Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  And she still might, C.B. said, which is why you need to say, “Yes, I can walk, Charlie. I just want to go home.”

  “Yes, I can walk, Charlie,” she said, even though she wasn’t at all sure she could. “I just want to go home.”

  “She’s fine,” C.B. said to the usher, who still looked skeptical. “Ready?” he asked Briddey aloud, and she nodded.

  He picked up her evening bag from the floor and stuck it in the pocket of his jeans. Have you got your phone? he asked.

  Yes, she said, reaching into the pocket of her skirt for it, but it wasn’t there. I must have dropped it.

  But you had it with you when you left the theater. You said you tried to call Trent. Were you in here when you did that?

  I don’t know, she said, trying to remember if she’d been in here or on the stairs.

  It’s okay, he said to her, and to the usher: “Could you go check and make sure there’s nobody around? I need to get her out to the lobby, and the sight of other people might set her off again.”

  The usher nodded and went out. The moment the door closed behind her, C.B. let go of Briddey’s waist and darted over to the counter.

  No! Don’t leave! she cried, unable to stop herself from lurching after him, hands out.

  I’m not leaving, he said, peering under the counter. I just need to find your phone. It’ll only take a second.

  He was just looking for her phone, she told herself. He wasn’t leaving her. He was only a few feet away, and he had to find it before the usher came back. If she grabbed on to his arm, it would only slow him down. She needed to let him look and not panic, but that was impossible, because behind her, in the mirror, the roar of the falls was already splintering into individual voices, hundreds of them, thousands of them, into a million shrieking pieces flying at her, slashing her—

  Aren’t some of them pirates? C.B. asked her, looking under the doors to the stalls.

  Some of what? The voices?

  No, some of the Lucky Charms marshmallows. Aren’t some of them shaped like pirates? He opened the door of the first stall. Or am I thinking of Cap’n Crunch?

  Cap’n Crunch doesn’t have marshmallows.

  Oh. He opened the door to the next stall. What’s the one with the toucan on the box?

  Froot Loops, she said, but it doesn’t have marshmallows either.

  Well, one of them does, he said, going on to the next. Count Chocula or FrankenBerry or Zombie—aha! He lunged inside the second-to-the-last stall, snatched up her phone, dropped it into his pocket, and had his arm back around her waist when the usher opened the door.

  “All clear,” she told C.B.

  “Good,” C.B. said to her. “Can you hold that door for Lucy and me? Thanks.” Okay, he said to Briddey, let’s blow this pop stand, and they started over to the door.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” the usher asked Briddey anxiously.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said, managing a smile, and let C.B. lead her out the door.

  Speaking of getting out of here, how’d you get here tonight? he asked, helping her up the steps.

  I took a taxi. The voices were starting to break through—

  Good. That gives us one less thing to worry about. You’re doing great, darlin’, he encouraged her. We’re almost to the landing—

  I can’t, Briddey said, pulling back against his grip. That’s where the voices—

  I know, he said, tightening his hold on her. We’re not going anywhere near the falls. We’re going to focus on those marshmallows, and before you know it, we’ll be out of here and someplace quiet.

  Someplace quiet, she thought. It sounded heavenly. But to get there, they had to get past the landing—

  Don’t think about that, C.B. ordered, continuing to walk her up the stairs. Think about someplace quiet. And dry. Arizona. Or Death Valley. How would you feel about going to Death Valley for our honeymoon?

  She didn’t answer. She was looking at the landing. The voices were just beyond it, they were already pouring down the steps—

  And speaking of moons, honey and otherwise, I seem to remember the yellow marshmallows were stars, which means the moons must have been blue, as in “once in a blue moon.” What did you say green was?

  Shamrocks.

  Ah, yes. Shamrocks. The symbol of Ireland. That’s singularly appropriate, considering our situation.

  What situa—?

  I’ll tell you later. What are the other colors? Orange? Orange pumpkins?

  Pumpkins aren’t Irish.

  You’re right. Okay, what is? Whiskey? IRA sympathizers?

  No, it’s got to be something like rainbows. Or a pot of gold.

  Also singularly appropriate, since here we are, he said, and she looked up to see that they were nearly all the way across the empty lobby, and the usher was outside on the sidewalk, holding the door open for them.

  “You’re sure Lucy will be okay?” the usher asked.

  “Positive,” C.B. said, walking Briddey to the door.

  “I’ll be glad to give you a refund. Or to exchange your ticket for another night.”

  She’s afraid you’re going to sue them and she’ll get in trouble, C.B. said. Tell her you’re not, or she’s likely to call 911 just so she’s covered.

  “A refund’s not necessary,” Briddey told her. “This was all my fault. I should have known better.”

  The usher looked relieved. Good girl, C.B. said, and walked her through the open door and outside.

  Away from the voices, Briddey thought, limp with relief. But they were still there on the sidewalk, in the dark street. “Do you need help getting her out to your car?” the usher was asking anxiously.

  “No, I’m fine,” Briddey managed to say. “Really.”

  The usher looked doubtful, but she went back inside. Very good girl, C.B. said. Now, let’s hope they didn’t tow my car. Oh, good, they didn’t.

  He indicated his battered Honda, which was parked at the curb where the taxi had let her out, between two large No Parking signs. “This is my lucky day,” he said aloud, walking her around to the passenger side of the car and opening the door. “It must be those green shamrocks. Here you go.” He eased her inside.

  “Okay, now,” he said, trying to extricate himself from the arm she still had around his neck. “You’ve got to let go so I can get in the driver’s side.”

  “No—”

  “It’ll only take a second, I promise,” he said gently. “And then I’ll get you out of here and away from the voices. Okay?”

  She shook her head. As soon as he let go of her, the voices would come back.

  “Look, we can’t stay here,” he said. “If Trent shows up, it could seriously interfere with our honeymoon plans.”

  He was trying to get a rise out of her so she’d let go of him, but she couldn’t. The voices would swamp her, they’d wash over her—

  “No, they won’t,” C.B. said. “Look, I’ll open the driver’s door right now so I won’t have to stop and do it when I go around.” He reached across her, pushed down on the door handle, and shoved the door slightly open. “And I’ll be really fast, I promise. You just concentrate on that last marshmallow. Okay?”

  No, she murmured, but he was already starting for the front of the car. “C.B.!”

  I’m right here, he said, dashing across the front of the car, talking as he went. The fifth kind of marshmallow, wasn’t it a top hat? No, wait, I’m thinking of the Monopoly game. An iron? No, that’s Monopoly, too, and anyway, didn’t I read they got rid of the iron?

  He was opening the door on the driver’s side, sliding in. She grabbed for him the instant he was inside, clinging tightly to his arm. Like some idiotic Victorian heroine, she thought, but she couldn’t help herself.

  And he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept on talking. “What did they replace the iron with? It was something more modern. Like a Kindle. Or a drone.”

  “No,” she said, “it was a cat.”

  “That’s righ
t, it was,” he said, shutting his door. “Very modern,” and when she smiled: “I’m afraid I need you to let go of me again for a sec.”

  “Why?” she asked, her grip tightening.

  “Because I’ve got to start the car. So you either need to let go or else you have to get my keys out of my jeans for me.”

  “Oh!” she said, letting go as if she’d been bitten, and her mortification should have been enough to make her pull herself together, but the moment he had the keys out and the key in the ignition, she grabbed for his arm again. “I’m sorry. I know I’m acting like a baby. They’re just so—”

  “I know,” he said. “I wrapped myself around my bedpost the first time it happened to me and had to be pried loose.”

  “You did?”

  “Yup,” he said, putting the car in gear with difficulty and pulling out into the street. “Though putting your hand on my leg instead of my arm might be a better idea till we get out of all this traffic.”

  She nodded and grasped his thigh just above the knee, and it took every bit of willpower she had not to wrap both arms around his leg like a demented fan at a rock concert.

  “You’re doing great,” C.B. said. “I’ll have you away from here in just a sec.”

  Out of the city, she thought, glancing fearfully out her window at the passing streetlamps and buildings. Out of reach of the voices. “Please hurry,” she murmured. “They’re catching up.”

  He nodded, glanced at his watch, and stepped on the gas. Good, she thought, straining to see ahead to the on-ramp sign. In another minute, we’ll be on the highway.

  But even as she thought it, C.B. was slowing down. He turned right onto a dark side street, stopped the car, and shut off the ignition.

  “Thankfully the rest of the world assumed that the Irish were crazy, a theory that the Irish themselves did nothing to debunk.”

  —EOIN COLFER, Artemis Fowl

  “What are you doing?” Briddey said, looking nervously around at the dark street. “Why did you stop the car?”

  “I’m buying us some time,” C.B. said, sliding forward in his seat and fishing her phone out of his jeans pocket. “What’s your password? And don’t think it. Say it out loud.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I’m not worried about reinforcing our neural pathway anymore. The more reinforced, the better.” She laughed shakily. “I’m just so grateful we had one.”

  “Me, too. But that’s not why I told you to talk out loud. Speaking helps to screen out the voices. So what’s your password?”

  She told him. “But shouldn’t you do that after we get away from the voices?”

  C.B. shook his head. “We need to do this before intermission.”

  At which point Trent would come looking for her, and when he couldn’t find her, he’d ask the usher, “Have you seen a redhead in a green dress?” and it wouldn’t matter that C.B. had called her Lucy and told the usher she’d come to the theater alone.

  “Exactly,” C.B. said. “What reason did you give Trent for leaving?”

  “Maeve.”

  “Maeve?” he said, looking up, horrified, from the phone. “Why did you do that?”

  “Because before in the bar, when the voices started, I’d told Traci Hamilton I was worried about Maeve, that she’d been having problems and I needed to go call Mary Clare. It was the only thing I could think of to get away and—”

  “Deal with the voices,” he finished for her. “Did you tell her—or Trent—what those problems were?”

  “No. Trent wasn’t there. And all I said to Traci Hamilton was that my sister was worried about my niece. So then in the theater I pretended Mary Clare had just called me, and I told Trent something had happened and I had to go find out what.”

  “Then we should be okay,” he said, and began rapidly typing a text message.

  “What are you telling him?” she asked.

  “That Maeve ran away.”

  “Ran away! She wouldn’t do that!”

  “And you wouldn’t have gone tearing out of the theater and over to your sister’s because Maeve got a B on her report card. It has to be something serious enough to justify abandoning him and the Hamiltons, which means either Maeve ran away or broke a body part, and running away’s easier to fake. There’s no cast.”

  “But if Trent calls my family—”

  “He won’t. I’m sending a follow-up that you found her at your Aunt Oona’s, and she’s fine.”

  “But if you tell him that, he’ll want me to come back to the theater,” she said, her hand involuntarily tightening on his leg.

  “Don’t worry. I’m telling him Mary Clare’s having a meltdown, and you’ve got to stay and try to calm her down.”

  “But what if Trent calls me during intermission and tells me to forget Mary Clare, that the Hamiltons are more important?”

  “He won’t be able to. I’m turning off your phone.”

  “What if he calls Aunt Oona’s house?”

  “I’ve got that covered,” he said, continuing to type.

  “What do you mean? You didn’t text Maeve, did you?” If he’d asked Maeve to provide an alibi, she’d insist on knowing why, and—

  “I didn’t text Maeve,” he said, pocketing her phone and starting the car. “And anyway, Trent won’t call. He’ll be too busy convincing the Hamiltons that your sudden departure wasn’t a reflection on them. After intermission I’ll send another text saying it looks like calming your family down’s going to take longer than you thought, and you’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  Trent will be so upset, she thought.

  “Too bad,” C.B. said.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled out onto the street, and she felt a wave of relief that they were moving again and getting away from the voices.

  “You didn’t hear Trent back there, did you?” C.B. was saying. “His wasn’t one of the voices, was it?”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “The voices I heard were horrible!”

  “Actually, they were just your average theatergoers. And your average everything else—friends, relatives, co-workers—”

  “But they were so—”

  “Vulgar? Vindictive? Spiteful? Scheming? I’m afraid that’s what people sound like in the privacy of their own heads.” He gave her a wry grin. “I told you it’s a cesspool in there.”

  He stopped at a red light. “It’s not entirely their fault. They can say out loud the nice stuff they think—‘Wow, you look great!’ or ‘What a pretty day!’ or ‘I’m filled with the milk of human kindness!’—but not ‘Go to hell!’ or ‘Man, what great tits!’ Inside their heads is the only place the bad stuff can come out, which tends to make their thoughts disproportionately unpleasant. But also, people are brutish, hateful, greedy, mean, manipulative, and cruel.”

  “But everyone can’t be awful.”

  “You haven’t listened to them for as long as I have.”

  “Are you telling me there’s nobody nice?”

  “I didn’t say that. But that just makes it worse. Nice guys really do finish last. And nice girls. They get lied to and betrayed and stuck on somebody who’s in love with somebody else and get their hearts broken. And listening to that’s even worse than listening to the creeps and the monsters. Speaking of which, you still haven’t answered my question. Did you hear Trent?”

  “I told you, Trent couldn’t have—”

  “Been one of the voices. Yes, he could have. But like I told you this morning, if you’d heard him, you’d have recognized his voice, like you recognized mine.”

  And Jill’s and Art Sampson’s, she thought.

  “Exactly. If you’ve heard the person before, your brain automatically assigns their speaking voice to the thoughts. If not, sometimes it’ll assign gender or age based on the things the voice says, but otherwise it’s completely characterless. That’s why you couldn’t describe the decaf latte’s voice.”

  And why the blind-date woman’s voice had sounded female the second t
ime she’d heard it. “Can they hear me, too?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, her hand tightening convulsively on his leg. If they could hear, they’d know where she was. They’d come after her.

  “I’m positive,” C.B. said. “I’ve been listening to them for fifteen years, remember? They have no idea you can hear them.”

  “But it felt like they were shouting at me and—”

  “Attacking you? Trying to kill you? Yeah, I know. But they’re not. They don’t even know you exist. You’re just overhearing their thoughts. It’s like being in a restaurant and accidentally hearing a stranger talking at the next table.”

  No, it’s not, she thought. It was possible to shut out people you overheard but not these—

  “That’s because the mind’s hardwired to make sense of whatever it hears,” C.B. said. “It tries to do that with the voices, but there are too many of them and they’re all speaking at the same time. And unlike the voices of the people you hear with your ears, they don’t mask one another or merge together into background noise. They remain distinct. So the mind ends up panicking from sensory overload.”

  Sensory overload? Is that what you call it? she thought, feeling again the ominous voices beating relentlessly on her.

  “But if they can’t hear me, then why does it matter whether I heard Trent?”

  “Because of the EED. If you could hear him, it might have suggested he was beginning to be able to sense your emotions, and the last thing we need right now is for him to be picking up a feeling that you’re in trouble and deciding he needs to come find out what’s going on. We’ve got too much work to do. But you didn’t hear him, so we’re good.”

  And in a few minutes they’d be safely on the freeway and out of reach of the theater and the voices. She wondered how far they had to go.

  Please don’t let it be far, she thought, looking out at the passing darkness and willing C.B. to drive faster. If he doesn’t, they’ll catch up, they’ll wash over the car…

  Stop, she ordered herself. Don’t think about the voices.

  “Nope, bad idea,” C.B. said. “Trying not to only makes you think about them, like when somebody says, ‘Whatever you do, don’t think about an elephant,’ and then that’s all you can think about. No, you want to think about something else altogether. Like elephants. Or Lucky Charms. Or where we should go on our honeymoon. Anything to create some white noise.”