The Natural Order of Things by Kevin P. Keating Page A

the one he uses to captivate audiences when delivering the keynote address at benefit dinners, but his smile falters; it looks defiant, devious, impudent, maybe even a little twisted. His eyes are blood-rimmed, his teeth caked with tartar, his tongue dry from another week-long bender. The charms of success have abandoned him entirely—a terrible thing for a man who clings to his fading celebrity as an idolater clings to a golden monkey paw. Taking a deep breath, he cracks open the door. In the hallway he hears the sound of a dozen antique keys jangling on a rusty ring, and in a slanted shaft of light he sees a thousand silver strands of cat hair shimmer, loop, and twirl.
    “Why, good afternoon, Mrs. O’Neill!”
    “Fuck you, Kaliher. You got somethin’ to smile about these days?”
    Mrs. O’Neill, the owner and manager of the Zanzibar Towers & Gardens, leans heavily against the doorway, a long pillar of cigarette ash wobbling between her lizard lips. She is a woman with a remarkable gift for cutting through the bullshit, and her demeanor suggests not only anger but sobriety. Not a good sign. She’s wearing a green bathrobe and slippers, her Friday night “uniform,” and her fingers plough through hair so wild and wiry and bleached of color that her scalp looks like a little plot of curled cornhusks roasting under a ferocious summer sun.
    “Something I can do for you?” Kaliher asks.
    “Yeah, asshole, pay up. Right now. Or hit the road. Bunch of goddamn infants living here. Helpless parasites, every last one of yous. This ain’t no charity ward. And it ain’t no brothel neither.”
    “I beg your pardon …”
    “Give it a rest, Kaliher. I know all about you. You and that dirty whore down the hall. I’ve seen her leaving your apartment. I won’t have it. I run a respectable place.”
    She thrusts her nose past the chain, her nostrils puckering and flaring, the bulbous tip covered with meandering tributaries of broken blood vessels that disappear into craters vast and deep and dark.
    “That ain’t no weed I smell, is it? Cause if it is, I’ll call the cops, by God I will. Make my life so much easier. One call, Kaliher, and out ya go.”
    “Weed, Mrs. O’Neill? Heavens, no!” He unhooks the chain and swings the door open. “Would you like to come in? Have a look around? Join me in a cocktail? Please, I insist.”
    He takes her by the hand, but she yanks it away and wipes it across the front of her robe. Amazing that
she
is the one to wipe
her
hand! But he isn’t about to let a rude gesture get to him, no, that might disrupt his timing, and he has these innocuous little transactions timed to the nearest tenth of a second. He always thinks in terms of a stopwatch, another habit from his years as a coach. He steps aside as Mrs. O’Neill, heavy and compact as a bison, shambles into the apartment, her great, humped shoulders threatening to rip apart the doorframe.
    “Okay, whadya got?”
    “Um, I have Kentucky bourbon. Irish whiskey. Single malt scotch.”
    She sneers. “You ain’t got jack shit.”
    “No, I swear it. How about a nice glass of Cabernet?”
    She snaps her fingers. “C’mon, c’mon …”
    He glowers at her, his tormentor, his jailer, and opens the kitchen cupboards one at a time. She isn’t particular, she’ll drink just about anything: cooking sherry, cough syrup, even rubbing alcohol isn’t beneath her, but they both know the truth, know that his cupboards are bare and that the only thing he has to offer her is a glass of cloudy tap water. This is just a preposterous pantomime he performs each month, but even the destitute abide by certain rules of etiquette.
    “Yer wife was here a few hours ago lookin’ for ya. Musta knocked on your door fer a good ten minutes ’fore I come down and chased ’er off. I can’t have some angry cougar makin’ a spectacle of ’erself. I don’t like troublemakers, Kaliher. Don’t like deadbeats neither.” She scratches the bristly black