Jan Freed - Talk To Me

“Nobody got hurt,” Bill spoke up, frowning at the audience. “They cleaned up the spill and I was back on the job in a couple of hours. Like I said, it was an okay day.”

Huffing, Dorothy turned in her chair to face him directly. “What about last night during Walker, Texas Ranger? I asked if you were nervous about being on the show today, and you never even looked away from the TV.”

“I answered you, didn’t I?”

“You said ‘yeah.’ Period. What kind of answer is that? For all I know you didn’t even hear me!”

Bill winced and stuck his little finger in one ear. “The whole trailer park heard you, Dorothy. How can you think I didn’t?”

Predominantly male laughter swelled in the audience.

Kara bristled.

She knew how Dorothy had thought her husband hadn’t heard. He hadn’t looked at her, that’s how. Without the connection of eye contact, a wife simply couldn’t be sure her husband was paying attention.

Poor Dorothy’s cheeks were tomato red. “If you’d told me how you were feeling, if you’d talked to me I would have known you heard me. But all you said was ‘yeah.’ And then when I told you I was nervous, too, and that my stomach felt queasy every time I thought about being on TV, you got mad.”

The couple fumed silently.

Vanessa jumped in fast. “Is that true, Bill?”

His scowl deepened. “I guess.”

Kara’s indignation on his wife’s behalf rose. From the outbreak of feminine murmurs in the crowd, she wasn’t alone.

“Why would her sympathy make you mad?” Vanessa sounded sincerely puzzled.

Slouched in his chair, Bill retreated into himself and stared at an exit sign. Rudely silent. Aloofly distant.

Annoyingly familiar.

Kara wanted to rush up on stage and shake an answer out of the man.

“See what I mean?” Dorothy turned away from the husband who hadn’t looked at her since they’d entered the stage. “It’s hopeless. When he’s at the pool hall with his buddies, he yaks his head off. But he won’t say squat to me, who’s given him three children and cooked and cleaned for him twenty-seven years. I give up.”

“No, no,” Vanessa protested. “Give the audience a chance to help. Okay folks, who’d like to comment on Bill and Dorothy’s problem?”

Hands, including Esther’s, shot up everywhere. But Vanessa was plunging into the opposite section of the auditorium.

“Let’s get a man’s take on this, first. The gentleman with the dark hair, sitting in the middle. Yes, you, I’m heading your way.”

Kara twisted and craned along with everyone else to watch Vanessa’s progress. Too many heads blocked the view.

“Stand up, sir—whoa! Hello up there. Everything is bigger in Texas, isn’t it? Love the T-shirt, by the way.”

Kara jockeyed for a glimpse of the man. Dam it, she couldn’t see!

“Turn toward the camera so we can zoom in for the folks at home. That’s it. Women want me. Bass fear me,” Vanessa read, her tone amused.

Kara’s heart stopped cold...then lurched into heavy slamming beats.

Remembering the big-screen monitor, she whirled to the front. The camera had focused on thin gray cotton stretched tightly over a muscular chest. Dead center, a hooked bass thrashed out of the water, the once-vivid greens and blues faded, the words above imprinted forever in Kara’s memory.

“Tell us what your name is, sir, and where you’re from.”

Even before the camera moved, even before the man answered, Kara knew.

Oh God, oh God.

“My name is Travis Malloy, and I’m from Lake Kimberly, Texas,” drawled the deep baritone that had so enthralled a young woman accustomed primarily to feminine voices.

Gram gasped.

The camera pulled back.

Kara stared at the shaggy sable hair, the slightly crooked nose, the square masculine jaw sporting stubble—not for fashion’s sake but because his beard grew at the speed of light. She took in the bronzed skin and deep squint lines of an outdoorsman, the dark intelligent eyes of a voracious reader.

Then she assembled it all into the heartbreaker of a face she hadn’t seen in nine years. The face of her ex-husband. The man who had, in fact, broken her heart—and had the supreme gall now to wear the T-shirt she’d given him for their first-year anniversary celebration.

The same occasion he’d ended their marriage for good.

STANDING IN THE beam of a remote-camera spotlight, Travis silently cursed the irritation that had sent up his hand, along with seventy or so others.

To his right, obnoxious cackling heated his neck. He probed with his heavy boot until he bumped rubber, then carefully planted his full weight on top of a sneaker.

“Okay, Travis,” Vanessa said above Jake’s strangled groan. “What did you want to say to Dorothy and Bill?”

Since “never mind” would make an even bigger fool out of him, Travis eased off his little brother’s foot and onto the subject at hand. “Just that I think I know why Bill got mad when Dorothy told him she was nervous and queasy.”

“Really? Why?”

He’d had nine years to refine his answer.

“Because instead of focusing on him, she brought the conversation right back to her. Why should he ‘talk’ to her about his feelings when she doesn’t respect them enough to devote her full attention to them?”

Vanessa appeared surprised, then intrigued. “Interesting. I see a lot of men in the audience nodding their heads. What about you, Bill?” she said, tuming to the stage. “Can you confirm Travis’s theory?”

Bill had snapped to military attention, amazed gratitude replacing his earlier scowl. “Yeah. I could never quite put my finger on it before, but that’s exactly right. Hey, thanks, buddy.”

Travis shrugged modestly. Unlike most women, he could be right without making a federal case out of it.

“I’m impressed, Travis. Thank you,” Vanessa told him in a dismissive tone.

He gladly sank out of the spotlight into his seat, ignoring the low singsong, “teacher’s pet” from his right. Give Jake an inch of encouragement and he’d dole out a mile of abuse.

Travis couldn’t think why he’d accepted tickets to the Vanessa Allen Show in lieu of his normal fishing-guide fee. Or why he’d compounded the mistake by inviting the Malloy family clown to accompany him to the show.

“Dorothy, you look a little shocked,” Vanessa continued. “What do you think about all this?”

Dorothy closed her sagging jaw. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Do you really think I don’t respect your feelings, Bill?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“For heaven’s sake, look at me, please.”

Travis cringed, the words fingernails on the blackboard of his memory, a slate he’d yet to wipe clean. He should never have made the rare trip into Houston today.

When Bill finally gazed at his wife, his expression was long-suffering. “All I know is, whenever I tell you something personal, you always say how you’re feeling or what happened to you that was almost the same. Like what I feel isn’t important”

“But—Bill, honey, that’s not at all what I think. When I say those things, I only want you to know you’re not alone, that I’ve felt the same way. I thought that knowing I understand how you feel might comfort you.”

“Well, it doesn’t. It never has.”

“I didn’t know.” Dorothy’s strident voice was subdued, her two screen-monitor faces sincere and misty-eyed. “I swear I didn’t know. I...I’m sorry.”

Travis shifted uneasily. The conversation slowly faded into the background of his mind. A soft melodious voice crept forward from the past.

Look at me, please.

Talk to me, please.

I know exactly how you feel about not making the boat payment on time. The late fees I paid on rent for my apartment in college would add up to a nice little nest egg. Don’t worry about it, Travis.