Talking Heads (13 page)

“Who, Kit? Who'd they want asleep?”

“Rebes, Z, Carlos, Junior, Rebes. Do you remember the first issue or
not
?”

No answer. His shout was so loud amid the mail-order furnishings, for a moment Kit believed he'd regained his normal voice. He'd talked his way back to strength. But then Zia echoed his echo: she repeated the name.

“Junior Rebes.” She touched her head rag.

That was all it took. Two words, and Kit's throat clogged again. He felt as if he'd become the upside-down figure in the kitchen's security mirror. Distorted, bloated, leaking, sick .

“Kit,” Zia went on finally, “wasn't Rebes the one who was killed?”

Kit touched his neck.

“And he was the same guy as in the first issue, too? The one in the closet?”

“We talked, Z, Junior and me, we talked. I saw his cell. His graffiti.”

“Whew. They locked him in a closet and fed him drugs.”

Zia went for her drink, clumsy with a flour-speckled hand. Kit followed suit. His plan was looking worse by the minute—he'd struck a nerve he'd never intended to.

“Jesus,” she was saying. “Kit, this is some story. This is major.”

Once more Kit strangled the container in his pocket. “The drugs, ah. That's not the story, Z. The drugs are just, ah, incidental.”

“Oh come on.”

“I mean it, Zia. This story, this is only going to start with Junior. After that, we're going to bring it all back to sea level.”

She started looking more like the woman he knew. Smirky, with hidden blades. “Back to sea level.”

“Zia, this story, we're going to bring it right back to wherever people make up their minds. Wherever they make up their whole
lives
. In the bedroom, on the telephone, wherever. This story goes right there.”

“Kit, you don't have to sell me. You're the editor.”

“Aw, Z.” Though he still couldn't let go of his pills, this kind of talk did feel better. “Look, just think about my getting into Monsod to begin with. Think about why they even let me in there.”

She exhaled dramatically. “I
was
wondering. Was it, was it maybe that aide you met? The Croftall guy?”

“Croftall, exactly. It was Croftall who told the BBC to take me along. And I'll tell you, Z, I believe I know why. Look at this hard, there's no question why. Croftall thought that with me in there he could put on some kind of a show.”

“Well, that's a classic, isn't it? CYA.”

“CYA, exactly. Everybody wants to cover their ass.”

Zia too, Kit figured, was feeling better. She liked this kind of bashing away as much as he did. Nonetheless the thought of how far the Monsod story might reach silenced him all of a sudden. It called Bette to mind. Bette—she loved to think. She'd have no trouble figuring out that this story might even reach her family. Cousin Cal wasn't the only Steyes with connections to the State House.

Zia went on. “Dirty stuff like this, I mean, isn't it always something like CYA?”

The bad guys might well include some of Bette's people.

“The motive's always like, the same old grubby little handful. It's greed, maybe. Or it's fear.”

And there was Bette's broken look. Tatterdemalion.

“Or it's
hubris,
” Zia said, “that's a classic.”

Kit was blinking, one hand around his pills and the other clinging to his scotch. What was he doing here, free associating? What was this, flashing on himself in a funhouse mirror, himself and his wife? He could trust something about how he felt here, talking shop. But there remained, also, something utterly wrong, a wrong built into the whole idea of coming out to the Sons of Columbus. That touch downstairs in the kitchen, that woman's touch—it had disrupted his entire long day, it had toppled the supports that held him upright. What was he
doing
here?

“Listen Zia,” he began. “Listen, let me tell you what I found out in the Law Library.”

But he couldn't stop blinking. His ears filled with the moan again, and he couldn't catch Zia's response (she was surprised, he heard that much: Kit, you went to the
library?
). He was crying again. He was crying full-throated, sobbing, keening, right there in front of the woman. At first he couldn't even cover his face. It was hard to let go of his pills and his liquor.

*

Kit toured his emotions like a man walking a polluted beach. Odd bits crackled and stuck underfoot. Here he stumbled onto a black remorse over his insanity at coming out to see Zia at all; there he found a gooey relief over sharing some part of his grief at least. Here was the doubt, the worm. One moment the thing wriggled on the sand, the next it shivered on his back. There lay a pipe-fitting from Mirinex, bleached by saltwater, with a trapped dead fish inside.

Plus the grimy internal shoreline (something like along the boardwalk in Revere) turned up flotsam and jetsam Kit couldn't recognize. He knew his imaginary double-issue when he saw it,
Sea Level
#2 & 3. He knew those grimy folds of protecting himself—of avoiding Bette and anyone else who truly mattered. But by now he glimpsed other garbage stuck to the pages, clots and strands he couldn't identify. Mystery sickness.

At least he knew better than to try and talk about it, this illegible scrawl at water's edge. When Kit spoke up now, he stuck to the basics. He apologized. He said,
I'm in bad shape, Z., bad shape
, and enjoyed another wash of relief at getting it off his chest. But mostly he opened his mouth only to get another chew of the dinner she'd brought for him, the bread and tomato sauce. The stuff clung to his gums and had him groaning in thanks.
You're too good, Zia
.

“I am being a nice girl,” she said, “aren't I?”

Head bent, she fished out another Marlboro. When her face came up again, there she was, first time tonight—the punk Z. The wicked daughter.

“But well,” she went on, “I guess I should fess up. Under the circumstances, I mean. I should tell you.”

Kit, waiting, sampled the coffee. Neapolitan, Zia had called it. Packed a jolt, especially with what tasted like a soupspoon of sugar.

“Kit, I've been a nice girl for a reason. I've had like, an ulterior motive. I've been softening you up.”

So there was more junk dumped on Kit's beach. Ugly stuff, brackish. Jealousy. This afternoon, thanks to Kit's friend Rachel, Zia had gotten a call from
Esquire
.

“They want to reprint the Humans piece.
Esquire
, Kit!”

Zia's grin had softened again.

“I mean, Kit, I have to say … I realize this isn't fair of me laying this on you now. After what you've been through.”

“It's okay. I'm a big boy. Congratulations, Z.”

“Yeah well like, that's just it. My news, it's just career news.”

“So? More power to you, Zia. I mean it. Congratulations.”

The words came more easily than he'd have expected. His talk tasted, in fact, of honest gladness. What Kit said didn't sweep away the jealousy, no—
This is the drug
, Junior had reminded him, grabbing his own jealous crotch—but it showed Kit that even tonight, he turned naturally to better responses. Even now he remained a believer. “Zia, I came out here, didn't I? I came here under my own steam. So what else are you going to tell me?”

She eyed him, over a wide and skeptical wedge of lip. In bits and pieces, sounding as if she were trying it out, she told him about the phone call. “Like suddenly it's this instrument of destiny, right there in your hands. Like suddenly my whole life has changed.” Zia had spent the next hour—“at least”—with the thing disconnected.

“I mean, I was glad I was coming out here, Kit. Out here to the Sons.” She'd signed up for the kitchen duty long ago; this weekend was the Sunday following Epiphany. “Feast of the Baptism. Jesus, I can't believe how this stuff stays with you.” But now she'd come here needing the dough-flecked women, the radio droning off the stainless steel. “Like I told you before, I don't want my city friends to know. They have their own things—there's even one guy I know who likes to cool out by riding around on the T. Just riding the Red Line. Me, I have the Sons of Columbus.”

“Whew.” Zia fished for yet another Marlboro. “Today, I even wanted to hear the family gossip. These guys here, they catch me up on my brothers. And I mean, you can imagine how I feel about my brothers. Castration's too good for them, right? Then there's my cousins, my thirteen hated cousins. Or I hate like, eleven of them.”

“I know what you mean,” Kit tried. “Did I tell you, I was raised by my uncles?”

She exhaled slowly, loud.

“I'm just saying,” he went on, “I know how it can be with family. One of my uncles was gay, you know.”

“Kit…”

“Or he is gay. He's never told us, he's old-fashioned. But we all—”

“
Kit
. What I'm saying is, I'm not ready for this.”

How many times did he have to get lost on this polluted beach? Kit folded his hands around his coffee cup.

“Kit, I mean, you're an old hand at success.” Zia dipped the Marlboro towards him, a tip of the hat. “You've been climbing that ladder since you learned how to walk. Like, since you were back on the ranch, right? But me, I've always been a sickie. I mean, you must have some idea. My friend Topsy, the trouble she was into, that must give you some idea.”

Her eyes remained large, a stare to contend with. “Cellars by starlight, Kit. And like, I'm not just talking about dancing.”

“Zia.” The coffee cup was warm in Kit's grip. “Your past doesn't matter now.”

“Oh yeah, Kit? It doesn't matter even if it's something my father can hold over me? You know my father's a schemer, Kit. He's always got a scheme going, and he's always got a rock in his hand in case the scheme goes wrong. You know like, that rock on his desk?”

“Zia.” Kit felt his frowning in his temples. “That rock on his desk, it's two thousand years old.”

She snorted, still staring.

“It's old, Z. It's history. Right now, today,
Sea Level's
legitimate. It's not your father's, it's ours, and if we're square and legitimate then so is the paper.”

Another bladed smirk.

“You know what I mean, Z. I'm talking about your talent, what you can do. Your father, whatever he's got on you, it doesn't matter.”

Her look relaxed. Zia picked at her scarf, fumbling for thanks, for apologies. “I don't get a lot of, a lot of this kind of thing, Kit. I don't have much practice.” Kit smiled and repeated his congratulations—though in fact the reminder of Leo's schemes left him newly uneasy.

In Kit's invisible layout & pasteup, this afternoon, he'd found a place for Leo's schemes. He'd figured that the quickest way to finance a double issue would be to do what the old man wanted. If Kit laundered the cash for Surinam, if he took the five thousand and gave back three and a half, he'd have more than enough for
Sea Level
.

Zia, beside him, tore off a hunk of bread for herself. “Whew,” she said, around her first bite. “
Whew.
”

Kit leaned back from his plate, his half-finished coffee, hiding behind an exhausted smile. Wondering how he'd ever gotten so polluted. This afternoon he'd figured out a way to take advantage of Leo's schemes without so much as a prickle of conscience. In the Law Library he'd discovered worse, the most crooked system for awarding state contracts in the country, a trail of grease that went back more than a century. But even that hadn't put Kit off. The end justifies the means, he'd figured. Take the money.

“All of a sudden,” Zia was saying, “I'm this like, rising young hotshot. You know Kit? All of a sudden I'm not one of the fungus any more. Just the opposite, in fact. The
Esquire
editor, he even said he wanted a picture.”

“How can a punk be a success?” Kit asked.

“Exactly, exactly.” She didn't pick up on Kit's darkening tone. “I'm living my own story. A fucking dream come true!” Her stare grew even larger. “And it's like, complicated. It's complicated, what's happening to me. Kit, I feel like I could talk to you all night about what's happening. This afternoon after the phone call, you know, I tried to cool out by asking myself like, what clothes should I wear? In the photograph, I mean. What clothes? And I stood by the closet and tried to pick out the wildest stuff. You know what kind of stuff; I've seen you notice what I wear.

“But then I realized like,” Zia said, “it doesn't matter what I wear in the photograph. I could come in without any clothes at all; I could come in stark, fucking naked. And I'd still be the reporter, Kit. The Humans, they'll be the sickos. This afternoon like, for the first time in my life I had work. I wasn't one of the Humans; I wasn't just another cellar-dweller. I had, my own chosen work. I stood in front of my clothes closet and I knew it.”

Zia's pale headscarf made it appear that she'd gotten a G.I. haircut, a buzz cut. Under these imitation gas lamps she called to mind that last photo of Kit's father. She had that sureness, natural, powerful.

“Kit, it's incredible what's been happening, since you took me on. It's like—
you're
incredible. Kit, totally. You don't even hold my father against me.”