This Child Of Mine

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.

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