John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

“Hey. Kit, kid — you with us?”

“That’s the dig, isn’t it?” Kit asked. “The dig, where the archaeologists work.”

“What, down there? You interested in that stuff?”

“That’s where they’ve found the, the artifacts?”

“Invaluable artifacts.” Leo shook his head. “So invaluable those Harvard wise guys didn’t even come in today.” He shared a look with the men beside him, shaking his big head. Kit too, though in his case he was shaking off a flashback to Garrison’s raging: Fucking rich-boy faggot Harvard .

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

Leo’s smile showed some tongue. Kit couldn’t believe how he’d sounded, breathless, desperate.

“It won’t take long,” he went on. “I’ve, I’ve got other appointments.”

“Sure, Kit. You’re a busy man, sure. There’s been a lot going on over at your place.”

Jab, twist. Again Kit recalled Garrison, the secrets he’d known, the things Zia must have let slip to her Pop. Maybe Kit should have taken a break after he’d wrestled free of the guard. A walk in the sea air. But now Leo was shrugging again, nodding again, and with a flat gaze he let the hardhats know he and Kit needed some privacy.

Cue:Out, ow, out! Imitation is the sincerest form of anarchy. Ayy:( no longer with us ) Yet I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen it, smelled it. Cue:Got sex on the brain? The sexual revolution, is that your ‘70s hang-up? Come out and get into Human Sexual Response! Ayy:I’ve seen graffiti like this before. I’ve smelled cold iron and standing water.

( He’s still got that bizarro sidekick, “C. Garrison.” The ghost in the uni, the prison guard. Briefly it flickers beside him. ) Cue:( unimpressed ) Sure, bring the cops. Cops, senators, presidents — hey, Watergate was a ’70s thing too. Come on and dance with Oedipus: the King is a motherfucker! Ayy:Then there’s the sea so close. ( Garrison disappears ) The muck at my boots, the wind in my face. Cue:( more serious, trying to reach him ) The Talking Heads, that’s our scene. Scandie see? The Talking Heads borrow the greatest authority in the authority culture, the very definition of reality. Ayy:The sea, the wind … Cue:The Talking Heads toy with the darkest secret of all, the emptiness that shadows The Man — the fear that whatever the muckraker rakes is no big deal, whatever the believer believes in is merest rhinestone. Ayy:I’ve been here before. I have. Cue:( giving up, singing ) Cellars by starlight, something in the air.

*

Leo said nothing till his friends on the crew looked like figures on a distant TV. Kit couldn’t make out faces.

“Whew,” the old man began. “If I’d had my head on straight, I’d’ve done this inside. ”

He’d gone right into his act, fixing up a fat Brando smile as he pulled together his checked lapels. An act, but it worked: for the first time in a while Kit noticed the cold. The wind here whistled along the lower site’s dam, high-pitched enough to be heard through the traffic.

Or you could hear it if you were off by yourself like this. Just you and the crooked money man.

“Kit, come on.” Leo’s expression turned smutty. “You’re looking at me like I’m one of those wise guys from the Human Sexual Response.”

“I need to talk to you.”

He touched his neck. Shamed again by his voice, blinking across the cluttered pit, he noticed the surrounding factories. Sweatshops from the turn of the century, they loomed on three sides. Blunt places, efficient.

“Anyway,” Leo was saying, “I got what you want.”

“I don’t want it any more.”

“He-ey.” Leo kept his head down, fishing under his coat for a pants pocket. “Kit, at least wait’ll you see it.”

“I don’t want it, that’s what I came to tell you, I can’t take it. You can’t trick me into taking it.”

Leo brought out the cash, a thick fold in a money clip. A Nutshell Library of his own.

“You can’t trick me, Leo. I know what’s going on. After this I’m going right over to the office to explain.”

“Trick you? Kit, kid, lighten up.” Leo waggled the clip beside his broad face. “You call this a trick?”

Leo had the fistful of hardpacked cash, and all Kit had was this flyaway rush of words. “It’s — I call it a mistake, Leo. It’s the same mistake I made just last week, the same all over. I have to figure out why it happened.”

“What? What are you talking about? Kit, you don’t mind my saying so, you’re sounding kind of nutty these days.”

Kit frowned. “Garrison already tried that one, Leo.”

“Garrison, ayy. Guy like that, Kit, you’re lucky we got him to talk to you at all. He had his way, he’d rip you open and pull you out from inside.”

Still the old man smiled, holding the cash in one relaxed hand. All Kit could think was— we .

“But it’s not just a gorilla like him, says you’re sounding nutty. You should’ve heard my daughter last night. She needed some money, you should’ve heard her talking.”

To Kit, even the site’s TV-sized workmen seemed part of that we . They seemed there just to whisper about him.

“She was counting on that next paycheck, Kit. You’re no friend of hers, man. No friend of that girl.”

She needed the paycheck? But Kit had told her … “She asked you for money, Leo?”

“Yeah, she asked. What, that surprise you?”

Kit shook his head, or tried to. Just what were they talking about? Garrison, Zia?

“Kit, come on. What’s your big news?” Now Leo held the cash at his belly. “What, you expect some kind of wrestlemania here? Let it all hang out? Hey, I’ll let it all hang out.”

“Leo, I, I told you …”

“You want to know how my daughter fits into this, Kit? ‘Zia,’ huh. Hey, I didn’t set that girl up down there just so she could write about her faggot friends.”

In the surrounding factories, glare filled the windows. The winter sun in Boston: it hurt the eyes but gave no heat.

“I told that girl myself, Kit. Last night I told her. She was all excited about Esquire , I said, ‘I don’t give a shit about you and your sick faggot friends.’ I mean, her brothers, they listen to me. They understand how a man does business.”

Kit straightened his spine. “Leo, they’re not the only ones. Your sons.”

“Oh yeah? Kit, you think you know about my business?”

“I know about Sea Level , what it means for you. It’s about cash, isn’t it, Leo. A cash business, that’s what you wanted. And not for taking down to Surinam either.”

“Surinam.” The old man had never quite lost his smile, and now it came on strong again. “The scams I can play off that Surinam. It’s as good as Pozzuoli after the war.”

“Don’t change the subject. Don’t try to trick me. The cash is for right here in Boston, isn’t it.”

It was a child’s smile, Little Leo knows a secret. The man flipped and caught his money clip.

“I’m sure Forbes Croftall gets his share, for instance.”

“Ahh, Croftall.” He waved the money as if shooing a fly. “That guy never needed me to help him find trouble.”

Kit had been bracing for hardball. In one coat pocket he’d made a fist and in the other — since the gun was in the way — he’d gotten a grip on the stock and trigger.

“You’re, you’re not denying you’ve done business with Senator Croftall?”

Leo snorted. “Kit, kid. If you’re going to finger me in front of that Grand Jury, don’t do it just because I know Croftall and I carry a lot of cash. I mean, at least get me for something juicy.”