Talking Heads (20 page)

“Aw, Mama.”

“That's how it woulda been without this man.”

“Mama, please.” The brother broke into a whine. “Can we just talk about this? Just you and me, huh, please?”

“Way I remember, Louie-Louie, even you didn't want to listen to those letters. Even you didn't want nothin to do with your brother.”

*

Kit had at last let go of his glass. He'd retreated towards the door; he knew a family squabble when he heard one. The mother was showing her sharper corners again. Her glare imperial, her gestures sober, Mrs. Rebes backed her remaining son towards the kitchen archway. When she snatched the glossy magazines from his hand (“You insultin this man bringin this trash, this man run an
honest
paper”), Kit may have glimpsed a bright flyer from Alcoholics Anonymous. But Louie-Louie wasn't going to get his mom to look at any flyers. Not today. The big kid was teetering backwards, having trouble on the extension cords. His chest and shoulders had shrunk. No, the squabble was no mystery—and Kit's side had won already. The mother worked fast. Kit had been sprung already, given an excuse to go, and it had happened without his putting in a word in his own defense. He'd only emptied his soft white-boy hands and drifted once more into the cold by the doorway out. Cold, on his back: the worm.

His idea had seemed so simple, so right. He would go to the woman and tell her. But he'd wound up off by himself, talking to himself. He'd wound up shaming himself with the things he'd found to talk about. How had he ever gotten started on his father? How, in a room where Junior's ghost burned in every nook and cranny? He'd found no way to free the unhappy spirit, to start it speaking honestly. Instead new ghosts had gotten in the way: the skeletons in Kit's closet, the hero the mother imagined, the looming Grand Jury. Too many ghosts, too much confusion. He couldn't even set the story straight for the one person who should hear it first.

“I ain't done with you yet!” Louie-Louie called suddenly, across the room.

The brother's features remained powerful, though his glare had lost something. “Yeah, you,” he said. “You still got a lot to answer for.”

“Huh,” the mother said. “Little boys got to play.”

One last time, Kit looked around the overcrowded room. The Krishna curtain flapped and winked over a radiator making more noise than ever, doing its best against the deepening cold, pumping out rainbows and halos.

Monday morning Corinna beat the process server to the office, but not by much. Kit was the first one in. His empty apartment drove him away, with no more than coffee and an unbuttered slice of toast to go on. Then came Corinna, heaving a big, body-length sigh to see her boss once more at his desk. Naturally, Zia arrived last. The writer showed up yawning and stomping off boot-slush, a good three quarters of an hour after the process server had gotten Kit's signature and gone. But in the meantime Kit had said nothing about the paper. When Zia got to the office he still hadn't explained to Corinna—to anyone—what he'd decided to do.

The process server made Kit nervous just to look at him. The man wasn't forty yet, not much older than Kit himself really, but already he appeared to be a boozer. His pouchy, florid face called to mind vodka breakfasts. It called to mind Ad and Amby out in Monsod. Mechanical over his clipboard and mail-packet, he was with the sheriff s office. He was serving a subpoena.

Kit took the packet back to his desk, behind the reflections afloat in his glass walls.

*

“Is this about the subpoena?” Corinna asked. “Is there something in that subpoena, making you do this?”

Kit kept shaking his head. By now Corinna and Zia had asked the same question, in one form or another, two or three times apiece.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Corinna kept pressing. “What do they want from you? State of Massachusetts, Grand Jury. Big shots.”

“Corinna, it's not like I'm telling you the Grand Jury
doesn't
scare me. It scares me, no question. You saw me in there.”

“Yeah but that's just what I'm saying, Kit. You sit in your office all shrunk up over the phone, shrunk up massaging your neck—and then you come out and lock the door and say to put the message on the phone. You say, ‘Guys, we need to talk.' Kit, I
mean
, what's that Grand Jury got on you?”

“Aw, please. I'm not a criminal.”

“Kit, listen—I know about things like this. I know a Grand Jury, sometimes it's got a rule that says no one can talk. No one can say anything about what's going on.”

Kit hoped he looked as impressed as he felt. But once more he shook his head.

“Kit, I mean. These people and their subpoena, aren't they the same people who said you could go down there in the first place? Said you could go down to Monsod and get yourself all banged up.” Corinna ran her glossy fingernails down one side of her face. “It's the same people, running this Grand Jury. Same big shots.”

“Corinna. If you want to blame someone, blame me. This is my call. My decision.”

“Kit. You really want to close the
paper
?”

“I want to suspend publication. For the time being.”

“Well what's that mean? How long?”

“Ah, till I've finished my testimony on Monsod.”

Really, Viddich? Was there really some moment of clearance out there? A point at which all this outrageous fortune settled back down into manageable office ethics—back to sea level? Kit hadn't thought it through, or not beyond what he'd just managed to put into words. And the woman could tell. Corinna kept on complaining, her accent thickening. As her body language picked up the shoulders of her dress slipped, exposing her bra straps. She swung round in her chair, facing Zia.

“What about you, you got nothing to say? You on some drugs today, girl?”

The writer sat sunk behind the bright patchwork of her desktop. Chin down, face soft, she didn't answer. Zia had said next to nothing in fact since Kit had come out of his office, out of note-taking actual and imaginary, and turned the lock on the hallway door. Now inside the macho collar of her jacket, of course a black leather jacket, Zia's pout appeared to have grown more fleshy, younger. Girl. Kit remembered her in the headscarf at the Sons of Columbus. Thursday night—ow. And yet, nutty as he'd been to run out there, at the Sons of Columbus he'd wound up accomplishing something. He'd won Zia's trust, he'd seen her secrets. Running around out of his mind, he'd done some good. But now what about today, when he was
trying
to do good?

“Zia,” Kit suggested, “give Rachel a call. Rachel at the
Globe
. She'll be glad to hear you're getting time off.”

Her look might have lightened up, Kit couldn't be sure. Corinna wouldn't let him alone. “Kit,” she said, “I don't think you thought this through. I mean, what am I supposed to tell people when they call?” Good question. The phone had rung twice during their conversation already, and the speaker on the message machine could only be turned down so far. Twice Kit had needed to raise his voice, working against the electronic rumble of puzzled callers. Worse, he'd told the women that they'd both remain on salary. Both of them, yes, though he knew the bank balance couldn't support it. He'd be broke by Valentine's Day. But how could he tell Corinna that he was going to keep sending her a paycheck and not do the same for Zia?

Now came a knock on the door. A knock, something else he hadn't considered. The way he'd been thinking—if you could call it that—the demands of carrying around the hottest story in Boston would be vaporized as soon as he closed the paper. Vaporized, poof,
Star Wars
. Kit thought of Junior's father, run off to Hollywood.

The knock sounded again, more loudly.

“What about this guy, Kit?” Corinna asked. “Should I get this or not?”

At the door was Rick DeMirris, frowning at Kit's bruises as he unzipped a parka patched with duct tape. He'd brought a list of the Monsod contractors. “The list, you know. The bad guys.” Freelancer's initiative—no wonder Rick was Kit's favorite. And even now Kit couldn't resist a look. There between the front room's partitions, still on his feet, he searched Rick's list till found the name he wanted.
Joints, fittings, misc. plumbing: Mirinex, Inc
. Kit had been on to a story, this time. He'd been on to something people deserved to know, and something for which other people deserved to get spanked. It looked like he was still learning about the power of that story. It had a life of its own, regardless of what Kit might do with his shoestring newspaper.