Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
She comes out of the booth while I’m still winding the headphone cord around my hand. Her notebook’s against her chest, a pen behind her ear.
“You ran long on the credit-card guy,” she says. “Good answer. Forty seconds too much of it.”
“He was hurting.”
“They’re all hurting. That’s the show. Give him an extra three minutes and you’ve got nothing left for the next one who’s hurting just as bad.” She taps the notebook against her thigh. “But the leaving. That was the night. More of that. Less of the rest.”
“More of bleeding on the air.”
“More of the truth. People can tell the difference.” She’s already turning back toward the booth. “So can I.”
I drive home with the windows down and the radio off. Two weeks ago, I couldn’t have told you what I’d say into that microphone. Now I sit at red lights wanting the only red light that matters, the one over the booth door.
Two nights later I’m back in the chair before Bex has the board lit, which earns me a look through the glass I choose to take as a compliment. The slots fill while I’m still pulling the cans on, and she points me at the first one before I’m ready for it.
The first voice of the night is young and a little embarrassed. “Okay, so. We’ve been married four months. And my husband plays video games. Which is fine. Except it’s six hours a night. Every night. I eat dinner alone while he’s got a headset on, yelling at strangers.”
“Six hours.”
“Six hours.”
“That’s not a hobby. That’s a place to hide.” I give her a beat to sit with it. “The question isn’t the games. It’s what he’s climbing into them to get away from. Could be work. Could be growing up. Could be the marriage, and that’s the one you need to know. So you turn the TV off, not as a punishment, as an invitation, and you ask him what six hours a night gives him that you can’t.”
“And if he gets mad?”
“Then he’s mad because you found the door he’s been hiding behind. Stay kind and stay in the room. Mad you can work with. It’s the quiet that ends marriages.”
The next voice is older, tired in a way I know from the inside. “I take care of my mother. She’s sick, she lives with us now, and it’s a lot. My husband says I’ve disappeared into it. That I’m never his wife anymore. Only her daughter.”
“Is he wrong?”
A pause. “No.”
“Then here’s the hard part, and I’m only saying it because nobody else will. You can love your mother all the way to the end and still be neglecting your marriage. Both things can be true at once. He’s not wrong to feel lonely. You’re not wrong to show up for her. But somebody has to say the quiet thing out loud, so I will. You need help. Not because you’re failing. Because no one person was built to be a daughter and a nurse and a wife with nothing left at the end of the day. Get the help. And give that man one night a week that’s only his. One. Start there.”
She’s crying. I let her.
“My ex won’t stop texting me.” A man, younger, sheepish. “Two in the morning, mostly. ‘You up?’ That kind of thing. We’ve been broken up eight months.”
“And you answer.”
“…Sometimes.”
“You called a radio show to ask a stranger whether you should block your ex. You already know the answer. You’ve known it eight months. You’re not calling for advice. You’re calling for permission.” I lean in. “So here it is. Block the number. You have permission. Go to sleep.”
He laughs, caught out. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”
The last call is two voices on one line, a husband and wife passing the phone back and forth, cutting in over each other.
“He wants to retire,” she says. “We can’t afford it.”
“We can if we’re careful,” he says. “She wants to work till we’re ninety.”
“I want to not eat cat food at eighty,” she says.
“Okay.” I get them both quiet. “Can I tell you what I think you’re actually fighting about? Because it isn’t the spreadsheet.” I wait until neither of them fills the gap. “Sir, you’re scared that if you don’t stop now, you’ll run out of good years to enjoy not working. Ma’am, you’re scared that if you stop too soon, you’ll spend those same good years lying awake about money. You’re both trying to protect the exact same thing. You’re just scared of losing it from opposite directions.”
Quiet on the line. Then the wife, smaller, “Well. When you put it that way.”
“Put the spreadsheet away tonight. Tomorrow, you plan the life, not the money. The money serves the life. Never the other way around.”
Bex fades the outro. The light goes dark. Paige is already on her feet, phone out, three clips trimmed before I’ve got the cans off.