Tell Me More (26 page)

And speaking of disappointments, where the hell was Jo? He was angry with her for not showing up, not bothering to call and turning her cell off, and worried that something had happened to her. She’d lied to him, too. She hadn’t gone to the radio station, and he had a panicky moment of imagining her car broken down somewhere isolated, of her cold and scared by the side of the road.

The night would have been entirely different if she’d been there. His father wouldn’t have drunk enough to degenerate into vicious anger; he would have played the charming Irishman and raconteur and been tolerable company.

Once inside the car he tried Jo’s cell again while the engine warmed. He tried the house, but there was no reply there, either.

He drove to the radio station and rang the bell on the back door, which was the only way to get in after business hours, always assuming someone was willing to open the door.

“Who is it?” He recognized the voice on the intercom as belonging to the woman he’d spoken with earlier.

“Patrick Delaney, Jo’s boyfriend.”

“She got here five minutes ago.” The door buzzed open.

He walked in along the corridor that led around the perimeter of the building and met the announcer, whom he now recognized vaguely as the girl who’d cried at Thanksgiving, and thanked her for letting him in.

She was flustered and angry. “This isn’t like Jo. She was over an hour late. My boyfriend is mad that I’m working late.”

He saw ahead the flash of the red light that indicated Jo was on air, the studio door open. She sat at the board, illuminated by a lamp, the rest of the room in darkness, her voice calm and mellow, and saw him at the window, and stopped in midsentence, then recovered herself and resumed speaking.

When the music started he stepped through the open doorway and turned on a switch by the door, flooding the room with light.

“What the hell’s going on, Jo?”

I TOOK OFF THE HEADPHONES AND TURNED THE
chair to face him.

He looked mad, and rightly so, and he didn’t know the half of it.

“I screwed up. I’m sorry. How was dinner with your dad?”

“Appalling. Where have you been? Why did you turn your cell off?”

I glanced at the clock. I had twenty minutes to explain what I’d done. “Tonight I told someone I couldn’t love them because they’d lied to me. And I don’t want to lie to you, or evade the truth. Remember I told you I had loose ends?”

He nodded, his face grim. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “Go on.”

“I was in love, sort of, with a guy I’d never met. The guy I had phone sex with. Here. And I found out, more or less by accident, that he was the one who was behind my invitation to join the Association.

“After…after you left on Saturday night I met him for the first time. I mean, really met him in person. He wouldn’t tell me why he’d lied to me and used me as a pawn in some sort of baroque game, and I wouldn’t have listened at that point. I was too mad, too hurt. So I told him to meet me again today and explain. He agreed that I was entitled to an explanation. So that’s where I was.”

“This explanation,” Patrick said. “Did it involve his dick, by any chance?”

I wished I could have lied to him but now I had to tell him anything, everything. “Yes.”

“Admirable, your quest for truth. So you fucked him and the mysteries of the universe were revealed.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, helpless, watching his face harden, loving him more than I would have thought possible. “If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t have told you. I am so, so sorry.”

“Of course.” He walked toward me and I was frightened by the contempt and pain on his face. “Was it good, Jo?”

“Stop it. Please.” I backed away.

“I’ll tell you something. If you really did love me, you wouldn’t have fucked another man and you wouldn’t be talking yourself into why you had to do it. That’s it, pure and simple.” He reached out and put his hands, quite gently, on my neck, thumbs caressing my collarbone. “Did he make you come?”

“Please don’t touch me, Patrick.”

He dropped his hands and looked nauseous, pale. “So the stockings were for him. And the sexy red lace knickers. Christ, I actually believed you when you said they were for my benefit. Did you get wet for him, Jo?”

“Stop it!”

“Did you come?”

“I know you’re mad—”

“Did you? Come on, Jo, the truth. Isn’t that what this is all about?
Did you come?
”

“Yes,” I whispered, humiliated.

“And did he get up your ass?”

I shook my head. I was about to cry and I didn’t want him to see me break.

“Lying bitch.” He turned and left.

I sank to the floor and cried when he’d gone because I knew I’d lost him, shuddering with grief and pain and hating myself for my stupidity and cruelty. When I looked up next, I saw I had ten more minutes before I had to go on air. I wiped my face dry and got to my feet and turned off the harsh overhead light, as though hiding in semidarkness could conceal the damage I’d done.

And then I noticed two things.

Both of them red, both of them flashing.

One was the entire set of incoming lines on the phone but there was a very good reason I hadn’t heard any ring. If the mic was on, then the phone ringers in the studio were muted.

The other flashing red light was the one that announced someone was on air, live, the mic turned on.

I lunged over to the board, praying that I’d pulled the fader down, but it was still in its normal, announcing position. Every vitriolic, obscene word exchanged between me and Patrick had been broadcast to our entire listening area. I wrenched the fader down and turned it off, and sat, paralyzed with horror, watching those phones light, flash and darken as they rang over to an extension, listening to them ring and ring.

I couldn’t know how much people had heard—we hadn’t been that close to the mic—but obviously enough.

Then I very carefully took a drink of water, gargled a little and cued up my next CD. I took deep breaths and turned the mic back on and slid the fader up. I made a cool and leisurely announcement about the music we’d heard, what was coming up next and gave the time and temperature. Fader down, mic off, music up. Done.

I took my cell out of my purse and turned it on. Six calls from Patrick as well as three text messages, three calls from the station, probably from Ann, and one a couple of minutes ago from Kimberly. I deleted them all and called her.

“Honey, what the hell’s going on?” Her voice was high and frantic. “I’m coming over. See you in five.”

“No, you don’t have to. It’s late. I—” But she’d hung up and sure enough, in five minutes the back doorbell rang and I let her in. She wore a gorgeous leather coat, pajamas with a pattern of fluffy bunnies and cowboy boots, and I laughed at her appearance and then cried again.

“You are up shit creek,” she said, dropping her huge leather tote bag onto the floor. “Wow, it’s like they say, they just don’t have that old-time radio drama anymore. It’s time for damage control. Okay, you know the password for the general voice-mail box? Great. You get on there and erase every message that’s been left and do your own mailbox, too. I’ll do the rest.”

“What about their passwords?”

“I know them. Don’t ask. Bill’s legacy. Then we’ll do the email. We’d better stay here and check things for a while. I brought supplies.” She nodded at the tote bag, which held fruit and cheese and crackers. “And don’t listen to any of those messages. They won’t make you feel any better.”

“I’ll have to quit after this, however good a cover-up job we do. It’s bound to leak out.”

“I know, honey. But you’ll quit in your own time. This buys you a few days. I’m just glad Neil is out of town.” She hugged me again. “Okay, girl, get crackin’.”

The general voice-mail box was full and by this time the calls had died down. I erased all the messages in there as well as all of mine. Then I erased the emails that had come into my account and that of the general mailbox account.

Kimberly came back into the studio a little later and cut up cheese and fruit and fed them to me, tenderly and gently, which made me cry again. We checked for phone calls and for more emails—most of them had gone to Bill’s mailbox, some to Neil’s—and deleted them. But after an hour everything was quiet. As Kimberly said, everyone had probably gone back to internet porn or tonight’s game. It was a time to be grateful for sports.

She stayed in the studio until I shut down and then took me back to her apartment, where Bill had fallen asleep on the couch waiting for us. I cried some more and told Kimberly the whole story in a messy and incoherent way. Bill woke up and made me hot milk with honey and offered me grass, his usual bedtime combination. (“And now little blue pills,” Kimberly added with a wink.) I turned down the grass but accepted a big slug of liqueur in the hot milk and fell asleep in Kimberly’s spare bedroom.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Kimberly sat on the bed. “How are you feeling? Want some breakfast?”

I sat up, rubbing my eyes and wondering why everything felt so strange and why I was in Kimberly’s spare bedroom. I wore a huge striped flannel shirt that was probably the top half of a man’s pajamas, and which probably belonged to Bill. Five seconds later memories of the previous evening flooded back.

“Don’t cry,” Kimberly said. “Oh, heck, cry if you want. You’re entitled. You fucked up real good, honey.”

“I know.” I reached for my cell phone on the bedside table.

“Uh-oh! No! You are not to call him.”

“I wasn’t going to. I want to call my mom.”

“Call her later when you’re not such a mess.” Kimberly placed the cell out of reach. “I’m going in to work soon to do some more damage control. You want breakfast? Bill will fix you something, or you can go back to sleep.”

“Tell me about Bill.” I wiped my face with my sleeve. “I want to hear about something good.”

“Okay. Well, I was getting tired of internet dating—dreadlocked dentists and all the rest—and I suddenly thought, hey, there’s this great-looking guy at work, and he’s a bit older but heck, that means he’s had time to put in some practice, so I hit on him.”

“A
bit
older?” I echoed.

“Honey, I’ve never told you how old I am and you’re too sweet to ask. I’m forty-five. I’ve got good genes and I’ve had a bit of work done.” She tapped the underside of her chin and beneath her eyes. “And I take care of myself. So, yeah, he’s a bit older, but so what? He’s a real animal in the sack, let me tell you. Don’t hardly need those blue pills at all, and he’s real good about putting the toilet seat down and those other domestic details. We had to keep it quiet at the station, what with sexual harassment and favoritism and all. But now we’re out of the closet.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Do you think you’ll get married?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll get going, then. Bill can give you a ride back to the station for your car. You just keep your head down and come in for your air shift looking the picture of innocence. I’ll check the snail mail. I tell you, it’s a good thing no one who works at the station listens to it. Except for Neil and he’s out of town. But Bill likes your show, always has, and that’s why I heard you last night.”

“Kimberly, isn’t it illegal? Tampering with mail and email?”

She stood and grinned. “You bet. Remember the Alamo, honey. See you later.”

I got up a bit later, dressing in a pair of Kimberly’s fancy yoga pants, and let Bill feed me a huge amount of pancakes. “Heartbreak’s always better on a full stomach,” he said, flooding my plate with syrup. “Mind you, I would have fired you, too. But it’s not the worst thing that can happen.”

It wasn’t, but I didn’t feel good about losing my job. I felt good about very little in my life at that point. I drove home through suitably gray, bleak weather with the car radio turned on to a relentlessly cheerful rock station, listening to the comforting oldies I remembered from my childhood. As I pulled into the driveway I glanced up at the apartment. I knew, although there were no signs to tell me so, that Patrick had moved out.

As I headed for the front door I saw someone get out of a large dark car parked across the street.

“Ma’am?”

I turned. Oh, God, I was about to get mugged. Great. I slid my keys into a weapon the way I’d been taught in self-defense class, threaded between my fingers, my hand a fist. A man approached, clipboard in one hand. Maybe not. I’d never heard of a mugger carrying a clipboard.

“Ms. Hutchinson?” the guy asked. He held out a large manila envelope and a pen. “Sign here. Great. Thanks. Have a good day.”

I tucked the envelope under one arm and went into the house. Brady ran toward me and weaved around my legs, making his usual affectionate, hunger-inspired crooning sounds. I followed him into the kitchen. Someone had fed him recently; a few scraps of food stuck to his bowl.

I walked upstairs and tapped on the dividing door to the apartment. No answer. I opened it and walked into a completely bare room. He’d taken the trouble of vacuuming, so the place was spotless. On the minuscule kitchen counter lay one of Patrick’s cards with the post office box he used for his business mail and his cell phone number.

I turned the card over to see if he’d written anything to me, but the back was blank. He was gone.

I was beyond tears, shocked and hardly able to move or think. The envelope fell from under my arm to the floor. I picked it up and opened it.

Inside was a letter, lines of dense type, on the letterhead of a prestigious local law firm. I skimmed over it. Phrases leaped out at me. Breach of contract. A ten-thousand-dollar fine levied by the Association. A meeting the next Monday at which I was to present the fine in the form of a bank draft.

And I thought things couldn’t get any worse. I stuffed the letter into the backpack, left the apartment and went back to bed, where I could sleep and cry for the rest of the day.

Sleeping and crying was about all I could do that week, except that by some odd twist of fate, possibly because I knew I was leaving the station soon, I did great shows. On the air I sounded fabulous, competent yet friendly, informative and entertaining, and the music flowed. I knew, because I made a few tapes, thinking that if my name was not mud in the wonderful world of classical music radio, it might be useful to have a few demo tapes of my on-air style. No one would ever know that the announcer off air dissolved into tears and lived on toast and peanut butter and coffee.

Kimberly spent some of each evening with me, sitting in the studio with her laptop, and bringing me leftovers from dinners Bill had cooked that I couldn’t eat. I took the plastic containers home and fed them to Brady. Not a good idea, I found, after stepping in Tex-Mex cat vomit.

I lay awake at nights wondering what I would do without a job, without a tenant and if I should cash in my IRA to pay a ten-thousand-dollar fine, or, if I ignored it, whether it might go away. Yes, I decided, that was the best approach. And I’d roll over in the bed that still held Patrick’s scent and cry until I fell asleep again. I saw little daylight that week.

I summoned my substitute announcers for the next week, claiming that I had an emergency to deal with, and covered my air shifts. I caught up on editing promos and public-service announcements. I tidied up the music library. I, who had been so grossly unprofessional, was leaving things in good shape. Neil should be grateful.

On Friday I packed my few belongings into a box for Kimberly to take home. I had ridden my bike in, because the speed and the burn of the cold were about the only things I enjoyed these days. “You be careful,” she said. “I think we’re gonna get an ice storm.”

“We never get ice storms here. It’s not humid enough.”

“Humidity’s high.” She popped the back of her car. “You call me if you need a ride. And…”

“And what?”

“I don’t want to leave you with bad news, but Patrick’s moved back into his house, if you were wondering where he was.”