Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  “Faraday’s as strong as before,” Lundin said.

  “Fact of it is, I’m glad the old bedsore’s dead,” Hoone said.

  “You what? You are?” Lundin said.

  “Stands to reason. Would you wanna be me the last four years? I’m not unhappy he’s dead.”

  Hoone was sweating. The air in there, and I been to that funeral home before, has no circulation. A pianer, but no air-conditioning.

  “Sure you wanna be telling me this?” Lundin said.

  “I’ll blurt it to Briggs, too.”

  “Cause you can’t help yourself but to talk.”

  “Truer words were never said. If I tell you and Briggs, I know it’ll go no further than you and Briggs.”

  “What’s so bad about it?” Lundin said. “Where was the stress?”

  “Driving highways months at a stretch, nothing but radio? You ever go on a long drive listening to the radio? Stations keep changing on you. Jazz to country, to classical, to light music. Adult contemporary, what the hell does that mean? It’s a conspiracy, the radio. There’s days you get nada but static, and you’re switching and choosing from static to static, which one is best. He won’t allow me satellite. Or even a CB, Chrissakes.”

  “This is your penance, you know that,” Lundin said.

  “Believe you me. Hitchhikers, I actually pick up hitchhikers, the thing everyone knows not to do. For the conversation. Briggs ever mention I call him?”

  “No, but I got it from him anyway,” Lundin said. “I didn’t tell him to stop it, I wouldn’t begrudge you that.”

  “Only a few times a month. He here?”

  “Was,” Lundin said. “Hard to see he still is, all these faces.”

  “Had to use me a pay phone cause out there, out there, you get no reception.”

  “You get static,” Lundin said.

  “Simple as that. Static. I’m months at the wheel, wondering if it’ll be a long year before I find another. It’s like digging around a minefield hoping one will explode. Four fucking years he’s been sick.”

  Hoone was at tears; Lundin knew they weren’t from sorrow.

  “How many more revival tents could I visit? Bible-thumpers? Looking for a real healer.” Hoone wiped his wet eyes. “Honestly, truly. I been waiting for him to die, I want the fun jobs you been living off.”

  “They wouldn’t classify as fun,” Lundin said.

  “Briggs tells me when we talk. It wasn’t fair Faraday chose me over you. Admit that.”

  “Penance,” Lundin said.

  “Truth is, you were there, too.”

  “Not as long as you. I left before it happened. And seeing it happen, I woulda tried and stop it.”

  “This is over six years ago,” Hoone said.

  “At the time it was a very big deal.” Lundin tipped his chin at the open door. “The kid, where’d you catch him?”

  “Chicago,” Hoone said. “To be frank, I was there for deep-dish pizza. That’s what I been doing the last six months, going to places for their food. Key lime pie, sourdough bread, steamed lobster, Gold Creek oysters.”

  “The healers, they were secondary?” Lundin said. “Are you joking?”

  “I kid you not. That’s how it’s been the last six months,” Hoone said. “Finding no one worth bringing back — ”

  “Except last week.”

  “And I get hungry. You can see I haven’t lost any weight.”

  “Chicago,” Lundin said.

  “Point of fact, I never been so lucky. Long story short, I’m lost riding around looking for a Giordano’s Pizzeria, it’s dark now. I see a free clinic. A lit sign’s hanging off the entrance, it says, ‘No Insurance, Cash Only.’ ”

  He waited for a tray of water to come around, took a cup, took a sip, said, “Parched. Cash I can understand, this is an area with no checking accounts. No insurance? I go inside. I watch.”

  “You made them let you watch,” Lundin said.

  “Right as rain. I stretch every once in awhile, yeah. He is for real. Too young but he’ll get powerful. They grow. I hope Faraday lets him grow, doesn’t mark him.”

  “But you’re glad the old man’s dead.”

  “That’s a fact,” Hoone said.

  Faraday was in the room. Lundin hadn’t noticed cause during Hoone’s scattershot admissions, Lundin had been tabulating a checklist of pros and cons to measure if this dowser and all his heresy and bitterness should be snuffed out. Hoone.

  Faraday was in a black suit, black shirt, black necktie. He wasn’t smiling; not that you’d expect him to, but his lips were tight to hide those missing teeth. Despite Kinkaid’s pessimism, Faraday did look better than the day before. He was walking less like he was made of hard candy. A ceramic urn was in his hands. It looked like a big, capped flowerpot, etched with sine curves supposed to be clouds. Or waves.

  The bruises on his face had been attended to by Emmie and her makeup. She walked behind him in a schoolmarmish black frock that was as morose as the occasion. Pearly had bought it for her that morning.

  What little laughter was left in the parlor dried up. They walked together through the crowd, accepting condolences and sympathetic frowns. Faraday didn’t respond to or acknowledge anyone. His left cheek was cleft by a sad tear that had melted Emmie’s heavy concealer to expose a toothpick of purple skin.

  Made their circuit and came back to the door they entered from, in back, its white frame stark against the green wallpaper.

  Standing there was a man who had to be Faraday’s brother. It was his brother. Jace. No one there had ever heard of a sibling — even Emmie till that morning, or myself — and those on the payroll wondered if this stranger shared Faraday’s talents.

  The brothers spoke to each other, and to Emmie, breaking the silence and reviving the room’s stalled conversations. Hoone walked over to guard his find. Briggs returned to his spot at Lundin’s side.

  “Twins are here,” Briggs said.

  Lundin straightened.

  “Over by the plants, left of the good door.”

  Lundin looked around, shook his head.

  “They were here,” Briggs said.

  “I believe you, it’s hard to mistake them,” Lundin said. He started for Faraday. He heard phrases and thoughts about an affair strung between friends and mourners like spider’s silk. Of Kinkaid and Emmie.

  She was oblivious to the spreading gossip. Kinkaid was fully aware, and happy at its revelation. People were staring — some at the illicit couple, to and fro. Most at Faraday who was as yet ignorant.

  On his way over to Faraday, Lundin tried again to read The Nine but again it was impossible. He settled instead for their expressions; they weren’t disgusted — as Lundin was — but smirking.

  He erected a deaf bubble around Faraday, Emmie, and Jace.

  The Nine filed out of the parlor with Kinkaid, like a mascot, behind them. Others nonchalantly bolted as well, talking into their cells. Hoone and his catch, the gaggle of nurses, they left. The remainders formed compressed cliques; Lundin didn’t recognize them all but Faraday did.

  Ignorant, disconsolate Faraday.

  Lundin maintained the bubble but it was merely a stopgap. There were no permanent edifices of this kind. No one, not even me, Big Sir, could attach a bubble to somebody for long, or stay at their side awake to keep this defense from popping.

  Emmie noticed something was wrong, the room emptying so. Not what, but something.

  Lundin struggled to produce the benefits of a preemptive inducement: permanent disbelief, ambivalent reception, topic blockers so that Faraday would never hear and never know.

  Lundin was right to try. He knew he’d fail, but he tried.

  Faraday deserved access to the truth, but not standing there with his father’s ashes in a vase in his hands.

  back to top

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Saturday, None

  Calder was in the same Cuban joint overlooking Adelard’s office. You remember, the flags and Fidel caps. Adel
ard’s office was dark but there was motion inside. Cleaning crew, Calder guessed.

  He’d come for an early dinner. The hijo wasn’t around to interrogate him, nor did I see Rook. All I saw was Calder sitting at the window. Eating at the other tables were hard dark immigrants speaking to each other, to the owner. Not a word of English between them.

  Calder had already ordered, paid for, and gotten his food: ropa vieja, bread, a medianoche, plantains. A Cawy Lemon-Lime soda. He wasn’t so hungry for all of this, but he was in the mood for variety.

  He wasn’t ashamed to eat alone. As he’d told the boy. Most of his meals were solitary in locales strange to him. Some find it pitiful or depressing, watching a sad soul tuck in at a restaurant. They try not to gawk; they do try to guess the circumstances: dead spouse, irascible personality, neither the time nor the will for companionship. And the icing to their speculation: Why can’t they eat at home and spare us the depressing sight of it?

  Calder’s migrant lifestyle inured him to the scrutiny. One chair at a table for two, he wondered why it wasn’t more common. He could eat faster, do his own thinking uninterrupted, mind his manners less. Leave when he was done without being chained to slow chewers, or linger without the pressure from someone else’s empty plate.

  He was there for ideas, because he had none. He’d hoped that proximity would stir possibilities, would peel open a ploy he’d been blind to or not yet desperate enough to see.

  Sitting by the window, again, watching Adelard’s office, again, he felt like some political radical. Not a lone transplant looking to affect a vote, but a delusional bomber planning a noteworthy explosion to justify his skewed ideals.

  His only notion was to barge into the office Monday and engage Adelard once more. Prove thrice that the man was a Stone. Maybe he’d been wrong the first time, and Rook’s second opinion was wrong as well.

  Calder decided that if by the time he finished eating, if he had no stronger plan, he’d go to Tamm’s and leave the city with or without her.

  He was homesick. Not for somewhere in particular — because he had no home — but for anywhere besides The City.

  He knew where the Port Authority Bus Terminal was, he knew how to get to Grand Central Terminal. They didn’t have to be terminal, they could also be curative gateways.

  He could leave. He’d done it scores of times, mostly due to cancer. It’s perceived as a slow disease but frequently it accelerates deceitfully. Like pancreatic. The patients Calder was speaking for sometimes slipped too far too fast. Rather than disappoint the returning family members, and become burdened with their disappointment, Calder would flee. From the patient, the relatives, the town.

  There was an instance when he didn’t flee but should have. He’d been tending to a scholarship student, football. Eighteen, the age Calder had found in his journeys and light interrogations to be just about everyone’s best year. In the collage of photographs taped to the bathroom mirror the boy was tan, adored, athletic, surrounded by friends.

  When Calder chose that hospital, randomly over two others within the small city, the boy was none of those things in the collage. He was fading, inhuman.

  The eighteen-year-old had two older sisters and a mother. They were greedy with Calder’s time, generous with questions. They’d taken the boy’s longevity for granted and were destitute for information the son had never shared. Or been asked for.

  Drunken parties, rowdy vacations, best friends, girlfriends, favorite book, social debts, embarrassments, regrets, triumphs?

  Days and days of talking that tired Calder and the son, the son whose lips hadn’t moved in weeks. Lips that had to be delicately wetted with ice cubes to keep from splitting. Sometimes the sisters accomplished this by kissing him. As sometimes happened, the hospital staff came to know Calder as some variant kin, this time a brother.

  Both sisters sought comfort from Calder alone. He’d seen his share of supply closets and plaintive women. He’d long ago convinced himself he joined them in secret out of compassion, not opportunism.

  The three women had an unusual request. Each had a question for the boy, three separate questions to which only the asker would receive the response. Intimate history that would become a personal keepsake.

  They wrote their queries, gave them to Calder to take inside to the boy, but he was too weak to answer and they’d have to wait till tomorrow.

  Are you a virgin?

  What career was it you chose?

  Your goal, your biggest goal left undone?

  The boy died after the women had left. The boy never gained strength enough to reply to Calder.

  Calder wanted to run away but returned to the hospital the next day. If he were one of those women, he was certain he’d be forever gardening for those answers unanswered. He was timid about finding the women; anyway, they found him.

  Calder lied. He could read what they wanted to hear and, individually, he supplied answers ninety degrees from that so it would seem authentic, substantive, worth saving.

  He lied to them. He forgave himself. But lying subtracted from the solace he peddled, and for months afterwards he felt like a thief.

  Calder could easily leave New York. I would, I was him. There was no one in his way, from fleeing.

  What was left of his food was cold. He lifted the medianoche sandwich to his mouth, decided it was tastier warm, ate it anyway.

  The day had plenty of light left. Two vans double-parked in front of Adelard’s office with WNBC and WPIX on their sides. A third van, unmarked. Then a fourth, WNYW. A couple of men and women were getting out of taxis nearby. Out of the vans came cameramen, reporters, and interest.

  Not twice in one day, not for Majella, Calder thought. Two of Adelard’s other aides wheeled out the plastic lectern. Microphones were affixed. The NY1 News van finally arrived. Everyone took up positions not according to journalistic rank but by local prestige, the two being wholly different.

  This took about forty minutes. When Adelard came out Calder was done eating and outside as well.

  “The pulpit I’m using right now was occupied by someone else this morning,” Adelard said. “I haven’t kept up with the coverage all day, but I implore you to treat Majella and his family respectfully. A good man. Would’ve made a worthy Council Member.”

  He cleared his throat to underline a change of discussion.

  “I will be brief. I’ll try.”

  Some laughter, not much.

  “Look, it’s Saturday, that means slow news,” he said. “You should be thanking me.”

  Some laughter, louder and more authentic.

  “Int 3001 has garnered a good deal of moss, debate, and litigation. More so than for any city since ancient Rome. So my staff reminded me.”

  More laughter, real laughter.

  Calder could feel his dinner turning to concrete in his stomach. He was behind the WNBC van, theirs was the largest.

  “It’s been an important debate. Even two of my sons, they’ve lobbied me on this. Most of my distinguished colleagues haven’t chosen which side of the fence they’d like. They’re still sitting. This must hurt one’s backside, sitting on a fence so long.”

  Need I say it? Laughter.

  “My constituents have placed their trust in me, and New York doesn’t expect to see the Council Speaker on any fence, nor does this great metropolis deserve such indecisiveness. New York knows I only vote in its best interests. When its interests haven’t benefited from either side of an issue, I’ve killed those Ints myself.”

  Voices swelled but Adelard suppressed them with a patting of his hands.

  “Please, I will. There are bonuses and negatives and there are universalities. It is without coercion or undue influence that I announce here, this glorious summer’s day, that I will be voting in strong favor of the conversion of the ConEd stations to bring safer and cleaner energy to our homes. Thus ends speculation, and, let it be understood, my decision will not be altered.”

  He sighed. “This is a changin
g metropolis that has many things to look forward to. One of those things is the future itself. What will fuel that future? It would be a mistake to lease that land for an early, easy return. I’ve excellent vision, never needed glasses. I see this conversion taking time, taking a good deal of money, but at end of day, bringing us stability with, as a benefit, clear environmental consciences. Let us see which way that fence tips now.”

  There was a discordant chorus as reporters tried to outshout the others when a bystander, not a reporter, called out, “Mister Mayor!”

  Adelard didn’t try to hide his smile.

  Calder stalked off. The concrete remained in his stomach. He was closer to victory but by no means within its reach. Until the vote there was always the chance Adelard could renege. He didn’t feel Adelard was the type, but the man was a politician and no politician is without bastard pressures.

  What Calder needed to focus on now, plainly, was prevention. Against Lundin and Faraday, and Briggs, and maybe Kinkaid and maybe the twins.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Saturday, Compline

  Tamm and Kinkaid were sitting on a love seat in the hallway of a modest apartment on the Upper West Side. It was on a modestly low floor in Lincoln Towers. Mass-produced paintings framed at art stores, DIY track lighting, the kind of carpeting delivered next day, pictures everywhere of an aging childless couple on inexpensive vacations around the world — in funny hats, with vistas and, unseen, the locals imposed upon to take those photos.

  Briggs was in the closed room behind the love seat, him and the final politician on Lundin’s list of three, Council Member Swithbert.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Tamm said.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Kinkaid said. “This is a terrible love seat.” He ran a palm across the material. “What do you think of it, burlap?”

  “A burlap love seat?” Tamm said. She was wearing a long thin coat down to her bare calves. Her hair was fixed and glittery like at Tattletail. She was holding an open pack of Marlboros. “What are they saying in there?”

  “It’s mostly Briggs is talking,” Kinkaid said.