knew Kayla was the “darlin’” mentioned. And he was a little irritated to have her called a darling. She was the one who’d left him. A bit stilted, Tyler replied, “No.”
His father sighed rather too heavily and lamented, “How did you let her get away?”
And, unfortunately, Tyler snapped, “I was only trying to educate her and—” But he didn’t get to explain.
His father looked up at his own son in aghast shock! “You hurt her?”
“No! Good gravy, Dad! I took her to see what had garnered such a crowd and found out there was a dogfight! I’d never seen one and thought she would be curious, too.”
And his father’s face changed from alarm to indignation. “You took that fragile flower to a dogfight?” His voice squeaked up rather remarkably. “They’re illegal.”
And with seriousness, Tyler went on. “I know that. I’ve contacted the state police. I’ve offered to be a witness.” He was deadly. “She was not frightened. She bought four of the dogs and put them in the car. I had to walk home!”
His father stared for the count of three, then his closed mouth stretched out, his body began to jiggle and after that the laughter rolled.
Tyler stood trying to get in some logical, adult information. But with the hilarity of his father’s misguided sense of humor, Tyler finally gave up. He left his parents’ house, slammed the door, shaking the entire, bulky structure, and went to his own apartment.
Then he went back for his car and drove it to the apartment. He turned off the phone bell and in spite of his lengthy walk to retrieve his car, he had one hell of a time trying to calm down and sleep that night.
Now, how and why was it that everyone in the sprawled-out city of the diversified San Antonio learned what that Fuller family conversation had been? Guess.
Even the whisperings and giggles and guffaws at the office were to be endured. In just a couple of days, look at the turnaround of the whole layout of his life...from compassion to hilarity.
Tyler was sober, businesslike and he ignored the snorts of laughter. The only one who showed any sympathy, at all, was his office mate, Jamie.
Jamie said, “Sometime, when you can handle it, I’ll tell you what happened to me. But from my own experience, I can give you this—you’ll live. Ignore the pack. They have little sunlight in their lives. You’ve given them this magic moment.” Jamie never looked up from his computer. His voice was moderate. He did not laugh.
Oddly, the joke on Tyler eased all the firm people’s acquired facade. What had happened to Tyler was worse than most of what had happened to them. Such a public put-down as he’d had made Tyler vulnerable. And they all understood vulnerability.
But it made his boss, Barbara Nelson, eager to soothe Tyler.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He complained to Jamie.
Jamie said, “She can soothe me.”
Distracted, irritated, Tyler said, “I’ll tell her.”
“Get my name right. She calls me Johnny.”
So Tyler explained her mistake. “People in control of many others have some difficulty with names.”
“She sure as hell knows yours.”
“I’m divorced, so I’m not a wet-nosed kid. She expects me to know the ropes?”
Jamie smiled. He licked his lips and put his lower lip under his teeth but he didn’t reply or embellish anything.
He made Tyler laugh.
What a time it was. His longing for Kayla. His adjustment at the office. The adjustment of the coworkers to him. Their now knowing who he was because of all the problems he was having. And it was all because of one woman. Kayla. Kayla Davie who chose to discard Tyler’s name.
That Kayla Davie Fuller was due a set down. Any woman her age ought to be more pliant than she was. She acted as if she had all her life to find a good man. One better than Tyler.
What man was better than he?
Two
Especially in big cities, there are little sections or groups of people who are isolated by their jobs or interests or kinship. Each segment believes they are The City. They’re the important ones. It’s mental territory.
It is solely for them that the city puts on the park festivals, the food tastings, the bands playing and the marching parades. It is all done only for their segment’s own entertainment.
The other people who are there are just phantom people.
The actual citizens who live among friends hardly ever even see the phantoms who are busily involved in their own lives and their own groups. Well, they don’t see them unless some hungry eyes are looking for someone of the opposite sex. Then they see everybody!
But mostly a group sees only those in their own group, and they ignore the many others who are all unseen shadows. The phantom ones drive cars and walk streets and go to grocery stores and to their cleaners.
The phantoms are like elevator background music. They are there to fill in the edges of lives so that no one believes he’s alone. The phantoms are busy with things to be done.
So are those busy people who think they are so special that the world is really just theirs. To those who believe they are the ones in control, the world is for them. Simple. That is true. But all the segments of people think that way. It is their own group that is the important, vibrant, needed one.
For those isolated, self-contained groups, the strangers’ houses might just as well be empty. The unknowns’ offices are blank. The other people in the restaurants don’t county. Not unless you’re looking and then those strange ones are real but unknown others.
Few people think about all those unknown others who live in the city and move about. They don’t really matter unless they get into some kind of trouble. Then everybody helps. Helping isn’t thought out, it is reaction.
Such thinking was just so, for those who were involved with Tyler and Kayla.
Their friends and kinfolk talked to each other about the divorced pair. At a remote family wake, one cousin of Tyler’s mother said of the divorced pair, “I do declare I’ve never seen any couple so hostile to each other. Even Cousin Douthet didn’t carry on this badly. I’ve no patience with the two of them.”
“Hush! Tyler is right over there, and he can hear you!”
The cousin pinched her mouth as she lifted her eyebrows and looked down without moving her head. “Listening to me just might do him some good.”
And at her side, a male voice inquired softly, “What would you say to him?”
It was Tyler himself who spoke. So his mother’s Cousin Maren replied, “You ought to’ve been talking to that child, all along. She’s a Davie, and you let her get away
