Tell Me More. Janet Mullany

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      “For me or the station?”

      “Both, and honey, I know you can get a volunteer in for your shift Friday, so you’ll find a ticket to the symphony in your mailbox tomorrow.”

      I imitated her Texas accent. “I just luuurve a man with a bulgin’ billfold.”

      “Oh, me, too, honey.” But the fundraiser in Kimberly was in full swing now. “With the ticket you’ll find a list of the people we’ll be meeting. Memorize their names. Prepare to be charmin'. You can borrow my black taffeta skirt again.”

      “And the killer heels?” I asked hopefully. I loved that skirt, its suggestive rustle and the way it flipped around above my knees. Kimberly had an extensive designer wardrobe, as befitted a former Dallas debutante who married an oilman in the days when oilmen made real money.

      “You bet. Hey, maybe you could invite him to sit in when you’re on air.”

       I don’t think so. “Maybe.”

      We chatted a little more—as usual, these days, I assured her that life without Hugh was progressing as well as could be expected—and after I hung up I realized I hadn’t told her the story of the peeping leprechaun. A pity—she would have appreciated the comedic side of it—but then I would also have had to admit that I’d made the grave mistake of letting Hugh drop his pants.

      And that reminded me that soon I’d have to make a decision about renting the apartment.

      I’d deal with that later. I fired off an email to my roster of substitute announcers asking for a volunteer for Friday night, and looked at the clock. Half an hour to go on Scheherazade.

      He’d better call soon.

      I walked around the radio station, checking that the lights were off and the outside doors locked; also that Jason and everyone else had really left. I returned to the studio, the quiet space with its white walls and racks and racks of CDs, the gleaming console and monitors.

      When the phone rang and I saw the screen announce “no data” I let it ring five times, despite my admonitions to the on-air staff to always, always answer the phone within two rings (unless you were on air, of course).

      I picked the phone up and answered with a hint of yawn in my voice.

      “Jo?” That voice, warm and dark.

      “Yeah?” I pretended not to know who it was while my insides melted away and my nipples protruded through my T-shirt.

      “This is a wonderful recording.”

      “I’m glad you like it.” Now I felt shy, aroused, nervous. I, who put thousands of listeners at ease, now wanted one of them to assure me that I was safe—safe and loved—in his presence.

      We chatted for a little while about the music—we both stopped to listen to the silvery flute ascent and descent, a magical, simple motif, and argued whether that, or the violin solo that represented Scheherazade’s voice, or the push and pull of the waves, was the most spine-chilling part of the work.

      “Have you read The Arabian Nights?” he asked. “No? Oh, it’s a marvelous thing, Jo. Stories within stories within stories, like a maze. Sexy, too, although translators censored it, until the most recent editions.”

      As he spoke, I tried to place his accent. Boston or possibly someone who’d once lived in England; he had that clipped precision and diction of a Boston blue blood … some of the time.

      A pause, and the sound of movement. “Sorry. I’m putting another log on the fire. It’s chilly tonight.”

      “I bet the aspens are pretty from up there.”

      He chuckled. He wasn’t to be caught that easily. “Yes, I believe you said during the last break that they would be peaking. Nice try. How are you? I hope that bastard Hugh hasn’t been giving you any grief.”

      I told him the story of Hugh’s visit and the leprechaun invasion, or at least a censored version—I used the term in flagrante… and heard him laugh with pure delight.

      “How long do you think he’d been watching?”

      “I don’t know. It could have been from the beginning.”

      “Would you have liked him to watch?”

      “I don’t know.” I lay back in my chair and watched the sound waves break and dance. We were moving into new territory here. We’d flirted, we’d talked about past relationships, but this—this was getting … well, kinky.

      I cleared my throat and attempted to sound dispassionate. “Do you mean would I have liked to have known he was watching, or would I have liked to have found out afterward that he had watched? Oh. Damn. Mr. D., I have to go. Give me twenty.”

      Mr. D. I called him that after I’d tried to find out more about him and he’d hinted he was quite a bit older than me (“Decades, my dear. Don’t ask.” I wasn’t sure whether I believed him) and old school. He called me Miss Hutchinson for at least the first dozen calls. It did sound sort of perverted to me—like I was letting him tie me up and spank me or something, or I was wearing a maid’s uniform, or both, but I liked that formality, the Mr. Rochester/Miss Eyre suggestiveness. I knew he was in the station broadcast area, somewhere, and a substantial donor to the station, but through a foundation. I loved his voice, the way he talked about books he’d read and places he’d traveled to and the joy when we found an author we both liked. We shared a passion for mountains, for high, remote places.

      For the past six months, as Hugh and I began that painful slide away from each other, Mr. D. had been a constant. A friend. Someone I could tell anything.

      There was the possibility we might both disappoint each other if we met. That this relationship could only exist at a distance while we both polished who we wanted to be. And yet he made me yearn for what I didn’t have—adventure, new experiences, the desire to become a sort of modern, land-bound female Sinbad, exploring and learning that one story could lead to another and another.

      On the air again, with the pulsing red light outside the studio casting a warm blush into the studio through the glass window, I repeated the information about the last recording, and what we were to hear next, time and temperature … Hope your evening is going well. A little later, we’ll hear music written to put its patron to sleep, Bach’s Goldberg Variations in their entirety, but leading us up to that, a short piece by Stravinsky …

      The next time the red light turned on, it was one in the morning. I talked briefly about the national morning news show, which we would interrupt a few times an hour with local news and weather. I hoped that those awake now—lonely lovers, people with insomnia or babies, or students with examinations to study for—would be asleep in four hours when the news began.

      The Bach began—music to put you to sleep, but music that had always made me want to get up and dance.

      The phone rang right on time.

      “Forty minutes of genius and you,” Mr. D. said. “Where were we? Ah, yes. Him watching.”

      “I don’t know that he would have found it that sexy.”

      “Oh, СКАЧАТЬ