maintain separate residences and double sets of keys. So far as I know, I’ve listed those in ascending order of frequency. It’s no wonder the man is infamous. His trousers are as often open as shut.
“Where would be the fun in that?”
I shook my head. “Are you going to help me carry the pimp you laced to the Tombs?”
Val chuckled, wincing. “Of course not. Afternoon, brother Tim.”
He turned to go. I have often suspected with a queasy tingle on the underside of my ribs that something terrible is going to happen. That circumstances recently set in motion are heavy—crushing, really—and they will now roll momentously toward a sharp dip in the cliffside. I’m usually right about such things.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t go a very long way toward preventing them happening.
“Are you going to keep campaigning for Alderman Symmes?”
“Fuck no,” Valentine scoffed, throwing wide the door and slamming it behind him.
4
We view it as a most insane and ludicrousfarce, for women in the nineteenth century to get up in a public and promiscuous assemblage and declare themselves “oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights,” when, if they really knew what belonged to their true position, instead of stirring up discontent and enacting such foolery, they would be about the sober duties and responsibilities which devolved upon them as rational beings, and as “helpmeets” of the other sex.
—
THE LIBERATOR
, SEPTEMBER 15, 1848
T RANSPORTING THE FRAGRANT LUMP that was the concussed Ronan McGlynn proved simpler than I’d anticipated, since Ward Four thrives on shipping and my colleagues are resourceful men. By the time Valentine departed, the girls had gone and Mr. Connell was returning from a freight yard with a rickety wooden handcart. He’d obtained permission to use the device by offering not to inspect their premises for unreported—and thereby untaxed—cargo. Which was big of him.
When we’d dumped McGlynn in the most swamplike cell we could find, roaches fleeing in pretend and temporary fright, Mr. Piest offered to return the cart in exchange for my making out the police report. It was a hard bargain, since I loathe that particular task. Writing police reports flattens living people into headstones, erases motives, erects paper monuments to dark errors and cruel whims. But I’ve never told Piest as much, so no malice was intended on his part.
“All right?” I asked Kildare as he made to exit. Only half joking.
“It’s the queerest o’ things, when it happens,” he replied dreamily. “Caoilinn may not ha’ slit my throat, but she stabbed me through the heart sure as—”
“Stop afore ne’er Wilde nor Piest is able t’ keep a meal down fer the rest o’ their natural lives,” Connell ordered, escorting his friend forcefully out of the lockup.
I could have told Kildare I knew what he felt like. But it wouldn’t have helped—nothing about love can be helped—so I let Connell drag him off to be hosed down or fed whiskey or whatever the Irish do in extreme situations such as the one in which Kildare found himself.
I lit for my office, a two-minute trek down one of the Tombs’ interminable echoing corridors, rolling my stiff neck to coax McGlynn’s deadweight away. Reaching it, I unwound a notch. Not that my office is comfortable exactly—I think of it in good humors as a whitewashed mouse hole, in bad ones the benign sort of coffin. Admittedly I’ve equipped it well. Bookshelves of local directories and codes of law, drawers that lock and pens that flow. A carved pine desk and an armchair upholstered in dark green preside, both given to me by a friend who moved to Toronto. A better-than-decent lamp painting an incongruously civil glow over the room. Two plainer chairs, ones I scavenged, wait for colleagues and crime victims. Finally I’ve a little table with Dutch gin and glasses resting on it, for whenever my colleagues stop by to ease the aches from
“Where would be the fun in that?”
I shook my head. “Are you going to help me carry the pimp you laced to the Tombs?”
Val chuckled, wincing. “Of course not. Afternoon, brother Tim.”
He turned to go. I have often suspected with a queasy tingle on the underside of my ribs that something terrible is going to happen. That circumstances recently set in motion are heavy—crushing, really—and they will now roll momentously toward a sharp dip in the cliffside. I’m usually right about such things.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t go a very long way toward preventing them happening.
“Are you going to keep campaigning for Alderman Symmes?”
“Fuck no,” Valentine scoffed, throwing wide the door and slamming it behind him.
4
We view it as a most insane and ludicrousfarce, for women in the nineteenth century to get up in a public and promiscuous assemblage and declare themselves “oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights,” when, if they really knew what belonged to their true position, instead of stirring up discontent and enacting such foolery, they would be about the sober duties and responsibilities which devolved upon them as rational beings, and as “helpmeets” of the other sex.
—
THE LIBERATOR
, SEPTEMBER 15, 1848
T RANSPORTING THE FRAGRANT LUMP that was the concussed Ronan McGlynn proved simpler than I’d anticipated, since Ward Four thrives on shipping and my colleagues are resourceful men. By the time Valentine departed, the girls had gone and Mr. Connell was returning from a freight yard with a rickety wooden handcart. He’d obtained permission to use the device by offering not to inspect their premises for unreported—and thereby untaxed—cargo. Which was big of him.
When we’d dumped McGlynn in the most swamplike cell we could find, roaches fleeing in pretend and temporary fright, Mr. Piest offered to return the cart in exchange for my making out the police report. It was a hard bargain, since I loathe that particular task. Writing police reports flattens living people into headstones, erases motives, erects paper monuments to dark errors and cruel whims. But I’ve never told Piest as much, so no malice was intended on his part.
“All right?” I asked Kildare as he made to exit. Only half joking.
“It’s the queerest o’ things, when it happens,” he replied dreamily. “Caoilinn may not ha’ slit my throat, but she stabbed me through the heart sure as—”
“Stop afore ne’er Wilde nor Piest is able t’ keep a meal down fer the rest o’ their natural lives,” Connell ordered, escorting his friend forcefully out of the lockup.
I could have told Kildare I knew what he felt like. But it wouldn’t have helped—nothing about love can be helped—so I let Connell drag him off to be hosed down or fed whiskey or whatever the Irish do in extreme situations such as the one in which Kildare found himself.
I lit for my office, a two-minute trek down one of the Tombs’ interminable echoing corridors, rolling my stiff neck to coax McGlynn’s deadweight away. Reaching it, I unwound a notch. Not that my office is comfortable exactly—I think of it in good humors as a whitewashed mouse hole, in bad ones the benign sort of coffin. Admittedly I’ve equipped it well. Bookshelves of local directories and codes of law, drawers that lock and pens that flow. A carved pine desk and an armchair upholstered in dark green preside, both given to me by a friend who moved to Toronto. A better-than-decent lamp painting an incongruously civil glow over the room. Two plainer chairs, ones I scavenged, wait for colleagues and crime victims. Finally I’ve a little table with Dutch gin and glasses resting on it, for whenever my colleagues stop by to ease the aches from
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