Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

after a minute, and Jed just stepped on the
    accelerator. Tate watched him fight not to give a double-take to his
    passenger, but he couldn’t help it. Sometimes his brain was as
    confused as the scars and the tattoos on his face.
    “She’s really sweet—Brian wanted to name her ‘Talkette’, right,
    because she’s a pied rat, and she’s all patchy, but only one side of
    her face is black, like me, but I said name her something happy, and
    so we named her Sunshine. We keep her with a sunlamp, you
    know? And Brian made her a blanket over her cage, because it’s
    cold, and even though we have heat this year, the place is drafty
    still, and he heard that they get delicate with temperature drops. And
    he cleans her cage every week, and gives her a bath and trims her
    toenails. I mean, we get home, and he just plops her on his
    shoulder and she puts her paws on his ear and reaches over and
    gives him little rat kisses and… and….”
    Talker twitched—Tate-the-twitch, that’s what they called him in
    school, and even his favorite teachers had moments when their
    eyes got big and they breathed hard through their noses because
    he would do it when things got quiet, and it would always, always
    send the class into chaos.
    He heard that same exasperated breath from Jed, and tried to
    focus himself on what he was talking about.
    “He’s the gentlest person on the planet, Jed. What could he
    have possibly done to deserve this?”
    Jed’s indrawn breath had a very different quality to it this time.
    “He defended you.”
    Tate’s goddamned vision went gray at the edges, and red
    spots surfed in front of his eyes. His lungs burned, and he must
    have made a strangled sound because suddenly Jed was pulling
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    over and putting the car in park and shoving his head down and
    yelling at him to breathe.
    He did, eventually, remember to breathe, and the burning in his
    lungs and the strange auras in front of his eyes all eased up, and
    there was nothing but the steady rubbing of Jed’s hand on his back.
    “He didn’t… he didn’t… he didn’t….” Oh Christ. Not that again.
    He’d cleared up that little problem when he was twelve, when he
    yelled, “I am a fucking faggot and get the h-h-h-hell a-ww-waayyy
    from me!” at his father, when the fucker had come to visit him (beat
    him) while he was living in foster care.
    But Tate had to get this out on his own; Brian wasn’t here to
    read his mind for him, to stroke his hand, to make him believe he
    was safe. It was just like being twelve again. It was him and the
    faltering infrastructure that cared for him. Of course, it only cared for
    him when it suited the purposes of the alien, adult intelligences in
    the surrounding stratosphere.
    “Oh God,” he whispered, half to himself and half to Brian,
    unconscious in the ambulance that was two blocks down the road.
    “Brian, what did you do?”
    Jed’s voice next to him was a little bit angry. “His hands were
    tore up for weeks, Talker. How could you not see it?”
    “Same way I lived with him for almost a year and didn’t see
    that he was in love with me!” Tate snarled back, so bitterly angry
    with himself he was surprised he didn’t just crawl out of his own
    damaged, macabre skin and run down the streets as a bloody
    skeleton, shrieking in pain. “I… I just didn’t see him.”
    Not all of him, anyway. Not the part that loved him. Not the part
    that would, apparently, become violent to protect him.
    “How….” Tate had to start again, and it had nothing to do with
    the stammering that he’d overcome as a kid. “How bad was it?”
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    Jed grunted, and put the car in drive. Apparently Tate wasn’t
    going to hyperventilate and pass out, and they both wanted to get to
    Kaiser when the ambulance did. “It was a fair fight,” he said. “Brian
    gave him a chance to defend himself. But… man, Brian’s strong.
    And he was pissed. And you were scaring the hell out of everyone. I
    had to pull him off, and Trev needed a trip to the hospital.” Jed blew
    out a breath—a shaky one. Talker realized that Jed cared about
    Brian, a lot. Not like a lover, but like a little brother, maybe. Like Jed
    had been caring for Tate, since he’d started working at Gatsby’s
    Nick.
    “But it wasn’t this bad… not nearly this bad. Brian used his
    fists, and there was only one of him. Trev… he was out the next
    morning….”
    Talker