John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

*

In time, the Sea Level office began to seem like a natural for this kind of talk. An open room, a natural. Whatever was brewing behind the halfwalls eventually foamed up into plain sight. Even now, every workspace revealed touches of visible madness. Here were Zia’s gaudy postcards, there Corinna’s bulky cosmetics case, and up on Kit’s glass walls stood the fabled Wyoming jackalope. Imaginary layout & pasteup, standing in plain sight, out where Croftall’s pursuit of Kit’s wife fit right in. A dirtball direct from the grubby little handful that motivation always comes down to. You put together a decaying marriage, a dark-lit Parker House memory — simple as that, you had the dirtball. The obsession. Only later, as the Senator’s better judgment had tried to play catchup, had Croftall seen as well the possibility of using Kit to provide political cover.

The Senator needed to satisfy Leo too, Kit pointed out. A BBC inspection had to look legit, but also it couldn’t turn up anything that would cost Leo too much to fix.

Bette pointed out that, as majority leader, Croftall lived behind a screen of public power. It had been years since he’d known what it was like to be exposed.

There in Zia’s workspace, Kit and Bette could work out the whole shape of the man’s lovesickness. Now they bent together holding hands, now they eased back against the partitions. Bette explained that, last Thursday morning, the Senator never made it any further than the stairwell. “I threatened to start screaming, actually.”

Kit shook his head, picking construction-site mud from one knee. “And he still didn’t get the message? He kept calling?”

Bette heaved another of her sighs. But then she was studying Zia’s desktop again, color in her face.

“I told you before,” she said to the postcards, “Kit, I’m not strong like you. I couldn’t make him stop.”

“Aw. Betts, the man was falling apart.”

“It was history again, Kit. An old family friend, don’t you know. History. I didn’t have the strength.”

Kit had her hand again, her hand and now the back of her head. He pulled her to him, repeating the old kindnesses: the best, sweetheart, always . Bette however returned no more than a conventional squeeze. With his face in her throat Kit could feel she was nowhere near tears. Enough, husband. No seconds on the sweet talk. Sitting back, firming up his tone, Kit pointed out that the real need for strength was still to come. He told her about the meeting with Popkin.

“Asa Popkin?” Bette frowned. “Kit, I should think you’d have met with him already.”

“Easier said than done, Betts.” Kit straightened his spine and told her what had happened with Louie-Louie, with Leo.

“What?” Her frown was almost a replay from the Cottage beach. “You went to Mirini?”

Yet the story came, if not easily, without any carrying on. Kit left his neck alone. He’d never have believed the sentence, “I pulled a gun on him,” could sound so mature. Never would have believed he could sound regretful, but no longer ashamed. Bette, watching close, lost her frown.

When he was done she exhaled without theatrics. “Kit, didn’t I tell you you’d been carrying on like a tragic hero? Didn’t I?”

“It was a mistake. I know.” Could this be the voice of his work ethic? His innate respect for what people were supposed to do at these desks?

“A mistake, indeed. And I suppose it’s gotten a lot of play on your interior news. Your invisible layout and pasteup.”

Kit dropped his eyes, but again it wasn’t quite shame that stung him. It was a lesser pang. Rue.

“How’s that going, Kit? Still hard at it?”

“Ah.” Kit even smiled. “I’d say the worst is over, there. This morning I reached some closure.”

“Closure.” Bette sat back, but her stare had lost nothing. She pointed out that the mind’s fantasy function generally had nothing to do with the neat logic of introduction, development, and resolution. “It’s not a columnist up there, you know.”

Heads up. “This wasn’t strictly fantasy, Betts. It wasn’t entirely unhealthy, either.”

“Oh really? Tell that to Forbes Croftall.”

“Aw, come on. Croftall’s just the opposite, he thought the fantasy was real. I always knew it was false, I worried about it. I told my wife.”

She remained longfaced, skeptical.

“I told my wife. Other than that, I let whatever was going on up there work itself out.”

She nodded, a half-measure, her eyes shifting. Kit had a nettled moment — three days of hard feelings were going to take more than this — before unexpectedly she gripped his hand.

“Good Lord,” she said, staring. “You don’t suppose Croftall told anyone?”

Kit’s turn to back off, look away. He recalled Leo, by the lower site: Croftall never needed me to help him find trouble . And the old man was a smutmonger, no question. But by now Kit knew the way to beat the guy.

“Betts,” he said, “so long as there’s nothing more buried between you and I, it doesn’t matter if anyone else knows.”

She softened the hold on his hand, and her eyes came back to orchid blue. Yet she returned to the confrontation with Leo. “What does Popkin say?”

“Popkin, hoo boy. What’s lawyer language for ‘mistake’?”

“A mistake, indeed. The mistake, I’d say.”

“The mistake?”

“Well, this sort of thing, Kit. Banging around this old city like a one-man army.”

All Kit’s sore spots grew hot again. “The Lone Ranger.”

Bette, relaxed enough to smile, was unaware of new thinking she’d set off. “I was thinking more of that movie about a Boston underground paper.”

“I’ve been bound and determined, haven’t I?”

Now Bette heard the difference. “I do wonder,” she said more carefully, “who you’ve been trying to impress.”

“Bound and determined to put myself into events. To become the news, myself.” Kit had to stand, to move outside Zia’s workspace. “That’s what I wanted. That’s why this happened.”

“Why this happened? Oh, Kit. You mean you’re only now — oh, Kit. All I’m saying is you’ve been a tad overeager.”

He kept pacing. “I never saw it like this. Never without something in the way.”

“Something in the way?”

This didn’t stop him either. He began to thank her as he moved, to praise her. “Bette, if I’ve got you, I’m not worried about it. If I’ve got you—”

“Oh Kit. You figured out all that business about Monsod and Croftall without me.”

“But not this, Betts. Not my own head, not without you.”

“Oh, honestly. This hardly qualifies as a blinding insight.”

“I was trying to be the news. That’s it. Not the media — the news.”

In the office, walking was easier on him than it had been out in the cold. The marriage was easier on him; it felt like an extraordinary piece of luck. That he and Bette should even have met, in this disorganized city, that alone was great luck. And then that over the past couple of days they’d had time and grace to write each other the sort of long, strange messages that were all the more powerful for being so roundabout — sweet luck. Kit thanked her again. He praised her some more, putting the exclamation point with thumps of his boot heel. “Betts, I’ll tell you, the last thing you need to worry about is whether you’re strong.” Thump! “If you can stick it out through this, Betts, you’re strong.” Thump!

At that Bette thumped along. They set off a fresh rattle in Kit’s glass walls.

Kit found her face. “Bette, anyway, it was stupid. Running around trying to prove I’m a hero.”

There was his smart girl, her eyes lifting. “That’s good, Kit. And I’d add that it’s a natural hazard for someone like you, besides. Someone who believes in heroes.”