Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  He hoped it wasn’t Rook. He’d seen him Tuesday afternoon, passed him in the bar on Rook’s way out and Calder’s way in.

  On the in/out pass-by, Calder had taken the Realtor’s card from his pocket, the one he’d gotten from the wife on Staten Island. “All the information on here’s out-of-date,” he’d told Rook.

  “And.”

  “I tracked her new office down. Wouldn’t give me her numbers, she’s too exclusive. But I weaseled she’s got a showing tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. I have chores of my own today.”

  The rest of Calder’s day he’d done nothing, pretty much. Read some of Watership Down in his room.

  It was Wednesday and Calder got out of bed in his boxers, turned on the nightstand’s lamp and answered the door without even checking.

  “I flew past your bartender,” Tamm said, coming inside. “He might be up here in a minute. I ran by without a Hello. He works late.”

  “There’s late drinkers.” Calder left the door ajar and was about to turn and address Tamm when someone knocked. “Calder, that woman,” Pal said. He put his hand on the door. “She seemed distressed, I didn’t hop the counter to tackle her.”

  “She’s here, it’s fine,” Calder said. His voice was tired. He was only just coming to realize there were two people around him and some sort of situation he was going to be in the middle of, or at least privy to. “Let her up whenever she wants.”

  “Sotto doesn’t give permi — ”

  “Sotto’s probably asleep,” Calder said. “Whenever she likes, Pal.”

  “But tell her no flying past me,” Pal said and shut the door.

  “I get you in trouble?” She was sitting on the bed, arms folded tightly. Her body had the posture of tension, her limbs and joints and the muscles in her face.

  Calder had to look away from the lamp. It was too bright but there was only the one setting. Tamm’s body slowly materialized.

  “Something happen?” he said. “What’s the time?”

  “Past midnight,” she said as she took off her jacket. She was in her work uniform, this one the pinkish skin he’d seen her wearing his first night at Tattletail. The top was askew, barely hiding a pale breast. “I just got off, I couldn’t even stay to change I had to just leave, to just desert. Faraday made us keep on dancing even after it happened and wouldn’t let Dez and me off the stage for hours. Fucking hours. I think he forgot to tell Lundin it was okay, we could go home. As if I could go there with my collection of dancers to keep me company. I’d have punched Doris Humphrey through the glass.”

  Calder took her elbows and brought her arms forwards, held her hands.

  “I was prepping in the dressing room so I didn’t see. Dez told me later, she had a perfect view.”

  “Of?”

  “Some looney trying to bust his way into the dressing room, where I was at the time. Iommi does his job, stops this guy but then doesn’t do his job because the madman, this guy, he leaps onstage. He’s got a … ” She paused to catch her breath, which was running away. “Knife.”

  “How big?” Calder said. As if it fucking mattered. I was shaking my head at that question. How big. Right, Fish? How fucking stupid a question.

  Tamm said, “And he’s all the way up there and standing right over the Winged Lady, Dez told me, about ready to slice her throat when Iommi got him. The music kept on but the place went quiet. I heard it from where I was.”

  “How’d he manage to climb all the way up to the Winged Lady?” Calder pressed her hands in his but they were rattling like teeth. “Don’t you have somebody down there, you know, a gate guardian?”

  “Iommi, Dowd, they roam. Sometimes Dowd’s squatting in front of the stages. People sitting there, usually they’re the tame ones. It’s the lap dancees and frat boys we worry about.”

  “Only the two bouncers.”

  “She’s not a big club, Calder.” Tamm was able to look at him. Her makeup was a child’s finger painting.

  He gave up on her hands and rubbed her waist. “This lunatic madman psychotic — ”

  She laughed stiffly.

  “What happened with him?”

  “The dressing room. Where he wanted to go all along, but not like that. Faraday took over from Iommi. Maybe Briggs, too. I can’t remember.”

  “So you don’t have to worry anymore.”

  “Can we get under the covers? I can feel dirt on my bikini and I’d like to take it off but I don’t wanna talk here naked.”

  Calder lifted the comforter, Tamm got in and changed into nothing. He imagined all her outfits had dirt on them, from the congealed dirty glances she inspired to the dirty horny pants she rode on the velveteen couch.

  He got in next to her, put an arm over her stomach. They were both facing the wall, Calder glad to offer his body’s warmth to her.

  When her hands stopped shaking (and rocking the whole damn bed) she said, “Faraday made Dez and me take the stage right after. Soon as the Winged Lady comes in, we go out. Floorboards were still warm. I thought I saw that asshole’s boot print. Terrified. I was goddam mortified. What if he’s not alone? Iommi, he’s occupied, all I’ve got is fat Dowd. What kind of man wants to stab a beautiful woman?”

  “I’ve heard of sick people stealing into racetracks at night to carve the horses in the stalls,” Calder said. “Far as I know, there isn’t even a name for that kinda sickness. People are, they, there aren’t always reasons. But how could you dance with that on your mind?”

  “I don’t recall which routine it was. I’ve only a few but I know them so well I could do them — I was gonna say blindfolded, but I don’t wanna think about closing my eyes. I stripped fast, me and Dez, to placate the crowd. Get them distracted. I don’t know why, I didn’t care about them. Dez and I were on the middle stage, we danced with each other. It wasn’t my idea and I didn’t care for it but it felt, it was like, but someone was telling me to. In my ear. Not Dez, of course, she was scared as I was.”

  Lundin or Faraday, Calder thought. Kinkaid, if he was anywhere near.

  “Forgot my cigarette I was rushed out to the crowd so fast. He’s a demon,” she said, “Faraday. All I wanted was to go, come see you. Instead of, we should’ve closed, you know? I had to work till the end of my shift, and to Dez’s which ends an hour later. Most of the time onstage, the side stages by then. Very few breaks. By the end I was asleep on my feet and not cause I was tired. Understand? It was fatigue, that isn’t the same.”

  Calder rubbed his forehead against the back of her neck, so she’d feel him understanding.

  “Fucking Faraday,” she said. “Another time.” Fury was deep under her voice, like bass. “I was giving a dance to this old lovely geezer used to come see me every Thursday. His wife was dead, he claimed.”

  Her body was slackening. Calder wanted to stroke her back, her bent legs. He also didn’t want her to think him aroused, because he wasn’t and knew enough that he shouldn’t be. He couldn’t deduce where was the correct spot to touch her so he left his arm across her stomach.

  “This geezer,” Calder said.

  “Was a gentleman. Showed me the same plastic picture holder flips down, pictures of his grandkids before we started, always. He was proud of them. I used to know each of their occupations, some of their names.”

  “Is it unusual, this kind of customer?” Calder said.

  “I’m doing my dance, gentle cause of his bones, I get up off him, and he’s not moving.”

  Calder had to swallow a laugh and buried the swallow in a cough. “Dead?”

  “Must’ve been a stroke cause I don’t know when it happened, his body didn’t flinch. His eyes were the same. Or heart attack, whichever is the one doesn’t flop you around.”

  Calder couldn’t swallow or cough this time; he had to laugh, and did.

  She threw a hard elbow into his ribs and because he wasn’t tensed or ready, it hurt.

  “You think I was laughing when it happened, right between my le
gs? I murdered him.”

  “Of course you weren’t laughing.”

  “But I murdered him?”

  “I’m sure he was way too old for that kind of attention,” Calder said.

  “Cold sweat, right away,” she said. “I didn’t scream, I’m no screamer. Least he didn’t fall on his side or roll onto the floor. He was considerate about it.”

  “In death,” Calder said.

  She threw another elbow but he was prepared for this one.

  “I calmly sprinted to Iommi and he knew there was trouble before I got there.”

  “Cause of the calm sprinting,” Calder said.

  “Him and Kink carried out the sweet old guy, holding him like he’s drunk, his arms over their shoulders. A few blocks from Tattletail they put him in a cab by himself. Dead. He died right between my legs and took a cab.”

  Calder felt terrible for having laughed, so he pulled her closer. She obliged.

  “Faraday, that night, he kept you on the floor.”

  “I had three more lap dances booked to go. Then I was due onstage. Between my legs he died,” she said. “I didn’t have sex for months. Six, could’ve been eight, nine.”

  “I’m not so sure I’m brave enough to try it with you again myself, that couch.”

  She let go a light giggle.

  “There’s another club opening, not too far,” she said. “I could still walk to work. Should I try out?”

  “If you don’t feel safe,” he said.

  “Yeah, but it could happen anywhere.”

  “But it’s happened here twice, twice under Faraday’s watch,” he said. “We could sleep on it,” although he was feeling very awake.

  Her hands began shaking again and she clamped them on his nearer leg. Her hips shifted. “Someone came by my apartment from the club Monday. I haven’t seen you since Monday? How could you let that much time pass by us? I was asleep, I knew it wasn’t gonna be you, I’d warned you I’d be sleeping afternoons.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I can’t avoid him but now I see I got to beware. I was scared. I was hoping you’d show.”

  Calder asked for more but she wasn’t talking so he went in and got it from her. Then wrapped an amnion of peace over her mind. The hands slowed, her breathing leveled.

  He would have turned off the lamp but Tamm was wading into sleep and he didn’t want to move her by disentangling their embrace. He thought she’d like to sleep with the light on anyway.

  All this spying on Calder and Tamm started reminding me of my ex.

  I hate being reminded of my ex.

  Twenty-one months we dated. How does she break up with me? In person? No, on the phone. What kind of narcissistic coward breaks up with you over the phone?

  What was she doing at the time? Was she crying? Drunk? Curled up on a chair by the window, chain-smoking? She’s ironing her dress for work the next day. I saw. I looked in on her, ironing.

  Not twenty-four months so I can say it was two years we had, not eighteen months so I can say we were together a year and a half. I gotta say twenty-one months. In Limbo.

  Since then I’ve done some things to her I’m not proud of, neither am I ashamed. Made her life harder than it had to be. Bruised her courtship with the man she’d marry, the celebrity chef. Who is, by the way, too handsome to be so good a cook. Get his own show on TV someday. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.

  She didn’t break my heart, she caused it to implode. I was in a haze for months. Emmie was worried. My ex, she knew all about me, my talents, and maybe that was part of our parting. Maybe why I hate these talents sometimes.

  No. Fuck her.

  She’s still with the mayor’s office, so after leaving Calder with Tamm I decided, look in on her, the way I sometimes do. Rarely. More often than I’d admit to you.

  It was about an hour or so after midnight but I tried City Hall, that’s where she usually is on a weekday, no matter the time.

  She was there, with Hizzoner. And a third guy. Apparently they were near the end of some conversation. Her and Hizzoner had come from a fund-raising dinner, I don’t know where at. A lot of other mayors from around the country had been invited.

  My ex, she had some grey in her hair when we were together. (Eighteen months! Limbo!) Remember, she’s fifteen years older than I am. It looks wonderful on her, the grey. She looks better grey than brunette. Unlikely, paradoxical, but true. A beautiful woman.

  As I was listening to them, she said, “The woman on my left, her husband’s mayor of some city in north Florida.”

  “Pensacola,” Hizzoner said.

  “Right, Pensacola, it had me thinking soda,” my ex said. “The wife, she tilts her plate with a finger and says, ‘This one?’ She’s young enough to be her husband’s granddaughter.”

  “And I tell her, ‘No,’ ” Hizzoner said. “ ‘That’s your salad plate. They’re gonna clear it away for the next course.’ ”

  My ex said, “ ‘Which will be salmon, your fish plate.’ ”

  Hizzoner said, “Then I tell her, ‘After that’s the dessert plate, they’re gonna clear the fish plate, too.’ ”

  “She screams,” my ex said, “yelling, ‘This is a $3,000-a-plate raiser, and I don’t get to keep any?’ ”

  Hizzoner said, “Then I tell her, ‘What do you think this is, The Franklin Mint?’ ”

  The other man in the room with them, he laughs. His name’s Derwatt.

  I always liked Derwatt. He’d gotten rich with the mayor in the private sector, before politics. This is no secret. They’re best friends. Now he’s the mayor’s campaign leader, chief speech writer, counselor, shoulder. He doesn’t just have the mayor’s ear, he owns that ear.

  Not one of us, like me and Lundin say, but in his own way, more powerful, subtler. A Svengali, a Rasputin. A hack, but a very savvy hack.

  One day I followed Derwatt around. On foot, for real followed him. Picked my opportunity, went up to him on the street but he wanted nothing to do with me.

  A jerk, but I’ve always admired him.

  Yet he reminds me of my ex, too, so fuck him. Fuck Calder and Tamm, and fuck him, too.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Wednesday, early Terce

  The door was open which was unsurprising, there was to be an open house in the morning at ten. No one was in the hallway outside. No witnesses. Calder went in first.

  The foyer was empty but the apartment had a foyer and that says plenty about its size and worth. What they saw moving inwards was sparsely furnished. Four bedrooms, five baths, ninth floor, ceilings you could play basketball in there. On the market for two days and would be seduced by a bidding war in three.

  They went down the hall on the right. This place had halls, plural. Calder and Rook were tracking the sound of a conversation. Mostly a woman talking, but sometimes a man. And the regular creaking a box spring makes.

  They were having sex in a child’s pink bedroom. The bed was too small for them; the man, on bottom, his legs jutted from out the sheets to his knees.

  The shades were halfway up for some sun. There was another building not twenty yards away with their windows west. Anyone over there wouldn’t have needed a telescope, like so many perverts in the city.

  The couple was in a corner room, and with the awkward positioning of the bed, neither the man nor the woman could see the door. Calder was about to go in when Rook shot an arm out to bar the way. Put a finger to his lips, crossed his arms, leaned on the jamb.

  The woman was doing most of the work. The bed had been rocked from its original position, you could see the indentations in the carpet. Half the tiny comforter was bunched around her waist. Every few seconds Rook could see her bobbing right tit.

  She was talking dirty and was good at it. The man was good at it, too, but not as good as her.

  “Whenever you’re finished defiling the baby’s bed, you can stop,” Calder said.

  She fell off the bed on the window side. He sat up like someone had sh
oved a beer bottle in his rectum, and then he covered himself with the sheets.

  She got to her feet, naked but bold. “Didn’t you lock the door?” she spat at her partner, Rutland, the Council Speaker’s third son.

  Rook walked her to the adjoining bathroom, commanded, “You’ll stay in here,” and slammed the door shut.

  “Get into that chair,” Calder said to the man.

  “It’s for a kid, I’ll get stuck.”

  “Get in the chair,” Calder said. Scornfully.

  The man got up wearing the comforter like a skirt.

  “Leave that,” Rook said.

  The man did as told. “Are you part of some kind of sting? We only used her listings a few times for this.”

  “What kind of work you do?” Rook said. “That you can be playing around with her middle of the morning.”

  “I’m on disability.”

  Rook laughed and pointed at the bed. “How disabled could you be? Small mattress like that?”

  Calder lowered the shades. “Hadn’t really expected you,” Calder said. “Her, yes. We were gonna ask her where you were.”

  “Whatever it is, you, this, you have to ask me I’m all naked?”

  Calder looked for the man’s jeans, plucked them off the floor with two distasteful fingers and slung them at Rutland. Calder sat on the bed. Rook stood. Rutland wriggled into the jeans, which was interesting to watch given the size of the chair he was in.

  “Call your Dad,” Calder said.

  “He’s in meetings most of the time. He’s a politician.”

  “Call him.” This time with more insistence.

  Rook advanced a few steps.

  “I’ll call him, about what?”

  “Int 3001,” Calder said. “Tell him you been reading the papers, you been talking to your brother over at Honda.”

  “I don’t read the papers, I don’t watch the news, it’s all manipulated and controlled. And I don’t talk to my brother.”

  Calder said, “You want him to get behind the Green side, for the conversion of the ConEd plants.”

  Rook said, “It’s gonna be a call with oomph. You believe in this. He listen to you?”

  “I’ve volunteered for him. I also go to rallies at City Hall, embassies.”