by Adam Connell
“Probably waited for me to fall asleep,” Rook said. He thumbed a scab of yolk from his chin. “I sleep like a deaf bear.”
“Sotto allows this?” Calder said.
“He hasn’t been around for days, a week. Seems like since you arrived.” Rook cut up the last of the eggs, bacon, toast, and hash browns with his fork. His knife lay unused.
Calder’s plate hadn’t made as much progress as Rook’s.
“What’d you do with her?” Rook said.
“Had to take her Uptown, home.”
“After she calmed down.”
“Which was a good fucking while,” Calder said. “Couldn’t let her stay. I didn’t feel safe, either.”
“But you came back,” Rook said over a strip of bacon that wagged as he talked.
Calder said, “I’d like one of them alone.”
“You said you had one alone, bottom of the stairs last weekend. I told her to leave.”
“Not because of them,” Calder said.
“But I told her,” Rook said. “It was more universal advice than friendly.” He sucked butter from his middle finger. “I keep telling Pal, use margarine. A meal like this it needs margarine, maybe egg whites. Skim milk.”
Calder ate half of one egg. “I didn’t sleep.”
“You look it. They disciplined each other as kids. All sorts of mischievous games to bulk up, mentally. They also jockeyed the children in their varying neighborhoods. Had them setting mailboxes on fire, spray-painting monuments, stealing cars. Twelve-year-olds stealing cars. The twins arranged all that, for practice. For days like they need to bust into someone’s room. Your room.”
Rook finished his hash browns, neglecting not a single onion or cubed potato.
“There was a period the two didn’t get along,” he said, “so their then-parents sent them to different schools. Sotto told me about this after he hired them. By way of warning. Their parents could have worried more is how I see it. Raising two monsters.”
Calder decided to finish the one egg. He wouldn’t touch the bacon; he’d always found bacon a risky food.
“At the diner you said you don’t talk when you eat,” Calder said. “Except with Beryl on Mondays was the exception.”
Rook said, “Are you staying in the city? After this assignment?”
“That’s been blown?” Calder said.
“After the assignment.”
“Faraday offered me a job.”
Rook was in the middle of bathing his toast in a yolk pool, and stopped. “Faraday? Directly?” he said.
“Through Lundin,” Calder said.
“They’re gonna pilfer this crew down to a skeleton. No skin on it as it is. What’s better there than here?”
“Didn’t say I was gonna take it,” Calder said.
“I wish I could see past your walls to find out that’s true.”
“I’m not a liar.”
“We’re all of us liars,” Rook said. “You proved me one not two minutes ago.”
Calder looked up at the telly above the bar. NY1 News, the most insipid channel on cable. But Pal liked it, and the TV was his.
“Smaller and smaller,” Rook said, “like a goddam puddle in the sun. You really haven’t made up your mind about Faraday?”
Calder exhaled, pursed his lips. “I haven’t made up my mind about anything.”
“The Nicotine Queen?” Rook said.
“Who you’d like to banish.”
“Even New York? Look, it’s a city mean to visitors, but after awhile everyone considers themselves a native. Never heard of any other place can do that. The city, she supersedes.”
“She’s two-faced,” Calder said.
“She’s a wife and a mistress,” Rook said. He pushed his empty plate aside. It looked like it had come out of the dishwasher. “I’m not gonna tell you how great Faraday isn’t. You haven’t been here long, but long enough to tell good from bad.”
“The twins, though, they’re pure white light.”
“Somewhere in Colorado there’s a husband and wife could neuter them. Or a phenomenal salesman in Alberta — ”
“Alberta, that a state or a city?” Calder said.
“The hell it matters? Anyway, it’s provinces, not states. We go there, Alberta, find a salesman employs our skills but he doesn’t realize it. These people are there, Cal. You were there once and recently, I might fucking add.”
Calder looked again at the telly. Someone familiar was at a lectern speaking.
“What’s the headway on my lap dance with the Winged Lady?”
“Pal,” Calder said, “could you make it loud enough for over here?”
“You say Please and I’ll oblige,” Pal said with a wink.
“Just turn the damn thing up,” Rook said, twisting to face it.
“Please,” Calder said.
“And Thank You are the two magic phrases,” Pal said, and raised the volume.
“ — in a rebroadcast of today’s surprise statement,” the reporter was saying. “Unusual on a Saturday morning.” The image behind the reporter expanded to fill out the whole screen.
“ — that many of you encouraged my run for City Council in next fall’s elections.”
It was Majella, the aide, outside Adelard’s office.
“Mother Mary,” Rook said and slammed a fist on the table.
“To my many supporters, I say I’m sorry. This is my disgrace. I’m sorry. The truth.” He paused. Cameras clicked, but not many. “I’m here to tell the truth. The truth is I’m a gay American.”
Majella took a sip of water. His wife’s face behind him became more and more stern.
Adelard wasn’t there.
“I’ve kept this truth a lie too long.” He extended his left hand towards his audience, took the wedding ring off his finger. “To my family, I’d like to say with deep regret — Not for who I am but what I’ve done about it, which is to hide and deny.”
Majella took another sip, giving the few reporters present a window that they barged through to shout out questions. He accidentally spilled the water setting the glass down on the lectern’s inner shelf. He went on: “I said this is my disgrace. By that I don’t mean being gay, but the sham I’ve built covering it up and causing pain to those nearest me.”
“My opinion, he’s still got a future in politics,” Rook said. “The integrity, right? They’ll be rebroadcasting this all day, stupid NY1.”
“I’m proud. To be gay. To be a New Yorker. An American.”
“Those fucking twins,” Calder said.
“As of this morning I’ve resigned from my post with Council Speaker Adelard and will spend time in private evaluating my past decisions, asking forgiveness from my family, and moving forward.”
“Goddam Piker and the Hun,” Calder said.
“They must really dislike you,” Rook said. “They didn’t sleep, like you didn’t. They must’ve gone right to poor gay Majella’s home.”
Pal was lowering the volume as Majella was saying, “Now I’ll take any questions you might have, but please be discreet.”
After two seconds of infinite impatience, one reporter started the cavalcade with “Mrs. —
FIFTY-ONE
Saturday, late Sext
“There’ll be no more New York for you.”
“That’s what Sotto said.”
Calder and Rook’s Metro-North train had just cleared the Harlem-125th Street stop. That’s where I found them, in the bright afternoon hours after Majella’s proclamation.
They were in a three-seater; Rook had the window, the middle was empty, Calder on the aisle. Scattered in the other seats were newspapers, some jerseyed hoodlums, and two separate businessmen, one crying to himself.
“If you stayed?” Rook said.
“Said he’d hound me, play tricks on me.”
“Jesus,” Rook said, “even The Bronx isn’t safe? No one looks for anyone in The Bronx.”
“There’s Lundin, too,” Calder said. “He told me I coul
d stay I threw Adelard his way. Otherwise he’d carve his goodwill outta me somehow. Or outta someone close.”
“Like me?”
“You’re safe, Rook. He meant someone I cared about.”
A briefcase from one of the special fridges under Pal’s bar was in Calder’s lap. The leather outside and the money inside were still cold. The contract was also inside. It contained the client’s name and emergency numbers, which Rook had used to set up this meeting. This capitulation. The phone numbers were real, the name a fake.
“There was never any staying either way, then,” Rook said.
“I know that.”
“Sotto and Lundin don’t make statements they don’t mean to carry through.”
“That was made clear to me.”
“You’ll have to leave. Why’d you stay so long?”
“Wanted to decide this on my own,” Calder said.
“On your own,” Rook said and huffed. “Since you been here, what’ve you done on your own? Your visas — on both sides — you sure they were beholden to this one job? Not just how hard you tried?”
“You,” Calder said, “you swore you’d do me the favor of seeing this to the end.”
“It is the end,” Rook said. “It’s finished, just not how you wanted.”
Calder opened and closed the briefcase’s latches, opened and closed, opened and closed.
“The assignment was a shitty one,” Rook said. “Too many playing pieces, not enough board. If you can’t stay in the city … ” The sentence died and hung between them like a ghost.
“You really care?” Calder said.
“I never had a protege before.”
Both of them laughed.
“Can’t do what I was before,” Calder said.
“Country, driving, hospitals,” Rook said.
“All that’s what forced me into the city,” Calder said.
“Now you don’t have the city, and you don’t want the country.”
“I can’t fly, I’m scared of planes, I don’t like being that far from the ground. I was telling Tamm,” Calder said, “she could go to the oceans. Be a steward or a purser or whatever it is people run those boats get paid for.”
“Lot of space on the seas,” Rook said, looking out at the low buildings swimming by and trying to imagine horizons of flat water. “All that space on those cruise ships and what it truly is, it’s buoyant isolation with old folks and families with kids. That kinda confinement you’d become a grifter, a simple grifter. Not what you are now. So there’s nothing next.”
Calder didn’t respond.
“There’s Europe,” Rook said, “there is Australia.”
“I don’t like planes. There’s your Canada.”
“Oh Canada,” Rook sang.
“I figured we’d have to wait till Monday,” Calder said.
“There are no weekends for people like these.” Rook reached over to tap the briefcase. “It happens, we have to give the money back. The down payment on big jobs like this one. It happens every blue moon. Some jobs can’t be done, nobody’s fault.”
“We could find fault here,” Calder said.
“About five years ago, me and Sotto and Montford and Kinkaid. There was a pitcher and shortstop wouldn’t retire. The Mets. I remember the team, not the players. This is when Shea was in Queens. These two players were peaking, too. They were buddies from back since grade school. But they were combative with the rest of the team. Owners didn’t want them and didn’t want them going anywhere else neither.”
Rook kept tapping the briefcase, like his tale was inside and he was trying to wake it. “All of us together we couldn’t wrangle past the preposterous amount of agents and managers — and women, God — that insulated these guys.” Rook put his hand on his knee, the story done. “We give back, on occasion, the money. Sometimes. And it has to be before the job is marked to expire, otherwise it’s insincere. And what we are is sincere, right?”
“Sure,” Calder said.
The train’s intercom chimed twice. A man’s recorded voice said:
This station is … Fordham.
This is the train to … North White Plains.
The next station is … Botanical Gardens.
The doors beeped for the blind and fixed lights flashed for the deaf. Calder and Rook got up and got out as the doors opened. Onto a concrete platform fenced left and right by chain link. Like they’d taken a train to prison. There were stone benches and square metal weather huts.
Calder and Rook climbed up clumsy unloved steps, through the ticket office above the tracks, down the steps to the other side.
“Where’re we supposed to stand?” Calder said.
“Here, first pole after the steps the way down.”
Calder and Rook leaned against the specified pole.
“You’d think we’re secret agents, this meeting,” Rook said. “They couldn’t have come to the bar? This is silly.”
“The client gets all this money back?” Calder said with a raise of the briefcase. “How much is in here?”
“It heavy?”
“Very.”
“A lot, then. They get the money and a consolation so we don’t look so inept. We freebie a simple request but it has to be simple.”
“Like we’re genies,” Calder said.
“Smaller than that, Cal, a token. For the shortstop and pitcher, we convinced the third baseman to quit whoring and pills. Both of which he’s doing them simultaneously. Another time, different job, I made a foreman halt construction for a week. Sounds like only seven days but in construction seven days is a month. Made the client a lot of money. Not as much as he’d have made otherwise, but a token.”
“What passes are we giving out on the train today?”
“Lundin’s offer still good? You could work for Lundin,” Rook said. “Take the credit for this, giving back the briefcase.”
“Then there’s Sotto,” Calder said. “I can’t be hiding from someone hiding under somebody else. That’s no life. You don’t know me well but you know me that much.”
“I’m giving advice, not solutions,” Rook said.
“Then I’m under Faraday’s thumb until it’s too much hassle for his other fingers to keep me from Sotto. Then I’m a new Kinkaid.”
“Faraday has a very big hand,” Rook said, grinning. The problem wasn’t his own but he wasn’t delighting in it as much as he normally would.
There was a breeze hitting the station from the west.
“I could talk to Sotto,” Rook said. With apprehension. Not that he wouldn’t do it for Calder because he could use it as a marker; he had very few markers left.
“No, thanks,” Calder said. “Owing you would make it worse.”
For a long second, Rook thought about other people he could influence on Calder’s behalf, but Rook didn’t convince anyone of anything for free, and then the long second was over.
“Tamm?” Rook said.
“Tamm’s part of what’s making it worse.”
Another breeze assailed the station, this time from the north and the Manhattan-bound train. This one was an antique; no fixed lights, a flaccid intercom. Screw the handicapped, am I right, Fish? The MTA? Can’t they afford new trains, all their rate hikes?
Calder and Rook sat in the row they’d been assigned over the phone, facing the front of the car. A real voice, a conductor’s voice, said, “This is the train to Grand Central, Grand Central.”
There were groups of people in the other half of the car, coming in from the suburbs seeking culture.
The seat behind them creaked. Both Calder and Rook craned around to see who it was but a man said, “No.”
Calder did see, before the admonition, that the man was narrow enough to take up less than a single seat. He was sitting low in the seat, had grey hair and large ears and wire glasses with too much reflection on the lenses.
Calder hoisted the briefcase over his shoulder, expecting the man to take it.
“No,” he said again
. He had a deep voice for someone so small. “We didn’t give you the money cause we wanted it back. It wasn’t a loan.”
“You have to take it cause the job’s been killed,” Rook said. “Not by us and not by anybody else. They die like that. Circumstances. Call it suicide. Give him the money again, Cal.”
“There are three days till the vote,” the man said. “That’s three days to pare Adelard. Until then this job’s alive and well enough to run marathons. That’s how healthy.”
“We can’t coax it any further,” Calder said.
“I don’t want the advance returned to me,” the man said. “The truth is you charged too little. What’s in that case, twenty times that we’d never miss it was gone. And what I don’t want is one of your saccharine party favors and a Thanks but who knew?”
No one said anything, and silence gathered. Then Calder, deciding it was their turn, said, “We can’t make it rain.”
“You have three days to make a storm. Make it rain or we buy that bar from Sotto. He won’t say no. We coax, too, in the modern fashion. We’ll purchase any buildings where you’ll relocate, we’ll lubricate you then squeeze you out of the city.”
“In no way does anyone have the resources for that,” Rook said.
“The other side of this contract, they have to see this Int fail. All you have is Adelard. One man you can’t turn, it’s pathetic.”
“Give us another name to turn,” Rook said.
“I’ll give you the same name. Adelard. I’ll give you a second name. Adelard. I’ll give you a third — ”
“Adelard, yes, Adelard, who can’t be turned,” Calder said.
“We’ll poison your well,” the man said. “Word of mouth is everything to you. We have very big mouths.”
Another silence gathered around them. During this silence the train rode into Grand Central’s snaking tunnels.
Look, I’ve been candid about this inability to see underground. I like to think both parties were obstinately mum into the station and Calder and Rook left without waiting for the man behind them who maybe didn’t get up at all. He simply sat waiting for the train to pull out again to have his driver meet him wherever.
Feel free to conjecture different.