A Voice In The Night by Brian Matthews Page A

Mag.” She reached out her hand and he took it. “Ted Fletcher. I’ve been seeing you around for a couple of weeks and I just got up my courage to come over here and say hello. Can I sit? For a minute?”
    “Please.” She gestured to the chair. “All the minutes you want.” He had auburn hair and nearly turquoise eyes, or at least they seemed so in this light. Tan and freckled, he spent a lot of time in the sun. His smile was confident. It was nice. A nice smile from a nice person. A good person. She got a sense of his goodness as he sat there in their first silent, smiling moment. This is the perfect part, she thought. The moment of attraction and knowing. She remembered this from years of first meetings. Next would be the awkward part when they wouldn’t be themselves for several weeks, when they would put on their date personalities, working at it too hard. Then, they would make love and intimacy would begin to emerge. But she would enjoy this first part anyway. White shirt, stripped tie, blue suit perfectly tailored over a perfect body.
    “I’m not very good at this,” he said. But he knew he was very good at this. He slipped out of his suit jacket and laid it over a chair and acted like she had him completely unhinged. “God it’s hot. Is it hot?” He looked around to the other tables as though he could find the answer among the diners. “Here’s an idea. How about we make a deal to be absolutely truthful with one another from now on. And I don’t just mean telling the truth. I mean being completely forthcoming with each other. Does that make any sense? I mean, I know what I mean by it, but do you?”
    She smiled. “You’re about to explode. Do you know that? Boom. All over the place. Yes, I think I know what you mean. We can start by telling each other about ourselves. I’m 56 years old. How’s that for the truth?” Ted thought she looked maybe 25. “The higher plane thing?”
    “Right. And you probably should drop your act. You’re a nice man, Ted and you really don’t need it.” He stared down at his hand in his lap for a moment, glancing up at her like a boy who’d been caught smoking a cigarette. He exhaled his relief. “Yeah, okay. That stuff is exhausting anyway.” They ordered lunch and told their lives to one another. Ted had moved here a few months ago to setup a Western U.S. and Asia headquarters for his family’s company, the largest mutual fund group worldwide. In fact, his grandfather had pioneered the idea of mutual funds back in the ’30s, but their headquarters in Boston couldn’t adequately service its far flung customers any longer.
    “I volunteered to take a bullet for the team and move out here to California,” he said with a wry smile. “I just love calling my Dad and brothers in February when they’re knee deep in ice and snow. But I miss them something awful. We’re a really close family.”
    His eyes drifted away for a second, and Margaret could see the loneliness in that tiny shift. “I miss them. My mother and father are extraordinary people,” he said, his eyes on the table now, his shoulders hunched up, hands clasped in his lap, all earnestness. “Everything was centered on us kid – seven of us. I grew up in the happiest home imaginable, and you know why? Because we all knew our parents loved each other so much that we knew we were safe, that our home would always be there. It’s still home to me even now.” Margaret could see into his eyes more clearly now, the distance he felt, cut off from them.
    “You have six brothers and sisters? Six?
    “Two brothers and four sisters. All married now with kids of their own. I guess that’s the big missing piece of me. I mean, I have a great life, but not like them. I try not to dwell on it too much.”
    “No, I know exactly how you feel,” she said, uncomfortably facing the outcome of the choices she’d made years ago.” I have friends next door who have young children and sometimes I feel like