Talking Heads (36 page)

Surprised, she showed traces of her old tatterdemalion. A few hay-hairs came loose from under her collar.

“Darling,” he said, “we've got to.”

He'd quit pacing, and the odors of his hard morning had caught up with him. “Next time, Betts, no more maybe, maybe not. Next time we're in bed. Whatever we do there, it's not going to be an accident.”

Bette allowed herself a small smile. “You want a son and heir?”

“Aw, you need this as much as I do. The woman I saw out on that Cottage beach, you know, when she needed something she wasn't shy about saying so.”

“All right, Kitty Chris. All right, yes. Kids.”

“Thataway. I mean, out on that beach, Betts? I'll tell you. I thought
you
were the movie.”

“Oh. I was frightened, you know.”

“You were incredible. You were the hit movie and the underground paper all rolled into one. It was like, ‘Arise, Arise—'”

Bette cut him off, singing the rest.

*

Singing, a rare move. Bette's voice wasn't bad, or not for a listener raised on the white-girl divas of acoustic guitar, early Carolyn Hester through middle Joan Baez.
Arise, arise, Mary Hamilton. Arise, and come with me
. Such serious material these women went in for. Full of the grave and its admonishments, full of noble gesture in the face of death. Bette quit her recital when the room's echo made her self-conscious. She broke off giggling. Nonetheless for a moment there Kit could hear it, his wife's root seriousness. He could hear a potent and bell-like willingness to work, determination enough perhaps even to throw off a few centuries burdened by absent fathers and the likes of Cousin Cal. And singing so open-throated and hymn-like was something else he and Bette could have together.

Recovered from her giggles, meantime, she was suggesting food. She had bread and chowder from Sage's back at the apartment. Perhaps a little wine.

A decent meal sounded like heaven. Kit couldn't remember when he'd been so hungry. But he knew what he'd heard, in his wife's singing, and what part of her he needed to reach. The two of them had to start sharing more than stage business and sexy dinners. Before they left the office, Kit found the card from Croftall's aide and the list of Monsod contractors. He showed her them both, explaining. And he told her more: “Before Thursday,” Kit said, “I needed to find a way to let Louie-Louie and his mother know the truth.”

Bette was brought up short. Wordless, she stared.

“Betts, I can't just be a tourist. Another lame ofay who blunders into their lives and then walks away.”

She'd caught him by the arm, beside Corinna's desk. She studied him, fingering the redone button at her neck. “But you say … you have to find a way.”

“Find a way, yeah. It wouldn't be right if they found out by reading it in the papers. But it'd be even worse if I made the same mistake all over again.”

“A neutral setting, perhaps. Popkin's office.”

“Somebody else has got to be there when I tell them, that's for sure. It can't just be Kit the Hit.”

Her smile wasn't much, but her grip on his arm relaxed. At the door, they were playful-formal, after you. Yet Kit kept up the high-mindedness. The real work, he pointed out, would start after the Grand Jury was over. The real challenge was finding out if there was anybody left who would put their money behind
Sea Level
and, at the same time, allow Kit his conscience. “I guess,” he said, “I'll finally find out whether this is city of my dreams.” But then part of his problem, Kit went on, was that nowadays the media itself seemed to have lost its conscience. New technology was throwing off old definitions. One moment, contemporary media looked chilly and distant and controlling (“like talking heads
Uber Alles,
” he said), and the next, it looked frivolous, fragmented and prying. The Fourth Estate had to reexamine every value, test every assumption. The alternative press especially. The alternative, nowadays, looked as far from the whole truth as .

“Kit,” Bette cut in, “who's this across the hall?”

Kit had noticed it too. There was noise from inside the women's counseling setup, unhappy noise. A moaning—surprised, grim. This with no lights on, inside. Then came a shuffling, a stumbling, then what might have been the sound of breaking glass. Not much glass—a vial, a test tube—but loud in the suddenly silent hallway.

“Hello?” Kit called.

“Is everything all right?” Bette called.

Wannabe heroes, Kit thought, the pair of them. But the next sound was a gasp or splutter, someone struggling to breathe. By the time the chair fell over, the loudest noise yet, Kit and Bette were in the door. They saw the chair at a farther desk fall, and Zia Mirini in it. Zia with no leather jacket, with one sleeve of her shirt up.

“Oh, hell,” Bette said.

Zia with foam at her mouth, a smear of blood on her exposed inner arm.

“Call 911,” Kit said.

But the phone for the women's group had been disconnected. Bette had to take Kit's key and run back across the hall. Meanwhile he was squatting over Zia, in the sweat-smell of her smack rush. He thumbed foam off her mouth, that Brando mouth she'd gotten from her father. The foam was the father's too.
I don't give a shit about you or your faggot friends
, Leo had said, and then he'd handed her the cash. But now Zia's mouth was something likewise stony. Rictus lips. Kit clenched his jaw, his stomach; he forced his fingers between her teeth and swabbed what gunk he could out of her mouth. Gunk, pulp—winy. Zia's half-shut eyelids fluttered, she jerked in a gag reflex, and for a moment Kit had a hope she would come to.

No. Her looks went still again, pale and still around his fingers. She was wearing eyeliner, sweet Jesus.

Without gagging himself, Kit cleared the breathing passages. He knew that much about overdose cases. He kept at bay the bad thoughts triggered by the pulp in her mouth, the images of another young face disappearing under vomit. He scooted down to her nerveless legs, setting them straight. Street slush clung to the hems of Zia's jeans, and he used the cold muck to clean his fingers. Across the hall, Bette was shouting into the phone. That helped, to hear her working too. Kit hefted Zia's thin arm over his head. When he hoisted her up, out of one eye he spotted the broken fallen syringe. Glittery antiseptic glass, dirty with blood.

“Move,” he said. “Walk.”

He knew that much about overdose cases. You had to keep the heart working.

“Move,” he said. “Live.”

At least this office had less in the way than his. Someone had knocked out the partitions, as well as the reliquary in the back. If there'd been such a martyr's space available, no doubt Zia would have tucked herself into it. No doubt she had some nasty spectacle of self-destruction in mind, coming here, in easy reach of both Kit and her father. Coming here was a slap in the face and a cry for help at once. The poor damaged daughter might even have been thinking of
Esquire
.

The ideas flickered, dim, but mostly Kit didn't have the time. He didn't have the breath. He found a clear stretch between the desks, and while he hauled Zia up and back he used his free hand to try and get her legs moving. Bent and twisted and grunting, he lifted one knee, he nudged the other. She wasn't responding. The toes of her biker boots dragged over the floorboards, noisy but slack. Hard work, after a hard morning. Kit stank as badly as Zia, and the knee he'd landed on at the T site was killing him. He'd been in these offices forever, midway between the money guy and the street. And whatever motives Zia might've had hardly mattered—they flickered, nothing more—like his own reasons for needing to save her. If
Sea Level
were worth anything, she had to live. If he'd done any good by letting all these secrets out of their closets, she had to live. If it meant anything to have worked out better with Bette …

Bette was back. She was in his way, uncharacteristically slouched, stooping to catch his eye.

“Twenty minutes,” she said.

Kit almost went into her. Breaking momentum took all the air he had.

“Twenty minutes, Kit. Can we keep her breathing?”

Kit, uncertain, made a face. He was still moving, shuffling, Zia hanging from his neck.

“Look'r legs,” he managed.

Frowning, Bette watched him. Kit thought of punk slam-dancing in slow motion.

“Has she moved at all, Kit?”

He thought of Zia's gag reflex. He shook his head.

“Lay her out,” Bette ordered. “Lay her on the floor.”

His wife had to help. The first time Kit tried to lower himself, he almost pitched over headfirst. The next time, Bette knelt under him and caught Zia across the breasts. They turned her together, and Bette propped the head back so the jaw hung ajar. Jesus, the human body could seem inert. Floppy and helpless as paper. Kit himself could only drop onto his butt red-faced and gulping, with one leg splayed.

“Mouth to mouth,” Bette said. “Keep her breathing.”

Already she had her fingers between Zia's parted teeth. She probed and then squinted into the opening, her long throat relaxed. Med School training.

“I'll go first,” Bette said, and with that she was down on the other woman's face. Down on that bloodless, helpless face, while her own flushed as red as something out of Zia's postcards. At least Zia's chest changed shape, rising as Bette blew into it. Kit noticed the writer's shirt, a bulky blue flannel. A lumberjack shirt. Menswear. He was thinking about men, about heroes and troublemakers and men. But these were thoughts, only. They flickered, nothing more. Then he was in place beside his wife, making sure the air was reaching the sick girl's diaphragm. Gently he laid his empty hands on her.

“Any time.”

His work was simple now. Simple and all to the good.

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