Talking Heads (12 page)
*
The Sons of Columbus on a weeknight. The foyer was unlit, the reception rooms sober, the furniture folded against the walls. More than anything, the place said:
cost-efficient
. For a banquet at the Sons, they brought out the long tables. For Vegas Night, the round tables. The kitchen doors groaned when they swung, heavy chipboard, dark enough to hide the dirt from a Boy Scout's hands and strong enough to take a crack from a caterer. The club was a working three-dimensional design for the immigrant work ethic. Seven days a week, any job, any hours.
Kit was still thinking of Garrison. Charley Garrisonâtalk about an immigrant work ethic. Even the chill of the walk from the T recalled the way his feet had held the cold from Monsod's basement. That morning Garrison had said nothing till the inspection team was safe. Wordlessly the guard had herded everyone upstairs and out through the cellblocks a different way, to a different sally port. Only then did he pull Kit aside. He spoke in a cracked whisper, a tone that prodded Kit like a second frisk. He told Kit not to write about the fight with Junior.
You know the kind of trouble you're in for
, Garrison had whispered,
you write about that fight? Whoa
. The guard had told him to say only that Junior had died in the disturbance.
That's all that pervert scum is worth
.
And then, downtown, Kit had seen just that story on TV.
| ( the guard reappears with a big red Irish grin . Ayy swivels to face him ) | |
| Ayy: | This man says, what's the big deal about the truth? He says, “Whoa” ( he does a pretty good South Boston accent, actually ), “the truth, that always comes down to the same sorry shit anyway.” Always comes down to fear or greed or some other sorry shit. That's all you'll get, Garrison says, once you've gone through all the excuses. |
| Cue: | Uhh, you're some kind of reporter? |
| Ayy: | ( proudly ) With an alternative newsweekly. A journal of politics and opinion. ( Garrison disappears ) |
| Cue: | Uhh, you know something? I myselfâ |
| Ayy: | An alternative newsweekly. Where every day there's a war on. The Bastille must be taken every day. |
| Cue: | What paper is this? |
| Ayy: | And this next issue, this is going to be big. We're not just going to do the prison, Rebes, that story. We're going to do the whole building-contracts scandal. In Massachusetts. |
| Cue: | Building contracts in Massachusetts. Well. That is fascinating. |
| Ayy: | ( oblivious ) This next issue, it's going to be huge. A double issue. Maybe even forty pages. |
| Cue: | ( massages inside of elbow ) |
| Ayy: | This issue, it'll be single-subject only. The scandal only, a single simple dirty picture. Hit âem between the eyes. |
| Cue: | (goes on massaging ) |
*
“Hey, what happened to you?”
Kit had propped himself in an open kitchen door. Here a radio droned, setting loose 101 Strings on stainless steel. And there didn't appear to be any Sons tonight in the Sons of Columbus. Kit saw only women. Even the ones with no fat to speak of had that flesh to them, Italian flesh. Kit couldn't tell at first where the knots of dough left off and the kneading hands began. They wore loose workaday dresses that bagged over apron strings. Scarves held their hair.
“Hey? You with us?”
Kit touched his neck. One of the women came away from the counter and, just like that, put her own hand over his. Lightly she fingered the bruises beside his ear.
“You really got a bump there,” the woman said. A smoker, she studied him with one eye closed. “What was it, some kinda accident on the Expressway?”
“Yeah, looks bad,” another woman said. “Sure you don't wanna lie down?”
Nobody asked what Kit was doing here. Not even a can-I-help-you? The smoker raked the hair back from his temple.
“Stitches too,” she said. “Y'know this kind of thing can throw off your sense of balance.”
Kit had heard the same at Massachusetts General. But these women were nothing like the nurse there, none of that professional distance. Kit's neck gave at the smoker's touch. Oh, a touch. The moan in his ears returned, the noise that had deafened him in the Law Library. He wanted to speak.
And then, perfect timing, Zia.
She said something about a message at the office, something about never expecting him here. The words reached him spottily, through a buzz of surprises. Kit faced a Zia Mirini he'd never seen. The moan that'd been building up in him broke, hushed, and he couldn't stop staring. Even with the apron on, it was obvious Zia's dress had been designed for better than kitchen work. Loud pink trim laced the spattered flour. After a moment Kit placed the dress, he'd seen it at the office. But he'd seen it with yellow cowboy boots and the usual hair. Tonight Zia wore a scarf, like the others. No makeup.
Kit found his voice. “Zia,” he said, “you look like the poster girl for a convent.”
More new sides to the woman: “God, how'd you know? I've been shooting for Joan of Arc since I was twelve.”
He grinned up the better side of his face.
“So what are you a poster for, Kit? What
happened
?”
A reasonable question. Kit's voice failed him again; he got no further than telling her he'd gotten into Monsod.
“Oh you did? You
did
?” Zia actually clapped her hands. “Oh I'm glad, Kit. That's fantastic for you. And it's great for the paper, I meanâreally great. Congratulations.”
His grin was getting to his bruises.
“Honestly, Kit. You've done something incredible.”
The smell of bread was torture, a vapor his stomach couldn't hold. Or was it the news he'd planned to give her that made him so queasy? What he'd had in mind as he'd headed out of the city had seemed so sturdy, so clear. Self-evident. Yet here in this touchy-feely kitchen, before this happy young stranger,
Sea Level's
next issue already seemed like a bogus reason for doing anything. Had he come all this way just to hurt Zia? To show her his bashed-in face and then tell her she was laid off?
“Zia, can we talk?”
She shared a look with the smoking woman, a glance he couldn't read. For the first time since Monsod, Kit wanted a good look at himself. The best he could find was the kitchen's security mirror, the bulbous circle of glass up in one corner of the room. The reflection turned him upside down. Or the proportions were all wrong, the head too heavy, patched and barely holding together.
To:
K
From:
Corinna Nummold,
Administrative Assistant
RE:
Projected budget,
SL
#2 & 3.
Kit, I'm sorry, but I don't belong here. I don't want any part of this.
I mean, I realize you're planning a double issue, next issue. I realize you need figures for that. A projected budget.
But Kitâit's you who don't realize. You can't even begin to try to realize. Double issue's going to
cost
you, Kit. Cost you a lot more than a man can pay.
See, to get the rates for the issue, I went to the libraries. I mean, you got to go where the facts are, right? And Kit, I'm telling you. I heard something.
There's a crying in the libraries, Kit. That's what I heard. A crying and a sobbing, a noise nobody can make sense of. Right there in the libraries.
I never did lay eyes on what was doing the crying, understand. The thing was in those stacks somewhere, oh yeah. Some kind of secret weeper, some broken heart. But it could tell when I was coming.
Because all it wanted, see, was to get across the message. The moan, only. That's all it wanted. A moan inside the stacks, the stats, the facts.
A
moan
. Like to start me crying myself.
You know back home, Kit, back in the Dom Rep? We got the voodoo people back there. Voodoo witches and such in the woods, they come over from Haiti. Talk in tongues, you know. Voices from your worst nightmare, voices of the dead. Change your own voice to hear de voices of de dead. Bad news.
Don wan no part of it, Kit. Cain give no figures. I knows when we don belong in de facts n de stacks.
*
“First time my father said he brought you to the club,” Zia told Kit, “I could have killed him. My city friends aren't supposed to know about this place.”
Kit kept his hands in his pockets, a fist round his pills. City friends? They were on the second floor, in a room that smelled of vacuuming. The space had a bar, a Sears setup with two stools. Kit had a seat at the long committee table. His back straight, his posture careful. No telling what the swivel might do to him.
“Whenever I have to battle the traffic coming down,” Zia went on, “I need a drink. And that's without any bruises to show for the trip.”
Kit tried to think of pick-me-ups. Rum and Coke had sugar and caffeine, beer starch and calories.
“Scotch, right?” She held up the familiar bottle, the little man in a hurry. “Walker Red?”
The first taste went straight to his wounds. Straight into cavities all over his head. Zia took the chair beside him, waiting. Even her hands were a surprise tonight, the knuckles raw and overworked. Kit found himself starting with compliments, repeating everyone's praise for her piece.
“With you,” he said, “it's not just the hip versus the unhip. With you it's a whole culture.”
“Well.” Zia fingered up a Marlboro. “It's one girl's little secret sliver of the culture.”
“But that's just it, Z. You know the secrets. You know what's going on
inside.
”
She let her first drag of smoke seep up over her face.
“Someone like myself,” Kit went on, “I'm a dinosaur. I can't even get past the names. I see a name like Talking Heads and I just goâhuh?”
“Well, words aren't really the point, Kit. What matters is like, performance. Manipulating media.”
Kit touched his neck. His stalling had taken him back where he'd left off, mentally, back into the big ideas he'd been toying withâhis invisible layout & pasteup. The last place he needed to go.
“So, Kit,” Zia said, through seeping smoke. “You have something to tell me?”
He tried to think of her as a stand-in for the people who'd be reading his next issue. A warm-up audience. “Zia, do you realize what's been going on in Monsod?”
“I heard some things this afternoon.” One of the women down in the kitchen, it turned out, had a man inside. Another was the wife of a guard. “Between the two of them,” Zia said, “they had the phone tied up for hours.”
She'd heard how the disturbance had started, too, down in solitary. “A guy down there got killed, right?”
Kit propped an ice cube against his tongue. The light here was rotten, the wall fixtures imitation gas lamps.
“The one who started it, right Kit? He's the one who got killed?”
“I know all about it, Z. I was down there with him.”
“What? You were with him?”
It was a light that made faces glow, and her eyes were so large. “The guard left us, Zia. He cuffed the guy and left.”
“Jesus. Is that like, when this happened?” She gestured at his face, his jacket. “Was that the guy who hit you?”
He drank again, around the propped ice. His hand in his pocket, he strangled his pills.
“Aw, Z. There's so much corruption.” If he did this right, said it right, she'd understand. She'd see she had to stay out of the next issue. “So much corruption â¦
“Think about it, Z. Down in Monsod it's life and death. Life and deathânow that should be simple enough. Right? That should be simple, getting that across. Life and death. But everybody wants to set up a different story. Everybody wants whatever makes them look best. It should be plain and simple, life and death and the whole truth, but everybody's stalling and cowardly. They're cowardly, Zia. They're trying to cover their asses.
“Even Junior,” Kit went on. “Junior down in a closet in E Level. Down deep inside his own head day after day. He had a whole story worked out.”
Zia touched his arm, something else to adjust for. “In a closet, Kit? Like, from the first issue?”
“Junior was the
man
, Zia. Junior Rebes, Carlos Junior Rebes. That name in the piece was a fake, didn't you know?”
“Well I remember you saying something⦔
“Come on, Z. That Manny business was a fiction. A a necessary evil, that's what that was. But today I met the man himself. I saw the totally fucking unnecessary hellhole of a closet. The graffiti alone, in there, the graffiti alone is more honest than nine-tenths of the other crap people want to put across. Aw, you want to hear about corruption, Zia? Let me tell you something. They had him on drugs down there.”
“Kit, like, slow it down. Okay? I can'tâ”
“My guess is Seconal, reds. I mean, they wanted him half-asleep down there.”