Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  “Almost. With this, almost? You can’t be almost pregnant, not with this.”

  “Well then he’s almost pregnant.”

  “All right,” Faraday said and fell quiet. Out of the Park’s eastern side — I won’t waste your time with how — he came to 31st and parked opposite the Windsor Court. The Court had a circular driveway and a single-storey lobby that connected two massive apartment towers.

  “Explain to me how he’s a preacher,” Faraday said.

  “A priest, there’s a difference I think. Maybe not. The things we can do, I can do, to him it’s God’s hands working through us. And I need his muscle. There are times, you well know, some mark’s gotta be restrained first. By hand.”

  “Like with the Speaker.”

  “Exactly.” He almost said Sorry. “I’ve never pretended to be an enforcer. In that way. I need him, ’Day, and he wants to be with us. Idolizes you. Is fascinated.”

  Faraday pointed up high at the building. “You’re sure this is the best way to go about it, this guy, his girlfriend on the side?”

  “The easiest way. He’s renowned, this one. A good pull. Like the other two I picked out. Notable.”

  “Cause this is a new contract. I mean, a new client,” Faraday said. “Could lead to more work.”

  “You trust me.”

  Faraday swiveled to look Lundin in the eye. “I do trust you.”

  “Then listen to what I had to say about Briggs, he’s a wolf in priest’s clothing. And give me more to do. The occasional job is great, I’m good at it. Ever since Big Sir, Kinkaid, I don’t get but the table leavings, and I spend too much time at the club with sparkly G-strings and lonely husbands. It’s getting so I can’t take the smell in there. Not the smell, you know, the vibe. Not anymore.”

  “You wanna leave?”

  “Where would I go?”

  “Sotto’s,” Faraday said.

  “I couldn’t restrain myself, work for him, his orthodox rules.”

  Faraday faced the street. “I was gonna talk about this on the way back, but we’ve got time. Big Sir’s getting out early.”

  “Two years early?”

  “Parole,” Faraday said. “It’s a sure thing.”

  “He’s not coming back to you, the club, is he? Wouldn’t it be unsafe for the dancers?”

  “Was only the one time. He’s smart enough, not to try that again.”

  Try it again. A crime I was framed for. Didn’t commit.

  Faraday said, “Something about Saffron’s claims didn’t ring right anyway.”

  Now he says this, now, a year after.

  “I agree,” Lundin said, “but we all of us saw her bruises.”

  Never laid a hand on her.

  “Won’t he be labeled?” Lundin said. “Sexual predator? Be on some kind of list?”

  “No, the sexual part of it was dropped,” Faraday said. “He pleaded to simple assault.”

  Thank God. I didn’t wanna have to go alerting my neighbors whenever I moved, I’m a sexual fiend. Cause that’s one type of fiend I am not, Fish. And anyway there was no assault, of any kind.

  Faraday said, “Big Sir, Kinkaid and I, after the Council vote, we’re renting a car, going on sabbatical. Not sabbatical, what do you call it, expedition.”

  “Big Sir and Kink in the same car?”

  “They’ll comport themselves. They better. A manhunt. I want recruits, we need to expand. They’re out there, Lundin. Forty-eight continuous states of them, out there to be courted and trained. Big Sir’s been telling me this a while. I’m finally listening.”

  Finally. Plenty of people out there don’t know what they’ve got, or maybe they’re scared of it. Like Faraday was, like I was once.

  “Our core business is not the club,” Faraday said.

  Like I been telling him.

  “There’s ranks need filling,” Faraday said. “The city’s big itself.”

  “I’m not sure I’m so good a dowser,” Lundin said.

  “Don’t go talking yourself out of a promotion.”

  “I’m not so sure I’d be good, I’m just being honest.”

  “Don’t be so honest you disappoint me. You can do this if you try.”

  “I’ll do better than try,” Lundin said.

  “It’ll be harder than finding pretty dancers, but it’s a big city, they’re here. I want to give you more responsibility,” Faraday said, “but I don’t have the people anymore you could be responsible for. Bring them in and they’re yours.”

  “Who’ll run the club when you’re out road-tripping?”

  “You, Iommi. Briggs if he can keep up. I promise I’ll throw you as many assignments as you can catch.”

  “My own team. My own?”

  “Whoever you feel’s right. You approve them, you won’t need my approval. Rubber stamp, this whole deal.”

  Which meant, Fish, that Sotto and Lundin would be looking against each other for the same type of people. Well, monopolies are no good, are they?

  “I’ll want Briggs,” Lundin said.

  “This Council Member,” Faraday said, “this Council Member, what’s the name?”

  “Marillac,” Lundin said.

  “Marillac, he was gonna vote for the new apartments over Green?”

  “I didn’t delve deep enough for that.”

  Faraday got out of the car. “Let’s go see if we have to change his mind.”

  back to top

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sunday, early None

  Kink knocked on Faraday’s front door. Emmie opened it a couple minutes later. She wore a kimono given to her by Tress, and her hair done up in pins. She was also wearing a blank expression, like she hadn’t been expecting Kinkaid but wasn’t surprised he was there.

  Kinkaid, he was a big happy smile. “You look lovely in anything. In gabardine, too, I’d bet.”

  She didn’t blush. She didn’t blush at anything. She was calcified to compliments, she’d heard them all in all their permutations. “Is it you want to come in?”

  “Don’t make an ass of me out here like I don’t have a standing invite.”

  “It’s not a good idea anymore, this invite you have.”

  “Allow me in, we’ll talk about it.” He shoved at her mind, just a little. Out of respect. Enough to get him past the door.

  She went down the hallway towards the kitchen. Kinkaid shut the door and locked it. Emmie’s kimono rode up her calves as she walked. Kinkaid liked those calves, he enjoyed the way they felt on both sides of his neck.

  At the stove she said, “I’m frying up a grilled cheese before work. I’d cook you one but I’m not your maid.”

  Kinkaid laughed and sat down at the granite island like this was his house. “Where’s Faraday’s father?”

  Emmie flipped the sandwich over and jostled the pan. “Downstairs with his nurse. Doing God knows what kind of therapy. Sometimes he yells, you’d think he’s being crushed, I have to go upstairs to my bedroom.”

  “Faraday?”

  “Out with Lundin.”

  “You don’t expect him back.”

  “He’ll go to the club from wherever he is. He never brings Lundin here.” She turned off the burner, slid the grilled cheese onto a plate, sat across from Kink, cut the sandwich diagonally.

  “Healthy lunch,” he said.

  “A little late for lunch.”

  “Little early for dinner.”

  “Who has time to eat later?” she said. “And I wouldn’t touch the slop they serve there. Only when I’m drunk.”

  “Everything’s gourmet when you’re drunk,” Kinkaid said.

  “Their food gives me pimples all over. I can’t have pimples. It’s the grease they use in the kitchen.”

  “I guess I don’t think that way. I used to get pimples all the time, even in my twenties.”

  “You’ve got one now,” she said over a mouthful of bread and cheese, pointing at his chin.

  “I’ve never asked, what’s it like up there? How’s it f
eel? Everyone I talk to, all the girls, they see it differently. I’m curious how you see it.”

  “Like being in a play and forgetting your lines,” Emmie said. She took another bite of the sandwich and chewed while she talked. Kinkaid looked away. “Everyone’s got their eyes on you. Think you’d enjoy that? I don’t. Expecting, waiting for something to happen. For me to fall, or impress them with some new twist of limb with a better view of my — ”

  “Sanctum sanctorum.”

  “Lurid is what it’s like. Faraday knows I hate it. I think they’re all wondering what I’d be like in bed.”

  “Or picturing you how they’d want you to be.”

  Emmie seemed confused. “Wouldn’t that be the same?”

  “No. Yes, the same. Yes.” Kinkaid slid his hand across the island, hoping she’d meet it. She was too busy eating. She took such small bites. “Don’t you drink anything with that? Water?”

  “And have to pee onstage?”

  “What about your period? I’m too new to the club to — ”

  “I don’t dance on my period.”

  “What I thought,” Kinkaid said.

  “Some of the girls do,” Emmie said.

  “What, wearing a Maxi? Wouldn’t that show? I seen Dez dance a whole month.”

  “She’s on the pill, or using tampons,” Emmie said.

  “Tampons have strings,” Kinkaid said.

  “Girls, other clubs I worked, they’d cut the string,” she said. “Fish it out later with chopsticks.”

  “That’s revolting,” Kinkaid said, then waited a few beats, beats long enough for a change in conversation. “You’re intelligent enough to do a lot more than dancing,” he said. “Faraday should know that about you. I certainly do. Where’s the confidence you bring to the club?”

  “I can only fake that a few hours a day.”

  “Let’s work backwards,” Kink said. “What would you like to be, in another life? The next life? A different Earth?”

  “I’d like to finish this damn sandwich and moisturize so I’ll be ready in time.”

  “Instead of this,” he said, indicating her body with the sweep of a hand. “Instead of.”

  “You’ll laugh at me, you’ll tell Faraday.”

  “Would not tell a soul,” he said.

  “Jingles,” she said, finishing the last bite of her sandwich. Licked dried cheese off her thumb. “Stupid TV commercial jingles.” She grimaced. “I write them in my head when I’m watching my shows. Catchy, musical,” she said. “Lyrical.”

  Or did she last say melodic, those two words, I get them confused.

  “Go ahead, make your jokes,” she said.

  “That is the sweetest thing you’ve ever told me.”

  “Ever told anyone.”

  “And a great career, you can never be so old you couldn’t do that,” Kink said. “You could do that in this life.”

  “What I need is something I can never grow so old doing.” She gripped her kimono’s sleeves. “Not this.”

  “You’re gonna be beautiful a long time.”

  “I get so fucking tired, people calling me beautiful. It’s gotten so I hate the word, I hear it so much.”

  “There’s worse accusations.”

  “Anything but that word would be welcome. Some afternoons, I’m alone in the kitchen, I want to put a knife to my face so I’ll never hear that word, never again.”

  Kink waited a few more beats for her to settle. “I won’t call you that, today, today forward.”

  “I’m still gonna hear it.” She got up, threw her plate in the sink where it clattered and rolled to a stop. “You, you’re gonna do this the rest of your days? Running round in circles for my husband?”

  No, I’m gonna move into this house someday soon, he thought. “I been a lot of things in my time, and in time I’ll be a lot more.” He touched the wrinkles that expanded from his eyes, the ones Pal had commented on. “I’m not young. I’m not young and I can’t write a tune worth shit, but I been a lot of things.”

  “You sound as worthless as me,” she said.

  “You’re not worthless, what you are is — ”

  “Don’t say beautiful,” she said. Threatening. Mustering what menace she had.

  “Potential, I was going to say. You have so much,” he lied. “What can’t you do?”

  “What I have to do is get ready. Sunday nights are busiest. The loneliest day, the more come out. I like to please them most. Call it my charity. Go, I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

  “Do what?” A grin.

  “I am not taking you upstairs.”

  Kinkaid shoved, harder than he’d shoved getting through the front door. “You want me to stay,” he said. Soothingly.

  “Faraday finds out, he’ll be the one to scar me.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “You, he’d rip out your balls barehanded and bloody. Or something mean so you’d never have sex again. Clap two bricks together down there, I heard him mention that once about someone.”

  Kinkaid shoved once more, this time so eagerly he might have done her some permanent damage. Not that he cared about her. It wasn’t for her he was here. Not precisely.

  “You need me, don’t you,” she said, truth as she knew it via Kinkaid. “How could I deny you?”

  They went up to the bedroom, decorated in etain blue: simple, elegant, trite. Kinkaid and Emmie were the only things there with color.

  She went to the bed and dropped the kimono without any prompting from Kink. He wasn’t stilled by the glory of her nudity; he’d seen her naked a thousand times, in this bedroom a hundred times.

  The bed itself was a mess, sheets kicked under sheets and bunched up. This excited him more than Emmie’s body. It wasn’t sex, it was being where Faraday had been — inside his house, his bedroom, his wife. The sex would be mechanical as usual, unimaginative lay that she was. Whenever there was imagination it was from Kinkaid guiding her.

  She danced for him with more vigor than she showed at the club. He undressed and slithered into the bed. He moved slowly, dragging the encounter along like a dead dog on a leash. There were times he wanted Faraday to discover them. Kinkaid didn’t know if he would survive the fight but at the very least Faraday would see that his wife had been tainted. He’d wonder how long had this been going on. His love for her would never be the same.

  Images like these were what wound Kinkaid up and made him spin.

  Emmie arranged the pillows how she liked them with Faraday — two behind her head, one under the small of her back. She lay down and spread her legs for Kinkaid. She was arid and closed to him.

  Kinkaid made Emmie want him.

  She bloomed wetly in a minute or so.

  “Don’t cum inside me, I don’t want to be walking around with that when I have to dance.”

  “Have I ever?” He took the Winged Lady by the waist, flipped her onto her stomach. “This way,” he said. “This is the way I want you.”

  She cried for a second into her pillow, then spread her legs again. Wider, her weight on her knees and the side of her face. He entered her from behind and quickly established a rapid rhythm. His pelvis was pressed against her buttocks. His hips were doing all the work, she was doing none, but Kinkaid changed that.

  Then he propped himself on his left hand, pulled her hair with his right. Pulled so hard that her face was turned up to the headboard.

  This was the position he used with the whores at Vestal Virgins in Turtle Bay. There, anything goes; at Vestal Virgins patrons are allowed to get rough and there’s nowhere else in the city you can buy that freedom.

  He couldn’t be rough with the Winged Lady, would never because she was always going on display soon. He let go of her hair, put his right hand on her spine for balance. Her tattooed wings bunched with her shoulder blades.

  The way she made love like she danced — without much motion — Kinkaid wondered if her fans ever guessed at her prudery.

  He swung into her faster, groan
ing against his will.

  Emmie groaned as well.

  At the peak of his (not bliss, there was no bliss here, just climax) climax, Kinkaid retreated and directed his semen onto the sheets, unfortunately an especially voluminous ejaculation. Afterwards he rolled one way, Emmie the other. In between, the sheets and pillows were wet from both of them.

  He didn’t say anything for awhile. He was enjoying Faraday’s side of the bed. He looked for slippers on the floor, always looked, but they were never there. He liked the picture of himself in slippers, going downstairs to read the paper over coffee.

  “Have the nurse change these linens soon as I leave,” he said.

  Emmie got out of bed and walked over to her vanity. She put one foot up on the chair, opened a plastic bottle and began moisturizing her raised leg.

  “You do that for your whole body?”

  “It’s my whole body up there for everyone to see.”

  Kinkaid watched her rub in the cream. She was naked, and she was (though now he knew she hated it) beautiful, but her preparation for the club was more mundane than her dance routines. He didn’t feel the urge to have sex with her twice in a row. On occasion they set records.

  In a few hours he might feel differently but at that moment he wanted to go.

  “Big Sir’s getting out soon,” she said.

  Supposed to. Supposed to get out. Assumed.

  “I could never believe it about him, what Saffron said he did. Lost a year of his life,” Emmie said.

  Emmie was a good friend. We’d had many cups of coffee in her kitchen, grilled cheeses.

  Kinkaid, angry, sat up. Took ahold of all her memories of me, like so many loose wires, and unplugged them. For her, that moment on, I no longer existed. Never did.

  And that, succinctly, is the essence of Kinkaid. The demented brute.

  The crime was — I can’t say alleged because Faraday’s lawyer had me plead guilty before any trial — was attempted rape.

  I never had to steal sex my entire life.

  Saffron, my “victim,” had a blonde Bettie Page haircut, never wore underwear, fancied Kinkaid.

  She was too young for me. Twenty-two. I prefer my lovers much older and wiser. Even my ex, the mayor’s aide, was fifteen years my senior. Anyone who knows me knows this about me. Why her claims were so preposterous. And I never touched dancers; as a rule they’re superstitious and insecure. Look at Emmie, Tamm.