Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

still.
    Talker turned to him, a little surprised. There was a look on
    Brian’s face, like he’d gone to Mars on vacation and had left his
    body there to answer messages.
    “He was fine,” Tate said, unnerved by Brian’s silence. “He was
    great. Helped put me back together. Made me feel safe. It wasn’t….”
    Tate’s voice faltered, and he looked down to his hand with the half-
    glove on it. He had this game he played, with his scarred, damaged
    fingers, where he’d try to get them to twitch, and then a little bit
    further, and then a little bit further. When he was a kid, the doctors
    told him that it would help him keep mobility in his hand, and he
    liked that. Now that he was an adult it just made him feel in control.
    He could control that hand, even though it had been damaged. The
    analogy to his life was just too hard to ignore.
    “Brian?” Dr. Sutherland asked carefully. “Brian, you know….”
    The doctor sighed, seemingly at a loss, and slouched back against
    his comfy tapestry chair. “You boys know, you’ve been coming to
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    see me for about six months, and… I’m glad. I look forward to
    seeing you in here every week. But I’m worried. You’ve made some
    progress in some things—Tate, you seem to be less… uhm… high-
    strung every week, and you can keep your attention focused for
    almost the entire session. But….” He looked away from them, his
    eyes seeming to find patterns in the random dance of tinsel across
    his bookshelf.
    When he looked back, he was as resolved as Talker had ever
    seen him.
    “You boys have got to start to talk about this thing like it really
    happened—both of you. You have to grab it by the horns and stare it
    in the face, and call it what it is.”
    Talker heard his whimper and hated himself, and his hand
    twitched in his lap hard enough to startle himself. Brian moved,
    finally, to put his hand over Talker’s and to calm him down.
    Dr. Sutherland watched them, and his jaw tightened, and he
    sighed determinedly.
    “Brian, if you think I’m less worried about you than I am about
    Talker, then you haven’t been paying attention. You’ve got a lot of
    shit, just threatening to explode out your chest, and I don’t know
    what you’re going to do if you can’t let it out….”
    Brian made an unexpected sound then, as he held Tate’s hand
    in his lap and stroked absently at the wrist with his thumbs. Tate had
    to look at him carefully before he identified it as a bitter, ironic sort of
    laugh.
    “Don’t worry about me, Doc,” Brian said, his eyes still far away,
    the part of him that Talker loved still mostly on Mars. “Don’t worry
    about me. I found a way to let it out. Trust me. Most of it’s not in my
    chest anymore.”
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    Brian had smiled then, and it was a chilling, dark-side-of-the-
    moon sort of smile, and not Talker’s Brian’s smile at all. Tate
    shivered, and Brian seemed to snap inside himself, and his smile
    warmed up and became Talker’s Prince Charming smile again, and
    the session went on.
    Tate would wonder, though. What was behind that smile? What
    was it that Tate had missed, when he’d run his own mission to
    Mars? A lot could have happened when he was getting his shit
    together after The Worst. Date. Ever.

    “SO THE thing is,” Jed said seriously as they were in his car,
    following the ambulance through the mostly empty streets of
    Sacramento, “the thing is, you can’t mention Trevor’s name.”
    Talker jerked—hard enough to run into Jed’s arm as he shifted
    the ancient Ford Escort, and beyond swearing under his breath, Jed
    didn’t say or do anything.
    “Why wouldn’t I tell the cops it was Trev?”
    He’d been living for that moment, the moment they came and
    took Trev away, Brian’s ruined face being the only thing they needed
    to convict the guy.
    Jed looked at him sideways as they sat at a red light. It was the
    moonless part of the night, and Jed’s dark face was hard to read
    anyway. Talker could only wait for him, patiently, and hope he could
    make himself clear.
    Jed shook his head. “You were out of it, you know. For a while,
    you really didn’t notice shit. Let’s just say that some shit went on
    between Brian and Trev that won’t look too good if the cops hear
    about it, okay?”
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    Talker stared at him like he was from far away. “Do you know
    we’ve got a rat?” he said