Page 85 of Close Match
I shrug, dislodging the blanket Monty pulled over me to keep me warm after our last round. “It wasn’t hard in my case. The cost was too high to pay.”
He frowns up at me. “What do you mean?”
I disengage our bodies and stand. Tugging the blanket, I use it as a cloak as I wander over to the window to find the night sky. I’ve become accustomed to seeing the stars while finding my peace of mind—dangerous considering my life is back in New York.
But I don’t regret what happened yesterday—not one moment.
I needed Monty— hell, I still do. And I need him to know more about me than the glamour and the body he spent hours exploring dedicated to my pleasure. I need him to understand why I’m the way I am—a dedicated professional, pathologically organized, and perpetually damaged.
“You learn the only person you can truly control is yourself. Need is a different motivator than influence and love. I need things in my life because I have to function in a certain way. It doesn’t always make sense to others, but they respect me enough to let me figure out what’s best.” I turn away. “Until it’s not.”
I hear the rustle of the soft sheets. The swoosh of a sheet approaching behind me is my warning he’s left the bed. Therefore I’m not wholly unsurprised when his hands land on my shoulders as I stare out into the ink giving way to blush in the sky. “Tell me,” he commands lightly.
In the flimsy shadows of Monty’s room, the words come from the depth of me, bursting forth as if they’ve been waiting for this moment, this man. “I don’t take lovers lightly.” His fingers tighten. “It always seemed to expose a part of myself I had to protect, but I can’t seem to do that with you.”
“Don’t distract me, Linnie.” His tone is light, but when I turn to face him, his expression isn’t. It’s filled with the kind of turbulent chaos I recognized right before he pulled me beneath him to love me senseless. My lips part of their own accord; my body’s already accustomed to the need he generates in it. He lets out a rough laugh. “Talk to me.”
Pulling the blanket tighter, I think about how to explain the fact I’m essentially a fraud. I decide to start from the beginning.
“When I was maybe seven, there was a school play. It wasThe Wizard of Oz. I didn’t get cast as Dorothy.” Even though my heart races when I imagine his reaction as to why, there’s still a sneer in my voice twenty-six years later. His light laughter makes me feel better though.
“What did you do? Chop off the lead’s braids or something?”
Thoughtfully, I mutter, “I wish I knew you back then.”
“Competitive little thing, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea.” Regulating my breathing, I continue. “I was cast as Auntie Em. There were fewer appearances on stage and fewer lines to memorize. But the songs she sang are some of the most haunting in that show.”
Monty drops one arm to wrap around my waist. “It sounds like you got a better role.”
I neither agree nor disagree with his conclusion. I go on. “I owned that stage during my solos. Suddenly, the focus shifted to the director for his poor casting.” Lowering my head, I was ashamed when I admitted, “But he was right. Back then, I should never have been lead.”
Monty turns me in his arms. “Why not?”
“Because I can’t remember things worth a damn.”
Monty laughs.Here it is, I think painfully. “How is that possible, Linnie? You remember scripts much more difficult than that today. You sing more songs…”
“I have a problem learning,” I blurt out. Pulling away from his arms, I lean back against the cold glass.
“How?” The sheet he pulled from the bed is knotted at his waist, allowing him to cross his arms comfortably across his chest.
With the ends of the blanket still in my hands, I must look like a bat trying to sleep as I pull the ends toward my face to scrub at my eyes. “I have to put things into my long-term memory to memorize them. I went to doctor after doctor when I was a kid, but no one was willing to diagnose it as anything specific. Mom always suspected…” I trail off.
“So you don’t drink?” It’s a statement and a question. I lower the blanket to meet his confusion head-on.
“No. Mom did heavily while she was pregnant with me. The problem is, she was also given drugs to help with her labor and delivery. Either, both, could have caused problems with my learning issues.” And there it is: the dawning horror I’ve seen on the faces of doctors, teachers, and the occasional person we’ve let close enough into our family fold to be told the truth.
Ignoring the beginning of anger that’s just forming inside, I plow on. “The only reason I can memorize scripts is that I have someone read the lines into an audio recording—you know, like an audiobook. It was a fluke I ever learned that trick. I was studying for a class where the professor happened to mention he was friends with the audio narrator, and this was another professional path we could go down. The idea of being a narrator intrigued me; I could use my talent without having to memorize anything. So, I downloaded the book we were reading. Imagine my surprise when I could answer questions in class later that week.” Even I can hear the bitterness in my voice. “I made an appointment with the professor, had him sign an NDA, and explained everything I’m telling you.”
“What did he say?” It’s the first thing Monty’s said.
“He got me in touch with his friend, who happens to own the small company. We had a long discussion about what I was looking for. I didn’t even know if it would work. But I agreed to pay him thousands of dollars from my savings—I like to call it my mother’s old guilt fund—to see if having one of his lesser-known narrators read me my textbooks would help put the materials into my long-term memory. I could listen to it while I was working out, while I was on the subway, anywhere.”
Monty brushes a lock of hair off my shoulder. “How quickly did you see results?”
“Oh, about six weeks. So much of literature is already on audiobook format. It was just a matter of getting the right recordings. All I was paying for was my regular textbooks like science.” Rubbing my fingers against my temples, I try to soothe the headache beginning to form. “As we started to get into my theater classes, it became more complicated.”
