go on.”

  “Congressman de Sales.”

  “Mr. Entitled,” Adelard said.

  “You know what these are about,” Majella said. “Our phones’ve never been so busy. With names like these.”

  “The polarizing 3001.”

  “Which
we still haven’t leaned, for or against.”

  “Water’s still too fresh. I want to wait a bit till someone else dirties it.”

  “But we do have a position?” Majella said.

  “What was the tenor of those calls?” Adelard said.

  “They want you to be the one gets the water murky first. Mayor certainly hasn’t.”

  I used to date a woman worked for the mayor’s office. This is going back many administrations. She still works there, married a celebrity chef.

  “I’ll be working for a new mayor one day,” Majella said.

  “You flatter,” Adelard said. “It’s lovable.”

  “Support is swelling,” Majella said. “This is your final term. The Minority Leader is here.”

  “Fantastic, fabulous. Send the bitch in,” Adelard said.

  She looked like a generic exorbitant attorney. Not a lawyer, an attorney. Crisp black hair, tailored Armani, flat professional shoes that could hold a shine. Independently wealthy. Very independently and very wealthy. “Mr. Council Speaker, sir,” she said.

  “It’s always not a pleasure to see you,” Adelard said.

  Council Member Nivellas sat in one of two fabric stack chairs, crossed her legs. “Pardon me if we don’t shake hands.”

  “No, pardon me. I’d invite you to sit down but you’ve already.”

  “Adelard, sir.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s why don’t we be civil,” she said. “I’m here on city business.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected we were going out for sundaes.”

  “Adelard,” she said, “bygones are meant to be forgotten.”

  “This bygone hasn’t quite gone yet.”

  “Well then I’m sorry. Again. Haven’t I said it enough?”

  “Not nearly.”

  “Hold your grudge, then,” Nivellas said.

  “Tightly.”

  “Why I’m here.”

  “Yes?”