Talking Heads by John Domini Page A

the table-teepee before him—and, astonishing himself, chuckled at the joke. He touched the card from Senator Croftall’s aide.
    He was on his feet, his back to the workspace, looking out over Sea Level’s home block. Across the way, the turn-of-the-century brownstones had bowed window-settings that bulged on either side of their central doors. Like dark children with mumps. Like brown forearms stitched down the middle with a needle’s track. The city had its diseases, certainly. But who said Sea Level couldn’t cure one or two of those diseases? Kit felt the constriction of the Boston winter, the weight of church bells a hundred years old tolling eleven. But who said he had to keep his head down under the gray, the clockworks? With or without the Building Commission, he still had a story. With or without Leo Mirini’s ambiguous support, he still had a paper.
    It did cross his mind, by the time he headed out to Corinna’s desk, that this morning’s energy might look just as foolish as Monday’s.
    â€œWho haven’t we tried yet?” he asked her.
    She blinked. Gently, editor.
    â€œThat freelancer who called me Monday,” Kit said. “That stringer with the Spotlight Team. Let’s find out who he knows.”
    â€œYou got a number for him?”
    â€œSure. And come to think of it there’s another Globe number I want you to try. Somebody from over there just called my source on Monsod.”
    â€œUh-oh.”
    â€œDon’t worry.” Kit assured her that Mrs. Rebes wouldn’t talk. “But think about it, Corinna. It’s time I talked to that editor that came to the party. Rachel, remember?”
    â€œYou’re going to ask someone at the Globe for help?”
    Over in Zia’s space, the writer had been huddling with Topsy Otaka. Kit had okayed a design inset for the disc-jockey piece. But the mention of Rachel Veutri brought Zia’s head up; Kit hadn’t been blowing smoke when he’d told Leo how the Globe woman had liked the Humans piece.
    â€œZia, you remember Rachel,” he said.
    â€œI remember.”
    â€œI think it’s time we talked to her. It’s time we got a move on.”
    Zia’s eyeliner was like two equals signs. “Dylan comes back,” she said.
    Kit laughed. “Aw, Z.” To think he’d once wanted to do without this live wire. To think he’d let a hambone like Leo disconnect his own wires. The next several hours seemed to Kit to be defined by Zia’s black-bordered gaze, a strict outline of what mattered. For starters, there was no reason he couldn’t make plans for two Number Twos. No reason he couldn’t line up assignments and deadlines for each of the mockups on his desk. When he’d been covering Agriculture for the Globe , he’d always had three or four pieces brewing at once. Kit had even hired researchers, and one of those researchers had been Bette. Worked that time.
    Today he took pains to clarify the alternatives, figuring the difference between the two issues in column-inches, in word-counts. He did this out where everyone could see him. He set both of Topsy’s designs on one of the extra desks between his space and Corinna’s.
    Not that his sense of purpose didn’t suffer the occasional blow. Things got sticky when he took Zia into his office and made it clear that the Oedipus profile might be bumped back an issue. She understood, sure. If Kit got into Monsod, sure. But the black borders of Zia’s gaze trembled, the gaze itself shifted to Kit’s jackalope, and for the next minute or so he was wondering again if he was up to this. He had Zia wait, there within his glass walls, while Corinna tried Rachel Veutri’s number again. And reaching Rachel, Kit took pains to keep his purpose in focus.
    â€œWhatever happens,” he told the Globe editor, “we still have to lead with Monsod. We can’t go changing what we’re