John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

“Kit? Are you there?”

He looked up from Zia’s desktop, blinking, abashed, then lapsed back into silence.

The man across the desk laughed, not unkindly. “I know, I know,” he said. “One of those Parker House wingdings’ll make you feel like starting a commune in Canada.”

This was Rick DeMirris, Kit’s favorite freelancer. A thinker, an agitator, Rick had stopped by as Tuesday wound down. He’d perched on one the halfwalls surrounding Zia’s workspace, talking shop while Zia pretzel’d this way and that behind her desk and Kit leaned against the facing partition. No top-of-the-masthead pretensions in this office.

“You’ll survive,” Rick said. “Hey, you’re back with the good guys now.”

Kit tried to think of a way to change the subject. Rick hadn’t said much yet about his own story, a Mass Transit piece. The MTA had made an unexpected find during excavations for a waterfront station, turning up a Colonial shipworks down at what used to be the harbor. They’d even found native Shawmut stuff. A local archaeologist had declared the site “invaluable.”

But the freelancer preferred to talk about Zia’s piece. “Oedipus?” he asked. “No shit? Is this a nom de knob ?”

“The name of his show is even better.” Half a smile peeked from one side of Zia’s cigarette. “Nocturnal Emissions.”

They made a strange pair, Rick and Zia. Worlds in collision. The freelancer let his hair billow well below the shoulder, whereas Zia cropped hers close, allowing no more than a trace of its natural curl. And Rick wore a sweater of deep hides-the-dirt brown, a fatigue jacket that hung on him like spaghetti gone cold. Mr. Natural and the punkette.

Miss Marina was altogether quite smitten by this … disc jockey. She waxed positively girlish, insofar as one can in red thermal underwear and a black leather jacket. She kept fingering her rosary beads (at least, I think they were rosary beads). The question raised by her hero’s career, Miss Moroni kept saying, was this: How can a punk be a success?

“How can a punk be a success,” Rick said. “Sexy.”

To Kit, Zia’s Oedipus profile sounded like what he wanted in Sea Level . No puff, no fluff. Zia wasn’t interested in anything so superficial as finding out the disc jockey’s real name. She wanted to explore the meanings of his career.

“See, Oeddie began in the basement,” Zia explained. “Cellars by starlight. Like, the mattress is on the floor, and you have to share it with someone in a methadone program.”

Grinning, Rick hooked one arm under his sweater, scratching his narrow chest.

“That was Oeddie,” Zia said, “totally in the basement.”

You should understand, earnest reader, that Miss Mirrorme’s outfit was entirely appropriate to her calling. The red and the leather, the ex-communicant’s rosary, all perfectly appropriate. The woman writes about the new “punk rock,”you see. Yes, “poke rock,” the latest ‘70s scourge.

The crowd included a number of Miss Marinara’s, ahem, musician friends. Indeed, her champion deejay was on the scene, great Odious himself. Quite flush with success, oh yes — a puke, but flush . Over New Year’s, it seems, the man was hired by the biggest rock station in town.

“Suddenly he’s made it,” Zia was saying. “An office, a telephone. He’s really made it.” And this was in Boston, she repeated. “I mean, with the demographic this city has, the number of, like, young people …”

Rick was nodding.

“Boston radio, I mean, it’s the cutting edge.”

“No shit,” Rick said. “Radio, electronics, that’s where the action is these days. Us print types, we’re way behind.”

Zia snorted. “So Oeddie now, he doesn’t just get, like, a salary and benefits. He gets clout in the industry.”

“And how can a punk be a success?”

Pensive, she tugged at her top, a red thermal undershirt. Tough girl: when she tugged, you noticed her breasts.

“Sexy,” Rick said. “A real hook, there. It’s loss of innocence, it’s testing of values.”

Meanwhile, among Miss Merengue’s, ahem, friends, there emerged a curious consensus. All the spank-rockers seemed to regard Sea Level as though Mr. Viddich were one of their own. They saw him as a comrade-in-underwear.

I spotted for instance four or five members of, ahem, the Human Sexual Response, a “gay” outfit. Yes, “gay,” meaning “real slime.” The Humans make no attempt to hide their perversion — part of the Castro District/Harvey Milk/Village People consensus, I suppose, out of the closet and all that. The leader, I daresay, found the new editor in town quite delicious: a tall tumbler of Minnesota lake water.

“I love him,” the leader of the Hummins was heard to declare. “That Bitch character — I mean, you think I’m a punk? I mean, that man’s a punk.”

“Well yeah, see it’s important, ” Zia said, suddenly loud. “It matters , what happens down in those basements.”

Rick’s eyes flicked wide. Where was the woman’s button, when had he pushed it? But Kit understood — Zia’s heat was directed at him. At him, sure. Kit had never hidden his misgivings about Zia’s subject matter, this cellars-by-starlight stuff. The first time he’d sat down with her he’d let her know that, originally, he’d never anticipated doing much “entertainment reporting” in Sea Level . Better she heard it from Kit himself, he’d figured, than from her father.

Hoo boy, had that been a dumb move. A glaring example of his defective social skills. No wonder he felt like he was walking on eggshells around here.

Rick knew an exposed nerve when he heard it crackle.

“Zia, tell me,” he said, “how’d you like working with old Kit here?” Rockin’ Rick. “He’s a wild man, you know.”

Then Kit, on eggshells, saw something new. He saw Zia’s arm, the way she massaged her arm. If he hadn’t been at such a bleary internal distance he’d never have noticed. Zia was a lefty, wouldn’t you know it, and here on her workspace halfwall Kit observed that when she got worked up, she massaged her right forearm. She massaged the right only — unlike her friend Topsy, for instance, who massaged the left only.

“I mean, I love him,” someone was saying. “I mean, you think you’re a punk? This man’s a punk.”

Kit didn’t think he’d ever seen Zia in short sleeves.

Oddyes said much the same: Mr. Benttip was a pogue after his own heart. I caught up with the young deejay — or did he catch up with me? — over by the heroin. Caterers had set out Sterno cans, syringes, and strips of tubing for tying off. Oddipuss, heating his spoon, couldn’t have sounded more enthusiastic.

“I’m wicked psyched to see the next issue,” he said.

Kit didn’t follow up on his suspicions. His lack of socializing was bearing down on him with brutal clarity — he’d only just now realized that Rick was flirting. The freelancer wasn’t here to talk about a new T station, no. He was here to say “sexy” every chance he got. Rick had even come to the office with a newly pierced ear, a touch Zia might go for. Among guys, only the hard-core hip would risk an earring; the accessory was still mostly taken as a sign a man was gay.

So Kit let his suspicions lie, putting out of mind the low thought that he might stay and rifle Zia’s desk. What was he supposed to find? Works? Anyway he already knew old Leo had a private agenda for Sea Level . Three or four private agenda, more than likely. And he’d spent too much time alone with his low thoughts, his strange thoughts. Kit quit the office when the other two did but then, back home in Cambridge, he found himself alone once more. Bette had left a letter on the kitchen table.