Читать книгу This Child Of Mine - Darlene Graham - Страница 11

THE PLANK DOORWAY to Murphy’s Irish Tavern was so narrow that Mark actually had to tilt his shoulders sideways as he squeezed in. He stood inside a cramped little vestibule, allowing himself a moment to adjust to the dim lighting, the noise and the pressing crowd.

Mark hated crowds, and he was already thoroughly sick of the trendy Washington bar scene—self-important men in overpriced suits, narcissistic women in clever little day-to-evening getups. Tonight the regulars were doing their best to outshout each other over loud music in this dark forty-by-sixty room saturated with smoke, strong cooking odors and humidity that floated up from the Potomac like clingy polyester netting. Grateful that he’d left his jacket and tie in the Lexus, Mark rolled up his shirtsleeves and stepped into the melee.

A svelte woman said, “Excuse me,” while brushing up against him as she passed. She made an elaborate business of raising two full glasses to shoulder level, to emphasize, he supposed, her trim shape, sheathed in a brown dress that poured over her curves like melted chocolate. The dense perfume she left in her wake clogged his sinuses.

Three girls, ponytails pulled through baseball caps and cleavage spilling out of athletic spandex, smiled from a nearby table and one raised a glass of ale at him. A woman at the bar turned her head, arched her back and lowered her eyelashes as he passed.

Mark spotted Kitt near the back of the narrow room. Squeezed into one of the old high-backed booths, with Jeff and that blond girl Mark had seen at the ice-cream social.

As he made his way to the booth, a trio onstage struck up a rowdy rendition of “Gary Owen,” making normal conversation strenuous and even shouted greetings difficult to hear.

“Mark!” Jeff jumped up. “You found us!”

Mark tried to discreetly wipe the sweat from his temple. “This place is certainly tucked in here, like you said,” he shouted at Jeff. “Had to circle the block twice before I found it, and a couple more times looking for a parking space.” He glanced at Kitt. Although she smiled up at him, she looked as if she couldn’t make out his words.

“Yeah, well,” Jeff hollered in Mark’s ear, “I guess Alexandria’s a far cry from Oklahoma, where everything is surrounded by miles and miles of absolutely totally nothing.” Jeff backed up a fraction, gave him a bland smile.

Even though Mark was not a native Oklahoman, he was irked by this condescending attitude. “Not absolutely totally nothing.” He smiled back, parroting Jeff’s redundancy. “There is the occasional Injun teepee.”

Jeff’s smile frosted a bit.

Kitt still seemed unable to hear the men above the music, but her eyes narrowed as if she had become aware that something was subtly amiss. “Mark—” she leaned forward “—this is Lauren Holmes, one of my roommates. Perhaps you two met at Congressman Wilkens’s ice-cream social.”

Mark extended his hand to the blonde, and she offered hers with that fingertips-only handshake some women employ.

“Sit down!” Jeff yelled and slapped Mark’s back, pointing to the seat next to Lauren. Then he squeezed into the booth beside Kitt.

Were Kitt Stevens and Jeff Smith a couple? Mark studied Kitt. The moment he’d seen her at that ice-cream social, he’d thought, Now there’s an interesting woman. Okay. More than interesting. Attractive. He’d found her even more intriguing at Gadsby’s, and downright fascinating as he observed her in her offices today.

She glanced at him, brushed her bangs out of her eyes self-consciously, and he realized he was staring. He turned his face toward the singers. Steady, boy, he told himself. Think of Tanni. Always of Tanni. Don’t let yourself get all hot about a woman you don’t even know.

“How about a beer?” Jeff, the grand host, offered.

“Have a Harp,” Kitt shouted, “the best of Ireland.” She raised her glass. The orange glow from the green-shaded lamp hanging over the table enriched the color of her hair to a honey gold.

Jeff jerked his thumb at Kitt’s glass of Harp. “The only alcoholic thing she’ll drink, but she claims Harp is some kind of patriotic ritual. Murphy’s and church are about the extent of her social life, you know.” Jeff winked at Mark and then grinned at Kitt indulgently.

Kitt smiled at Mark. An impudent little smile. “Irish music and a glass of Harp are good for the soul,” she said, then closed her eyes and broke into a mellow, perfect-pitch harmony with the singers onstage. Some song about a minstrel boy.

Above her singing, Jeff teased, “Maybe good for the soul, but not the ears.”

Without opening her eyes, Kitt jabbed Jeff in the ribs, and sang louder. Jeff clutched his side, feigning injury, then covered his ears.

Ignoring this silliness, Mark fixed his gaze on Kitt, but spoke to Jeff. “Actually, she has a beautiful voice.”

Abruptly, she opened her eyes and stopped singing. She blushed, he noted with satisfaction, most attractively.

“Please. Don’t stop.” He smiled.

She gave him a quick wide-eyed stare, then dragged her gaze to the singers onstage, and picked up the melody. But her singing was softer, more subdued now.

As the last strains of the music died away, Kitt looked into Mark’s eyes. While they studied each other, a crease formed between her eyebrows, and her lips parted. Mark’s gut tightened and a quickening shot to his groin as he watched her mouth.

The crowd was applauding and cheering, Jeff and Lauren with them. But Kitt and Mark continued to analyze each other in motionless silence.

The waitress came. Mark smiled up at her, then fixed his gaze back on Kitt and said, “I’ll have a Harp, please.” He glanced back up at the waitress and added, “And could you run me a tab?”

“Sure,” the waitress said as she scribbled on her pad. But then she gave Mark a closer look and hesitated. “Uh, may I see your ID, sir?”

Mark leaned forward, extracted his billfold and flashed his driver’s license.

“Thanks.” The waitress gave him a second glance, smiled in apology and left.

“Bet you get sick of that,” Jeff piped up. “How old are you, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Twenty-seven,” Mark said flatly. “And you?” He asked this with his eyebrows raised as if this were a real conversation and not a put-down contest. From the first, he’d suspected Jeff had some kind of territorial thing about Kitt.

The little blonde smiled into her beer glass.

“Old enough not to get carded,” Jeff answered, and draped his arm on the booth behind Kitt.

“Congratulations,” Mark said dryly.

This time it was the blonde who stepped in to calm the waters. “So, Mark, you’re in Washington on an internship,” she said.

He turned to Lauren. She was pretty, but not like Kitt. Not fascinating. “Yes,” he answered. “And I’m also doing some stringing for the Dallas Morning News.”

Kitt nearly lunged across the table, grabbing his wrist. “You’re a reporter?” she said.

He looked at his wrist. She released it. “Not yet,” he answered. “I’m only a cub. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Yet.”

“That’s why you took this internship,” Kitt said, realization dawning on her face. She made it sound like a crime or something. “And you’re already stringing for the Dallas Morning News,” she challenged. “That’s what you were doing with that microrecorder.”

“I was putting out feelers for a feature, that’s all. Just an idea. They don’t have to buy it.”

Now Kitt’s green eyes flashed like heat lightning. “Don’t you have some ethical obligation to tell us that?” She was practically shouting. Mark noticed that people at surrounding tables were glancing their way.

“If I decide to actually write it, sure. But right now I’m just researching, seeing if there’s a story there. You know, something along the lines of the tiny idealistic coalition taking on the media giants.”

“Just researching? You were recording people’s remarks.” Now Kitt was shouting, and her face was getting redder by the second.

The duo onstage struck up a livelier song, a Scottish ditty about two young ladies peeking under the kilt of a passed-out drunken Scot.

Kitt pointed an accusing finger at Mark. “You were extracting material from sources who didn’t know they were sources.”

“Kitt, this is not a courtroom,” Jeff tried to calm her.

“Oh shut up.” She whirled her head at Jeff, and her hair made a glittering saffron fan over her cheek.

Mark pointed at the pint glass of Harp in front of her. “How many of those have you had?”

She spun her face back toward Mark. “I’m perfectly clear-headed.” Kitt pounded the table with her fist. “What I want to know is what you were planning to do. Paint our organization as zealots—fools? Anything to undermine the CRM’s efforts to limit the violence and filth glutting the media? Anything to help your daddy profit off his dirty rock-and-gangsta rap? Anything to clear the way for your precious LinkServe to operate free of constraints? Is that it?”

Mark eyed her. Even if she was a little stewed, it was obvious she meant every word. He matched her ardent fire with the cold sobriety of a stone. “No, ma’am. That is not it. I do not work for my father. And I wasn’t being sneaky. I told your people I was recording them. And I haven’t done a feature article yet that wasn’t totally unbiased—”

“Unbiased? How can you even pretend to be unbiased about the CRM when you yourself are the developer of that…that LinkServe monstrosity?”

“Monstrosity? Monstrosity? This happens to be the twenty-first century. Technologies like LinkServe are here to stay.”

“The CRM is only trying to protect children from undue violence and sexually explicit material. Seems to me that used to be a given in this country, before kids with guns and dirty music became commonplace. No thanks to Masters Multimedia.”

“Masters Multimedia has nothing to do with guns, and as for dirty music, et cetera, we didn’t exactly invent it.” He cocked his head toward the stage, where the duo was still singing the bawdy Scottish song. “Just listen.

“This nonsense has been around for ages. Think of all the old Scottish, Irish, Appalachian ballads that are full of murder and mayhem, not to mention—pardon my French—sex.”

Kitt glared at him, picked up her Harp, took a swig, then carefully lowered the glass to the table. “Oh, this nonsense—” she made quote marks in the air with her fingers “—has been around all right, in the form of subtle innuendo. Like that last one. But not a dirty word in it. Even in the most tasteless old drinking songs, it’s all innuendo. Nothing explicit. I have nothing against sex…or fun. But there is a vast difference between bawdy old tunes for adults and the stuff your father’s company—” she shook her finger at him—twice “—your company, is producing, packaging and distributing to children—”

His mouth opened as he tried to say something about it not being his company, or about First Amendment rights, or about parental responsibility, but Kitt charged on, shouting over the music.

“Stuff so violent—” she actually jabbed his chest this time “—that it’s threatening to change the very fabric of this country. Kids are listening to those lyrics, they memorize them, they adopt their worldview. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, Mr. Masters, but today the village is destroying the child, all for the sake of money,” the word money came out muh-nee and Mark recognized a trace of Okie accent. “The CRM’s goal—and mine—is to halt that trend, Mr. Masters—” she jabbed again “—and neither you nor your rich daddy can stop us!”

The rich-daddy crack left Mark so blistered he was momentarily speechless.

Their eyes locked and it was as if Jeff and Lauren had shrunk to vanishing points at the edges of the room. And in that moment, Mark thought he felt something pass between himself and Kitt Stevens, something mystical but real. Her eyes, green as emeralds, were flashing, reflecting the fire in his own, he guessed.

He saw that she was looking at him, too, in a way no other woman ever had. Really looking at him. Into his eyes. And suddenly it hit him. This woman was the one. The One. Which was totally crazy. Surely he was imagining this, whatever it was. He tried to regain control. But it didn’t work. He felt shaken. And again he thought, as plainly as if it were a neon sign flashing behind the bar: She’s The One.

But The One broke off their eye contact, rummaged around wildly in her oversize tote and tossed a twenty on the table. “Let me out.” She nudged Jeff out of the way. “I refuse to drink Harp with the devil.”

“The devil?” Mark repeated sarcastically.

Kitt scooted to the edge of the seat, then twisted toward Mark before she stood up. ‘“Knocked yo’ mama outta her bed,’” she rapped. ‘“Jumped her bones and split her head.’”

“Dead Tuna,” Mark informed her. “Nobody takes them seriously.”

“The hell they don’t,” Kitt retorted, and stood. “You should check your own company’s sales records. Five hundred thousand copies sold and those precious lyrics inside every CD jacket.” She hoisted her tote over her shoulder and whirled away before Mark could respond.

“Sweetie! How will you get home?” Jeff whined at her departing back.

“I’ll be fine,” Kitt retorted as she pushed through the crowd.

Jeff stared after her for some seconds, then resettled himself in the booth. “The lass has a bit of a temper on her, a bit of a temper,” he said with a dreadful Irish brogue, which irked Mark at him afresh. What business did Jeff Smith have, apologizing for her? Jeff Smith wasn’t responsible for Kitt Stevens.

But yes, Mark warned himself, his face still scalding from her verbal excoriation, the woman has apparently got a temper. And a fantastic mind. And a kind of righteousness that he found both intimidating and thrilling. A righteousness he envied.

He glanced at Lauren next to him. She smiled uncertainly, her face betraying acute embarrassment. Much as he wanted to leave, he’d stay long enough to smooth this over with her. After all, she wasn’t to blame for the tremors rumbling beneath the surface between him and Kitt Stevens.