Talking Heads (23 page)
“Oh man, I'm sorry. I'm so-so sorry.”
“It's okay.” When Kit closed his eyes, the pattern of his stitches flickered red before him.
“Mister, really, I'm really sorry.”
“It's okay, Arturo. We were just playing.”
The boy came a step closer. “What happened to you anyway?”
*
No, this wasn't Monsod. Kit managed a chuckle, he made an explanation. He even let Arturo touch the sutures. Soon he and the child were finishing up their half-hour over the spilled jigsaw puzzle. The picture in the puzzle was a natural for them, a fists-up portrait of the Incredible Hulk. Kit saw no reason they couldn't put it together on the floor, so long as Arturo first helped pick up the chairs and get the toys back in the box. Then as they sorted through the bright puzzle pieces, for the second time in three jam-packed days Kit caught the whiff of kid-sweat. The odor struck him, just now, as somehow herbal.
Their conversationâloosened up, quieted downâcame round to Kit's relationship with the boy's mom. Corinna had told Arturo that Kit was a good boss, yeah really a good boss, but he liked another woman in the office better. “My Mom says she's pretty, this other woman.”
“Pretty?” Kit made sure the boy saw his smile. “Arturo, the last thing that woman would like to be called is
pretty.
”
“Yeah, right. I heard she's a punk rocker. But my Mom said thatâthat you kind of like that.”
“Oh I see. Men like me, they like women like her.”
“Right. Punk rockers, you know. Strange women.”
“Well I'm here with your Mom today, aren't I? Think about it. I'm not gallivanting around with any strange women today.”
The boy fell silent awhile. He was working on the Hulk's face, an American Indian face really, with strong cheekbones and a cliff-like lower lip.
“My Mom's not pretty,” Arturo said then.
Kit denied it. He sat up from the puzzle, the subject deserved a pause, but the son repeated himself. “She might be pretty in the Dom Rep where she's from. But in America she's not pretty.”
“Aw, Arturo. Anybody can see what an effort she makes. Your Mom's a woman who really cares about appearances.”
“Yeah right. Appearances.” Frowning, the boy put in the superhero's black eye. “But when you look at my Mom you never see a movie star.”
“Well, your Mom's not trying to be a movie star.”
“Someone really pretty, right?” Arturo turned his small, sober face towards Kit. “When you see them you think of a movie star. Maybe sometimes you think of somebody on TV, but that's the same thing.”
Kit felt so close to the boy, so wrenched open by these last jam-packed days, he might already have put together what the kid was thinking. It had to do with the Mom unattached as far back as her son could remember, plus the pop-sexy decade the kid had grown up with. “Arturo,” Kit tried, “nobody ever marries someone because they look like a movie star.”
He'd been half-afraid the boy would start sneering again. But Arturo looked pensive, trying to understand.
“And kids,” Kit went on, “as for kids, well. I never met a kid yet who looked like a movie star.”
Now
there
was a sneer Kit could live with. A sneer that was nine-tenths smile. Kit grinned back, he even patted the boy's shoulder, and after a moment he offered another good thought or two. “Your mother's just fine, Arturo. There'll be somebody for her, for both of you.” Kit strained to sound real, to make what he was saying come across as better than empty promises, and in so doing he recalled, for what felt like the first time in hours, precisely what had brought him here. The deal with Corinna. The unspoken test.
“Now myselfâ” he chuckled, straining to come acrossâ“I'm taken, you know. I have a wife.”
The doctor knocked twice, careful to get an invitation before he put his face in. And Halsey kept his tone neutral. Only once did his voice possibly betray something, a hint of a joke when he said,
Looks like you two had a nice quiet time in here
. Kit wouldn't blame Arturo if he sneered at that. But in fact Kit wasn't paying much attention to the man. Rather it had come home to him again how unlike Monsod this was. No banging, no bellowing every time somebody opened a door. Here, instead, it felt like the last minutes before his wedding. Then too he'd sat alone in a small room with a boy, an unmarried friend from his hunting days, until a soft-spoken older gentleman came in and said that it was time.
Here too there were women in tears. Corinna sidled in behind the doctor, pinching the corners of her purse, and in the moment before Arturo went skipping into her arms, Kit could see that the mother had been crying. He could see that and a lot more, a look as complicated as the one she'd shown him back in Halsey's office, before he'd gone off with her son. Pleading, angry, at a lossâand still willing to try.
M
USEO OF
T
HE
S
AINTS
A Guide for Tourists
.
The scening depicts blesséd Snigr. Hardnose late on a day, deep in masturbation over telefono and random papers.
It is to notice the overcoat. Although stained with stains from many millions of other times, overcoat must cover Snigr. Hardnose even nevertheless in his glass offizzio, which very hot place with the sun coming all over the window. It is to signify awareness of the miserable Hell Clown which is Man.
Where else was Kit going to go? As Happy Hour came on, January's dark-already Happy Hour, he was back behind his desk calendar and table teepees. He was explaining what he'd decided to do about the paper to remaining interested parties. There was the woman who handled his layout and pasteup. There were the printers over in Somerville.
What else was he going to do? Winning back Corinna's trust had felt terrific, sure. The young mother had been so touched that, on the way from the counselor's, again her accent deepened. Kit you a goo man, really a goo man. You like Jimmy Carter, like ol JC on the TVâyou a goo' man and you
don even know
. Corinna agreed to stay with the paper at three-quarters time, temporarily. She would take a smaller paycheck, temporarily. Felt terrific. Arturito wasn't the only boy getting therapy today. Likewise, when Kit poked Corinna's child goodbye, a poke in the belly goodbye, the kid was quick to grab Kit's finger but careful not to hurt it. The most loving touch he'd felt since his tumble with Bette down at the Cottage.
Nonetheless, two minutes after saying goodbye, Kit stood gulping down a soft pretzel from a vendor in the Government Center T station. He was waiting by the tracks for the trains downtown. Where else, what else? The worm was on his back. Already he could think of a hundred more useful ways he might have spent the last hour.
He had to come up with the money. He had to stop wasting time running around having emotions. Or sitting at his desk lost in the streaks of reflection along the glass.
To notice coat belt undone with tip on the floor, this is to think of the naked flesh we have hair to, and hapenis which drags on the ground beneath all.
It is to notice as well cowpoke decoration, the “tabletop Indian dwelling,” which is caked to fronting glass. The scening depicts cowpoking of mistical critter, “jackalhope.” It is to signify the critters we who are all Hell Clowns must strive forever to poke.
On the first issue, Kit himself had pitched in with
Sea Level's
layout and pasteup. He'd spent a couple of hours over the T-square, the blue pencils. Today, the contractor was willing to cancel her next appointment without charging a fee. The printers, however, had already turned down work in order to keep their machines free for Number Two. Kit, sighing into the phone, tried to get the shop owner to cut him some slack.
“You know,” he tried, “my wife tells me that pretty soon we'll do all this on computer. Layout, printingâ”
The printer cut in: “These days even the wife don't work for free.”
The wife. Kit suffered a brief, grim image of what he'd be doing if he'd gone home. Mooning from room to room, having emotions. And when he roughed up a budget that included the printer's cancellation charge, he didn't seem to have cash left for Corinna's February paycheck.
Did Kit still have a paper or not? A paper and, at the same time, his conscience?
It is to notice the black telefono and the white papers, instruments of dooty. The black one stands up firm and three-dimmental over the soft cumly white one laying two-dimmental with its angle showing. In other words, we have the cunjuntin of two happisits. Two happisits, and one inside the other. This is to signify how in the struggle of everyday toilet we must be brought off as often as potent.
Mistical union of happisits rejaculates the essence of the blesséd Snigr's theologizmo. We are hair not solely to naked butt as well to jackalhope. To this Snigr. Hardnose was consummated, the moaning when flesh and grace collide in a hole. The hole truth!
Then there was Louie-Louie Rebes, mammoth and colorful. Louie-Louie, glowering over Kit's front wall.
The brother spoke first: “Where's everybody at?”
Louie-Louie, and he must have made a racket coming in.
“Hey man,” he said, “you there?”
Come back, Shane. At least exhale.
The brother circled the glass towards Kit's office. The clomp of his biker boots echoed in the American Empire spaces, and the glass rattled, the floorboards whined. Kit couldn't believe it. When Leo Mirini went by in the hall, Kit never failed to notice. The first words he managed were by rote: “Come in, sit down. I'm sorry.” Louie-Louie's voice, on the other hand, was as hard on the rickety office as his boots. “You come to my place, man, I come to yours. And where's the, where's the
secretary
and shit?
“Man.” Louie-Louie turned in the doorway, frowning. “Is this place really a newspaper?”
“The secretary and shit have the afternoon off,” Kit surprised himself by saying. “It's a paper, Louie-Louie.”
As the brother had come closer, he'd appeared less intimidating. Louie-Louie took up most of Kit's office, no question, and his outfit was the same ruckus as yesterday. A fatigue jacket over disco threads. But he'd changed the shirt, going instead for a formal look, starched white and better fitting. More than that, the man looked like he was wrestling with trouble of his own. Twisting the kinky ends of his beard, Louie-Louie wouldn't sit. He wouldn't take off his jacket. Now Kit was the only one talking, filling space with an abbreviated version of why
Sea Level
wasn't such a crazy idea. The
Phoenix
, you know, had probably started with less.
Another rote. It allowed Kit to try and recall what Mrs. Rebes had told him about her younger boy. The father had left, she'd said, before he could hurt Louie-Louie. He was still a baby, she'd said.
“You know something?” the brother said suddenly. “One team I always hated was the Boston Red Sox.”
Kit blinked. “The Sox?”
“Always
hated
those Red Sox.”
“Well, the pitching's weak. They need a stopper.”
“Ain't talking about no pitching, man. Ain't talking about no Louie Tiant. You got a Harvard mug on the desk there, you oughta know what I'm talking about. It's
racism
. Man, the Red Sox're the most lily-white organization in baseball. Always nine white guys and a big nigger with a bat. Racist team.”
Kit checked the urge to apologize. “True enough.”
“And the Celtics ain't any better.”
“Aw, come on. The Celts were the first team to draft a black player. They made Bill Russellâ”
“Man, I don't care what they did a hundred years ago. It's practically the â80s now, man.” The brother was facing the street windows, the bulgy brownstones across the way. “Practically the â80s, and here you got a professional ball club with white guys getting all the minutes.”
Louie-Louie had turned towards the windows, Kit realized, before he'd said “nigger.”
“White boys,” the brother went on, “that's what brings in the money in this town. In Boston you need white boys.”
Kit exhaled slowly. In his mind's eye was the famous
Globe
photo from â76, four or five white teens assaulting a black man on the steps of the city courthouse. They were bashing the man's face in with a flagpole they'd grabbed off its stand.
“Boston,” Louie-Louie said.
In the photo, the white kids were using the stolen pole like a lance, thrusting the eagle at its tip into the falling man's face. And the American flag hung rippling from their grip, filling a corner of the shot. 1976, the Bicentennial. The photo had been all over the media.
Kit began to say he understood, he agreed. Boston â¦
“Man, tell me something. Tell me something, okay?” Louie-Louie turned to face him, and Kit knew what he'd ask:
Did you kill my brother?
“Tell me, man,” he said. “How could you come to my house and tell my Mama what a sweet old time your Daddy had with a racist
Red Sox
like Ted Williams?”
Kit touched his neck.
“What kind of a crazy white boy are you, telling my Mama something like that?”
He hadn't expected to get insulted, either. “Aw, Louie-Louie. I hope that's not the burning question that brought you all the way over here in the dead of winter.”
The younger man's beard changed shape. He might have been smiling; the window glare left his face largely invisible.
“She gets to you, doesn't she?” the brother said. “My Mama. She gets to your head.”
Kit managed a small grin himself. He gestured at his bruises and repeated that he'd been in bad shape when he'd come by their house. And with that a more reasonable motive for today's visit occurred to him. “You know,” he said, “I also told your mom I've got no ownership of this story. No legal claim or anything.”