by Adam Connell
“I need another waitress cause I need a real drink,” Briggs said.
“I do have good news,” Lundin said.
“It must have to do with you.”
“This job comes off, I get to bring in more people like me.”
“People unlike me. Unlike us hacks.”
Lundin slipped a breeze of composure into Briggs so the man would stop his whining.
“Employees,” Lundin said. “I get to lord over them. My clique, all mine.”
“That’s good news.”
“Is what I said. Good news.”
“Great news,” Briggs said, meaning it. “Of all them here, you deserve that.”
“There’s always room for you with me,” Lundin said. “I was getting to this before you sidetracked me with your — ”
“Your blindside,” Briggs said.
The breeze wasn’t enough so Lundin made it a gale.
Briggs finally smiled. “Great damn news. If I could find a waitress and a drink, I’d toast you. I am glad, you can sense I’m glad, right?”
“What I was getting at, you’re with me. Always my partner. We have to get pa — ”
“We like you and me or we like you and them?”
“We” — he pointed at Briggs — “have to weather Faraday, tread some water. After that, we, you and I we. Do what I told you.”
“Run.”
“You said run, I’m suggesting, until I get a group and get it settled, you show Faraday I’m no liar. You show him, show him you’re a help to me, not just biceps. Mets lost. That’s fifteen thou we owe Muckety Mack.”
“Fifteen plus the twenny we owe,” Briggs said.
“Wanna see him tomorrow?” Lundin said.
“Don’t wanna see him ever. Cheaper that way.”
“He’ll send out his kudzu vines,” Lundin said. “We preempt. You keep his brutes away, I’ll clear the debt from Muckety Mack’s memory.”
“And be sure to tell Faraday how good I was.”
“We’ll have to find another bookie. There aren’t many left we can jilt need be.”
“But you’ll tell Faraday I was a help.”
He’s like a goddam Stone today, Lundin thought. “Faraday’s over there with one of the politicians. Table by the side wall. Why not go by, say something harmless? Let him know you’re here and eager.”
“Like what?”
“Briggs,” Lundin said, too loud, “I protected you the other day, I’m giving you good advice now.”
Fish, he didn’t bother telling Briggs about my homecoming, or Faraday’s cross-country; Briggs couldn’t properly digest what Lundin had already told him.
“Walk over there,” Lundin said, “think up something to say. You pretend he’s a girl you want to lay.”
“I don’t lay girls I’m scared of.”
“Oh Jesus, Briggs!” He slammed the table with his palm, upsetting his empty coffee cup. Iommi looked over, shook his head. Lundin nodded.
Briggs got up, meandered through the tables towards Faraday whose back was to the room. Halfway there he had nothing more seductive than Hi so he abandoned the opportunity and went out the front doors. Hyperventilating.
“Running a club like this,” Council Member Vianney from S.I. said, “it must bring a host of problems.”
“People think that,” Faraday said. “Really it’s not too unlike a restaurant, and I worked in plenty of them on my way up. Thank you for coming here.”
“It’d be an obvious confession, this isn’t my typical haunt. Your man Lindon — ”
“Lundin.”
“Was insistent about bringing me.”
There was a third politician on Lundin’s list. Kinkaid was supposed to have brought him down but couldn’t find him. He, Faraday, realized after his ride Sunday with Lundin that he didn’t relish traveling the city for one job. He’d much rather be Muhammad than the Mountain.
Council Member Vianney was on his fourth Martini. It was understood that the drinks were free. And he had a view of the stages. “Most restaurants,” the Council Member said, “they don’t have naked ladies dancing to music.”
“You asked about my problems,” Faraday said in his best friendly voice. “Waitresses, busboys, dishwashers, they all want more money, keep a higher stake of the tips — a portion of which the house deserves. There’s turnover. I don’t have a big menu but I can’t keep a good chef on staff because they leave so often, every time a new restaurant opens in this city, which is twice a day. Furniture needs replacing. I have to advertise, be good to my customers. And be nice in public, which isn’t always easy when I’ve got all these problems. These are restaurant problems.”
“And the ladies onstage?”
“They get to keep the majority of their tips. That’s only fair. They earn them. Dances on the velveteen couch in back. People buy them nonalcoholic drinks, I can’t have them drunk. We got a system, the standard one because it’s efficacious.”
“I meant, any restaurant problems with them?” Vianney said. He was wearing a grey suit buttoned all the way, as if he was daring himself not to relax. A tuft of grey hair matching his suit and only on the top of his head. Glasses so small they could have passed for pince-nez.
Faraday signaled their waitress to bring another Martini for the Council Member. He turned his chair to face the stages. Kitten was at the end of her song, dancing slowly to INOJ’s slow “Love You Down.”
The Winged Lady would be out next, it was almost ten.
“They don’t complain about more money,” Faraday said. “And they don’t leave lest I ask them to, the performers. I don’t consider that turnover. It’s a great living for someone their age.”
“They must realize, on some level, it won’t last,” the Council Member said. “No one looks that good for long. Working their way through college? Law school?”
“That’s a popular misbelief makes the feminist in us all proud. Only thing these girls are working their way through is wallets.”
“Some students?” Vianney said.
“Not here. Grass widows, yes, two of them. That’s one of the true assumptions.”
“Who comes in here, generally? What sort?” the Council Member said. He finished his fourth Martini as the fifth arrived.
Faraday was so weary of these questions everyone with a curiosity about clubs like his were compelled to ask. But he was answering the Council Member as if he’d never been asked them before.
“Those customers close by the stages,” Faraday said, nodding at them. “They’re all wearing rings. Their wives have gained weight, or were never attractive. Had too many kids, which destroys the physique. Or their wives don’t know the word sex anymore. They’re here to look.”
“They’re all here to look,” the Council Member said.
Faraday pointed at Nadezhda who was talking to a young lawyer by a high-top table nearby. There was nothing sexual — no fawning, no caressing of hands — to their conversation. Nadezhda could have been wearing a dress, not a G-string, they could have been on the phone like old roommates.
Faraday said, “He’s here because he knows he walks in those doors there’s gonna be someone willing to listen. She might be beautiful — ”
“She certainly is,” Council Member Vianney said. “Russian?”
“All he wants is to talk. He has to pay for it but she makes him forget that.”
“Her body doesn’t factor in?” the Council Member said.
“For the first thirty seconds, but by now he’s complaining about his girlfriend’s moving in, there’s an uphill court battle he’s fighting, he hasn’t made partner.”
“How could you know he’s a lawyer?”
“I don’t. Couldn’t he be? For right now, he’s a lawyer.”
“I’m a lawyer,” the Council Member said. “I was his age, I never came to places like this. I did, I’d be asking her all sorts of perverse questions. Excuse me, did I blunder? Your face.”
Temper temper, Faraday. He said, “We g
et them will come in, want to know about the girls’ habits, how far management’ll allow them to go. Confuse my Tattletail, any Tattletail, for a bordello. Those men, they’re not regulars. They won’t find what they want here.”
“I sure as heck wouldn’t be coming to complain about my cases.”
“That’s why you’re not a patron,” Faraday said. “The ugly woman at the table with her friend over there. Coworkers. They’re dressed the same. Shop at the same stores.”
“Lesbians,” the Council Member said.
“They aren’t sure. They are gay, or at the least attracted to beautiful women. Appreciate a naked woman. Doesn’t make them gay necessarily. Jealous, maybe.”
“Because you appreciate art doesn’t make you an artist,” the Council Member said.
“But if these two weren’t ashamed of their taste in art they’d be at a club Downtown caters only to ladies. Only women, on the stages, in the seats, bartending. Watch them, these two, they can’t even look each other in the eye to talk about it.”
“So everyone here’s lonely,” Council Member Vianney said.
“There’s ten more types I could point out.”
“Bachelor parties?” the Council Member said. He’d never had or been to one.
“We have no Champaign Rooms, no House Madam in the dressing area. No DJ, just favorite songs on a loop for each dancer, one speaker above each stage. It’s a humble respectable den, that’s what sets us apart. You won’t see tens and twenties being folded into ankle garters. This isn’t a Gentleman’s Club.”
“This is a store. A sad place with what you’re selling,” the Council Member said. “It gets stale, staring at this skin all day? Makes you lose your taste for it?”
The lights went down, then brightened as they swung towards the center stage. A few minutes of trance electronica segued into “For Love” by Lush. Everybody including the waitresses watched the Winged Lady descend on her crane. It landed, she stepped out, it went back up into the ceiling.
The purple and yellow and green lights, her favorites. Her naked back was to the audience, her hair up in a hair-sprayed bundle. She was stroking her tattooed wings with long, lovely fingers. Her hips rocking to the beat, slightly off rhythm, but everyone forgave her. Then her arms went down to her sides. She raised them to shoulder height, up and out as if expanding a cape when it was sordidly clear she was wearing nothing at all.
The Council Member had been in midsip since she’d appeared from the ceiling.
“She’s closer to forty than thirty,” Faraday said.
“That isn’t possible.”
“Classic beauty like hers, takes longer to fade. She’s my wife.”
The spell was dashed. Vianney finished his sip. “Wife? You let your wife work here?”
“Emmie’s the best dancer in the city. You don’t think she’s beautiful?”
“It doesn’t bother you, it would bother me, men are going home tonight, make love to their wives with her body on their face? Or her face to their bodies?”
“She doesn’t mind. It’s made us wealthy.”
“But don’t you?”
“I get her body and her face. That doesn’t bother me, no.”
“I have a daughter,” the Council Member said.
“They’re not prostitutes,” Faraday said. “They’re smart women. I revere them.”
“I don’t know if I could.”
“Most people don’t,” Faraday said.
“I could ask questions all night but I do have a family to get home to. And a daughter now I very much need to see is asleep.”
“Int 3001,” Faraday said, staring at his wife with the others, with the Council Member.
“Is not an easy subject. You’re better off speaking to Adelard.”
“I’ve spoken with Adelard,” Faraday said.
Council Member Vianney sat up straight. “How’s he going to vote? He tell you?”
“How are you going to vote? That’s why you’re here. Aside from the naked asses.”
“I don’t have much influence.”
You and a few others together will, Faraday mused. If Lundin thinks so.
“There is no right answer to 3001,” the Council Member said. “I’ve been mulling the idea of abstaining.”
Faraday looked at him. “You won’t abstain,” he said. Emphatically.
“Abstaining is a terrible idea,” the Council Member said. “I have to mix myself into this debate. I don’t know which way to vote.”
Faraday was scooping out the man’s indecision and was about to deposit the desired side of his customer’s debate when the Council Member’s expression went wide. Faraday followed the man’s line of sight to the dressing-room door.
The man doing most of the shoving was smaller than Dowd who was guarding the door. He became more insistent, the shover, arched forwards, used street grabs to hustle Dowd aside, get through the door.
Faraday bolted upright but he was too far away. Iommi was trotting down the aisles from the lap lounge but Faraday didn’t think Iommi’d make it in time.
The shover, a swarthy man with shiny hair, he pulled a blade from an ankle holster. Just as Faraday thought the man would gut Iommi — Faraday was also too far to get an accurate read on the man’s intent — Swarthy swiveled and ran for the stages.
The Winged Lady was in that part of her act when she turned to grace her fans with full frontal. She squealed and fell over backwards. Swarthy’s torso was up over the middle stage’s lip when Iommi took him by both ankles and ripped him down.
Swarthy’s head hit the stage, Iommi’s raised knee, the floor. He was carried towards the dressing room and through the door.
Faraday was inside immediately, Lundin right behind him.
Iommi had Swarthy in a chair, standing behind the assailant, pinning the man’s arms back.
Kitten was fixing her makeup at her station. On the upper left corner of her mirror was a picture of herself as a man, on the upper right a photo of the new her. She got lipstick across her cheek to the ear as the commotion burst in.
The Nicotine Queen, at her station, was bare from the waist up. There was shaving cream on her underarms, a woman’s razor in one hand.
Emmie came in through the rear stage door, hysterical.
“Kitten,” Faraday said. “Take Emmie upstairs and calm her down.”
“From what? What happened?”
“Get her out of here,” Faraday boomed. He was looking at no one but Swarthy. “Lundin, you go back out there. Do your thing, everybody’s calm. I don’t want anyone leaving.”
“Right.”
“Where’s Kink?”
Nobody answered.
“The music doesn’t stop,” Faraday said. “Dowd, Nadezhda gives out no more lap dances, she’s onstage.”
“Okay,” he said, leaving.
“Tamm, you too, get out there.”
“Faraday, my armpits. Five minutes.”
“Out there, now.”
She wiped the shaving cream off, changed quickly into an outfit, left.
“Whores,” Swarthy said. His hair had a sharp cowlick down the center of his forehead. The excitement hadn’t dislodged it. He wrestled with Iommi but there was no getting out of that chair.
“Whores,” Faraday repeated. “You’re gonna pretend you’re here cause you hate women?”
“Oh I love women. I love them as often as I can. But your women, them I hate, your women are hussies.” There was blood on his teeth. “If you knew where I’m from, who I — ”
“I know where you’re from,” Faraday said.
“So why should I lie? Your wife is beautiful, fucking unattainable she is so perfect.”
“This is where you were pressing to get in, backstage,” Faraday said. “What would you like, now you’re here?”
“Deface merchandise.”
“Iommi, where’s his knife?” Faraday said.
“My pocket.”
“Cut him,” Faraday said. “In the bath
room so there’s no fucking mess. Not into pieces but scar him good. All over but especially his face and especially his groin if you can stomach that.”
“I’ve an iron constitution,” Iommi said.
“What he would’ve done to my wife, imagine what, and do it to him worse.”
This is when Swarthy threw his fit, trying to tip the chair over, get out of it sideways, use the sweat from his hands as lubricant to pull out from Iommi’s grip. Swarthy’s face was red like he had a mouthful of hot briquets. Iommi held him in place so rigidly and securely, one of Swarthy’s bones cracked. The tirade ended right then.
Briggs came in. Lundin had sensed him loitering outside on the street, went and dragged him in, briefed him in ten words or less, threatened him into the dressing room.
“I’ll do it,” Briggs told Faraday. “Give me his knife, I’ll handle it top to bottom.”
“He gets dumped in Central Park at night,” Faraday said. “Or anywhere it’ll take him a good twelve hours to be found. You cut him deep, Briggs. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Faraday.”
“I gave Iommi some instructions, follow those.”
“I’ll do better than Iommi,” Briggs said, his left hand near his own throat, covering the white of his clerical collar.
Faraday composed his face and went out to the main room. Most of the customers had remained. Talking as if something had happened, but they were still there.
The Nicotine Queen and Nadezhda were up there dancing hard. Had skipped their stripteases, were naked and making distractions of themselves. They were dancing together on the main stage and close to its edge to prove there was no longer any danger.
And they were dancing together in a way that could have gotten Tattletail shut down.
Lundin was jumping from table to table, soothing things further.
Faraday went to Council Member Vianney’s table but the man was gone.
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THIRTY-SIX
WEDNESDAY, Matins: 2nd Nocturne
It wasn’t the knocking that woke Calder, it was the whispering. The knocking his sleeping mind translated as part of the city’s incessant machinery. The whispering didn’t translate and it shook him awake.