Tell Me More

by Janet Mullany

  The concert broadcast was on the radio when he’d picked his father up from the hotel and he’d expected Jo to be at the restaurant when they’d arrived. They’d waited almost an hour, his father drinking Scotch while ignoring the starters they’d ordered. Now Patrick was getting worried.

  “And how’s Gran?” Patrick asked.

  “Much the same, miserable old cow,” his father replied. “You should phone her up.”

  “I do, and all she does is say how clear the line is as though I’m phoning from next door and then she talks about the weather. She also has some sort of fantasy that I’m getting back with Elise.”

  “Lovely girl, lovely girl,” his father said. “And are you getting back with her? You could always keep this other one on the side. Have the best of both worlds. We’re not genetically disposed to monogamy.”

  “We? The Delaneys? Irishmen? Come on, Da, don’t be an idiot.” He grinned at his father with affection. That was the problem. He liked the old man in a way, when he was sober, which at the moment, he was, more or less. “Back in a moment. I’m going to call Jo.”

  He went to the front of the restaurant, where the reception was better, and called the station. Someone would be there, even if it was only the announcer, but he knew they might not answer the phone since it was after business hours.

  The phone rang and rang and he was just about to give up when someone answered; a woman, but it wasn’t Jo, and she told him Jo wasn’t there.

  “This is Patrick, her boyfriend,” he said. “When did she leave?”

  “She hasn’t been in at all today. She called an hour or so ago and said she was running late.”

  Running late from what? And for what—she was going back to the station? Why hadn’t she called him? This was ridiculous. He thanked the woman and sent Jo a text message. Meanwhile his father was about to down another Scotch and probably order a bottle of wine. He went back to their table, where his father was chatting up the waitperson, staring blatantly at her breasts.

  “Why don’t we order?” he said.

  “Would you like me to clear the other place setting, sir?”

  “No, she’ll be here soon. What’ll you have, Da?”

  They both ordered buffalo steak and Patrick told the waitperson to bring the wine his father had ordered with their meal.

  His father reached into his jacket and produced photographs of Patrick’s nieces and nephews. Patrick pretended he hadn’t seen them already on Facebook and let his father do the proud grandfather bit.

  “And when are you going to produce some grandchildren? Keep the family line going?”

  “You mean my sisters’ efforts have been in vain?”

  “They don’t carry the Delaney name,” his father pronounced. “Now, you and Elise—”

  “It’s over, Da. Forget it. We’ve split up, we’re selling the house.”

  Their food arrived, each plate a work of art, even if the flowering rosemary garnish looked rather girly. His father cut into the steak and waved the server back over. “I ordered it rare, darling. Look at this! Take it away.”

  She apologized and removed his plate.

  Patrick’s father poured himself a glass of wine. “I suppose you’re not drinking,” he said.

  “I’ll have a glass with you.” Patrick took the wine bottle and poured himself a meager inch.

  His father grunted. They raised glasses, clinked them. “Have you given any more thought to your career?”

  “I’m doing fine as I am, thanks, Da.”

  “Playing with computers?”

  “If you like. I make pretty good money at it. I’ve done some pro bono law work to keep my hand in.” He surreptitiously checked his cell to see if Jo had sent him a text message.

  “Pro bono! It’s no wonder she left you.”

  “No, Da, I left Elise.”

  “For this Jo woman? The one who can’t be bothered to meet her boyfriend’s father?”

  “No, I didn’t know her then.”

  His father waved the server down again, Scotch glass in hand.

  “You’ve been stood up, boyo.”

  “Looks like it,” Patrick said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel.

  “Bloody women, eh?”

  “Right.”

  To his relief his father’s new steak arrived, and was pronounced satisfactory after he cut into it and blood flooded the plate. The food seemed to steady his father, who talked for a time about the conference he’d just attended, and gave some wicked imitations of his fellow academics.

  Patrick ordered a bottle of mineral water and tried not to look at his watch or check his cell. His father, having drunk nearly all the wine, ordered another Scotch.

  Oh, shit.

  Patrick called over the server and ordered coffee for them both.

  His father slumped in his chair and then lurched forward, elbows on the table. Silverware clattered to the floor. He knocked his coffee, which the server had placed at his elbow, onto the floor.

  “I’ll get you another one, sir,” she said and crouched to pick up the broken china.

  “That’s a beautiful arse you have, my darling,” his father said.

  “Shut up, Da.”

  “That’s my son,” his father said. “Can’t keep a woman or a job. Fucking mother’s boy.”

  Other diners looked up and stared. A waiter with a dustpan and brush approached the table, as did a man in a dark suit who introduced himself as the manager and enquired if there was a problem.

  “He’s the problem.” His father pointed at Patrick. “My bloody useless son. His mother was a whoring useless bitch, it’s no fucking surprise.”

  Patrick stood and handed his credit card to the manager. “I’ll take the check.” He handed two twenty-dollar bills to the waitress. “Thanks for your patience and I’m sorry. And this—” he threw a ten-dollar bill onto the table “—is for you to get a cab back to the hotel, Da, because I won’t have you in my car. One day we’ll have a real conversation, but it won’t be tonight.”

  He left the restaurant, after signing the credit card receipt, appalled at the cost of the meal—the bar section was by far the highest part of the bill—and asked the restaurant staff to call a cab. They assured him they’d see his father got into it and he wished them luck. He walked outside and took a cleansing breath of the bitingly cold air and congratulated himself on surviving yet another evening of insults and embarrassments from his father. Maybe after a few days he wouldn’t feel so raw and disappointed.

  And speaking of disappointments, where the hell was Jo? He was angry with her for not showing up, not bothering to call and turning her cell off, and worried that something had happened to her. She’d lied to him, too. She hadn’t gone to the radio station, and he had a panicky moment of imagining her car broken down somewhere isolated, of her cold and scared by the side of the road.

  The night would have been entirely different if she’d been there. His father wouldn’t have drunk enough to degenerate into vicious anger; he would have played the charming Irishman and raconteur and been tolerable company.

  Once inside the car he tried Jo’s cell again while the engine warmed. He tried the house, but there was no reply there, either.

  He drove to the radio station and rang the bell on the back door, which was the only way to get in after business hours, always assuming someone was willing to open the door.

  “Who is it?” He recognized the voice on the intercom as belonging to the woman he’d spoken with earlier.

  “Patrick Delaney, Jo’s boyfriend.”

  “She got here five minutes ago.” The door buzzed open.

  He walked in along the corridor that led around the perimeter of the building and met the announcer, whom he now recognized vaguely as the girl who’d cried at Thanksgiving, and thanked her for letting him in.

  She was flustered and angry. “This isn’t like Jo. She was over an hour late. My boyfriend is mad that I’m working late.”

  He saw ahead the
flash of the red light that indicated Jo was on air, the studio door open. She sat at the board, illuminated by a lamp, the rest of the room in darkness, her voice calm and mellow, and saw him at the window, and stopped in midsentence, then recovered herself and resumed speaking.

  When the music started he stepped through the open doorway and turned on a switch by the door, flooding the room with light.

  “What the hell’s going on, Jo?”

  26

  I TOOK OFF THE HEADPHONES AND TURNED THE chair to face him.

  He looked mad, and rightly so, and he didn’t know the half of it.

  “I screwed up. I’m sorry. How was dinner with your dad?”

  “Appalling. Where have you been? Why did you turn your cell off?”

  I glanced at the clock. I had twenty minutes to explain what I’d done. “Tonight I told someone I couldn’t love them because they’d lied to me. And I don’t want to lie to you, or evade the truth. Remember I told you I had loose ends?”

  He nodded, his face grim. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “Go on.”

  “I was in love, sort of, with a guy I’d never met. The guy I had phone sex with. Here. And I found out, more or less by accident, that he was the one who was behind my invitation to join the Association.

  “After…after you left on Saturday night I met him for the first time. I mean, really met him in person. He wouldn’t tell me why he’d lied to me and used me as a pawn in some sort of baroque game, and I wouldn’t have listened at that point. I was too mad, too hurt. So I told him to meet me again today and explain. He agreed that I was entitled to an explanation. So that’s where I was.”

  “This explanation,” Patrick said. “Did it involve his dick, by any chance?”

  I wished I could have lied to him but now I had to tell him anything, everything. “Yes.”

  “Admirable, your quest for truth. So you fucked him and the mysteries of the universe were revealed.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, helpless, watching his face harden, loving him more than I would have thought possible. “If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t have told you. I am so, so sorry.”

  “Of course.” He walked toward me and I was frightened by the contempt and pain on his face. “Was it good, Jo?”

  “Stop it. Please.” I backed away.

  “I’ll tell you something. If you really did love me, you wouldn’t have fucked another man and you wouldn’t be talking yourself into why you had to do it. That’s it, pure and simple.” He reached out and put his hands, quite gently, on my neck, thumbs caressing my collarbone. “Did he make you come?”

  “Please don’t touch me, Patrick.”

  He dropped his hands and looked nauseous, pale. “So the stockings were for him. And the sexy red lace knickers. Christ, I actually believed you when you said they were for my benefit. Did you get wet for him, Jo?”

  “Stop it!”

  “Did you come?”

  “I know you’re mad—”

  “Did you? Come on, Jo, the truth. Isn’t that what this is all about? Did you come?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, humiliated.

  “And did he get up your ass?”

  I shook my head. I was about to cry and I didn’t want him to see me break.

  “Lying bitch.” He turned and left.

  I sank to the floor and cried when he’d gone because I knew I’d lost him, shuddering with grief and pain and hating myself for my stupidity and cruelty. When I looked up next, I saw I had ten more minutes before I had to go on air. I wiped my face dry and got to my feet and turned off the harsh overhead light, as though hiding in semidarkness could conceal the damage I’d done.

  And then I noticed two things.

  Both of them red, both of them flashing.

  One was the entire set of incoming lines on the phone but there was a very good reason I hadn’t heard any ring. If the mic was on, then the phone ringers in the studio were muted.

  The other flashing red light was the one that announced someone was on air, live, the mic turned on.

  I lunged over to the board, praying that I’d pulled the fader down, but it was still in its normal, announcing position. Every vitriolic, obscene word exchanged between me and Patrick had been broadcast to our entire listening area. I wrenched the fader down and turned it off, and sat, paralyzed with horror, watching those phones light, flash and darken as they rang over to an extension, listening to them ring and ring.

  I couldn’t know how much people had heard—we hadn’t been that close to the mic—but obviously enough.

  Then I very carefully took a drink of water, gargled a little and cued up my next CD. I took deep breaths and turned the mic back on and slid the fader up. I made a cool and leisurely announcement about the music we’d heard, what was coming up next and gave the time and temperature. Fader down, mic off, music up. Done.

  I took my cell out of my purse and turned it on. Six calls from Patrick as well as three text messages, three calls from the station, probably from Ann, and one a couple of minutes ago from Kimberly. I deleted them all and called her.

  “Honey, what the hell’s going on?” Her voice was high and frantic. “I’m coming over. See you in five.”

  “No, you don’t have to. It’s late. I—” But she’d hung up and sure enough, in five minutes the back doorbell rang and I let her in. She wore a gorgeous leather coat, pajamas with a pattern of fluffy bunnies and cowboy boots, and I laughed at her appearance and then cried again.

  “You are up shit creek,” she said, dropping her huge leather tote bag onto the floor. “Wow, it’s like they say, they just don’t have that old-time radio drama anymore. It’s time for damage control. Okay, you know the password for the general voice-mail box? Great. You get on there and erase every message that’s been left and do your own mailbox, too. I’ll do the rest.”

  “What about their passwords?”

  “I know them. Don’t ask. Bill’s legacy. Then we’ll do the email. We’d better stay here and check things for a while. I brought supplies.” She nodded at the tote bag, which held fruit and cheese and crackers. “And don’t listen to any of those messages. They won’t make you feel any better.”

  “I’ll have to quit after this, however good a cover-up job we do. It’s bound to leak out.”

  “I know, honey. But you’ll quit in your own time. This buys you a few days. I’m just glad Neil is out of town.” She hugged me again. “Okay, girl, get crackin’.”

  The general voice-mail box was full and by this time the calls had died down. I erased all the messages in there as well as all of mine. Then I erased the emails that had come into my account and that of the general mailbox account.

  Kimberly came back into the studio a little later and cut up cheese and fruit and fed them to me, tenderly and gently, which made me cry again. We checked for phone calls and for more emails—most of them had gone to Bill’s mailbox, some to Neil’s—and deleted them. But after an hour everything was quiet. As Kimberly said, everyone had probably gone back to internet porn or tonight’s game. It was a time to be grateful for sports.

  She stayed in the studio until I shut down and then took me back to her apartment, where Bill had fallen asleep on the couch waiting for us. I cried some more and told Kimberly the whole story in a messy and incoherent way. Bill woke up and made me hot milk with honey and offered me grass, his usual bedtime combination. (“And now little blue pills,” Kimberly added with a wink.) I turned down the grass but accepted a big slug of liqueur in the hot milk and fell asleep in Kimberly’s spare bedroom.

  “Hey, sleepyhead.” Kimberly sat on the bed. “How are you feeling? Want some breakfast?”

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes and wondering why everything felt so strange and why I was in Kimberly’s spare bedroom. I wore a huge striped flannel shirt that was probably the top half of a man’s pajamas, and which probably belonged to Bill. Five seconds later memories of the previous evening flooded back.

  “Don’t cry,” Kimberl
y said. “Oh, heck, cry if you want. You’re entitled. You fucked up real good, honey.”

  “I know.” I reached for my cell phone on the bedside table.

  “Uh-oh! No! You are not to call him.”

  “I wasn’t going to. I want to call my mom.”

  “Call her later when you’re not such a mess.” Kimberly placed the cell out of reach. “I’m going in to work soon to do some more damage control. You want breakfast? Bill will fix you something, or you can go back to sleep.”

  “Tell me about Bill.” I wiped my face with my sleeve. “I want to hear about something good.”

  “Okay. Well, I was getting tired of internet dating—dreadlocked dentists and all the rest—and I suddenly thought, hey, there’s this great-looking guy at work, and he’s a bit older but heck, that means he’s had time to put in some practice, so I hit on him.”

  “A bit older?” I echoed.

  “Honey, I’ve never told you how old I am and you’re too sweet to ask. I’m forty-five. I’ve got good genes and I’ve had a bit of work done.” She tapped the underside of her chin and beneath her eyes. “And I take care of myself. So, yeah, he’s a bit older, but so what? He’s a real animal in the sack, let me tell you. Don’t hardly need those blue pills at all, and he’s real good about putting the toilet seat down and those other domestic details. We had to keep it quiet at the station, what with sexual harassment and favoritism and all. But now we’re out of the closet.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Do you think you’ll get married?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll get going, then. Bill can give you a ride back to the station for your car. You just keep your head down and come in for your air shift looking the picture of innocence. I’ll check the snail mail. I tell you, it’s a good thing no one who works at the station listens to it. Except for Neil and he’s out of town. But Bill likes your show, always has, and that’s why I heard you last night.”

  “Kimberly, isn’t it illegal? Tampering with mail and email?”