by Adam Connell
“I love my job,” she said. She crossed her legs in the other direction. “I love it. I’m just not very good at it. I’ve made some poor — ”
“Reprehensible.”
“Uninformed. Uninformed decisions,” Ms. Nivellas said. “My district has qualms. But I want reelection next November. It’s now become a very important month to me. Can I speak openly?”
“If you have to,” Adelard said.
“Int 3001.”
“I fucking knew it.”
“You’ll owe me a favor,” she said. “You come out first, and charging, we come out charging, whichever side of the Int you like, you’ll have it locked early.”
“And that favor’s next November,” he said.
She smiled. “On this matter,” she said, “we can both afford to be discreet. It’s the better part of valor.”
“Are we at war?” Adelard said.
“Should we be?” Ms. Nivellas said. She uncrossed and crossed her legs again.
“I like political wars,” Adelard said, “because I win them.”
With miraculous skill, Council Member Nivellas clipped the end off a slim cigar, had it lit, and had blown a cloud at the ceiling before Adelard could stop her. The smile was still on her face. It was as if she hadn’t been rebuffed.
“I don’t enable smokers,” he said. “Nothing is more selfish, smoking.”
She put the cigar out on his desk, thumb and forefinger twirling it into the leather blotter.
“That’s twice you’ve insulted me, that last one, the first one, grievous,” Adelard said.
“I’m the one’s been insulted, Council Speaker,” she said. “My party may not affect this vote to your liking.”
She got up and walked out of the room as tall as when she’d come in.
Adelard didn’t get up to close the door behind her. He sat, slid open the lower desk drawer, lifted the false bottom, poured himself two fingers of whiskey. He often drank in the morning. The best way to ease the stolidity that gripped his mind before noon.
He stared at the crushed cigar, the lipstick stains on the end. There was a hole burned through his desk blotter. He’d order a new one. The city would reimburse him. He was Council Speaker after all.
NINE
Wednesday, Terce
At Sotto’s insistence, Calder became tourist for a day. Started at the bottom of Manhattan and worked north. Statue of Liberty. The transformation happening at Ground Zero. Film Forum (and caught a Zatoichi flick). The gleaming Empire State Building. Bloomingdale’s. Zabar’s. The Guggenheim, MoMA. Culture, pop culture.
He also went and saw the ConEd buildings and thought them ugly structures, like surly buildings with a grudge. Monsters.
New apartment complexes were being erected all over the cramped city. He’d seen so many ongoing constructions throughout the day. Were more necessary?
Calder had never been a part of history, or more precisely, a part of the future. And with such massive scope. This Int, him having been to the contested buildings, it appealed to him immensely. Help those grey monstrosities become something useful, something forwards. Cleaner, safer energy for all the old apartment houses, all the new ones he’d seen rising.
This was purpose, this he admired, even if that admiration sprouted from his own soul. Those monsters would, in the future, have an inwards (possibly immortal!) beauty to fuel New York. Calder would know, wherever he was, thinking back, he’d been crucial to that fuel, that beauty. Int 3001. And having completed the contract, proven to himself that he belonged in the city with the beautiful monsters.
The city itself wasn’t as rude as he’d been told. He was, though, conscious to stay in tempo with the foot traffic for fear of provincial wrath. If anything, he found it to be a passive-aggressive city, with people expressing their disgust and displeasure only when walking away, usually with mutters and downwards shakes of the head.
News that the city had been sanitized was mostly true. But there was old gum crushed to the sidewalks like black acne. But Disney musicals had devoured Broadway. But if you were looking for porn, you had to look harder.
He reached Tattletail at one-thirty the next morning, half an hour early. The Nicotine Queen was at work. A lap dance for a skinny man with a tiny nose. She was astride his legs, teasing him with motions like a slow, fluttering ribbon. She touched his neck, whispered something that turned him red. The watchful bouncer looked over but Calder knew Tamm’s prey was too timid to break the rules.
Calder was jealous. He had no reason to be. This wasn’t his wife or even his lover. He barely knew her. He didn’t know her at all. In fact he didn’t think he could become involved with a woman who teased man after man after man for a living. Whose job it was to be a sexual cipher. There were too many boundaries crossed, too much room for arguing. And yet he was jealous.
The Nicotine Queen saw him at one of the last tables, threw him a wink. She accelerated her dance, left the tiny-nosed boor with a hard-on to take home to his wife, and veered towards the dressing room.
Calder had a cup of coffee while he waited. The city, it was also a vigorous thief. Sapped your energy. He’d done nothing much but walk the whole day. Manhattan’s only thirteen miles long (and he skipped the Park and Harlem, and north of that) but he was ready to hibernate. He was no stranger to five-, ten-mile walks. There were too many obstacles in the city. And you had to move at its pace.
He watched some of the other ladies dance. They lacked the Nicotine Queen’s vexing majesty.
The Winged Lady was absent.
“’Kay, tiger,” Tamm said. “I’ve got a surprise for you tonight.” She was wearing a flared tartan skirt and a soft black top. A simple, quick outfit.
“My name’s Calder,” he said. “Thought today you’d like to know.”
She hailed them a cab. “You like fish, Calder?”
“I’m easy when it comes to food,” he said.
“These are some unusual fish. Snakes, too. Ever eat lionfish?”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Water moccasin?”
“I used to have a pair of moccasins. Didn’t eat them. But I’m pretty daring.”
“You’re gonna have to be,” she said.
The taxi took them to a part of town Calder didn’t recognize from any movie or television show.
The restaurant was below street level. It had no name, and inside it smelled like a poorly tended aquarium.
“You don’t order here,” Tamm said. “They bring out what they’ve been able to catch.”
It was crowded. They were seated amid a number of tables whose conversations were both loud and guarded.
She unrolled her napkin, put it on her thigh. “How long you lived in the city?”
“About two days,” Calder said.
“So you weren’t kidding.” No one around them took notice of her laugh, which was broad and high. Another genuine laugh Calder had given her. She relaxed some, any anxiety she’d had about this man beginning to dissipate. He could make her laugh.
“Then where are you from?”
“Over out west.”
“Honey, don’t make me do all the work.”
Calder smiled. “I know. It’s just, how do I, I’m in a strange city in a strange restaurant with a strange girl about to eat strange food. But forget I said all that.”
“Strange girl? I left here without you, you’d never get home.”
Now Calder laughed. “Strange being beauxotic.”
“Chalk one up to a nice save.”
“South Dakota,” Calder said. “I lived there till I was fifteen, but it got too loud for me.”
“The people?”
“It was definitely the people,” Calder said. “Got so loud I ran away.”
Partial lie.
“I ran away once,” she said.
“I stayed away.”
“You’ve got no accent. Northeast, the South, Midwest. Something about your voice is odd, I think that’s it.”
“It�
��s the only odd thing about me.”
“I’m not sure any of this is first-date material,” Tamm said, adjusting her skirt and sitting closer. “But it is interesting. What’s next?”
“Gradually I learned to be around people. That took time. Then I rode the rails, place to place, talking.”
“About?”
“I don’t know you well enough.” Grinning.
Again with Tamm’s laugh.
The food was brought to them on cedar planks. Strips of raw and cooked meat. Calder couldn’t tell which was fish and which snake. He armed himself with chopsticks. Tamm said, “They’re all poisonous. I mean they were, before the chefs got at them. Still, there’s always the possibility — ”
“I could die.”
“Only happens rarely. Never so far as I’ve heard in New York. Other cities, yeah. That’s why the place is illegal, moves every few weeks. The food is good, though.”
They started in.
“I want to ask about your career,” he said, “but also I don’t want to pry.”
“I don’t have many secrets.”
“When did, why — ”
“I developed very early.”
“Is this the rote speech you give everyone who asks?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Around fourteen I had the body of a woman. Some of the boys teased me, but most wanted to be with me. Touch me at least. I let some of them touch me. Don’t run away, Calder.”
“I’ve heard worse,” he said. “I’m still here.”
“I wouldn’t say worse, I don’t see anything bad in it. It was more fun not to let them touch me. Found it was kind of exhilarating. I liked it. Liked it more than anything since. So I became what I am. I like to be adored is best I can explain it. There is more, though.”
“Always there’s more. Isn’t as if I told you everything,” Calder said. She laughed again, and this time it got the attention of their neighbors.
“You’re gonna embarrass me,” she said.
“You have a clientele? Regulars who are infatuated,” Calder said.
“I don’t want to talk about them. Or Faraday. Everybody wants to know about Faraday. There’s something about you. Too confident for someone your age.”
“I’m more confused than confident. You like confident?”
“Hate it.”
“What is my age, exactly?” he said.
“Somewhere in between is as exact as I can guess.”
In a taxi they kissed good night. It was almost demure, both their bodies apart, each not wanting to frighten the other away with an unrequited touch.
Calder said, “I never been on a first date there was the possibility of tragic death.”
“You feel nauseous the next twenty-four hours,” she said, “put your fingers down your throat.”
“You really are sexy.”
She patted his cheek. “Our next date, I won’t put you in danger.”
“But you’ve set a precedent. And who says I want a second?”
“Well I do.”
Tamm got dropped off first. Calder got home at five in the morning. Everyone upstairs in the bar was asleep.
back to top
TEN
THURSDAY, Compline
The limousine out to Queens had been Calder’s idea. He had no inkling if the regal borough was north, south, east, or west of Manhattan. He thought a fancy car might impress Adelard. The limousine.
He’d slept most of the day, showered and dressed, gotten Pal to give him some money from the safes, called the car.
As the city withdrew (he already knew The City meant Manhattan to the exclusion of the other four boroughs) Calder didn’t feel as if he was leaving anything substantial. From what he’d seen so far Manhattan was a discursive place, everyone in motion. Judging by the real-estate classifieds in one paper he’d seen, vacancies and rentals and the buying/selling of apartments was a mundane industry. Nothing but the buildings stood still. Even the city’s restaurants changed locations.
This wasn’t a place where he wanted to stay. He’d had enough transience in his life so far. Cobbling meals together, bathing in public restrooms, sleeping on floors, wishing winters were summer and summers winter. He’d come to New York for its permanence but found it a place in flux. Even Tamm. He did like her but wasn’t sure she’d be in his life a day from now.
But maybe he did want to stay. Sotto and his men. Calder felt more sympathy there but wasn’t certain it would be enough. If his propensity for wandering would lead him to abandon them as well.
Flux, he was feeling a great uncertain flux.
The ride out of the city brought more trees. Calder was interested in all the turns, parkways and expressways and all that, but when it confused his sense of direction he sat back and closed his eyes.
The driver was good, and he was quiet. Calder appreciated a man who knew his job and did it well.
There were houses here; Calder hadn’t expected houses. If it weren’t so dark he would have been able to see the sky; Manhattan has so very little sky.
Adelard lived in Whitestone, Queens. From the size and style of the house’s perimeter it was plain that there had been extensive additions.
The limo pulled up to the curb.
A woman with lacquered hair answered the door. Calder wondered what type of woman — at home, wearing a blue bathrobe, nine-thirty at night — cared for her appearance. He could sense a cold reception so he reached out to melt her demeanor.
“It’s late,” she said. “Can I help you?” One hand in her robe’s pocket, as if she had a gun.
“I’m an associate here to see your husband.”
“He knows you’re coming? I’m sorry, but he’s, we’re getting ready for bed.”
With lacquered hair.
Calder lifted his hand, projecting an image of a briefcase and documents into her mind. “Bed can wait, can’t it?” he said.
“Let me see where he is, come in.”
The air inside was frigid. He was standing in a long hallway with attending mirrors and art so that each painting was reflected. The wooden floors shone from a recent wax. The ceiling was higher than necessary. A staircase was set off on the right.
Adelard came down the steps in a matching bathrobe, his with a black A stitched into the left breast. “Who the hell are you and what time is it?”
Calder gave him a false name and a teaser about Int 3001, the interests of green energy. Adelard didn’t seem interested. “Since my wife let you in, it’d be rude,” he said, and led Calder to his office. Again, unnecessary furnishings in a space too large.
Adelard sat on the edge of his desk.
Calder spun out yards of yarn about the ConEd stations, the importance of their conversion. Hastily admitted the transition would take years, slowly stressed that was the point of the Int, right? To get it started? Make clean energy and reduce the carbon footprint. (Whatever the hell a carbon footprint is. Worse phrase I ever heard. Jolly Green Giant, now he’s got footprints. Neil Armstrong, giant footprint.)
Calder created facts and studies. And as he talked, probing Adelard’s mind for the right switches, where to fill in gaps of doubt or shave outcroppings of disagreement. He was running out of things to say and the time to look.
There was nothing, nowhere to plant seeds of suggestion, nowhere to erase decisions previously made. Adelard’s mind was a blackness like Calder had never seen before.
“I never heard of these studies,” Adelard said. “Those figures seem wholly inaccurate.” He was holding his elbows, the pose of classic disbelief. “That all? That’s what you came here for?”
Calder relaxed his own mind.
“Don’t you know the time?”
Calder pictured himself as a needle.
“This late, and you come bothering someone like me? The Council Speaker? With this?”
He pierced Adelard’s mind again.
“Rude, the height of rudeness.”
It was like swimming in a stagnant pond.
“I have a wife I strive to keep out of my professional affairs. That’s how she wants it.”
Calder was looking for memories.
“You don’t conduct business like this.”
Calder probed deeper, was suffocated.
“My wife said you had a briefcase with papers.”
There were no memories, just more blackness.
Adelard was off his desk. “Where’s this briefcase? You left it in my hall, this briefcase, gonna come back for it tomorrow? An excuse to see me again? That gambit’s too old for me to fall for. I’m too old to fall for it.”
Calder came up for air. “No briefcase, sir. Your wife’s mistaken. I won’t be coming back. I’m only here tonight because the vote’s so soon and we feel we haven’t enough time to plead our side.”
“Enough time? What? Plead it during business hours.”
Calder tried the last weapon in his armory, an all-out shriek to incapacitate his marks. A numbing contralto scream that shut their defenses down completely. He gathered his reserve, tightened up his yell, and let loose.
He got no response. It was as if Adelard had no mind at all.
ELEVEN
Thursday, Matins: 1st Nocturne
“I’m not going to any more gay bars with you,” Briggs said.
“Why, what’s changed?” Lundin said.
“Nothing’s changed, I just don’t wanna go. I don’t see how you need me.”
“I go alone, I look desperate.”
They were in Lundin’s Coronet at the bottom of Adelard’s street. Lundin at the wheel this time, smoking one of his foreign cigarettes.
“Besides, you like the attention,” Lundin said.
“It’s good for my ego, I think they like the taboo of a priest there, but I wouldn’t say I like it.”
Lundin was smoking with the cigarette inverted, the lit end inside his mouth, fingertips on the filter. He’d learned this from a Cambodian who’d been a Khmer Rouge prison guard at S-21. A good way to prevent being seen in the dark.
“I stand around looking at titties all day,” Lundin said. “Think I enjoy that? Don’t you think I’d rather be Downtown at Chi Chiz?”