Talking Heads by John Domini Read Free Book Online Page A

School she was “heading to Rowley to give Hepburn a good lunging.” Hepburn was Bette’s Morgan, a stallion, three years old. One of those odd accoutrements of family wealth that exist outside the month-by-month cash flow. Kit’s wife kept her mount stabled at a farm belonging to one of her aunts. “Tuesday’s a good day for it,” Kit read. “Aunt Georgie goes into Haymarket Tuesdays.” And after that, Bette planned to visit a psychic.
    A psychic. “She speaks with ghosts, this woman.”
    Just a voice on the air, that’s your precious hero of prank-rake radio. The way he comes in one ear and goes out the other. Why, a person can’t tell if he’s ahead of the times or behind. And so far as your humble Society reporter could see, Mr. Bitterid was no better. Saturday night I journeyed out of my body briefly, in order to get a fuller view of the proceedings. I floated up by the rafters, in the dimension of the spirit. And Boston’s newest newspaper editor why, I’ve never seen an aura so dangerously in flux.
    â€œWell yeah see it’s important, ” declared tatty young Miss Mindyourmind—or rather her tatty young essence, afloat beside me.
    â€œIt’s like I said,” her shade went on. “How can punk be a success?”
    Bette had gotten the psychic’s name from a man she’d known years ago. A man Kit wouldn’t have met, a holdover from a time in her life she called “The Rampage.” “Ivan,” Kit read. “One of a very few I’ve kept in touch with from out of that, well. Out of that era.” And if she was reaching back to The Rampage, Bette concluded, well. Then she must need whatever she was reaching for. She must need it badly, this seance. “Of course I’ve already told you so in words,” Bette had written. “Words, words, words. But I believe I also let you know by means of, what shall we call it, symbolic language. See attached. ”
    Bette had used underlining too: “God knows I hope to avoid living Aunt Georgie, but I’d love to hear from dead Aunt Winnie.”
    Kit finished his reading, his rereading, in their bedroom. He sat on the crumpled covers, his heart once more a soaked beehive. He had a notion of finding the psychic’s address and running over there. Darling , he’d begin, I’ve been chasing some ghosts myself . He’d ask if there’d been more crank calls. And he’d say something about Zia, something to put both his and Bette’s minds to rest.
    Eventually his eyes shifted to the photo of his father.
    The photo stood on Kit’s bureau in a formal wooden frame, a Midwestern, mid-century frame. It had come with one of the last letters from Korea. Chris Viddich Senior, Nordic and full of bones, stood on the wing of his Marine Corps Sabre jet. The baggy flight suit couldn’t conceal his fitness, his muscularity. The helmet was off. His grin seemed like the fleshy outermost spill of an eruption (was this just because the photo’s black and white recalled ‘40s war flicks?), like some all-natural prehistoric sureness had proved too powerful for the suit and helmet.
    â€œIt’s the question of the ‘70s,” Miss Marines went on—still asking her question. “This is all about the ‘70s.”
    Her own aura had an astonishing sureness, I must say, some all-natural prehistoric sureness too powerful for her longjohns and leather. And though she claimed to be of the moment, riding the ether of this decade only, she spoke in terms that were timeless.
    â€œIt’s culture vs. counterculture,” she said. “It’s that basic. As basic as keeping up a good front when, behind the front, you’re riddled with doubt.”
    *
    Did he sleep? Did he wake and touch his wife, take coffee and the MTA? Midnight and morning seemed to carry Kit down the same shadowy tubes. By ten-thirty Wednesday, Corinna was