John Domini: Talking Heads: 77

“Aw, Betts. A shoestring venture? Is that what I’ve got?”

But Kit’s laughter, once again, didn’t go far. He let his scrolled first issue flop across the desk. “Bette,” he said, “I’ve got to get in on that visit.”

“The visit?” She needed a moment. “You mean to Monsod?”

“Monsod State Penitentiary. The inspection’s set for Thursday.”

“Oh, Kit. Oh, honestly.” It never took her more than a minute. “Must the media be everywhere ?”

“The first issue’s just a building block, Bette. Deadline for the next’s only ten days away.”

“But Kit. Surely you don’t need to go inside? You don’t need to go and, I don’t know, take samples? That despicable closet, for instance—”

“The closet especially, Betts. The closet’s the most incredible thing in the story. I’ve got to see it.”

“Oh, hell. Honestly.”

In the glass before him, Kit rediscovered her face. And if he turned away, there was more glass. His office fit in bowed streetfront of a waterfront brownstone. A second-story space, American Empire, it had windows facing in three directions. Even in January the sun made the place hot.

“Well, what am I to say?” Bette went on. “Be careful, lover. If you’re allowed to go, be careful.”

“I was wondering,” Kit said, “about Cousin Cal.”

“Cousin Cal.”

No, it never took her long. Cal was Harding Calvin Steyes, of Halterstock & Steyes. A Boston holding company, in trusts and real estate mostly, Halterstock & Steyes had ties to the State House that went back more than a century.

“You want to go to my cousin once removed,” Bette said. Elizabeth Steyes Viddich. “You believe he could help you get into Monsod.”

“Aw, Betts. It’s possible. Maybe one of the guys on the Building Commission likes to hunt duck.”

“Kit, don’t joke. Please, don’t. Cal and his shotgun, that’s the stuff of nightmares to me.”

Aw, Betts. It wasn’t as if Kit himself didn’t suffer the awkwardness of this, calling his wife for a favor. Especially when, not more than an hour earlier, the two of them had been snuggled together crotch to crotch. They’d been fucking hard, hump against ripple. An odd first-of-the-week greediness. Odder still, Bette had told him to do without the Trojan. She’d told him she was past the “worrisome” part of her cycle.

Oddest of all, suddenly Kit’s thinking was full of their morning ferocity. After his wife’s first peak, he recalled, they’d separated so she could take him another way. She’d rolled over deliciously, all haunchful in anticipation. The image flared before his mind’s eye; it may even have appeared among the reflections before him. This as, over the phone, Bette grew chillier by the word.

“You know Kit, Cousin Cal may well be the last person on earth I’d want to feel indebted to.”

“Darling, I’m calling to ask. I’m calling you first.”

He called her darling and his heart remained baggy. In the phone’s earpiece his tone sounded sensitive. Yet Kit sat there flashing on his wife’s last climax, when she’d thrown her head back to let him watch.

“And Kit,” Bette was saying, “you must realize that my Cousin Cal, well. He’s what’s delicately known as ‘a family hire,’ Cousin Cal. I suspect the only phone number he could give you would be L.L. Bean’s.”

Kit didn’t laugh. In the phone’s electronic pathways every sound he made seemed like a lie. The black instrument in his hand was itself a lie, not a phone at all but rather his wife’s elongated cowgirl hips, thrusting up between his spread hands. Well Betts, Cousin Cal see State House call Monsod—

“Bette,” Kit said, “this is wrong. I have to say, I did wrong. Asking you like this. You remember this morning, the way we made love? That’s all I’m thinking about right now. I’m asking you about Cousin Cal and I’m thinking about us this morning. Fucking our brains out.”

Bette made a noise, a release in the throat. Kit remembered a similar sound, part groan part exhale, while her neck and chin had arched up and up across a ruined pillow.

“It’s my unconscious taking revenge,” he went on. “That’s what it’s got to be. My unconscious punishing me for calling you. Aw, Betts, forget I ever asked about Cousin Cal.”

“Kitty Chris. Honestly.”

“I’m sorry. Darling, forget it, forgive me.”

“Goodness. It’s just one crank call after another today.”

“This morning was so incredible, Betts. You were like something out of Joan Baez.”

She made the noise again, but this time he could see her in the present. On rare occasions — undone occasions like this — Bette took on a look to match that haystack head of hers. A tatterdemalion look: a broken blue openness. A weakness.

“You were so deep, ” he went on. “You were like, ‘Arise, Arise, Mary Hamilton.’”

“I thought you’d given up on folk music,” she said. “I thought you couldn’t believe in the voices any more.”

Ah Bette, making distinctions. Putting that distance between herself and how she’d been touched. It didn’t fool Kit. Didn’t fool the man who could see her over the phone.

“Actually,” she said, “this morning ran a bit deep for me as well, don’t you know. Yes. Possibly too much so.”

Bette’s rare tatterdemalion. It was another bit of herself she and Kit kept between the two of them. The rest of the world, so far as he could tell, knew only Bette with her hair done. Bette in strict equestrienne posture.

“Kitty Chris, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Betts, tell me.” The stupidity of his original reason for calling rocked him, an undertow. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m not so sure about my cycle, Kit. My time of the month, as they used to say.”

God, the stupidity. Lunging after career help in all the wrong places. Kit bent over the phone, his head dipping below his desktop shelving, below his “Ve-Ri-Tas” mug and attaboy memorabilia. “Bette,” he said. “The Trojan, not using the Trojan — that was as much my call as yours.”

“Oh, now.”

“Betts, the responsibility’s as much mine as yours.”

“Kit, oh. You told me the truth just now, the whole truth, as the bailiffs say. And, well. I should tell you the same. Kit, this morning I didn’t have a clue.”

“Darling.” He recalled her testiness when she’d picked up the phone. “Have you been worrying about this?”

“Well, yes. It’s frightening, Kit. I’m nearly thirty, don’t you know. I’m an adult. Yet when I told you to skip the precautions like that I must’ve been talking to myself, don’t you know. I must’ve been telling myself something. And I’ve no idea what it is.”

“You’re frightened.”

“I’m frightened, Kit. Honestly.”

Then there were women at Kit’s door. Two women, peering through the glass. For a moment, blinking, startled upright, Kit thought they’d heard everything. He couldn’t recall if one of them had knocked.

“My family must have some part in it,” Bette was saying. “Some part in this, this test of who I’m to be or whatever. I mean becoming a family, joining my own family. Well.”

“Ah.” Kit said. The two women were no surprise, really. They were the only other people who approached full-time for Sea Level . One, shorter, darker, was his Administrative Assistant Corinna Nummold. The other, prettier, more strange, was his sole staff writer, Zia Mirini.

“With my family,” his wife went on, “well. One wouldn’t say I’m filled with joy at the prospect of joining the grand pageant down the generations.”

Aw, Kit. Bad first move, bad last move. He hated to cut his wife off when she got like this, exploring, examining. He knew how much she loved to think.