John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

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.”

Her father, his father. Kit was stumbling over every kind of junk there was.

“And today you did this like, heroic thing, this incredibly brave and noble deed. And still you’re on the job. You’re on the job, you’re letting me know. Even if it means coming all the way out here. You’re thinking about me, you’re making sure I’m part of it. The next issue.”

That roused him. “Aw, Zia.” Kit reached for his coffee. “I don’t know about the next issue.”

“Oh, it’s going to be a killer. A motherfucker.”

“I don’t know, Z.” The drink was an unlikely mix by now, bitter but sugary. “I’m not sure what to do, about the next issue.”

“Oh, hey Kit. He-ey.” Zia laid a hand inside his elbow, her fingers light. “You must be tired.”

“Zia, I’m not sure. I’m in bad shape.”

So I left our blue boy, our pseudo S&Mie. With an itch in my arm, I went looking for a darker dive. And the Cue & Ayy I laid out above, my day with the dilettante — well as you’ve probably guessed, that isn’t exactly what took place. Not exactly, no. It’s what those of us in the news business call a “made-up quote,” or a “total fabrication.” Every now and then we have to do that sort of thing in order to get our point across. But my point, remember, is that this guy had missed the point.

This guy was lost. Way out of his depth. His friend Garrison might’ve had some ghostly substance, yeah, okay. Garrison kept fooling me, yeah, a stubborn bit of bad news, buoying up into view no matter how jaundiced an eye I cast over the scene.

But Our Subject, Our Scandie Ayy — he was lost. He didn’t get it.