Lay Saints

ONE

Call me Ishmael.

Forget that. Call me Sir.

Sirs get the top bunk. You just be glad I don’t wet the mattress.

Lower bunks are for Fish. That’s Fish cause you’re new.

Come up here to cuddle and I’ll make you squeeze your head through those bars, ask any guard.

I talk a lot.

We used to have a window. They bricked it over, not that it makes any difference.

From our cell on this fine block I can see everything. No, I don’t think I’m God, I have no delusions. It’s what’s kept me alive, no delusions. Well-grounded since I came to terms with it. We have an understanding, me and my wild talents. Just like we’ll have an understanding, you and me.

I can see things that are far away. There’s a term for people with this kind of vision. I can also hear what people are saying, far away, and also listen in on what they’re thinking. There’s a term for people who can listen to thoughts like I can. But there’s no term for people who can see and hear like I do. I’m unique. Among special people I’m so unusual they haven’t come up with a term for it yet. Maybe they never will, they’ll never have to, won’t be one like me again.

I often watch the city, but I don’t wish I was there. The asphalt smell, the smell of car exhaust, the look of exhausted people. Its rigid neighborhoods. Way it can change overnight, way sometimes it refuses to change, makes me uneasy.

The sum of which is disgust.

Don’t you recognize me?

But of course you wouldn’t. Faraday wiped you clean. Well, he lamed you. Fish, you had wild talents similar to one of mine, but when Faraday lamed you, unfortunate side effect is your memories are gone, too.

Faraday asked me to watch over you, make sure there’s no rebound, you getting your talents back. Wiped you so clean there isn’t any slate. To the bedrock.

In defiance of Faraday, I’ll tell you the why and the how that brought you here. Tell you this specifically — you’re a murderer. You’ve killed. That’s indefensible and undeniable.

I’ll make it Calder’s story, since in many ways he’s the pivot.

Don’t go looking for your name. You won’t hear it, the name the lawyers and judges used, guards and all, police, cause that’s not the name we know you by. Lawyers and judges, they used a different name. We all know you as something else.

So don’t look for it, the name you recently learned.

Amnesia. Derivative amnesia. By-product amnesia.

If I gave you your name, it’s probable you’d only focus on yourself. This will work much better you get the whole story, everybody’s actions, repercussions. There were so many ramifications for so many people. Even from what you done, how it affected others in ways you didn’t notice. Or wouldn’t notice, if I only told you the parts you were in.

Faraday manipulated, yanked strings, got you sent to me, which was convenient for him, I’m already in prison. I’ll tell you the why of that, too.

Faraday doesn’t want you rebounding, wants to make sure his revenge sticks. I don’t blame him. Nobody could.

Yeah, Calder as the pivot, that’s how I’ll tell it.

I didn’t know much about you before. I’m certainly not gonna learn more about you now, the state you’re in.

I talk a lot.

What matters is I’m in here before it escalated. I told Faraday, we should be recruiting. He didn’t listen to me about a lot of things.

You have to listen. You’ve got nothing to do but listen, Fish, isn’t anything else to do in here. Twenty-three hours a day in this cell. Twenty-four if you don’t leave, like myself.

The toilet’s steel and there isn’t any lid so it’s cold when you sit down to do your business. Don’t be doing any business at night.

Follow me, Fish?

back to top

TWO

TUESDAY, Terce

So. Calder got to the clinic ready to converse with the comatose and the mute. He’d been across the country about ten times — east to west and west to east — since being cast off in his late teens. Seeking hospitals, using his raw talents to connect the silent with their desperate families. Asking only a small fee. It’s a service, no matter how fantastic. He deserved payment. Some hospitals, some small towns had banned him as a charlatan.

This was his first trip to Manhattan. He’d always avoided the city in fear of meeting more like himself. Calder always imagined their talents to be refined, guided by mentors, lessons handed down whereas he was self-taught. Fifteen years an itinerant conduit, he was running out of places to exploit.

The glass doors facing Park Avenue parted and spoke a recorded greeting. He joined a grieving family as they bypassed reception, pointed at them, the receptionist nodded. He knew a dozen such tricks. Calder also had a scuffed black satchel with heraldic crossed shears in bas-relief on both sides. He left the family at the elevators and proceeded to the stairs. Up to the highest floor, the fifth. He was crazy for stairs over elevators.

On the right, two sentinel nurses were mired in busywork at a wooden desk that matched the wooden decor. Nurses in navy blue who’d become alert the moment Calder invaded their sphere of responsibility. He didn’t want to waste energy coercing them — there were no families on the floor anyhow — so he walked down to the third. Stayed inside the door, watching the hallway through a small rectangular window. Safer there.

Who uses stairs when there’s elevators?

He ignored the rooms with relatives milling outside. Experience told him they wouldn’t be interested in what he was selling. Otherwise, they’d be in the room, rarely leaving. When a loved one can’t speak, it’s normal to stay anchored, try and coax a word or two. No, those milling, their mothers or wives or daughters or nieces were just transients here.

Calder leaned against the door, knowing what to watch for and finding it twice.

The first was a husband who left room 302 every twenty-five minutes for a cone of cold water from the upended plastic blue drum. Calder caught the words bastard, accident, drunk from him.

Too angry.

The second was a woman. Left room 306 only once, to stand outside and take hefty breaths as if her lungs were porous.

Calder left the stairwell and knocked lightly on her door. Hollan, he said.

She jumped from her chair, eyes red from a recent cry.

My name’s Calder, he said while calming her mind with soft soothing phrases. If you like — he gestured towards the bed — I can help.

You’re not wearing the clinic’s blue, Hollan said. She was holding her blouse at the collar. You aren’t any doctor.

What I do they wouldn’t believe me. He closed the door behind him. He put his satchel on an empty chair. But you can believe me, it’s real. What I do is talk to your husband, tell you what he’s saying but can’t say. What he’s thinking.

Not thinking anything. He’s gone from me.

Calder shook his head.

The husband was in what’s known as a coma vigil. Not a vigil vigil, you got twenty people with candles standing about. Vigil’s a type of coma where the eyes are open but nothing moves except for blinking. Calder had seen too many like this to be disturbed.

Okay, Hollan said. Then tell him how mad I am he fell off the beam like that.

Calder stared at the husband and began the process. There were some disjointed words as they translated each other, Calder and the husband. Next came an admission of adultery. Confessions like this are common, plus they helped prove Calder’s abilities.

Calder diluted it for Hollan. He says one time he kissed Gwendolyn behind your back, and he’s sorry for it.

Hollan smeared her tears with a thumb.

It went on like that for twenty solid minutes. Relaying. Tempering hurtful truths. Assuaging the grieved and the grieving.

Shouting outside in the hallway broke the triangular connection.

Calder said, I have to go before someone sees.

Come back tomorrow? Hollan said.

I’ll try.

Not a lie, not a promise.

How much do I — 

Whatever you can, Calder said. What he always said. Made him feel less a thief.

Hollan gave him all she had in her purse — $122. I can bring more.

He moved towards a stealthy leave when she said, holding his black bag, Forgot this?

He thanked her.

I have trouble seeing in deep stairwells, and in elevators or underground. I also can’t see two places at once. My gifts don’t work that way, Fish. Ultimately, it’s one room at a time, so I don’t always get all the story. Or to the good parts while they’re happening.

I do try. I’ve got a feel for it, especially after following the same people around for awhile. A knack, you get a sense.

Being in this cell, that helps, too.

I can read simultaneous thoughts, and that helps most of all. Give me a room — even the backseat of a car — and I’ll give you its guts.

So I apologize. I do the best with how God’s blessed me.

But you understand, Fish. You were a good reader. But you could never, like me, see into places.

When Calder was coming off the curved stairs into the lobby, someone grabbed his arm from behind and wouldn’t let go. Calder swiveled and threw a blind punch.

The man ducked before the punch was thrown. Whoa, whoa, that’s no way to treat your new boss.

Calder wrenched his arm free. I have no boss, you prick.

As of now, yes you do. Otherwise I’ll make your time in New York painful and memorable both. Don’t have to like me but I’m betting you will. Why don’t we break bread together. There’s a mediocre coffee shop on the corner.

He was shorter than Calder, who wasn’t ridiculously tall. Graying, in the process of getting fat. A visitor’s sticker had been slapped to his shirt pocket. He led Calder outside and to the corner.

They sat at a table for four and ordered sandwiches. Calder put his satchel down.

You’re not the first, the man said.

Tell me your name, Calder said.

You’re not the first, Calder. Just like you already know my name. Sotto. Not the first to make a living in and out of hospitals. It’s how I found some of my crew.

The backs of Sotto’s hands were splotched pale pink, like he’d been burned as a child.

How did you find me so fast? Calder said.

How’d you find out about the clinic? Sotto said.

The silence grew until Sotto broke it with: Same way I knew your name.

How many more?

A crew, Sotto said. He ate a few soggy fries off Calder’s plate when the food arrived.

City like this, I thought there’d be more than a crew.

There’s others, Sotto said. We’ll talk about them later.

But you represent the noble ones, Calder said.

Slightly noble.

And me being pure of heart — 

We shouldn’t play absolutes.

I should warm to your advances, Calder said.

You’re needed, and you might be strong. Sotto put his hands out as if conjuring a spell. It’s good to be with your own. On some level you want that. We all want that at some point, and at some point we need it.

So you think I need it, Calder said.

Don’t you? Sotto said.

THREE

Tuesday, Sext

The Gossamer’s Veil was Downtown on Second Avenue between 5th and 6th. An unremarkable bar. Kind of place you go into for a burger and a beer, once. Walking by, because you’re hungry. Not the best bar in all Manhattan, and that on purpose.

Outside the place, Sotto told Calder, She’s been here near on eighty-one years.

Inside, four men and a woman were sitting on the left at a dark wood bar stitched with darker grooves. The bartender was reading the Daily Racing Form with pen in mouth. The television bolted to the ceiling above him had the volume on low and was tuned to Time Warner Cable’s NY1 News.

The booths on the right were almost empty. It was that vague time between lunch and dinner.

Sotto went up to the first man — balding, mid-fifties, hard and mean jaw. He was a good boxer. Not great, not good enough he could’ve made a go of it pro, but good enough the other amateurs at his gym were afraid to spar with him. Sotto said, Rook, this is Calder. He’s joining us just after I roll out the rules.

Rook stood up and gave Calder a knuckle-crushing handshake. What’s your background?

Background? Calder said.

What you been doing most.

Intermediary, Calder said.

Hospitals, Rook said, back on his stool. Another coma junkie.

The woman had less to say. She tried to be attractive but her features were at odds. To combat this she wore too much makeup, her hair was too styled, she had on too much perfume. That earnestness made her very pretty. I always thought so.

The next two men were the twins: Attila (yes, he’d had it legally changed from his given name) and Piker (not his given name but a nickname given to him). They only worked together and spent the rest of the day talking silently to each other. Attila was darker than his brother; he dyed his hair, and he liked tanning salons. Sotto made introductions. They nodded their disinterest and didn’t look up.

The last man at the bar was a patron. Sotto didn’t introduce Calder to him, naturally.

At the booths. Sotto sat first, facing the door. You’ll be inclined to what I say. It’s about your future.

All this foreshadowing, Calder said, taking the opposite bench. What about the bartender?

Pal? What about him, nothing, Sotto said. Just a barkeep. He knows, but he just keeps the bar. There’s a kitchen back behind there, a cook you’ll never see.

Only half this place is real. I’m sitting here, I don’t know why, I still have no idea what you do.

You aren’t so naive as that. This defensiveness, it isn’t coming from fear. Be better if you relaxed.

Why you need me, then.

Most of what we do, it isn’t done here. Sotto was looking past Calder, through the windows onto the street. We help people, locals mostly.

A charity.

Well, for profit. But we help them in a way they can’t find anywhere else. And we do turn some people away, don’t call me a whore.

Help them.

Get attention, get a lover back, get a promotion, get distance from problems.

"Peddling gets."

We sell influence to people who want their lives interfered with, Sotto said.

Calder sat back. The bench creaked. Invasive influence.

You’ve done it. Might find gratification here. People in this neighborhood, most this part of Downtown, they aren’t wealthy. Aren’t demanding. They have simple needs and we meet them. The well-to-do, the Uptowners, they go to Faraday. Sotto rested the edges of his palms on the table, like he was gonna push it away from him. He was always moving his hands around, always, since I’ve known him. It’s infuriating.

We rarely have much contact with Faraday and his. We stay close to our building here, safer for everybody.

Calder, still full of questions, didn’t voice any.

Realizing Calder wasn’t going to fill the pause, Sotto went on: We’ve had a request come in, and the request demands somebody fresh. Someone’ll be hard to recognize.

I’m supposed to want to work for you, I don’t know the fuck who you are.

It might be a two-sided job.

Someone hard for Faraday to recognize, Calder said. Or whoever he’s got under him.

I don’t know how many he has. Thirteen last I had count, but maybe there’s more now.

You’re not selling this very well, Calder said.

The job, it’s important. You’ll agree with me. I’m not selling you something, I’m offering you something. You’re lonely.

Calder looked at Sotto, then at the door inside to the right of the bar. I don’t suppose lying to you will work.

No it won’t.

He stared at the door a little longer. I been alone a long time.

You reek of it, Sotto said, leaning in, taking up too much of the table. We’ll give you brethren. Spend some time with your own.

And if it’s not for me? If I prefer alone?

Leave when the job is done. No one’ll stop you from going.

Calder didn’t believe him, but he was tired of the constant driving, and the buses and hitchhiking. The chasms of solitude.

I’ll probably leave, Calder said.

Under Pal’s bar we keep a couple mini lockboxes disguised as refrigerators, Sotto said. You can ask Pal for petty cash but no more than a hundred a day. Let’s show you the room.

He led Calder past the door in back and up some narrow flights of stairs. On the topmost landing there were doors on the right and left. The landing smelled of old air-conditioning and abused carpet.

My room’s the second floor, Sotto said.

Calder nodded towards one of the doors. I don’t roommate.

You’ll have your own. One on the right. Where’s your things? he said, opening the door. Standard small Manhattan apartment, no better than a hotel room. And like a hotel room, no kitchen.

She’s not so big, Sotto said. The bathroom’s not so big, too. I own the building.

Do I get paid? Calder said.

I keep three-quarters the fee, Sotto said. Where’s your bags?

This. Calder raised the satchel. The second one I left at Port Authority, Greyhound storage. I came in by bus.

Sotto gave Calder a key. For your room, and also the front door of the bar. Now bring the other bag back here, now that you’ve got a home.

back to top

FOUR

Tuesday, late Sext

Uptown, there was an old man naked from the waist up being helped onto a big folding table by his latest nurse. They’re in the living room of a beautiful brownstone. The man coughed hard into his hands, getting blood on them.

Lie down for me, facedown, said the boy beside the table. The old man stared at him: sixteen, dirty long hair, grimy fingernails. The look of a runaway.

He’s not even clean, Faraday said. You could have showered him, Hoone. Before bringing him here. He look clean to you?

Hoone. Eternally dressed in one of his secondhand suits. He said, I brought him fast as I could. We didn’t stop for a shave and a haircut. It was serendipitous I found one so quick this time.

"Who says serendipitous?"

Fine, a stroke of luck.

Dad, Faraday said, we have to try him. Faraday had a doubtful look on his face but he was feeling hopeful.

Hoone crossed his fingers and hid them behind his other hand.

Faraday’s father cleaned his bloody hands with a ready handkerchief and lay down. The boy approached with evident apprehension, warmed his palms together. Put those palms to the old man’s back, fingers curled over the soft ribs. Five minutes he kept them there, towards the end sweat was running from hands shaking with strain.

A sloppy coughing made the boy cringe. A jet of whitish blood came out the father’s mouth. The boy stepped back and Faraday had him by the shirt. He turned the boy around and began pounding him in the face. Lefts and lefts and lefts, always aiming for the cheeks, always with the biggest knuckles on his hand.

The boy slumped but Faraday still had him by the shirt. Who’ll heal you? Faraday yelled with each punch. "Who’ll heal you now? Who? Who’s gonna heal you?"

Faraday let him go like a dropped barbell and Hoone was there to catch him. Faraday wiped his hands on his father’s handkerchief. You knife him, Faraday said.

God’s honest, he doesn’t look so great already, Hoone said.

You take a knife, Hoone. You use a knife up and down his face, both sides. Mark him cause I don’t want you finding him again like with that other one. Make sure you damn well recognize him the second time. Get him out of here. Then I want you out there, tonight, looking harder. And with a little more diligence, if it pleases you.

Around here I fell asleep. Took a nap. Scenes like this were common around Faraday.

When I woke, Kinkaid was knocking on the door to Faraday’s study. It was one of those ornate wooden doors that couldn’t have possibly come with the home. A deliberate trophy antique, they don’t make them that way anymore anywhere.

Come in.

Kinkaid fingered his hair behind his ears. It grew down to his neck, brown-blond. I’ve always hated his hair, it’s so heavy and straight.

Sorry to hear about this afternoon, Kinkaid said.

Faraday closed a ledger and put it on a shelf behind him. He’s frail. I think he’s lived past the point he should’ve died. It’s sad, Kink.

He hated that nickname. Kink. The only one he ignored it from was Faraday. Everyone else knew better by now than to call him anything but Kinkaid.

The regular doctors, they still don’t know?

Aren’t any more tests to take. Besides, he’s running out of steam. Those tests, they require stamina, some of them.

Kinkaid sat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. He didn’t want to spend an evening talking about the old man, pretending he cared. He wanted to be outside. Involved. So he changed the subject: The union job, that’s done. He would have put his feet up on the desk but didn’t want the sharp cornice to scuff up his new boots. Imported boots, free, talked out of the salesperson. Instead he put his feet against the front of the desk and leaned back and rocked on the chair’s hind legs.

How messy did it get? Faraday said.

Union jobs they’re always messy. Local this, Local that. Everything’s territory and concession, the two things no one wants to give up.

The new job just come in. That you barely agreed about.

I’m just saying, it’s a politician, Kink said. Ha! He would hate me calling him that. Unions are messy, but politicians’re hard. Plus the client has a strong feeling Sotto got the other side. Wrestling with him, that’ll take people.

You’ve got Lundin and Briggs.

We’ve got Briggs and Lundin, and that’s it.

They’re enough, Faraday said. We’re taking it. He looked through the debris on his desk but couldn’t find the contract. I must’ve left it at the club. Iommi, he’ll have picked it off one of the tables. Next I see Lundin and Briggs, I’ll tell them.

Briggs is unreliable, Kinkaid said. We could use The Nine.

Their last job spanned twelve time zones, they need to rest. So do I, it’s, dealing with them — and all at once is the only way to do that — it’s exhausting. Plus they get summers off, no matter what.

Then we could use Hoone.

No, my father comes first, Faraday said.

But Sotto.

Speaking of non sequiturs, Big Sir is getting out early.

"Is he," Kink said. If he wasn’t constantly constipated from Oxy he’d have shit his pants. He thought he had two more years till I was a problem for him again.

Didn’t he go down for three years? Kink said.

Prison’s a lot like time travel that way, Faraday said. Go up Otisville Correctional for three years, get out in one. Parole.

That would be me.

No, not Sur. I only ever been out to California twice.

Sir.

Big Sir. Short story shortened, a job I did over in Leeds for an expat. The outcome was spectacular. Faraday starts calling me Big Sir.

I wouldn’t have pegged Big Sir for good behavior, Kinkaid said.

Not that you had time to know him. The hearing’s in a couple weeks.

So it’s not definite, Kinkaid said.

It’s definite. He’ll be released about a week after. He’s smart, been on good behavior. Plus he’s strong enough to warp the hearing however he wants it to go.

He was strong, Kinkaid said.

"Is," Faraday said.

Damn right I am.

Plus I kept tabs, Faraday said.

On him? With who?

His Unit Warden, Faraday said. She calls me, first of every month, even if it’s a Saturday. We’ve an arrangement. Big Sir will do fine.

Kinkaid was real queasy then. He fixed a giant grin to his face, show how happy he was. Wasn’t. There were a hundred worried things he wanted to say, but instead, We’ll throw a party.

There were things I wanted to throw. Like Kinkaid through a window. A wall.

It’s a good thing, this news, Faraday said.

Fantastic, he’s been missed. About Hoone for Sotto — 

My father first.

FIVE

I’m doing this for your soul, Fish. Could be that Briggs rubbed off on me more than I realized. If Briggs is right, then there is a God. If there’s a God, that means you’ve got a soul. And if there’s a God, then there’s Heaven and Hell.

You’re headed for Hell. You think God’s so lenient, he’ll allow you Heaven because you can’t remember all the bad shit you done? Some really horrible shit, Fish?

I want you to know what happened. So that, after knowing, give you a chance to repent, feel some remorse. A kind of third-person confession/confessional. An experiment. A favor to you. Save you from damnation, Fish. I’m that pious.

I know, I know, don’t have to tell me, anyone in your position — no memories at all — they’d be eager to discover anything, anything about their past.

Don’t be thanking me yet. You’re not gonna like what you find, but that’s too fucking bad. There’s no such thing as bad publicity? There’s no such thing as good amnesia? Bullshit.

Faraday would have triplets if he found out I was telling you any of what happened. Triplets — I’m not sure how that started, but it’s how we always describe Faraday mad, him having triplets.

There’s the slight chance you could rebound, recover, hearing all this. Faraday doesn’t think there’s any chance of you rebounding, but if it happens I’m under orders to lame you again. And again, should it come to that. Custodian, at least for the two years we’ve got together. If you haven’t rebounded by then, you won’t ever.

I’m only supposed to watch you. Not even supposed to be talking to you.

But your soul. Consider it a favor. We can both ignore Faraday’s being mad about this, he’s far away, him and his triplets.

back to top

SIX

Tuesday, Matins: 1st Nocturne

In a cab going uptown. The backseat, like I said I could.

She’ll digest you, this city, Rook said.

Calder, who’d spent some time hiding in the back pockets of small cities, grunted agreement. If this outing was going to be all about Rook’s advice, a man he didn’t know and didn’t trust, Calder knew he’d regret coming. But this man was his best friend at the moment, and the only one who’d asked for his company.

A bad place to be, really, Rook said. People choose to live here, I don’t know why.

You chose, Calder said.

No I didn’t, Rook said.

You could leave, Calder said.

No I can’t. Rook sat back, head on the top of the seat rest, closed his eyes. Least we’ve got this special edge, and work. Don’t you talk much?

I’m told no, no I don’t. Usually I’m not around people worth saying anything to.

"Sotto said you were strange, but that’s okay cause I’m crazy. Sotto could tell you that about me. Fact he wasn’t keen on the idea me taking you out tonight. Thought you should stay in that tiny room of yours. Dwell. And I don’t mean dwell like make it a home, I mean dwell like fester. Thinks you’re a fucking wound. Used to be my room. Keep the mouseholes covered with the dresser, want my advice."

Rook opened his eyes, stared at the roof of the taxi and interlaced his hands behind his head. Big boxer’s hands. There’s no getting settled, he said. This city’s like a virus. You need a few days, a week, a month to let it run through you. Then you get immune.

I’ve been in cities before, Calder said.

Rook laughed. A condescending, superior New York laugh. You’ve been in cities but not The City. The City is what I’m showing you tonight.

The streetlights whipped past them with railroad regularity. Street signs and shop names a blur. The cabdriver cut west through the Park. It was late but there were still runners and cyclists competing for road.

Conflict is what this city’s about, Rook said.

Now Calder closed his eyes. This outing was going to be about Rook’s advice.

Even where I’m taking you tonight, Faraday’s club. Conflict.

Who is Faraday? It sounded juvenile to Calder. Who is Faraday? What is algae? What’s an eclipse? Still he needed to ask. Who is Faraday?

Competition, Rook said. He might even have the other side of your job. If anyone has it.

This job, the one I’m not even sure I’m taking, maybe you could explain what it is.

The cabbie honked an arrogant pedestrian and Calder opened his eyes.

The job, Rook said, is Council Member Adelard, Council Speaker. Means he’s the highest Council Member, has the most say. You heard of Int 3001?

Int?

"A city law being introduced. Called Ints. City Council —

(Ahem. Rook goes on to tell this awfully. ConEd has four grayish monsters in the East 30s, First Avenue. Some years ago they decided, sell them. Developers choked on their own saliva.

City Council blocks this with the state’s imprimatur. Fourteen acres we’re talking, total. Land use is part of the Council’s bailiwick. Deemed the land the buildings are on was eminent domain. We’ve got some clash, years of it. Developers sue, lose. They appeal. Blah blah blah, lose.

There’s a compromise born of bribes. Int 3001. Yea and the stations are converted for cleaner, safer energy. Nay and down with the stations and up with the apartment buildings, the city leasing the land to developers and ensuring an enormous annual income.

What’s ConEd? City Council? Fish, Faraday wiped you down good.

Back to that idiot Rook.)

— and the clean energy, we’re for it. Council Speaker Adelard hasn’t publicly made his mind known, and we want to make it for him."

I’m his lever, Calder said.

You mean — Yah! Voting machine’s lever. That’s a pun.

Calder hadn’t meant it to be one.

You’re going to convince him, Rook said, in the most subtle way possible.

So he won’t realize he’s been convinced.

I was wrong. Maybe the virus’ll only last a few days. But only convince him. Just him. That’s the job. Don’t bother with the rest of the Council, we’re not getting paid for that, all fifty-one of them, so Adelard’s all they want, him being the Speaker.

The cab pulled up in front of a club on Amsterdam whose awning read Tattletail in pink on black.

You get out, Rook said. We can’t be seen together, that would ruin why we need you. Look around. Stay long as you like. Try the Nicotine Queen if she’ll have you. And no matter what trouble I get in, keep away. You might want to watch but don’t involve yourself.

The cab took off to travel round the block a few times.

It’s a crowded club and smells like perfume and cologne. I don’t know Faraday’s trick but she doesn’t smell like cigars and beer. The floor slopes downwards towards three oval stages. Fixed lights showcase the fluid ladies. Businessmen and businesswomen, on their way home from work, they watch from the small European tables.

Calder found the only empty seat, next to a man in a loosened tie. If my wife were only twice as old and half as pretty as her, the man said. But she’s neither.

Calder gave him a noncommittal smile. There were three dancers onstage; Calder didn’t know which was being compared to this man’s spouse.

The man clarified. She’s the one I come to see, pointing at the third oval platform.

She was completely nude, lights reflecting off her skin like hard plastic. She was older than Calder. She teased the pole; stroked it; clenched it in her legs, let it go. Jerked around and around so fast the pole bent slightly in the middle.

A lit cigarette between her lips the whole time. Spinning like that with fire on her mouth.

Looked at me, just now, Loose Tie said. Good God, I couldn’t stand up if I wanted.

The music got louder, Persephone’s Bee’s City Of Love.

Calder didn’t see Rook. He noticed a bouncer kneeling below the center stage.

Best women in the city. I’m waiting for the Winged Lady.

Calder couldn’t understand strip clubs. He’d rather find a woman, didn’t comprehend this ogling. To him, nothing was more frustrating than looking and looking only.

The music died a little.

Oh hell, she’s coming right for me, Loose Tie said.

The cigarette was there. Now she was wearing a white thong so close in color to her skin tone she looked sexless. She had above-average looks, above-average height, the same for her breasts and physique. Separately, there was a radical homeliness to her features. But together, she was an above-average beauty. Attainable beauty. Realistic beauty, which is why she had so many fans. You could see her looking this good thirty years from now, whereas with the others, you knew their looks would curdle.

She was peppered all over with brown birthmarks, a small cluster of them down the center of her forehead like a worry crease. More realism. Her eyes were too far apart but, again, like with her body, the other features compensated and complemented.

Big red hair in a youthful ponytail. And pale, like her skin had been blanched in chlorine.

She put her cigarette out in the table’s ashtray and took Calder by the hand. He heard Loose Tie groan.

They ended up by the long velveteen couch in the back. She sat Calder down. He was aware of another bouncer in the shadows to his left.

The Nicotine Queen swayed in front of him, shoulders keeping time with the new song, Baby I Love You by Aretha.

"You are new, aren’t you," she said.

I been around, Calder said with a crooked grin.

She laughed — not the false laugh she was so tired of, but a real laugh. I’ve been around, too.

Not as much as you pretend, Calder said.

A mind reader, then. She put her hands on his knees, leaned inwards. Tell me what I’m thinking.

Calder didn’t bother. You upset that guy I was sitting with.

What can I do to get you to squirm? Touch me.

Touch you? Not unless I wanna get thrown out of here.

I haven’t even asked you to buy me an overpriced drink. I’m not even gonna charge you this dance. Go ahead and touch me, just mind the bathing suit areas.

Calder slid his hands down her arms, what seemed the safest place. She was cold with sweat. He’d been expecting feverish skin, as if it had absorbed and would radiate the heat from the lights. Next he touched her knees, the only part of her body where he could see any bone.

That’s enough, she said, removing his hands. She bowlegged up and onto his waist. So you’re enjoying this.

I guess the body doesn’t lie, he said.

She rocked her waist against his. Calder’s arms felt useless at his sides, like they ought to be doing something erotic to equal the way she moved. Her naked breasts were taunting his face.

You don’t like these places, the Nicotine Queen said.

Now you’re the mind reader.

She laughed again. I hope you’re not one of those thinks I’m degrading myself.

No.

Because I’m the one with the power here.

Yes you are.

I’m the one started it, and I say when it ends. She put her arms around his neck. You are cute. And compliant. And no whiff of need or desperation.

There was a ruckus in a lower corner by the stages. Three men fighting. One was Rook. The other two — one was black as coal, the other a sleazy white man wearing a clerical collar with his albe tucked into his jeans. Calder wanted to help but he was under orders, so he watched.

The bouncers descended. The black man looked up and the first bouncer walked away in a daze. The second bouncer, despite the black man’s interference, kept coming. The fight grew.

Come back tomorrow, said the Nicotine Queen as she dismounted. Tomorrow night, like two in the morning. We’ll date.

I have to admit I’ve no idea where I am or how to get back here.

So make a friend and ask them.

I can’t come back here and call you the Nicotine Queen straight-faced.

Tamm, she said.

And my name? he said.

Tell me tomorrow.

She left Calder, who waited for his body to subside before getting up.

The lights dimmed, Echo & The Bunnymen’s The Back Of Love could be heard. A hidden crane was lowered from the ceiling like some Euripidean mechane. On the platform was a woman with long, fine, black hair. All one length and so dark it looked like it was streaked with neon blue. She was crouching, her back to the audience. Her hair was divided forwards over her neck, her bare shoulders tattooed with red angelic wings.

The fighting stopped. It had to. Everyone was watching the Winged Lady. She was the most beautiful woman Calder had seen all day.

SEVEN

WEDNESDAY, early Prime

Briggs was a dubious Catholic priest affiliated with no actual church since teaming with Lundin. He used to love hearing confession, that’s the sort of priest he was. When he was younger he learned how to fight by starting bar brawls. And also attempted and learned from a variety of violences. This was before he joined the priesthood. Once he had been forced to kill a deranged repentant. That youthful training came in handy, the two sides of him working together.

Difference with Lundin is Lundin didn’t need training, didn’t have to use his hands. For obvious reasons. On those rare occasions when he had to, he had an edge over Briggs: he knew what his targets would do before they acted.

Not that it had helped much against Rook. Lundin touched his cheek and