Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  “Oh.” She yawned loudly. “Good morning, Trent. What are you doing up so early?” But that didn’t even register. He was shouting, “My God, Briddey! I can’t believe what just happened!”

  “What? What do you mean, what just hap—?”

  “We were actually talking to each other!” he shouted so loudly that C.B. didn’t need to be able to read minds to hear him. His voice filled the car. “I never dreamed…I expected the EED would let us communicate feelings, but this!”

  “Trent, wait. What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, it’s amazing! A whole new kind of communication—no filters, no barriers! And to think I doubted you! When we didn’t connect, I imagined all sorts of things—that you weren’t emotionally bonded to me, even that you were in love with someone else, but now I realize how ridiculous that was! Of course you love me!”

  This cannot get any worse, Briddey thought.

  “This has all worked out better than I could have imagined! Telepathy! I can’t wait to see you. I’m coming over!”

  “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Briddey said. “Not till you’ve told me what’s happened. You’re not making any sense, Trent. You need to sit down and tell me what—”

  “I can tell you when I get there. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  It was only fifteen minutes from his condo to her apartment, and they were at least half an hour away. She had to stall him somehow. “No!” she said. “I mean, I’m not even up yet, and I need to take a shower and…” She looked over at C.B. for help, but he was staring straight ahead at the road. “Listen, how about if I meet you at Piazza Venetia at ten? They have that champagne brunch—”

  “Are you kidding? I want to see you now! And someplace where it’s just the two of us.”

  Oh, God, she’d forgotten about him saying they’d get engaged as soon as they connected. What if he—?

  “This isn’t something we can discuss at the Piazza Venetia,” Trent was saying. “I don’t think you realize what this development means!”

  Yes, I do, Briddey thought miserably. “But couldn’t we meet for brunch first and then go back to my—”

  “No, we need to talk about this, and we can’t do that in public.”

  “Why don’t I come over to your place instead? You know how my family’s always barging in unannounced—”

  “Not this early, and in this rain. You get dressed. Or better yet, you just stay right there in bed—”

  I was wrong, Briddey thought. It can get worse.

  “…all warm and sexy, and when I get there, I’ll—”

  “Trent, stop!” Briddey cut in desperately. “You’re acting insane! Telepathy? What are you talking about? The EED doesn’t make people telepathic—”

  He wasn’t listening. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said.

  “No, wait, I don’t have a thing in the house. Why don’t you stop and pick up breakfast on your way over?”

  “How can you even think of food at a time like this? All right. See you in a few minutes,” he said, and hung up.

  “He’s coming over to my apartment,” she said unnecessarily.

  “Which means I’ve got to get you home so you can get out of that dress before he gets there,” C.B. said, and stepped on the gas.

  “I’m sorry I won’t be able to go to the deli with you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ve taught you the basic defenses.”

  That isn’t what I meant, she thought.

  But he wasn’t listening either. “All you really need to keep the voices out is a perimeter and a safe room,” he said, “and you’ve got those.”

  “Plus the lyrics to ‘Teen Angel.’ ”

  “Yeah, though ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ might be more appropriate under the circumstances,” he said, and sped up.

  “Do you think you can get me there before Trent arrives?”

  “Yeah, with a little luck,” he said, which meant he was listening to Trent and knew exactly where he was. And he must already be on his way because C.B. kept going faster—and tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel at every red light. Which meant he didn’t think they’d make it, and she’d better come up with an explanation for what she was doing with C.B. and why they’d been out all night.

  My car broke down on the way home from Aunt Oona’s, and he had to come pick me up. No, because why wouldn’t she have called Trent instead? Or Mary Clare or Kathleen? And it wouldn’t explain how both of them had gotten so wet. Or why her car was parked out in front of her apartment building.

  She looked over at C.B., wishing he’d suggest an excuse, or at least say something about the Rules of Lying, but he was staring straight ahead, the muscles in his jaw clenched tight. Because we’re cutting it so close? Or because he knows this changes everything, too?

  She wished fervently that this hadn’t happened now, that C.B. had taken her to the deli and taught her how to audit individual voices so she could read his mind.

  Or maybe it’s just as well I can’t. What if she heard him think she’d been nothing but trouble and that he couldn’t wait to dump her at her apartment and be rid of her?

  He’s right. Telepathy’s a terrible idea, she thought, shivering in spite of the turned-up heater. She stared blindly out her fogged-up window at the rain-soaked streets. All the promise and sweetness the morning had held was gone, the smell of wet earth turned to mud and the gray sky depressing. The radio announcer was right. It was a really bad morning out there.

  And in here. I wouldn’t blame C.B. if he does want to get rid of me. He’d spent the last few days having to race to her rescue and cope with her hysterics and fend off her accusations that he was blocking Trent, which he obviously hadn’t been doing.

  I wish he had been, she thought wistfully. But he hadn’t, so she was going to have to come up with some lie that would convince Trent they weren’t telepathic, though she couldn’t imagine what that would be, no matter how many Rules of Lying she employed.

  She was going to have to tell him the truth. No matter what happened, it would be better than this constant lying—

  “No, it wouldn’t,” C.B. said. “It’d be worse. Much worse. Which is why we’re not going to let it happen.” He put his foot all the way down on the accelerator, plowing through the water, throwing up wings of spray on either side, and cursing every time he had to stop.

  We’re hitting every light red, Briddey thought, looking over at him. His hands were clenched on the steering wheel, and he looked even grimmer. Did that mean he was afraid they wouldn’t make it to her apartment in time? Or that Trent was already there?

  “He’s not,” C.B. said, clicking on his turn signal, and she saw the next corner was the turn for her street. “He’s not to Broward yet.”

  That meant he had stopped to pick up breakfast. Thank goodness. But it still didn’t give her much time.

  “I know,” C.B. said, turning down her street. “I think I’d better just drop you outside your building.”

  Like a guy who can’t wait to ditch his date, she thought, and the moment he stopped the car, she had her door open, thanking God she had a safe room so he couldn’t witness the full spectacle of her humiliation.

  “Wait,” C.B. said, grabbing her arm to hold her in the car. “Before you go, I need to tell you”—she stopped, her hand on the door, waiting to hear what he was going to say, hoping—“don’t tell Trent any more than you absolutely have to about the whole telepathy thing, especially not about your being able to hear other voices. The only one he can hear right now is yours, and he thinks that’s because you’re emotionally bonded, so it won’t even occur to him that you’ve been connected to anyone else. The only way he can find out is if you tell him. And you mustn’t. It’s important. And you can’t tell him what causes the telepathy either, not about the Irish connection or the R1b genes—”

  Because if he finds out about the other voices, he might find out about you, she thought. And tha
t’s what really matters, isn’t it? That he doesn’t find out about you.

  But she owed that to him. He’d saved her life, and he’d taught her how to defend herself against the voices. And told her he’d take her to Niagara Falls on their honeymoon. “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “I won’t give you away.”

  She got out of the car. “Thank you for everything,” she said, shut the car door, and ran up the walk to her building, anxious to be inside before he could say anything.

  And when would she learn that it didn’t work like that, that there was no way to get away from C.B.’s voice?

  That isn’t it, he said. Briddey, listen, there’s more at stake here than you realize! It’s not my secret I’m worried about, it’s—shit, he must have hit every light green. Get inside. And she turned, startled, to see C.B. roaring off down the street. And Trent’s Porsche rounding the corner two blocks up.

  “Hey, where are you goin’ with that elephant?”

  “What elephant?”

  —Billy Rose’s Jumbo

  Briddey raced through the front door and up to her apartment, fumbling for her keys as she ran. She managed to drop them and then put the wrong key in the lock. Panicking won’t help, she told herself, searching for the right one.

  She unlocked the door, ducked in, slammed it behind her, and ran to the bedroom, yanking off her earrings as she went. She thrust them into a drawer and hurried over to the bed to take off her shoes.

  No, she’d better not sit down on it. She’d get it wet. She leaned against it instead and unstrapped her shoes, struggling with the sodden buckles, and then took them off, pushed them under the bed, and started to do the same with her evening bag.

  Her phone rang. Maybe it’s C.B. wanting to warn me about something, she thought, and answered it.

  It was Kathleen. “I can’t talk right now,” Briddey said, hung up, and hurried into the bathroom—and then back to the living room to put the deadbolt on so Trent would have to knock. That would give her an extra couple of minutes, though probably not enough to take a shower. But she didn’t need to. Her hair was already wet enough to fool him. She turned the shower on to make the bathroom look convincingly steamy, wishing she did have time. She was so cold.

  Her phone rang again. “Look, Kathleen,” she said. “This is a really bad time—”

  “I know,” Kathleen said. “Trent’s there, right?”

  No, but he will be any minute, and—

  “I’ll make this quick. I’ve got this really big problem, and I don’t have anybody else I can talk to about it. I’m at Mary Clare’s. They’re getting ready to go to Mass, and all Mary Clare can think about is how Maeve is still shutting her out—”

  “Kathlee—”

  “And Aunt Oona will just tell me I need to stop trying to meet guys and go out with Sean O’Reilly, and I have to talk to somebody. I signed up for the Lattes’n’Luv thing, and I was supposed to go to coffee with this guy Landis. He’s a hedge fund manager, and he’s really handsome—”

  Waiting for Kathleen to pause for breath was not going to work. She wasn’t ever going to breathe. “Ka—”

  “I mean he’s exactly what I want in a guy, but when I went to Starbucks to meet him—”

  “I really can’t talk. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, okay?” Briddey said over her, hung up, turned her phone off, and started back into the bathroom, unzipping her dress as she went.

  Too late. Trent was already knocking on the door. “Coming!” she called, shut off the shower, and grabbed her robe, wishing she had one that buttoned all the way up to her neck. She bundled the robe tightly around her, making sure the neckline of her dress didn’t show, wrapped a towel around her wet hair, and hurried out of the bathroom.

  “Briddey!” Trent was calling from the hall, and she could hear him trying the lock. She padded barefoot to the door—darting back at the last minute to shut the bedroom door—took a deep, collecting-herself breath, and opened it.

  Trent had his hand raised to knock again.

  The rain must have let up, Briddey thought. His dress shirt and khakis weren’t even damp, and his neatly combed hair had only a few drops of rain on it.

  “Why did you have the deadbolt on?” he asked.

  “Shh,” she said, vaguely resentful of how neat and dry he looked. “You’ll wake the neighbors.” She opened the door wider with one hand, holding her robe closed at the neck with the other.

  He came in. “You obviously didn’t hear me calling.”

  “I was in the shower.”

  “I meant, calling you mentally. You didn’t hear me at all?”

  “No.”

  “You need to concentrate harder. I kept calling you the whole time I was standing there. I still can’t believe this! Telepathy!”

  He reached for her, but she neatly evaded his grasp. “I really need to dry my hair and get dressed,” she said, starting for the bedroom. “You stay here and set out breakfast—” She stopped, frowning at his empty hands. “I thought you were going to stop and pick up something.”

  “I was, but I decided I had to get over here and see you!”

  But if you didn’t stop, then how did we beat you here?

  “I don’t think you understand just how momentous this thing is, sweetheart,” he said. “The most I was counting on was being able to communicate feelings. I never dreamed I’d be able to read your mind!”

  And hopefully you still can’t, or you’d know I’m desperately wondering how to get back into that bedroom and out of this dress before you find out I’m still wearing it.

  “I mean, telepathy!” Trent said jubilantly. “No wonder it took us so long to make contact! I was so worried about our not being able to connect, and then when you ran off in the middle of the play like that—and in front of the Hamiltons. And then this morning, there you were, speaking to me! This is so amazing! I’m still having trouble believing it’s real!”

  Good, Briddey thought. “Maybe it’s not,” she said. “Dr. Verrick said sometimes emotions come through so strongly, the person receiving them thinks he’s hearing words—”

  “This wasn’t emotions. You talked to me. I heard you, and you heard me. We were telepathically linked.”

  “But how can we have been? There’s no such thing as telepathy. So how can we be hearing each other’s thoughts?”

  “Hearing each other’s thoughts?” Trent said sharply. “Not just communicating with each other? What did you hear?”

  “I…um…”

  “Tell me exactly what you heard. Word for word.”

  That was the last thing she wanted to do. “I thought I heard you calling my name…,” she said uncertainly. “And then I sensed you were saying you could hear me.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Yes,” she said, and he looked distinctly relieved. But why? He’d been so thrilled that they could hear each other’s voices, she’d have expected…“What did you hear?”

  “You calling, ‘Where are you?’ and that you thought I couldn’t hear you, and then that you were afraid you’d lost me.”

  I was talking about C.B., she thought, and hoped Trent hadn’t heard her say his name. “Did you hear anything else?”

  “Just fragments.”

  Good—this wasn’t as bad as she’d been afraid it might be. At least she hadn’t given away anything about C.B. or where she was—

  “I heard you say you were cold,” Trent said. “And something about windshield wipers. You didn’t go out this morning, did you?”

  She resisted the impulse to grab the neck of her robe and pull it more securely around her neck. “No, I just got up. I remember thinking the floor was cold, but not anything about windshield wipers. Are you sure you didn’t just imagine—?”

  “No, I definitely heard you say it. Maybe you heard the rain and were thinking about me having to drive over in it. I didn’t hear the rest. You faded out, and then I didn’t hear anything while I was driving over. But I think that’s becaus
e I was calling to you, and I’m not able to send and receive at the same time.”

  If only that were true, Briddey said silently. But she needed to encourage him to think that. It might keep him from listening at least part of the time. “That sounds logical,” she said. “Or maybe it was just a fluke, something that only happened because we were half awake.”

  “No, because when I turned onto your street, I started hearing you again. You said ‘hurry’ and ‘listen’ and then a word I couldn’t make out.”

  Not “C.B.” Please.

  “ ‘Bag’ or ‘bad’? You said it a couple of times.”

  Bag. My evening bag, she thought, relieved, and then remembered she’d been about to hide it under the bed when Kathleen had called.

  “So what were you trying to say to me?” Trent asked.

  “That I felt bad about you having to come out in the rain,” she improvised, trying to remember if she’d put the bag under the bed. She’d picked up the phone—

  “Oh,” Trent was saying. “I didn’t get any of that, the words or the emotion. In fact, I haven’t picked up any emotions from you at all.”

  Thank goodness. If he’d picked up how unhappy she was that they’d connected, or how bereft she’d felt when she thought she’d lost the ability to hear C.B.—

  “Maybe it’s only possible to hear words or feelings, but not both,” he said. “We’ll have to ask Dr. Verrick.” He pulled out his phone.

  No. “You’re not going to call him now, are you? We don’t know what’s going on yet, and he’s not even here. And who knows what time it is in Morocco.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He said to call him if we made contact or if anything unusual happened, and this is both. I already called before I came over.”

  Oh, God. “Did you tell him what happened?”

  “No, just that we needed to talk to him,” he said, scrolling through his messages. “I haven’t gotten anything from him yet. I left messages with his office and his answering service. I don’t know why they haven’t gotten back to me yet.”

  Because it’s Sunday morning. How was she going to stop him from telling Dr. Verrick when he did reach him?