by Adam Connell
“With who what?”
“The pact,” Lundin said, elongating the a in pact.
“Myself. Who else’d do something so stupid with me?”
“You can’t make a pact with yourself. A pact is for two people. Vow, maybe.”
“A pledge, then,” Hoone said.
“No, a pledge — ”
“I was working alphabetically. I’d gotten around to shrooms when it kick-started something in my heart. Thought I was having hundreds of coronaries.”
“But you didn’t die.”
“Astute,” Hoone said. “They dosed me with all manner of heart drugs to tame my pulse which was, like, two thousand at one point.”
“So much for your daft pact.”
“Pledge. As the day is long, I keep my word. I continued.” Hoone motioned with two fingers, come hither. “Give me a hospital story.”
“I never been to the fucking hospital,” Lundin said.
“I will not stop asking,” Hoone said.
“Fine. It’s how I made my first bucks,” Lundin said. “Places like these for seances with the unconscious.”
“Who hasn’t done that, worked hospitals? I want something personal, Lundin.”
“No. Fine. Okay, Briggs likes to tell this one about me. And since he can’t talk. Has to be two years ago, one night I had Briggs toss a man under a street sweeper. You seen them, white with the brooms going underneath, big vacuums on bottom. Noisy obnoxious.”
“Why?” Hoone said.
“Because I had a feeling they could do some grievous bodily,” Lundin said.
“But why?”
“It’s how I decreed this job should end. He was, I kid you not, the client. He’d been less than forthright about his motives and I don’t care for being used.”
“How’d he look after the sweeper?” Hoone said.
Lundin smiled big and broad. “Peeled,” he said. “Skin was stripped down his arms, chest. And this motherfucker was wearing a coat, it was winter. One side of his face was meat. Hair gone in patches. Broken bones where you’d expect. I stayed with him, it was Cabrini Medical, for a week. Every day. I enjoyed that.”
“Cabrini closed, didn’t it?” Hoone said.
“Yeah,” Lundin said.
He was going to elaborate on the man’s internal distress, as Briggs always did telling this tale, but a quiet, efficient nurse came into the room to conference with the machines. She reset some of the screens, adjusted dials. Made notes of some of the flashing numbers from an especially colorful robot.
Swapped empty bags for full ones, full ones for empty ones, and left without a Hello or Good-bye.
“How do you do?” Hoone said to her absence. “Chatterbox.”
“He looks like a fighter pilot,” Lundin said, “that grey thing on his mouth.”
“Does it go down his throat?” Hoone said.
“Something’s breathing and it’s not him,” Lundin said and pointed to the glassed accordion on the floor. “The unlucky bastard can’t breathe on his own.”
“Or shit or piss,” Hoone said. “Or blink, is why the good eye’s taped shut.”
“Is it taped?” Lundin said, leaning in. “Goddam it is, I thought he was sleeping.”
“He is sleeping,” Hoone said. “The eye’s first thing I noticed, the tape. After, you know, the patch.”
“There’s nothing he can do for himself,” Lundin said, “and there’s fuck-all in his head.”
“That’s a fact. I looked a few times.”
“I’m looking every few minutes,” Lundin said. “Absolutely zero. Not a thought. Not a twinge. No pain. No awareness. Not even instinct.”
“No doubt about it, the Nicotine Queen did this to him.”
“Burned him and scratched him, sure. It was somebody stronger than Briggs did the remainder and I can’t think who. Look at that fucking hand. You could float it down the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.”
“The hand’s indicative of nothing,” Hoone said. “The mental carnage. His head’s been scrubbed clean and I don’t mean street-sweeper clean. Put it this way, he’s been chafed in there. Someone. On purpose.”
“I don’t smell Kinkaid,” Lundin said. “He leaves a scent behind, don’t ask me how to describe it.”
“I smelled it before,” Hoone said. He was lying down on the bed again, toying with the controls.
“Plus I never seen Kinkaid cut all someone’s strings,” Lundin said. “Or Faraday. Or Sotto or Rook or any of those. Or me. You I don’t think you’re capable.”
“The Nine,” Hoone said.
“What would The Nine want with Briggs? He doesn’t exist to them. Class hierarchy. Wish I could smoke in here.”
“You could use Briggs for an ashtray. She did.”
“Why would The Nine bother with Briggs?”
“Why would Briggs bother with Tamm?” Hoone said.
“A crush, kind of,” Lundin said.
“Well he’s the one crushed,” Hoone said.
Lundin took out a cigarette, a Djarum Lights — cloves, Indonesian — and twirled it in his fingers.
“Whoever did this to him did that to her,” Hoone said.
“It was Briggs did that to her,” Lundin said.
“Au contraire, there’s no possible way to know that. How could you know they’re related?”
“They’re in the same fucking hospital on the same fucking day taken from the same damn building.”
“How’d you get all this?” Hoone said.
“My card’s in his wallet, that’s how come I got called down here.”
“Card? Faraday gave you cards?”
“The rest I got — ”
“The rest you got in our own special ways. Seen the Nicotine Queen?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And she’s like Briggs, only almost as bad. She’s bruised up and cut up but she’s got her mind.”
“Briggs put her in the hospital?” Hoone said.
“I’m getting no answers from him,” Lundin said. “I don’t see why he’d do it but the man was capable.”
“No offense,” Hoone said. “The Briggs I know, we’d go bowling. Tuesday nights, Wednesdays. Days lanes aren’t crowded. He’d wear a cheap pair of shoes and walk out of the place with those ugly things they rent you. That was my Briggs, stealing cheap stuff you’re supposed to return that nobody wants. Motel robes, airplane blankets. A low-rent nympho he was.”
“Klepto,” Lundin said. “Nympho is sex.”
Hoone broke the bed. It locked itself between two settings and started vibrating. He sat up. “The Briggs I know is not in this room. What’s next for him?”
“Machines and IVs breathing for him and collecting his piss for as far as the eye can see.”
“Hand to God, I’m selling my car,” Hoone said. “I don’t care what Faraday has to say. I been in that driver’s seat so long you could use it as a mold for the back half of my body. No more scouting for me. I’m in the city. It’s taxis and the subway for me, simple as that. I might never leave again.”
“There is spontaneous health,” Lundin said, really to himself. “Fuck, that kid you brought home, the healer. Get his ass in here.”
“Kinkaid stopped by my hotel early afternoon.”
“What does he need a healer for?” Lundin said.
Hoone shrugged.
“We’ll go get him back,” Lundin said, sitting up, “soon’s I’m ready to leave here.” He accidentally lit the Djarum, reflexively, and began smoking it.
“The door,” Hoone said.
Lundin kicked the door but not hard enough, it didn’t click shut. “Escort that healer to the Queen, too,” he said. “I am not thinking today. We’ve got us a goddam healer.”
“Briggs, if he’s not gonna be ambulatory, or breathe without a musical instrument under his bed,” Hoone said, “I’m available, Lundin. No lie. I could be your new partner and I’d make a competent one. I swear to you.”
“Yeah,�
� Lundin said, but his eyes were unfocused, and Hoone wasn’t sure what Lundin was agreeing to.
“Briggs has a workload,” Hoone said. “Responsibilities, quotas. I’m not saying he’s replaceable, but I could take his place. You follow?”
“We’ll most likely move him to some clinic they specialize in this.”
Fucking garden, for vegetables, Hoone thought.
Lundin missed the thought entirely.
“For people who can’t blink,” Lundin said. “What kind of clinic specializes in people can’t blink on their own?”
“Square odds there’s a couple in the city,” Hoone said. “There’s a couple everything in the city.”
“I’ll pay for his care,” Lundin said. He wasn’t enjoying the Djarum, wasn’t even tasting it. “Briggs deserves it from me, not from Faraday. I’ll say I’ll visit every week but that won’t last, right? I’ll forget about him, why he’s there, what he meant to me. That fades. I’ll remember when I’m writing out the checks, for five minutes a month.”
“Life goes on,” Hoone said.
Lundin looked at the cigarette in his fingers like it had just materialized. “Life does not go on,” he said. “Life gets worse and then another bad thing happens and it’s natural to forget the previous bad thing. That’s not life going on. Life starts out all baptism and sacrament and — ”
“Lundin, Jesus.”
“Jesus? It’s the pessimists are right. Optimists got it wrong. Give me every optimist, I’ll march them through this room and hold them down to Briggs’ face.”
“There’s a shadow on the floor outside, standing there a while,” Hoone said. “I’m not being symbolic. Outside the door.”
Calder moved past the door into the room.
Lundin whipped around. “Well, my flabber is gasted,” Lundin said. “Calder, Calder. You do this to Briggs? I offer employ and you introduce my best friend to oblivion? You stole him from me? This, I didn’t see this.”
Hoone was off the bed, coming at Calder.
“Sit down or I tell Lundin what you and that healer did together on the drive to Manhattan.”
Hoone skidded, inched backwards towards the bed he’d broken.
Calder was scalding Lundin with a hot stare. “It’s much worse than you’re thinking, what Hoone here did,” Calder said.
“How the fuck” — Lundin was waving the Djarum around like a butterfly net — “could you in any way know what I’m thinking? I’m all plate armor.”
“Fellatio, sodomy,” Calder said. “Nope, it’s much worse than that. You’d be disappointed.”
Hoone said, “Please don’t say — Thing of it was — Please, don’t.”
“You fix my friend here,” Lundin said, his free hand on Briggs’ bed. “I don’t care about Hoone. But Briggs, in no way did he deserve this.”
“And worse,” Calder said. “You don’t deserve the same but I will afflict you, you don’t come with me. Play the obedient and I’ll restore him enough he can live without a nurse the rest of his days.”
Lie.
Lundin attempted to find out if he was lying but it was Calder was the fortress.
Calder said, “Briggs did deserve this, go back in time fifteen hours to Tamm’s apartment. You don’t have to be obedient, only pretend long enough for me to get done what I need.”
Hoone said, “Like as not, there’s no difference when it comes to subservience. Even when you pretend, then you are. That’s a truism.”
“I’m trying to limber Lundin here for an easy answer,” Calder said.
“Fuck you,” Lundin said. “We don’t cripple our own.”
Lundin’s hands went numb. He stared at them as if they’d been turned to gold.
“They aren’t really, numb, but in your head,” Calder said. “In your mind they’re dead. Try fighting it. Realize how hard it’ll be living life you can’t feel your hands? This life baptism to sacram — ”
“When’d you get sinister?” Lundin said. “Did Kinkaid teach you how to do this?”
“You’ll come?” Calder said.
“What can I give you? Among specials, I’m ordinary. You’re obviously the stronger.”
“To undo your last two week’s work,” Calder said. “Then I return your hands.”
“And my best friend,” Lundin said.
“But not all the way,” Calder said. His deception was more tangible with that touch of parameter.
SIXTY-THREE
Sunday, early Vespers
Faraday rang the doorbell a few times. A man in a blue suit answered the chiseled glass door.
“How are you, sir?” Faraday said.
“How I am is my family’s having dinner,” Suit said.
“I’m your neighbor, other side of the block. Eighty-second and Riverside. I’m pretty sure you’re 211 on that side,” Faraday said and pointed as if over the brownstones onto 82nd.
“Yes, our house spans both blocks,” Suit said. “I seen you around the area. At the market with your wife.”
Faraday’s missing teeth were noticeable when he smiled, and because Emmie had been made unavailable to him he wasn’t wearing any concealer to hide his green-and-yellow face.
Suit was standing back on his heels as if Faraday were a contagion.
“Great home,” Faraday said, peeking past the man’s shoulder. “I would love for you to tell me its pedigree, how you managed to get this city manse to sprawl two blocks.”
“I didn’t get your name, and I don’t want it,” Suit said. “We’re having dinner.”
“Dinner’s an important meal,” Faraday said.
“Is that a sledgehammer behind you?”
“My name’s Faraday. It is a sledgehammer.”
Suit looked as if he’d fallen into a pool filled with forty electrified toasters.
They stood wordlessly for a minute as Faraday picked at Suit. Ha, that’s kind of funny, right, Fish?
“We were going out for dinner,” Suit said.
“Yes you were.”
“Like to join us, Faraday?”
“Thank you, I’m gonna stay in,” Faraday said.
“So come on in, we’re neighbors.” Suit stepped aside but didn’t leave the door. “Kids, Babe!”
They left Faraday. Alone in their house. A quasi stranger. With a sledgehammer.
That’s how good he was. He was the old Faraday again.
He paced the main hall, concentrating on the left walls. Approximating laterally to his kitchen, where the wall had always been thin and he could hear next door. In his study as well, as Piker noted.
There was a tall oak stereo rack on casters; Faraday pushed it aside. He shoved two ostentatious speakers out of his way.
He’d been mixing the meperidine and hydrocodone even though the doctor had explained it was prohibited. Faraday had also been grossly overdosing so that he knew his limbs were there and he could use them, but all his hurt was accumulating a rain check.
Faraday started swinging. The drywall came away in big, dusty triangles. He cursed himself for neglecting a crowbar and instead used his hands to fold the portions away. The concrete blocks behind looked intimidating but were — as he’d expected for years — old and corroded. And fragile as ceramic urns.
His shirt, unbuttoned, was sweated down to the sleeves, and cold. The tape that had bound his rib cage lay in sheets on the floor. The sledgehammer was cruel and ungainly. It had been only seven minutes but his internal clock said an hour.
The red bricks that formed the shell of his own house were more strict, but also aged, and in no time crumbled under the bullying hammer.
Faraday squeezed through the hole, detritus glued to his wet clothes and skin, and likely he was rank. Emmie was on the other side, sitting on the kitchen’s island. She was shivering and as sweaty as her husband though she wore only the pink tank top and shorts Faraday had seen her in early that morning.
“I didn’t suppose you’d let me in the door,” he said.
“The door’s
locked,” she said.
“Honey.”
“The hammer was so loud. Why was it so loud?”
Faraday stared at her; he wanted to answer in a physical, violent way.
She said, “The Nine might be coming back.”
“But they’re not here now, I been waiting and saw them go with Kink. I made a fucking racket, didn’t I?”
Emmie made a sharp noise of agreement in her throat. “He’s out.” She lowered her hands. “He wasn’t specific, he could be coming home now.”
“Home?” Faraday yelled. “My home.”
She put her arms out to hug him. “What’s possessed everyone? I’m all nerves. No skin and bone but nerves.”
Faraday had brought the sledgehammer through with him, case he needed a weapon. He lobbed it at the sink which it demolished.
“How could you?” he yelled. “Do this! To me? And Kinkaid, with him?”
“Do what? The past few weeks I don’t even know what day it is!”
Faraday could see Kinkaid all over her mind, like footprints in slick sewage.
“You could have held off,” he said.
“Held off what? What could I have held off? Tell me.”
“Came to me,” Faraday said. “Explained your confusion. I could’ve clarified. Prevented this. Prevented — ”
“This mess,” she said, widening her eyes at the hole.
“In a manner,” Faraday said.
“You go ahead and tell me how I could’ve explained. How I could put into words what’s — Kink’s been here and I remember him being here lots but I’ve no idea what we did.”
“It was carnal,” Faraday said and had to close his eyes to say it.
Emmie was crying. Yesterday’s makeup was dripping like warm ice cream.
Faraday reached for her but she jumped off the island like a mistreated pet.
“You won’t be here when he gets back,” Faraday said. Calmly.
“He’ll get mad,” Emmie said. “You’re already mad. Who’s worse?”
“I am not mad,” Faraday said. “We both been wronged in this. I’m disappointed.”
“In me?” she said. She moved a few steps closer, sensing safety now.
“The situation,” Faraday said. “But if you take my hand — ”
“He is, Kink’s, he’s, when Kink’s mad he’s vicious mad.”