Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  “ ’Bye, honey,” he said to Maeve. “You have a fun time with your auntie.”

  He left, and Briddey had to hightail it to her courtyard to make sure he didn’t sense the gust of relief she felt at his being gone.

  Maeve was looking malevolently at the door. “How old does he think I am? Three? He doesn’t have very good communication skills, does he, Aunt Briddey?”

  Not yet, Briddey thought. And let’s hope he doesn’t get better ones anytime soon. “No,” she said, and tried to think of how to address the subject of not going to the mall.

  “Mom said you were going to take me to Carnival Pizza, but can we not go there?” Maeve asked. “It’s so childish.”

  You blessed girl.

  “There’s a restaurant in the park. By the lake. Can we go there instead?”

  “The park? But it’s raining.” And freezing, she added silently, remembering the bus shelter.

  “It’s almost stopped. And anyway, you can eat inside.”

  And it would be deserted in this weather. “Are you sure it will be open?” Briddey asked.

  “Yes, because Danika went there one time when it was pouring, and it was. They have really good food. And you can feed the ducks.”

  Which apparently wasn’t childish, but Briddey wasn’t going to quibble. The park was much better than the mall, and if Trent somehow managed to get hold of Dr. Verrick, it was the last place he’d look for her. Plus, if Maeve went off to feed the ducks, it would give Briddey a chance to figure out what to do.

  C.B. had said it was essential that Trent not find out about their connection, but Briddey wasn’t at all sure it was possible to keep it from him. He was already able to hear some of her thoughts, and now, with him starting to pick up her feelings, too, he was bound to sense that she was withholding something and start asking questions. And she didn’t know whether a safe room worked for emotions, too.

  I need to ask C.B., she thought, and wondered if Maeve would agree to their swinging by his lab to see him on their way to the park so she could find out.

  “The park it is,” she said. “You go find something to feed the ducks, and I’ll get dressed.” As Maeve started for the kitchen, Briddey asked, “Can you wait till I’ve taken a shower?”

  “Sure,” Maeve said. “Do ducks like ice cream?”

  “No,” Briddey said, “they like breadcrumbs,” and went into her bedroom. She dug her wet shoes and evening bag out from under the bed, wiped them off with the wet towel, wrapped them up in it, stuck the bundle in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and turned around.

  Maeve was standing in the doorway with a mesh bag of onions in one hand and a jar of capers in the other. “Do ducks like either of these?” she asked.

  “No. They like breadcrumbs.”

  “You don’t have any breadcrumbs.”

  “Then bread. They like bread. Or crackers.”

  “Okay,” Maeve said, but she didn’t budge.

  Briddey braced herself for Maeve to ask, “Why are you hiding your shoes?” but she didn’t. She said, “You don’t have any crackers either.”

  “Then cereal,” Briddey said, and Maeve went off to the kitchen, but she was back again immediately.

  “You don’t have any good cereal.”

  By which Maeve presumably meant Trix or Cap’n Crunch. Or Lucky Charms. I’ll bet she knows what the marshmallows are, Briddey thought, and asked her, “Can you name the marshmallows in Lucky Charms?”

  “Why are you asking that?” Maeve said, so defensively that Briddey wondered if Mary Clare had put a ban on Lucky Charms as well as Disney movies.

  “I just wondered,” Briddey said. “A friend and I were talking about them the other day, and we couldn’t remember if there were five or six different marshmallows.”

  “Eight,” Maeve said promptly. “Pink hearts, purple horseshoes, green clovers, blue moons, yellow hourglasses—”

  That’s what the yellow dog-bone thing was, Briddey thought. An hourglass.

  “—red balloons, orange shooting stars, and rainbow-colored rainbows. But there are lots of ways to find that out. It’s on the internet and everything. Do bagels count as bread?”

  “Yes,” Briddey said, frowning at the abrupt change of subject.

  “Even chocolate chip bagels?”

  “Where did you find chocolate chip bagels?”

  “I didn’t. I just wondered. Are ducks supposed to eat chocolate? Dogs aren’t. It’s poison to them. This one time Danika left her Twix bar on her bed, and Tootsie—that’s her dog—ate it, and they had to take him to the vet and everything.”

  “Then chocolate’s probably bad for ducks, too,” Briddey said. “And sugar. Go get them some Wheat Chex.” She pushed Maeve out of the room and went, finally, to take her shower and concoct an excuse for what she’d been doing with the shoes and bag, which, knowing Maeve, she would definitely ask her about.

  Though she hadn’t said a word about C.B.’s phoning her last night and asking her to cover for them. Why not? She was usually as nosy as Suki.

  Maybe she’s waiting to interrogate me till we get to the park, Briddey thought. In which case, she’d better think of a plausible story. Or change the subject, like Maeve just had. And hope Trent hadn’t heard her thinking about going to the park.

  He apparently hadn’t, because as she was shampooing her hair, he asked, Are you still in the car on your way to brunch? And a moment later: Where did you decide to take Maeve?

  Carnival Pizza, she said. He’d never consider eating at a place like that.

  I still haven’t heard from Dr. Verrick, he said. I’m on my way out to Commspan to see if I can get IT to find me his nurse’s number.

  Which meant that swinging by to talk to C.B. was out. She’d have to think of something else. She finished showering, dried her hair, and put on a warm sweater, jeans, wool socks, and her rain boots. “Did you find something to feed the ducks?” she called to Maeve.

  “Yeah,” Maeve said, appearing in the kitchen doorway with the Wheat Chex, a bag of bagels, a box of Special K, a box of Raisin Bran, a package of rice crackers, and an entire loaf of French bread. “I’ve got some popcorn in the microwave, too. Do you think this’ll be enough?”

  “Probably,” Briddey said dryly, and as soon as the popcorn was done, they set off for the park.

  The rain had not let up. There were only a few hardy souls out walking their dogs, and while Maeve had been right about the restaurant being open, her claim that they could eat “inside” was a stretch. It consisted of metal tables on a patio covered with a sagging canopy from which rain dripped.

  But there were no other customers, and after seating them at a table next to a heater, the waiter handed them very damp menus, disappeared into the kitchen, and left them alone, except for a gaggle of sparrows hopping frozenly around on the patio looking for crumbs.

  Briddey had convinced Maeve to leave the duck provisions in the car till after they ate, but Maeve begged, “Can’t I just go get the popcorn? They’re starving!”

  “So am I. You can after we’ve ordered,” Briddey said, and looked at the menu. The “really good food” consisted of hot dogs, corn dogs, chili dogs, and a wide array of ice cream treats. Briddey ordered a hot dog and a large hot tea. “In a mug.” Which I can wrap my frozen hands around.

  Maeve ordered a mango raspberry shake with whipped cream and sprinkles, and Briddey wondered again how Mary Clare could be worried about her. She seemed so utterly normal.

  “And a hot dog,” Maeve told the waiter. “Now can I go get the popcorn, Aunt Briddey?”

  Briddey nodded and gave her the keys, and she was off like a shot. Good, Briddey thought. While she’s gone I can figure out some way to contact C.B.

  Or not. There was no coverage down in his lab, so she couldn’t call him there, and she didn’t know his home phone number. If he even had one. Or had a home, for that matter. For all she knew, he might simply alternate between the lab, the library, and that kosher deli he’d talk
ed about. Which she didn’t know how to find either.

  Her phone pinged with a text from Trent. “No luck with nurse. Found number but she wasn’t home. Left message for her to call me. Calling hospital next.”

  He didn’t mention having gotten any messages from her, which might mean he was so busy trying to find Dr. Verrick that he’d forgotten about their connecting. And even when he’d been receiving, he’d only heard fragments, so she might be able to talk to C.B. mentally after all, provided she didn’t say his name and did it right now, before Trent found Dr. Verrick.

  Her phone pinged again. “Just got mental message from you,” his text said. “Heard you say ‘Call…say his name…right now.’ Couldn’t hear rest.”

  Thank goodness for that, at least, she thought, and her phone pinged with yet another text: “Also heard something about ‘park.’ Thought you were going to Carnival Pizza.”

  Oh, no. She hastily texted him back, “We are. It’s jammed. Having terrible time finding place to park. Must have been what you heard,” and turned her phone off.

  But I can’t turn Trent off, she thought, so calling to C.B. was out. She’d just have to hope he was aware of the situation and would get in touch with her—and that Trent wouldn’t get any better at hearing her. Or succeed in finding Dr. Verrick. Or her.

  The waiter was bringing their order. The mango raspberry shake came in a glass the size of a flower vase.

  Maeve’ll never get through that, Briddey thought, and turned in her chair to see what was keeping her.

  She was trudging back across the grass with her arms full. “I brought the Wheat Chex, too, and the bagels,” she said, “in case sparrows don’t like popcorn.”

  “I’m pretty sure they like anything. You can feed them after you eat,” Briddey said, but Maeve was already squatting down and holding out a piece of popcorn to a sparrow.

  Briddey let her, still trying to think of a way to get in touch with C.B. If he did have a home phone, it might be listed in directory assistance. She turned her phone back on to look up the number, and it immediately rang.

  Kathleen. “You never called me back,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Briddey apologized. “Things got a little crazy.”

  Maeve looked up from trying to coax the sparrow. “Who is it?”

  “Your Aunt Kathleen.”

  “Oh,” she said uninterestedly, and went back to feeding the sparrow.

  “Did you decide what you were going to do?” Briddey asked Kathleen.

  “No. I don’t want to make a fool of myself by saying something if Rich was just being nice. He’ll think I’m some kind of lunatic stalker. On the other hand, he might not be saying anything because he saw me with Landis and thinks I like him. And that’s another thing. I think Landis really likes me, and I’d feel like a jerk falling for somebody else while I was dating him, you know?”

  Yes, Briddey thought. I do.

  “I just wish I knew what he was thinking. It would make it all so much easier. Maybe you were right, and the smart thing to do is get an EED.”

  No. It’s definitely not. But Kathleen was right about one thing: It would help to know what Trent was thinking, or more specifically, exactly how much he could hear of her thoughts. If he was only picking her up periodically, and it was limited to intermittent words and phrases, it would be safe for her to call to C.B. But if not—

  “I think I’ll look Rich up on the internet and see what I can find out,” Kathleen was saying. “Maybe that’ll tell me something. I need more information.”

  So do I, Briddey thought, and after Kathleen hung up and Briddey shut off her phone, she sat there watching Maeve feeding the sparrows, thinking, I wish C.B. had had time to teach me to audit individual voices. But he hadn’t, and he obviously couldn’t do it now with Trent listening. She was going to have to learn how to do it on her own.

  Maeve tossed out a handful of popcorn, and the birds converged from all over like tiny vultures to pounce on it. And that’s what’ll happen if you open the door of the courtyard, Briddey thought, her heart quailing at the thought of the voices roaring in like a tsunami.

  But she had to know how much Trent could hear. She hurried Maeve through her meal, and when Maeve asked if she could have dessert, said, “It looks like the rain’s stopped. How about if we go feed the ducks now and then come back for dessert?”

  “Great,” Maeve said, and took off for the car again while Briddey paid the bill, asked when the restaurant closed—“We’re always open,” the waiter said forlornly—and gathered up what was left of the popcorn, the bagels, and Maeve’s forgotten umbrella.

  “You can use it,” Maeve said when she came back laden with food. “I can’t hold it and feed the ducks at the same time.”

  “Thank you,” Briddey said. “Do you mind feeding them on your own? I need to call Trent,” and then was sorry. Maeve didn’t like Trent.

  But Maeve said cheerfully, “Sure. I won’t fall in, I promise,” and ran down to the edge of the pond.

  “Watch out for the geese,” Briddey called after her. “They can be mean.”

  “I know,” Maeve shouted back disgustedly. “You sound just like Mom.”

  “Sorry,” Briddey said, and sat down on a bench. The bench was very wet, and she was grateful for Maeve’s umbrella. Rain dripped in great wet blops from the trees.

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself. You’re in a sunny courtyard in Santa Fe. She took out her turned-off phone and put it to her ear so it would look to Maeve like she was talking to someone, and then walked across the courtyard’s flagstones to the bench under the cottonwood. She took a long look at the solid blue door, wondering if she might be able to open it after all, just for long enough to distinguish Trent’s voice among the thousands of others, but at the mere thought, the voices outside seemed to rise like a huge wave, ready to crash through, and she dived for the door, slamming the bar more securely against its brackets.

  I can’t do it, she thought, gripping the wet arm of the metal park bench. I can’t.

  She looked enviously down at the lake’s edge. Maeve was completely surrounded by ducks, a couple of large geese, and a swan angrily flapping its wings, but she didn’t look frightened or even worried. She was happily scattering Wheat Chex.

  If she can do it, you should be able to, Briddey thought, but even her shame at having less courage than a nine-year-old couldn’t persuade her to lift the latch and open the door.

  There had to be some other way to audit the voices, something more controllable. C.B. had said that it was a matter of visualizing, and that it didn’t make any difference what you visualized. All right, then, what would stand for sorting through huge numbers of something, looking for a single item?

  The card file in the storage closet, with its alphabetically ordered drawers. Maybe she could riffle through the cards like C.B. had done that night, and find Trent’s…but the voices weren’t written words; they were sounds. She needed something that would let her hear individual voices and tune out the ones she didn’t want.

  A radio, she thought, remembering C.B. tuning through the stations on his car radio, looking for a song to screen the voices. I can visualize the voices as stations and the roar of the voices as the static in between.

  It couldn’t be a car radio, though. It had to be something that could fit in the courtyard, like the portable radio C.B. had in his lab.

  There’s one in the gardener’s cupboard, she told herself, opening the weathered doors and hoping she could do this without C.B. here to coach her. What did Aunt Oona have in her potting shed? Gardening tools and packets of seeds and flowerpots.

  There was a stack of cobwebbed flowerpots on the top shelf. Briddey reached behind it and pulled out the radio. She blew the dust off the pink plastic, took the radio over to the bench, and sat down, holding it on her lap. She wiped the face of the horizontal dial clear of dust, looked at the red needle and the black lines and numbers—550, 710, 850—and switched the radio on.
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br />   The dial lit up and voices rushed out, barking, bawling, screeching. Briddey reared back in fright and nearly dropped the radio onto the flagstones. The sound was earsplitting. She fumbled wildly to turn it off.

  The voices stopped instantly. It’s only noise, Briddey told herself, heart thudding. You had the volume too high, that’s all. But she wasn’t sure she had the courage to turn it on again.

  She looked down at the lake. Maeve was still happily feeding the ducks and geese. But for how long?

  Briddey took a deep breath and switched the radio on again, turning the volume all the way down first. The voices emerged from the speaker as a faint whisper, like the sound of the ones beyond her perimeter.

  They’re not voices, they’re static, she told herself firmly, and began moving the needle, searching for Trent’s voice: …traffic is terrible. I should have taken…so cranky…must be cutting a new tooth…leak in the basement…worst hangover ever! I need a beer…Jesus, who drank all the Budweiser?…

  At this rate it could take forever. She needed to do this scientifically, so she could eliminate frequencies and narrow it down. She turned the knob all the way to the low end of the dial and began inching it slowly up, noting the station numbers as she went and hesitating only long enough to make sure it wasn’t Trent before she moved on. At 550: …marble sculpture…; 575: …sniveling sycophant! I hope he…; 610: …no business going off without leaving a contact number for his patients…; 650…

  Wait, that was Trent, she thought, belatedly recognizing his voice. He’s talking about Dr. Verrick. But it was too late, she’d already gone on to the next station.…think I’m coming down with the flu, a voice was saying.

  She dialed back to 610. I won’t. You can’t make me, a child’s voice said angrily.

  She must have overshot. She inched the knob forward.…scratchy feeling in my throat…, the person coming down with the flu said. No, that was too far.

  He has to be here somewhere, she thought, inching the knob back: Oh, why do I have to get up? It’s Sunday, and then, faintly,…tell Briddey…

  Definitely Trent, but even as she heard her name, it blurred into static, like a station going in and out of range. She moved the knob gingerly back and forth, trying to get a fix on it, but she couldn’t find him or the flu woman, and she was about to give up when she heard,…my head aches…, and before she could go a notch back, Trent’s voice.