by Adam Connell
“I won’t, Faraday said so.”
When they arrived at her walk-up, the doorman said, “Guy was here, I didn’t see him leave.”
“What’d he look like?” Tamm said.
“It was Holliswood allowed him in, he went home sick which is why I’m working a Saturday night. Maybe he left before I got on shift, this guy.”
“Thanks, Sax,” Tamm said.
“I should walk you up, as far as the door,” Briggs said. “You don’t know who this guy is. Could be someone you don’t want.”
It’s Calder, Tamm thought. Let Calder settle this, put Briggs out of my misery.
“I’ll come up?” Briggs said, hoping it was Calder, too.
There was no one in the hallway on her floor. Tamm cringed, just a bit. She opened her door and Briggs closed it from the inside. He sat down in front of it while Tamm went from room to room. Briggs knew it was empty. He crossed his arms over his knees, undid some buttons on his albe.
She came towards the door, arms wide. “Nobody,” she said.
“I’ll go,” he said. “But first I’ll stay for a while. They could come back.”
“I’ve got a Medeco dead bolt. Let them come back.”
“I’ll go,” he said without moving.
“I really think you should.”
“Five minutes,” he said. “Way I got broiled by Faraday cause of you, five minutes? You shouldn’t have told him about our talks.”
“I didn’t intend for that,” she said. “The roasting. It was all the other — trials I been through, you came up as part of it. And they weren’t talks. I only listened.”
“You never listened. I don’t scare you.”
And at the moment he didn’t scare her. Sitting there like a child at recess.
“For a little while, a few minutes,” she said and tossed Kitten’s coat on the floor of her entryway closet. Went to her bedroom, took an overlong T-shirt from her dresser, and went into the bathroom to change out of her bikini.
“I been to prison,” Briggs said. Again, like last time, she was in the bathroom, but he said it loud enough for her to hear.
“When?” she said without wanting to know.
“Twenty-four years ago, this September.”
“Why?”
“Who, what, where, when, why?” he said. “How?”
She was running the tap. He knew she was trying to fool him. Again, like she had the last time.
“I haven’t admitted this to anyone at Tattletail. It could be they know, but I haven’t said.”
She turned off the water.
“I’m telling you because I feel we relate,” Briggs said. “On some wavelength, don’t you feel it, too? We’re different from Kinkaid and Lundin. It’s not the same for me as for you, but you do consider me a friend.”
A beat. “I do.” She had to dig deep to unearth that I do.
“You care about me.”
Two beats. “Of course I care about you. What sent you to prison?”
She left the refuge of the bathroom, wearing the long tee, hoping the sight of her in the homely tee would spur Briggs to leave. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, both hands holding the shirt down between her legs.
“I killed two men,” Briggs said from his seat by the door.
“Murdered?”
“They tried to mug me I was at a gas station,” he said. “I was with a lady friend, she was in the car. One of them had a gun. It was plastic, how should I know? In the dark? They came at me from two sides. The one without the gun I set on fire. There was gasoline, I had the nozzle, he was a smoker. At a filling station. Jackass.”
“You only wanted to stop them, though. Not kill them, right?”
“The woman in the car, she was screaming and beating on the windows. That made me want to kill them. It was over in thirty seconds. Thirty-three seconds exact, the station caught it on surveillance. My lawyer pleaded me manslaughter, and that’s how it went.”
“Where was this?” Tamm said.
“Way over in Oregon, where you could ask total strangers and to a man they’ll tell you they’ve never been. Heard of the Blue Mountains?”
Tamm shook her head.
“Magnificent. Mountains make me gush. We could’ve gone, or somewhere else there’s mountains. They stretch all the way up into Washington state. I’d picked up a Maserati some cattle baron’s son wanted me to drive it to his party house in Vero Beach. That’s what I did before seminary, before prison, drove cross-country cars spoiled kids didn’t want shipped by car carriers.”
“How long? Inside?” she said. She lit a Maltepe — Turkish — from another pack she’d lifted off Lundin.
“A good while,” he said, raising his head. “Long enough that God and I found each other. It’s in there I became a priest. They had a program, visiting clergy, a full theologian’s library. I didn’t go to seminary college like I tell people. I did my seminary by correspondence.”
“It’s late, Briggs.”
“My name’s not even Briggs,” he said.
“Lundin know any of this?”
“Who the fuck can be sure what they know or don’t?”
Tamm said, “You should go home with this, tell someone can help you.”
He was far enough away that she felt safe. She decided to keep a cigarette lit till he left, she could burn him somewhere it would hurt. Tamm was certain he wasn’t leaving till he’d retched himself clean.
“Five more minutes,” she ventured.
“You shouldn’t have told on me to Faraday,” Briggs said. “Those talks were between me and you.”
“And God?”
“Always there’s God.”
“Not in my life,” Tamm said.
“He died for your sins, Tamm.”
“Well I didn’t ask Him to. Where was He tonight in that apartment?”
“He, He was there.”
“God wasn’t there. Kinkaid was there,” she said.
“Kinkaid and the rest, they perform miracles,” Briggs said. “I been privileged to see it. Been a part of it, that makes me part of those miracles.”
“Holy shit, you are deluded.”
“Please don’t say hateful things. The only palpable thing I ever accomplished was the priesthood. I’m wanted in Arizona.”
“Wanted for what?” She lit another cigarette, one for each eye should it come to that.
Briggs waved his hand like someone had asked him to choose between two identical socks. “I question myself about going back there, giving myself up. That’d be something I could finish. So I could feel whole. Only I go back in, I’m not coming out for two decades. What should I do, Tamm?”
“I have a brother,” Tamm said, “lives in the city.”
“He as pretty as you?”
Tamm laughed. Head thrown back, mouth open, one of her genuine laughs. Briggs saw the metal crowns in her upper teeth. “He’s pretty. He was. I haven’t seen him going on ten years. This September, too, matter of fact.”
“If I had any siblings,” Briggs said, “I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“You had a sibling, a younger brother, you might not say that. It creates this dynamic in your life.”
“Something happened ten years ago?” he said.
“Yeah. I question myself about calling him. I look up his number every once in awhile, I know where he is.”
“Your parents would like that,” Briggs said. “I don’t have to be a Lundin to know that.”
She lit a third cigarette, kept two smoldering in the ashtray.
She said, “I talk to them once a year. Thanksgiving, I give ’em a ring. Why should I be the one to reach out? Why shouldn’t he come to me? Does he know here I live?” She exhaled a thick fog. “Don’t come asking me for advice, Briggs,” she said with a flat grin. “It’s been ten years and I can’t decide.”
“You have to stop the dancing,” Briggs said.
“Someday.”
“Now. With the politician, that was your last.�
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“Last what?”
“Faraday using you outside the club. Reprimanding you in front of everyone.”
“It wasn’t a joy,” Tamm said.
“This is no way to be conducting a life. Taking your clothes off to get paid. There’s better ways to get paid.”
“No kidding there are.”
“They watch you with their greasy eyes. I often think about what they do when they get home, or what’s in their heads when you’re dancing for them.”
“I don’t, I wouldn’t want to. What do you care?”
“Because we could’ve solved this neatly, Tamm. I could’ve supported you till you found — ”
“There is nothing else,” she said. “I’ve got no skills. You want me waiting tables at a quarter the salary? In some fucking diner? What’s so wrong with what I do?”
“Nothing, for the other girls. They’re beyond salvation. Well, beyond my salvation. You, you were worthy. I could have saved you. But tonight, being outside the club in that apartment, doing what you would’ve at Tattletail — You’re beyond saving. That means so am I.”
He stood up, slowly like a troll coming awake.
“Use the door,” Tamm said, “and leave. I want you to go.”
“I can’t be witness to it anymore. Your brother. Wouldn’t he agree?”
“He’s an asshole. So are you, you don’t walk your ass out that front door. Didi mao, Briggs. Lundin taught me that phrase. Your miraculous Lundin. Didi mao. Get out now.”
“My name’s not Briggs. You proud of what you do?”
“I am, Briggs.”
A lie. Everyone in this story lies.
Briggs hadn’t advanced from the door; he did fasten his albe, though.
Tamm, on the sofa, was up on her knees. The three cigarettes were burning behind her back, clasped between the fingers on her right hand like thin glowing spikes. “I’m proud. I won’t do it forever but I’m lucky enough to support myself. Other women, they’re jealous of how I look. Men wonder what I’m like in bed. It’s gratifying.”
“You said you don’t think that way.”
“I lied. It brings me pleasure, their greasy eyes,” she said.
He still hadn’t advanced a step. “In bed, that’s what I’m suggesting,” he said. “You cannot go around with people speculating so. Taking off your clothes to encourage it, that’s blasphemy.”
“How I use my body’s my business,” she said. Then, after a taunting chuckle, “My body literally is my business. Get the fuck out, creep.”
“Creeps don’t care as much as I do, Tamm. I care a lot, I do. I did.”
Finally, as everyone in the room anticipated, he took a baby step away from the door.
“This apartment?” she said. “It’s small but it’s mine, a co-op, I own it. My clothes? My books? How much I’ve saved? My body bought all that.” She flashed him, lifting her T-shirt with her free hand. “My outfits at Tattletail? I don’t rent them from Faraday like the other girls. I paid for them. I support myself, and I’ll continue paying my way how I want. Leave or I call my boyfriend.”
The cigarettes were almost out. She could feel and smell the webbing between her fingers burning.
“Boyfriend?” Briggs said. “He allows this?”
“Allows? Who the hell is he to allow? No one allows me anything.”
Briggs was coming towards the sofa. “You’re the only one at Tattletail — I could have — I’d have helped you.”
“Leave is what I need, and lose my address. Didi mao.”
“I understand you’re mad at yourself. I’m mad.”
“At myself?” she screeched, praying for a neighbor to intercede, praying they’d do more than slam the walls in protest.
“I’m your savior. This is another thing I can finish. You won’t have me but the greasy eyes aren’t gonna have you.”
“What?” she said.
FIFTY-SEVEN
SUNDAY, Matins: 3rd Nocturne
Calder was sitting on the edge of his bed, feet on the floor as if ready to roll forwards and dive through the door.
The sun hadn’t yet come up, wasn’t even close to rising.
He’d unplugged the lamp in the hopes that Piker and Attila would invade his room with more threats and more of their harmonious hamstringing.
He couldn’t divide them, nor could he repel their attacks. He could hobble them with a Hail Mary, last-ditch, all-out shriek. He’d tried it on Adelard to no effect but he’d used it once before that, to great effect, in Corpus Christi.
He relived the incident in preparation.
He’d gotten off the Greyhound within blocks of a nursing home that had once been recommended to him by a grateful anesthetist in San Antonio. It was a lean time for Calder. In that long, lean workless winter, he arrived once again at Cimarron Healthcare in Corpus Christi. The staff knew him well because he’d proven to them a dozen times what it was he could do, for the residents and their families.
A middle-aged father and his son were in the crowded den. The son — fourteen, fifteen — was communing with an inert patient in a wheelchair. Grown grandchildren were behind them.
The boy and Calder recognized each other, and not because they’d met before.
After greeting the attendants Calder found a family for himself, was led up to their loved one’s room. Alzheimer’s. He dazzled the relatives with his flashiest tricks, negotiated a fee, and was successful at wiring a rudimentary link to their grandmother. She was prone to outbursts of unheralded weeping.
Leaving the family itself in tears, Calder stepped outside the room and was mentally castrated in the hallway. The effects began to fade immediately but the boy bent to Calder on the floor and said, into his face, with abysmal breath, “Go away. Get out of Texas. Only I eat here.”
He vanished down the stairwell. Calder stood up, fine except for professional chagrin and a slight fear.
Calder had dinner in a coffee shop near the home. The boy’s father had been a block behind Calder the whole walk and, inside, sat opposite him.
“My son wants you on the next bus. That’s how you came, a bus? He’ll pay the ticket.”
“He’ll pay?”
“We’ll pay. I carry the wallet for both of us.”
“You make it sound unusual, that you should carry it and not him.”
The waitress dropped two stained menus on the table and went outside for some fresh air. The place did have a smell.
The father said, “Tonight, please? My son gets his way. He says you pretend you’re similar but that you’re faking.”
“You travel far?” Calder said.
“We keep to the South. Crossed it many times but never the same cities twice. Except in Texas, he loves Texas. We been to Galveston five times.”
“And you drive,” Calder said.
“Oh, he’s too young to drive, you saw him.”
“You hold the money.”
“Well it’d look strange, him paying for everything. And driving.”
The father put his arms on the table, well past the center into Calder’s territory. The father said, “You’re gonna go before he concocts trouble for you. He calls it concoct, so you see it’s not the first time. It stews in him and it comes out scalding. When I get mad at him, he’s the one gets mad and wins.”
“What is it you do for a living?” Calder said.
“Take my son here and there. Told you that.”
“Are you his father?”
“For as long as I can remember,” he said, jeering.
“How long can you? Remember?”
Here the man faltered like he’d been asked the square root of something. “Sometimes I can’t.”
“What’s your name?”
“Everyone calls me Dad. My son stole my license and won’t give it back.”
The waitress returned but Calder shook his head to signal for a few minutes more. He leaned over the table, past the man’s arms. “You buy that bus ticket for yourself,” Calder
said. Tenderly.
“Head somewhere north,” Calder said. “Distance will help. Maybe someone will recognize you.”
Calder held the man’s hands in his own. “I can’t find anything in you, a name, even. The kid’s too good. Let me see your wallet.”
There was over two thousand in hundreds. Calder would have given Dad some of his own money, but all Calder had were some twenties and various expired coupons. Dad needed neither.
Dad left the coffee shop, inexplicably taking one of the menus with him, and walked in the direction opposite the nursing home, towards the bus station.
Calder ordered his chicken-fried steak, ate, paid, went back to Cimarron Place. The boy was with another senile and family. He watched the door for Dad and when he didn’t come in after, he fixed a stare on Calder hard enough to break glass.
The folks Calder had been working with came over to him. He gently asked them to wait in the den so he could have some time alone with grandma. Prep work, he explained, for a smoother session. Alzheimer’s, he explained, is a delicate connection. The family acquiesced.
Calder waited behind grandma’s door, and when the boy raced in Calder detonated a bomb in his head the equivalent of a cerebral enema. He’d never tried this attack on anyone but he was so repulsed by the kid’s abusiveness, so alarmed at his potential, so cognizant of what the boy could already do at his age. Fourteen, Fifteen?
Calder reeled all of it out, not into himself but into the air, like a magician pulling on knotted colored handkerchiefs. Vicious memories, vile plans, the boy’s inner codex.
Grandma began to weep, though it was completely unrelated.
Calder pulled the red emergency cord on the side of her bed, then hid in the bathroom. A squadron of doctors and nurses were there in under a minute.
The boy, enfeebled, never left the home.
Calder, in Sotto’s dormitory, sitting on the edge of that borrowed bed, he had the focus and anger to repeat the maneuver. Twice, for a set of twins.
A knock on the door. Calder fell backwards onto the mattress as if pushed. The twins wouldn’t knock. He took some deep breaths.
It was Sotto who entered and closed the door. “I caught Adelard’s press conference,” he said. “You were behind that?”