Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  He left Adelard’s inner office, motioned to the candy people, and walked towards the front door. Dazed and a little awed.

  Majella followed him out onto the street. His cheeks were wet. “I wouldn’t come back,” the man said. “Fact, I wouldn’t ever come to Queens, much less this part of it.”

  Rook faked a punch and Majella recoiled. “Next time I’m in Queens it’ll be to find you.”

  “We live in a society,” Majella said. “We don’t threaten each other.”

  “We, I. Don’t speak for me,” Rook said.

  back to top

  FORTY

  Thursday, Prime

  Calder was in a cramped Cuban take-out/eat-in overlooking Adelard’s office, eating his breakfast slowly. He and Rook had come to Queens separately this morning, waited in separate eateries (Rook at the diner) for Adelard to show.

  Calder had gotten there via the subway, on his own. The Cuban place was unabashedly loyal; the walls were all flags, enlarged maps, postcards from relatives, Fidel caps and Che berets hanging on hooks.

  But dingy. The Formica on the few tables was chipped. The lights had yellowed. The floor was bereft of a tile here and there, but as an establishment it didn’t seem to be mourning its appearance. The kind of place so busy with locals the owner didn’t have to maintain it.

  Calder had ordered a Carne Pastelle and a cafe cubano off the pictorial menu above the register and was having them by the table near the window. The pastelle was exceptional, the espresso was too sweet but he wasn’t paying much attention as he ate and drank. Rook and a man were having a heated discussion outside Adelard’s office. Rook was supplying most of the fire, then he appeared to end their talk by snapping his (Rook’s) wrist in the air, throwing a T-shirt at Majella, and walking away towards the LIRR. Majella stared down Rook’s back, picked the shirt off the street, then went inside.

  Their great roundabout plan hadn’t worked, the sons had proven themselves a useless exercise. Calder reached for and glided into Rook’s mind easily. Bypassing Rook’s defenses without detection.

  Calder felt isolation, a sensation that confronted him at every town he’d ever hitchhiked, stowed away, or driven to. He never knew where he’d stay, how long he’d be there, would work be available. Would anyone trust his skeptical talents, would those talents offend a zealot to run him from their borders. Friends, a lover, would he need to beg for food if broke.

  Each town was new this way. He’d avoided large cities because they were uncertain longer. Rural communities had treated him best. And best of all, for his chosen specialty, the hospitals were smaller and desperate. Either willing to believe or shunning him immediately.

  He’d spent a year in a tiny town in New Hampshire. There was of course a hospital, but also a larger hospice with the kindest people. Families paid him what they could. He stayed in the homes of these various families in a sort of circular hotel.

  Some of the hospice nurses took him to bed, and some of them he took to bed. There’s a difference.

  This hospice had wanted him to stay but, eventually, about thirteen months after his arrival, he’d had to leave. Something about being inside the head of a patient as they died left a smudge that never dried.

  Some locales — if the wrong sort found out what he was selling — Calder didn’t last a day. Plenty places still confuse certain things with witchcraft.

  He’d found that New Yorkers apparently embraced what he could do. Him and the two opposing crews. Even in a city whose unspoken motto is Cynicism. Calder had never believed there could be assignments that involved swerving multiple minds or the alteration of public policy.

  Calder was surprised he’d lasted here this long and didn’t know how much longer he’d last. Every aspect of the company he kept was a departure from his self-training. Tamm aside.

  The pastelle was gone. He didn’t remember finishing it but there were sticks of meat lingering between his teeth. He pushed the paper plate away, an act he knew was poor manners but seemed to him the normal culmination of a meal.

  “Take that?” a little kid said. Six or seven.

  Calder didn’t hear him, he was focused on Adelard’s office.

  The kid sat across from him. “Why are you eating alone? Don’t you know anyone?”

  “I eat alone a lot,” Calder said.

  “That’s sad.”

  “I used to be very sad but that’s gone now, I’m not sad like that anymore,” Calder said.

  “You look sad. My Dad says people eat alone are good tippers. They feel like they owe for the empty seat. Are you a good tipper?”

  “And who’s your Dad?”

  “The cook. He’s also the owner.”

  “You help out,” Calder said. “You bus tables?”

  “Why do people say bus? I clear tables. Where does a bus come in? You have no friends?”

  “I’m still making them.”

  “Hijo,” the father said.

  “Okay,” the kid yelled out. To Calder: “But you’re so old, you should’ve made them by now. I have friends from since I was young.”

  “So how old are you now?”

  “Seven and a half.”

  “My friends,” Calder said, “I’ve stashed a lot of them in different places.”

  “What?” the kid said.

  “Let me ask you. How long would you stay where you weren’t wanted? You didn’t feel like it was home.”

  “Maybe there’s one or two people you like,” the kid said.

  “But you didn’t have any friends, you’re eating breakfast alone. How long?”

  Majella hadn’t gone back into the office yet. He was smoking a cigarette. He was concentrating on Adelard’s schedule across the next few weeks. People who’d be coming in for meetings. Legislature he’d be reading to give Adelard a summary. Calls to put through and calls to die on hold. Invitations gladly accepted or courteously but implacably refused.

  Calder could see, this man whose preoccupations were calmed by the cigarette, he was Adelard’s sentry. It would take more than phone calls for the sentry to influence Adelard’s vote. Calder realized what was necessary and that it would take some groundwork.

  “Who’s that you’re staring at?” the kid said. “Is he one of your two friends?”

  Calder stood and took a battered fifty from his wallet. It had been with him since Missouri. “Keep it.”

  “Really?”

  “Or buy a toy for your sister,” Calder said.

  “How’d you know I have a sister? She’s too young to clear tables like me.”

  “Hijo. Leave the customer alone.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Thursday, Compline

  The club was bustling. It was Thursday night, coworkers in teams bitching about their bosses, their projects, their deadlines. Because Thursday was the day before they were nudged onto their families who had no conception of their pressures or its concurrent vocabulary.

  The rightmost stage was Tress and her whipping hair, dancing to “Love Rollercoaster.”

  The leftmost was Pearly’s, and at the moment she had the room. She was dancing to urgent techno. She danced from her shoulders and her hands, like a teenager first learning how. There were thrusts and kicks, but it was mostly twirling hands and shoulders, and undulations curving her spine.

  Pearly. Customers who thought themselves clever gave her last names like Gates and Whites and Luster. Those were the three most popular. She faked her responding laughs like she faked her orgasms.

  Onstage she wore contacts to make her eyes silvery glass. Her bikinis were a metallic white, made to look brittle. Marcelled flaxen hair so stiff with pomade it seemed as if it might shatter.

  In her booth backstage Pearly airbrushes her skin the color of eggshell.

  Once women pass twenty-two, that’s the age. In my experience, Fish. Under twenty-two, they try and look older. Over twenty-two, they want to look younger. Some who are over twenty-two and are extremely vain — or have a career the illusion of
youth is vital — they try and reach back for the age when they were trying to look older: say sixteen, seventeen.

  Pearly was twenty-three but had very large breasts for her inner fifteen-year-old.

  There are men who come into a reputable club like Tattletail and they have legal and moral security. All the dancers are guaranteed over twenty-one. No moral conflicts but conflicting appearances, and appearances can be deceiving. Pearly was the worst deceiver there, and she profited from it. She wore no pearl earrings, though, that would be redundant.

  Calder was at a table at left where he couldn’t see Pearly or the Winged Lady’s center stage because of an obtrusive support column. The Winged Lady wasn’t on yet but most of the patrons were seated at the best tables for when she was. She was late for her first scheduled act; Pearly was filling time till the Lady came out.

  Calder was relaxed. The club was noisy and overpriced, most of the dancers were too aggressive, but there was a truce between them and their customers. Like between our guards and the inmates, us. An understanding without which there’d be riots because one so outnumbers the other.

  Calder didn’t fear for the Nicotine Queen who was at a table with three grinning men, smoking their cigarettes. She hadn’t noticed Calder, who planned on seeing her after work, but that wasn’t the main reason he’d come tonight.

  Behind the column was a good spot for him to brainstorm. He was now avoiding hospitals. The club had the benefit of semidarkness, of a stranger’s solitude if wished.

  Calder sensed Rook was losing interest in the project but Calder still required his help. The man was a local. He was stubborn but he was decisive. Turning Majella was going to necessitate a persistent and diligent severity, different from how they’d used the sons. Majella was in a position to influence Adelard daily. Calder would need to find Majella a reason, and his way of life might get bartered in casualty. Calder wasn’t certain that this was above him, but he knew it wasn’t beneath Rook.

  There were five days till the vote. Calder planned on waking Rook early tomorrow to get him to recommit.

  Calder had never been important. He’d felt important, these last few days, working the Int, the contract. But that importance was no longer important. It had turned into a trial of validation. Prove to himself, and to Sotto, that he belonged — in the city, and that the city belonged to him. The contract had become a vessel with Rook a tool, a lathe.

  Affirmation, definitiveness.

  The Nicotine Queen saw Calder from her table but didn’t wave. She was at work. Calder nodded at her.

  Lundin saw him as well. Calder knew Lundin might. Neither was looking for another conversation. Lundin did wave but didn’t come over.

  Briggs came over.

  “I’m sorry about that other night,” Briggs said. “The scare with Tamm’s old boyfriend. The jet and all.”

  “I wasn’t scared,” Calder said. “And Lundin already apologized.”

  “You weren’t scared. Lundin could’ve melted your brain and we would’ve laughed, you included, the three of us including you cause you wouldn’t know any better, wouldn’t even know your own name.”

  “Both of us know it would never’ve gotten that far,” Calder said. “How about what I could’ve done? You don’t even know me.”

  Briggs smiled at Calder and took a chair. He put his hand across the table. “What say we agree to amnesia. Hey there, I’m Briggs.”

  “Calder.”

  They shook hands. Briggs was a knuckle crusher like Rook but Calder pretended he wasn’t in pain.

  “You’re fresh to the city,” Briggs said. “I can see it in your stare.”

  “Everyone in New York,” Calder said, “they’re scholars with doctorates on New York.”

  “Spoken like a true newcomer,” Briggs said, who had no idea what a doctorate was. He knew it sounded like doctor. “Lundin told me you’d had a talk together.”

  “In his car.”

  “If you’d any notion what’s happened in that car over the years, you might not have gotten in. The backseat, the trunk, they’ve seen trauma.”

  “I was in front. You have a parish? Parishioners?”

  “You can do what Lundin does?” Briggs said.

  “What does Lundin do?”

  Briggs laughed, snorting. “I been a part of this club three years to see what the boys backstage can do. What Sotto and his girls Downtown can do. I’m thinking a number, tell me what it is.”

  “Briggs, go down the Jersey Shore for that.”

  “Lundin offered you work. I’m with Lundin, aren’t I? Tell me what number. It’s a whole number, no fractions.”

  “This is carny stuff,” Calder said.

  “Simple proof,” Briggs said.

  There was rage around Calder’s eyes but Briggs was too gleeful to notice, still high on Lundin’s promotion.

  “Tamm’s address, 400,” Calder said.

  “Holy shit, that’s good. Context, too, that’s real good.”

  “Enough?” Calder said. “I don’t enjoy stupid parlor games, they cheapen us. Me and people like Lundin.”

  “But not people like me. Okay, what’s my Mom’s name? She’s dead but you should be able to get her name.”

  “Fuck off, Briggs.”

  “That’s not her name, but you know it. Lundin doesn’t let me play like this anymore. C’mon, I’ll leave you alone after this one.”

  “We both know you won’t.”

  “It’s fun,” Briggs said.

  “I could sit here all night till closing and you’ll be asking me who was your first, what’s your favorite movie, how many times you seen it, give you the names of all the cats you ever owned.”

  “I hate cats, I’m for dogs. How about my first apartment? Where was it?”

  “Lundin’s calling.”

  “Ha,” Briggs said flatly. “That one’s old.”

  “Why don’t you go and see what he wants?” Calder said.

  “You’re slippery. I’d rather play more games.”

  “Bed-Stuy, I guess it’s called,” Calder said. “Going now? Or are you gonna throw a Frisbee for me to catch.”

  “Lundin, he seem nice to you?”

  “Pleasant cause he was asking me for something,” Calder said.

  “He seem understanding,” Briggs said, “forgiving, lenient?”

  “We didn’t talk all that long, it was a quick drive, SoHo and back.”

  Briggs hunched over the table like a coconspirator. “Because he’s none of those things, Calder.”

  “You don’t want me joining.”

  “I wanna make sure you’re not wasting anyone’s time, and that includes your own. You come across skinny but tough. Reedy you are, but tough?”

  “Go visiting Tamm’s apartment again and I will tear out fistfuls of your mind. I’ll cut through Lundin first if that’s what it takes.”

  “I walked her to work. The city’s not as improved as — People still get mugged, shot. Apartments broken into.”

  “By people like you.”

  “Never owned a gun. I like talking to you. A fucking challenge it is. I don’t think you’re used to having a boss. Lundin’s gonna be a boss. He has to answer to Faraday and he’s a bigger boss. That’s two people you’ll be worrying about disappointing when you’re outside these doors for them. Hell, in here, too.”

  “Lundin said I’d answer to him.”

  “We all of us answer to Faraday. Lundin, some days he won’t even speak to you, his moods. We once went half a week in that haunted car without a word. He’s more valleys than peaks. On jobs. You ever done something vicious you regretted?”

  “I’ve crossed lines,” Calder said.

  “Well Lundin lives his life outside those lines you’ve crossed. We were up in a — ”

  The music and lighting changed.

  “Rotating the dancers,” Briggs said. “Maybe the Winged Lady’s finally coming out. We were in the Seagram Building, it’s thirty-eight storeys high. We must’ve bee
n on thirty-seven. How can they fight fires that high? Seeing a man about this, his, I forget. He was getting divorced, his wife wanted something out of him. It was, was, old family pictures,” he said, the latter part quickly. “Ridiculous but that’s what we were there for. In a hundred-thousand-dollar office, for photos. An album. Husband’s being reluctant, what with the hems and the haws. Lundin has me go for the window — ”

  Briggs stopped because Faraday was standing there, a shoulder against the column.

  “Go on,” Faraday said.

  Briggs gave Faraday his seat and walked away.

  “You’re Faraday,” Calder said. He stifled an urge to sit up straight.

  “I’ve had one defection from Sotto,” Faraday said from Briggs’ seat. “Sotto might not get over it a second time.”

  “Told me he wouldn’t,” Calder said. “I haven’t made a decision.”

  “But when you do.”

  “Wouldn’t that be Lundin’s worry?” Calder said.

  “It would. Taking you in or not, that isn’t my decision. I’m not sold on is it a good idea.”

  “I didn’t come by for another interview. Lundin even said, if I wanted, I wouldn’t have to meet you at all.”

  “Funny,” Faraday said, “that’s primarily why you came. To meet me.”

  “Not primarily.”

  “Secondary? Tertiary? What comes after tertiary?”

  “I was curious,” Calder admitted. “Now’s a good time, with Lundin’s offer and all. I didn’t believe him, he said there’d be no interaction.”

  “Who can think with all this pussy about?” Faraday said. “You like these girls?” Spreading his hands like a folksy auctioneer. “Was that the primarily? Free peeps?”

  “Isn’t a thing in here I haven’t seen in my own bed, and better,” Calder said.

  “Better than Tamm? In your own bed?”

  They sat in silence for ten minutes. I counted, Fish. Ten fucking minutes in silence. You know how long that feels? Faraday was watching his girls make money and Calder was fending off the man’s decreasingly sneaky probings.