One Night (2 page)

The sandals were gorgeous but flimsy, not meant for movement more energetic than a quick stroll down a carpeted couture runway. By Washburn and Eleventh the toe loop on the left one had popped loose. By Eighth Street the right sole had split and was flapping loudly every time I took a step. By the time I reached the parking ramp, the other toe loop was loose, and every fourth step one or the other of the sandals would fly off.

A reasonable person might ask: Why not go barefoot? And a more reasonable person might answer: Not on your life. Not on city sidewalks three days into a sweltering heat wave.

Controlling what I could, I flapped and shuffled onto the ramp. The attendant glared at me as I ignored the No Pedestrians sign and walked up the down driveway toward the station door. Nothing unusual about that—she always glares at me when I ignore the sign and take the shortcut. But today she rapped on the window of her booth and shook her fist. I was about to wave her off when she stepped out and shouted, “Tell your aunt we don’t need any more of the asshole professors. Where was Simone?”

I stared a moment, my jaw dropped open in imitation of the village idiot, then shrugged.

Miller, the KLIP security guard, also wouldn’t let me pass without comment. Of course, he always has something to say about nothing. He came out of his booth, stepped in front of the heavy gray door, and crossed his arms on his chest. “Kelly,” he said.

“Hello, Miller,” I replied. “Are you going to let me go to work? Or do I have to use the front door like the tour groups?” I looked down at my two dirty feet. “Please don’t make me go in the other way.”

“Kelly,” he repeated.

“Miller,” said I.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “Would you please relay to your aunt the depth of my disappointment because today, contrary to what I’d been told, there was no Simone Sanchez to walk through this door and brighten the morning for a poor working slob. Instead I get to hold it open for a very angry station manager and a very livid president of programming.” A slight smile spread as he watched me. “That’s right, both about twenty minutes ago.” He uncrossed his arms and motioned with his index finger. “C’mon, where is it? You know the rules, sweetheart. They’re sitting in central security watching everything that comes across on that camera, so please help me do my job by wearing the badge where they can see it.” He hummed softly as I pulled my wallet out of a pocket and fished out the ID. “Oh look at that,” he said. “You’re still holding only a temporary ID. Well, I don’t suppose there’s any hope of that changing now.”

I slipped the wallet back into my pocket. “What do you mean, Miller?”

He shrugged. “After today’s stunt, management will have to do something. Kit’s untouchable, but the people around her might not be.”

“Thanks, Miller. Thanks a lot.”

“You’ve been warned, sweetie.”

*

The very angry station manager and the very livid president of programming were going at it right outside the elevator door. Tyler McCall, my aunt’s producer, was backed up against the wall. Obviously they couldn’t get at the real target, so they were spitting at him instead.

“She locked the door again?” I asked as (barefoot at last) I stepped out of the plushly carpeted elevator and walked around them.

“You—” said one angry man.

“You tell her—” said the other angry man.

Tyler leaned limply against the wall and said nothing.

I didn’t slow to hear what I was supposed to tell her, because after all, my aunt paid my salary, not the station, and I only wanted to hear what she had to say.

The two bosses followed me down the hall to Kit’s office suite and stood breathing down my neck as I fished in my bag for the keys. The lock clicked free, the knob turned in my hand, and then I felt them start to push past me. “Gentlemen,” I said. “It’s in her contract; you have to be invited.”

Yow, how those boys can curse.

Raoul, the station manager, added something else: “Goddam junkie gofer.”

I beg your pardon: ex-junkie gofer.

*

The first time I remember seeing my aunt Kit was at my grandfather’s burial when I was five years old. I was standing at my mother’s side, her hand clenched hard around mine, when I unglued my eyes from the long, shining coffin and looked up as the crowd shifted slightly, opening up, everyone turning. All that morning people at the house had been talking about my father and whether he’d show for the funeral; after all, the dead man was his father. After hearing all the talk, I was wondering the same thing because I had never seen him. But it wasn’t my father who caused the rustle, just a tall woman at the back of the crowd. The others whispered a bit, then returned their attention to the casket and the words being said. I kept my eyes on the woman, though. She was staring straight at me, and without her glance wavering a moment she produced a cigarette pack, tapped it, then removed a cigarette and placed it in her mouth.

Who smokes at a waiting grave? Back then I was not the least bit aware of those kinds of rules; that was not the astounding thing to five-year-old me. No, what held and charmed me was that the woman did it all with a silver claw.

I found out after the burial that she was my father’s older sister. My mother and I had been living with my father’s parents, which when you think about it must have been a royal complication in family life, certainly one so twisted and tight, I’m still not able to understand it. Unless, of course, it wasn’t complicated at all, unless it was something as simple as my grandparents saying to my flat-broke mother and me, Our son has screwed you over, but we will keep you safe. But probably it was more twisted than that, because not only did my father keep his distance from his parents, so did my aunt Kit. She hadn’t visited her parents in years. So I had never met her. Until the day of the burial I’d had no idea I had a one-armed aunt.

She wasn’t born that way. Her left arm up to the elbow had been shot off. As she likes to tell it—no, wait, maybe not; she likes to tell it with lots of detail about the blood and pain, and to pepper the story start to finish with really raw language. Not surprising, I guess, that she tells it that way, because it happened when she was a war correspondent in Vietnam and was following some Marines on a small action that went wrong. She says the story should reflect the reality.

But it’s her reality, not mine, so all I need to say is that she got it shot off in Vietnam when she was covering that war. And all I need to make clear is that I fell in love with my aunt the moment I laid eyes on that claw. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

*

My office is the outer room of Kit’s suite, which I suppose makes me half receptionist, half guard. Before I knocked on the door to her inner sanctum, I listened for the postshow warning sounds. I heard typing. Kit does eighty words a minute with claw and fingers, fifty one-handed, but today the tap-tapping seemed slower than normal, so I figured she was unwinding with solitaire. As I opened the door, her computer erupted into tinny cheers and she sat back looking pleased.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“I just won Gaps, difficult level. Do you realize how hard that is?”

“Not what I meant.”

She shoved a paper to the edge of the desk. “Here are some things I want you to check before Friday. And I’m having doubts about tomorrow. Do we really want another show on genetic engineering?”

“What about today’s show, Kit? What happened? We spent days prepping for Simone Sanchez, and you dump her? When did you do this? Who knew? Not Tyler, that’s obvious. You can’t make a move like this without telling your producer. You can’t.”

She swiveled in her chair. “Those sons of bitches.”

I stepped closer. “Did you dump her or did she cancel? Raoul and Jerry are outside, both of them madder than hell, so I’m guessing you dumped her.”

“Those sons of bitches,” she repeated.

“You dumped her. Oh, man. They have a right to be mad, Kit. Number one on the radio is nothing compared to number one in the movies. Her CDs make more in a week than your show brings in over a year. And you dumped her, for a community college professor who thinks he’s an expert on the war in Lakveria?
Lakveria?
Did this really happen, Kit?”

“Your Lakveria research was excellent, Kelly. I was able to challenge him on several points. His area was the history, and I kept up. I owe you for that. Good stuff, you always find me good stuff. But I don’t suppose you listened today, did you?”

“You dumped her to talk about a war no one cares about? Simone Sanchez?”

She spun her chair around and faced me, furious. “Simone Sanchez used to be a good singer, back before everything she recorded started sounding like soundtrack schlock. And have you seen her last movie? She spent most of it in a gorilla suit, harassing an ex-husband’s new girlfriend. This is a woman I want to spend two hours with?”

“What did you tell her? What excuse did you give?”

Silence.

“Kit, Tyler’s likely to get fired unless you cough up something. Who knows who his replacement will be, maybe someone you can’t ignore and walk over.”

“I told her assistant that there were some breaking developments at the peace conference.”

“Are there?”

My aunt’s chair twirled and she looked at the skyline where the university buildings spread out along the banks of the river. She pointed and said,
“
Those
sons of bitches.”

I sat on the corner of her desk and looked out the window with her. Half a mile away world leaders were posturing at a special forum, making fine speeches about peace—or the lack of it—in Eastern Europe, especially Lakveria, the latest hot spot. The world’s most important men and women, and Kit had been denied access to each and every one.

“Maybe,” I said softly, “just maybe when you had the former vice president on the show you shouldn’t have asked if he was a virgin on his wedding night. Or that interview with the former secretary of state? Do you suppose she liked being asked if she had a weight problem as a child? All these questions on the air, need I remind you? With your usual millions of fans listening in. Do you just suppose it might have destroyed your credibility as a serious journalist?”

“He’s just pissed about the tree. I know that’s what it is. So petty. He blackballed me because of the stupid tree.”

You would not think this pleasant Midwestern city was a hotbed of diplomacy. Agriculture conventions you would expect, but not international peace forums. However, Dakota City is the birthplace and home of one Allen Ripley, former vice president of the United States, former ambassador to India, and, most recently, the former UN High Commissioner of Human Rights. That last job pretty much wore him (or Mrs. High Commissioner) out, and two years ago he came home to a statesman’s retirement, which apparently involves serious gardening, frequent dog-walking, and hosting summits at his alma mater, Dakota City U.

Everyone knows about his resume, of course. I happen to know the details of his retirement because this particular former vice president of the United States lives next door to Kit and me. I get along fine with him; whenever we meet out walking, we always chat. But he’s at war with my aunt. What the world does not know: The highflying diplomat does not get along with his neighbor. For two years they’ve been arguing over a diseased tree on her property next to his garage that she refuses to cut down. And of course, there was the wedding night question.

Kit snapped to attention, snapped her fingers. Her eyes were fierce. “I want to be back in there, Kelly. I want it.” Then her eyes faded to middle distance, dreaming about the past, probably mucking about in some war-ravaged country. I’ve read her stuff, stories so clear, you can almost smell the explosives and gunfire and blood.

After twenty years of combat reporting she settled in Washington to cover the men and women who made those wars. Two Pulitzers, three best-selling books—she was as famous as the world leaders she covered. And a better talker. Her experience and wit soon earned her prime television exposure as a talking head. Before long she had multiple, lucrative offers to create her own current affairs show; everyone from PBS to MTV was in the chase to own a piece of Kit Carpenter, witty, war-seasoned, photogenic, one-armed Kit Carpenter.

She walked away from it all. Turned her back on the hot television lights, left the cast of the most important political theater in the world to start a radio show from the prairie. Like the veep, she turned her back on what she loved and came home to Minnesota. Came home to take care of me.

I want to be back in there.
Guilt and gratitude began their familiar roiling. It’s a combustible combination, I assure you. I stayed mute, knowing it would pass, likely the moment she opened her mouth.

Kit breathed deeply and brought herself back. She leaned forward and said, “Sketch it out for me, hon. You do that so well. So clear-headed. Ironic, isn’t it? Sketch it out and I’ll figure out what to work on, what to fix.” Then she barked the command familiar to millions: “Talk now.”

I counted it off on my fingers, rippling them in the air. I loved doing this to her; it made up in part for the frequent little comments like the one about my clear-headedness. “One, you book Simone Sanchez to come on the show the day before her only Dakota City concert in two decades. Simone Sanchez finally comes back to the town where she got her start and you’re the one who gets the face-to-face. Simone Sanchez, the number one moneymaker for the big ugly media company that pays your salary.