Tell Me More

by Janet Mullany

  I’m still interested in the apartment if it’s available. Please let me know when I may view it.

  What a gentleman. No mention of Christmas or underwear or your future landlady having her ass screwed off on the sofa.

  Lights off, bike gear on, alarm turned on and I was out into the cold night, a splendor of stars above me.

  Could Mr. D. see those stars from his cabin or was it buried deep in trees? I was sure he lived in a cabin, high up in the mountains, although most of us in town had hardwood floors and woodstoves.

  I pushed off, cycling hard up the hill, forcing myself. I wasn’t afraid of cycling in the dark—at any time of night in this environmentally conscious town there were cyclists on the road. As I rode, I thought about renting the apartment, the mice in the basement…domestic trivialities.

  Anything to stop me thinking about what Mr. D. had proposed.

  After I’d emailed Patrick, telling him to come—an unfortunate word choice I changed to stop by—anytime after three the next day, I couldn’t sleep. I wandered around the house, now too empty without Hugh. I couldn’t put it off any longer. Had I made the right decision regarding Mr. D.? It had to be, since there was no going back.

  To my surprise, the man who had proved so elusive for many months now wanted to meet me. One orgasm—mine, if he had told me the truth, and I wasn’t quite sure he had done so—and he had a complete change of mind?

  And I was embarrassed and angry. I had touched myself and talked dirty and moaned, broken my phone-sex cherry, I guess. I had shared this most intimate of pursuits with someone who hadn’t reciprocated. I had performed without knowing it. Now I was not in a mood to be cajoled.

  “But of course we should meet.”

  “No,” I’d said.

  “I’ve never been more intimate with a woman. Not even when I was married—”

  “You don’t know me. I’m a fantasy for you. You’re a fantasy for me. It should stay that way.”

  “Don’t push me away, Jo. I understand that you’re feeling wounded by what Hugh did, but—”

  “How do you know I didn’t make Hugh up?” I was angry now. “And this isn’t about Hugh. It’s about you and me. Think about it, Mr. D. I don’t even know your name. You haven’t exactly been open with me, have you?”

  “My name? You want to know my name? It’s—”

  “Stop!” I was panting as though I’d ridden a bicycle uphill. “Don’t tell me.”

  “Jo, what do you really want?” His voice was gentle, sad.

  I don’t know. You. Maybe.

  And then I thought of the men I’d loved, the men who claimed to love me back, the mistakes and infidelities, the withdrawal into indifference. I remembered pushing Hugh away in bed because I felt smothered; I remembered too how I’d reached out for him, when I was overcome with loneliness and regret, and his impatient grunt as he shook off my hand.

  Did it happen with every relationship? I didn’t want that familiar path anymore. I didn’t want to take that journey—not yet anyway. Eventually I knew I could take the risk, but not now, still worn out and disillusioned by Hugh’s infidelity.

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t think this is right for me. I’m sorry. We should say goodbye.”

  So it was done.

  His last words to me echoed in my head. “Very well. I’m sorry, Jo.”

  A click and silence.

  I had lost a friend.

  Patrick had pretty much decided he’d move into the apartment on Yale Drive if Jo Hutchinson offered it to him, which he thought she probably would. It turned out she knew one of his references, a good sign.

  The apartment was small, built over a garage; what Americans called an efficiency and he’d call a bedsit, one large room with a minimal sort of kitchen arrangement and a bathroom. There was a staircase up from outside and a door leading into the house and Jo offered him use of the washer-dryer in the basement and, if he had ambitious cooking plans, he could use her kitchen.

  He told her he might well be inspired to bake a half-dozen loaves in that fancy high-tech oven, and she looked at him in a way that suggested she didn’t know whether he was joking or not.

  He liked her. She was a bit eccentric, and there was some awkwardness, mostly on his part, that he’d seen her naked.

  She spent the first five minutes of this meeting staring at his chin and then told him that taking the beard thing off was an improvement. Given what she was doing the day before, he thought he should be flattered that she’d even noticed his facial hair. He launched into a long rambling explanation of how he tended to sideswipe the beard thing while shaving so it lost definition, but the silent subtext of his monologue was that he wished he’d got a better look at her breasts when she was naked.

  Today she wore some sort of blue shapeless dress thing—her legs and feet bare—probably made of hemp or tofu or compost like everything else in the town. He liked her slender body and waifish short dark hair in a ragged sort of style that either cost a lot of money or was a mistake, he couldn’t tell.

  She didn’t look the way she sounded on the radio; she was younger than he would have thought, about his age, late twenties. But her voice was sexy in real life, too, and he told her he liked the music she played even if he didn’t always understand it.

  “Do you like being a DJ?” he asked.

  “I’m music director. I decide on the music programming. The on-air work is only a small part of what I do.”

  He felt he was being corrected. For someone who had a geeky sort of job, though, even geekier than his, and looked fey and otherworldly, she was right on the button when he asked about insurance and security and cable access.

  By this time they were back in the kitchen, where she poured him a cup of coffee and examined his application. “It says here you’re a web designer.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be working from here.”

  “That’s fine. We won’t see much of each other because I sleep mostly during the day.” She refilled his coffee mug. “I have a Mac, a laptop. I really like it.”

  “I use Macs, too. Three of them and six screens. I’ll show you my setup if you like.” He stopped, because it sounded as though he was boasting, or as if he’d waved his dick at her to prove it was bigger than her boyfriend’s. (It was.)

  He told her the brief, bare facts of his divorce, of how he was moving out until his soon-to-be ex-wife had finished her master’s and they could sell the house. She nodded sympathetically and he had the urge to tell her how depressed and horny he was but instead he told her he was stable and financially responsible and so on.

  He embarrassed himself trying to look down the front of the blue shapeless thing and musing on how he could persuade her to bend over so he could look up it. He wondered, not for the first time, if women spent as much time and energy, for instance, looking at men’s flies or up the legs of their shorts. Elise had told him once that men were natural sprawlers and it was no big effort to spot, or ignore, a dangling penis in warm weather.

  At one point, mildly exciting, Jo stood on one leg with the other foot against her knee in a sort of yoga pose—in this town you had to do yoga or pilates or else risk social ostracism, but he did neither. He suspected there was a crack squad of yoga police who would break down your door to make sure you had your foot in your ear.

  Great legs, he noted.

  They shook hands and she said she’d let him know.

  As he drove away, he decided he absolutely had to forget that he’d seen her naked and stop thinking about what she’d be like in the sack (pretty good, he suspected). It was an honest mistake. He’d heard the moaning and groaning and thought someone was in pain, and looked around the open door and the first thing he saw was her pair of Father Christmas knickers on the floor, the crotch sopping wet.

  After that, it was less of an honest mistake. He must have stood there for a good five minutes watching that unimaginative fuck, turned on as hell, seeing the guy’s cock slide in and out of her. He wasn’t
particularly interested in the cock, but he could see how it cleaved her, opened her up. She was all sweet and pink and shiny beneath that tuft of black hair, the star of his private porno movie.

  Shit. This was a business arrangement. Period. And he should feel relieved that he’d found a place to live, but he felt only sadness.

  He couldn’t wait to get away from Elise, but he dreaded the actual moving out, saying goodbye, knowing from now on it was just going to be legal business.

  More tears. His if not hers.

  How had everything gone so wrong?

  Thursday evening at the station we had an on-air staff meeting, me and two full-time announcers and a handful of subs and volunteers. I filled them in on the latest station news and praised them for the quick handling of a breaking news story the previous week. I passed on information from Neil, our program director and my boss, and pretended not to notice the grins and eye rolls.

  Sometimes I felt sorry for Neil. Mostly he just annoyed me. He’d come to us from television, and, snobs that we were, Kimberly and I laughed at his liking of expensive suits and haircuts and his blatant ambition. He didn’t know much about music, either, which was a real problem, and mispronounced composers’ names on the rare occasions when he took an air shift. He spoke longingly at staff meetings of talk shows and more news programming.

  I found a garment bag on my desk; Kimberly the designer-clothes fairy had visited, leaving the skirt, the shoes and a folder with just about every detail except the inseams of our victims for the night. My date was Willis Scott III, one of our quaint local royalty, in his mid-thirties, president of a real estate company. I yawned as I scanned where he’d gone to school, his hobbies and nonprofit involvement.

  On the top of the sheet, in her round, loopy, rich-girl writing, Kimberly had given me the following instructions:

  Wax. Go to Azure Sky Salon and mention my name.

  No garlic.

  Don’t say fuck too often.

  Don’t criticize the orchestra.

  Don’t cut your own hair like last time.

  Just to annoy me she had put a smiley face over the i in her signature.

  Wax? Was she kidding? I hoped she only meant my legs and armpits, something I tended to neglect at this time of year.

  I took a quick look through the rest of my mail, most of it ending up in the recycle bin.

  There was one envelope that must have been hand-delivered, my name neatly typed on the outside. It must be—had to be—from Mr. D. I wanted so badly to open it, but we’d hurt each other and I was afraid of what I might read. Forgiveness might be even worse than any accusation.

  Inside was a single sheet of paper.

  I miss you already.

  Beneath it was a phone number and an email address.

  I turned the paper over although I knew there was nothing on the other side. Had this really been for me? Yes, that was my name on the outside, in the same standard computer font as the letter. It had to be from Mr. D.—who else could it be from?

  I could phone him. I could…

  I dangled the paper between my fingertips.

  There was no such thing as privacy anymore. I might have an unlisted home phone number, but my information—everyone’s—was all over the place on any number of databases, easily found. I crumpled the paper and threw it into the recycling bin. Then I picked it back out, smoothed it with my palms and wished he’d written it, not typed it. There was one way I could determine it was from Mr. D.—quite simple. I could make a call to that number.

  No, not now. I folded the paper and pushed it into a desk drawer, out of sight.

  After all, I couldn’t be sure it was him. A good proportion of the male population assumed that a woman was on the radio purely to get a man, meaning them. They sent in photos, some with their cats or dogs, and some, the anonymous ones, proudly displaying an erection but not their face. They sent their resumes, or long rambling letters explaining how we’d been soul mates in Arthurian Britain. We attracted the sad lonely misfits, and that was the end of it.

  “You look good. Did you get into Azure Sky okay?” Kimberly bent forward and examined her lipstick in the women’s room mirror.

  “Uh-huh.” One of the razors Hugh had left behind had done perfectly well.

  “Now be nice to him.”

  “You sound like you’re running the best little whorehouse in Texas.” I tucked my small silver purse under one elbow, rearranged my shawl and willed my nipples to behave. I wasn’t wearing a bra—my top was a gray silk halter-neck, found at a yard sale. Above my knees, the taffeta rustled. To complete my happy-radio-hooker outfit I wore thigh-highs, black with a seam, and a pair of large dangly fake diamond earrings.

  Kimberly gripped my elbow and escorted me out of the ladies’ room.

  “You have the right to remain silent. You have—”

  “Smart-ass.” She tugged me across the foyer, filled at intermission with well-heeled, mostly middle-aged patrons, mixed in with a few Birkenstocked old hippies, and some younger people in jeans and hiking boots and down vests. The symphony was nothing if not diverse.

  We approached a group of people with champagne glasses; our station manager, Bill, was among them and the administrative director of the symphony. Kimberly made introductions, her mane of blond hair tossing, and I got to meet Willis Scott III.

  He was the sort of man Kimberly would go for—I preferred them in faded blue jeans or baggy khaki shorts—dark with a bit of gray, handsome; expensive haircut, suit, cologne.

  “I’m surprised you enjoy the symphony,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You listen to music all day.”

  “I don’t listen to it a whole lot. There’s quite a lot to do in the studio while the music’s playing.” Phone sex, for example.

  “Sounds interesting.”

  I nodded, searching for something to say. “Tell me about what you do.”

  He was only too happy to, running off at the mouth about prime interest rates and equity, and how this was a great time to buy up.

  I drank champagne and tried to look intelligent.

  “I’ve got a new development just north of town,” he said. “Great architecture, real exclusive, beautiful setting. We’ve preserved the environmental integrity, lots of trees and stuff, and we’re keeping it upscale, you know what I mean? Second homes, mostly—”

  “If you’re that concerned with environmental integrity, why develop it? It’s not as though you’re providing housing for people who really need it.”

  He frowned, his handsome brow wrinkling. “There’s a demand, you wouldn’t believe it. But Jo, you know, if you’re in the market—”

  I guess that was what happened when you wore designer clothes or possibly gave off some sort of involuntary slutty radar. “I don’t have any plans to—”

  “Call me.” He produced a business card.

  “Okay.”

  Like a gentleman he held my champagne glass while I opened my purse and tucked his card away.

  He moved a little closer to me and tugged my shawl back on to my shoulder. His manicured fingers rested on my bare skin a little too long. “You’re a very attractive woman, Jo. Maybe we could have dinner sometime?”

  I stepped back. “I work most evenings, Willis.”

  “Lunch, then. And we could drive out to the development after. Commune with nature. How about it?”

  “I’ll let you know.” I couldn’t wait to throw away—in the recycling bin, of course—his business card.

  “Great shoes.”

  That was all I needed, a shoe fetishist. Maybe it was an attempt at empathy.

  To my great relief the chimes sounded for the second half of the concert. As we walked back into the concert hall, one of the group—a fortysomething fair-haired woman—walked beside me.

  “I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your show.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You always sound so approachable. I think a lot of people get intimid
ated by classical music. It’s a shame.”

  “It is. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I’m Liz Ferrar.” She smiled and touched my arm. She whispered, “If Kimberly thinks Willis is a hot prospect for the station, she’s wasting her time. He’s a real tightwad. The whole family is. And he’s a jerk.”

  “Fuck, yes. He hit on me so hard, I couldn’t believe it. Liz, don’t you run the women’s center in town?” She was the reference Patrick had given, the one I claimed to know. “I guess you know Patrick Delaney.”

  “Oh, yes. He’s a sweet guy. He designed our site for free. How do you know him?”

  “He applied to be my tenant.”

  “Good. I’m glad he’s leaving Elise—I mean, you hate to see a couple break up, but when they’re both so unhappy…” She shrugged.

  “Come visit us—me, I mean, and Patrick, too. Call me at the station.” We exchanged cards.

  Happy that I’d made a new friend, I shushed Kimberly so I could listen to the music.

  I arrived at the radio station by cab shortly after the concert ended, and settled myself in for a quiet evening. Time to get caught up on paperwork. I had an article to write for the newsletter, programming to select for the next couple of months.

  I jumped every time the phone rang.

  At two in the morning I shut down, tidied up the console and reached for the phone to call a cab home.

  It rang. No data.

  I stared at the ringing phone. I had no obligation to answer—we were off air. After seven rings the caller would be transferred to the station’s voice mail.

  But I answered anyway.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  “I’m sorry, Jo. I pushed you too hard.”

  “It’s okay.”

  He sighed. “I want honesty between us. It’s been two nights and I’ve had time to think and…”