My Only Talent Ch. 18

Alley's parents were interesting. They met in law school at SMU, and Alley's mom was a conventional and very successful real estate attorney, specializing in contracts for large and complicated multi-property deals. Jerrold, Alley's dad, was trained as a personal bankruptcy lawyer, but he didn't practice law. His parents had run a pawn shop in a seedy part of Dallas, but made their home in Highland Park, perhaps in the least expensive house in the zip code, so that their kids would go to the good schools there. Jerrold had grown up working in the pawn shop, and had a considerable education in scams, fraud, credit problems, and general personal financial mismanagement before he had ever entered law school. He had taken over his running parent's shop just as the Texas legislature was authorizing more pawn shops, and he had used all his SMU connections to get more than his share of the new licenses, and now owned the biggest collection of pawn shops that was not part of a national chain, with stores all over Texas. He was very objective in his approach to the business, doing what worked because it worked. He discovered that his customers, the 25% percent or so of the population who did not want or could not get a bank account or credit card, responded well to ostentatious displays of wealth. The bigger the Rolex or Patek Philippe and diamond ring that the store manager wore, the more the customers respected them and felt secure in dealing with them, and the more money Jerrold made. The store managers and their customers also respected Jerrold for displaying even more wealth than they did, so he drove around to his stores in a red Ferrari or pearl white Bentley, with big and showy reserved parking spaces for them in front of every store, and displayed all the other trappings of wealth he could find.

The latest downturn in the economy was very good for Jerrold's business, even though Texas was far better off than most states, and he was making more money than ever the last few years, in fact, he was hard pressed to spend or invest it all. He also dearly loved to get a bargain when someone else had financially overextended themselves. So when that Cowboy's player had to sell one of the most overbuilt, pretentious, and showy houses in North Dallas at a fire sale price, Jerrold was all over it. Since he bought it, he had monthly parties for his store managers and employees there, giving out lavish sales prizes and making presentations of profit sharing checks with ceremonies that rivaled the academy awards. All his employees loved working for him, and strove mightily to outdo each other and get good results, promotions, and more bonuses and awards.

.....

Sarah was not expecting toll roads, and she did not have a toll tag on her car. But she had to follow, or else lose them. She had already looked up Robbie's home address, but they could be going lots of other places first. It would mean her dad would get a bill from the toll road authority in the mail, probably with a picture of her driving maniacally, but she had told them she was going to Dallas, so it should be okay. She moved up a little closer so she would be sure to see what exit they took.

.....

Alley took the Preston Road exit and turned east on the Farm to Market road, turning away from her house, and negotiated the last few blocks towards my driveway. "I'm letting y'all out first," she said, "but my Mom demands that you two come by to visit. We are having our open house tomorrow night, and I think your folks are coming, Robbie, so y'all come too." Nora immediately accepted on our behalf. I supposed it was unavoidable. We pulled up into our long driveway, and I quickly unloaded our stuff just as my Mom appeared through the garage door. She actually hugged Alley first, as she was old friends with her mom, and then hugged Nora next, but then I got an embarrassing kiss. I was wondering how my parents would react to Nora, before and after we talked about her 'talent' or ability to resist my talent, or whatever the proper term was for it. After a few minutes of talk, and some impromptu planning for getting together tomorrow, Alley headed for her place.

Grandma and Granddad met us in the mudroom, along with the dogs. Our oldest and wisest female, Eldee, who didn't really like anybody much except occasionally Grandma, went crazy over Nora. When Nora sat next to Grandma on the family room couch, Eldee immediately put her chin right on Nora's feet and went to sleep. That was absolutely unprecedented. Normally she stays 'bewaken': on watchful alert when there is anybody new to her within a quarter of a mile. The talk soon turned to cooking, and I took the opportunity to carry my stuff up to my room and Nora's to my older sister's room, which was functioning as Nora's room for this trip. The other three dogs followed me up the stairs, but Eldee stayed glued to Nora. I looked out at Grandma's big new garden and the big pond that was east of our new house. There was a dirt road that ran just past the pond, and I saw a car on it, which was unusual. The dogs noticed it too, and gave a quick bark, and then streamed down the stairs and out their jumbo sized doggie door.

.....

When Sarah looked up Robbie's address before the trip, there were two, the newer one had sounded like a standard subdivision, and that was what she had expected. But it turned out to be a road with only one house on it, and it must have been built on ten acres or more, plus a lake next to it. She quickly turned around in the road, which was really Robbie's driveway, before she got too close to the house, and made a wide circle around the place. She found a dirt road east of the lake, and tried to go all the way around the compass, looking for a good observation point. The house had a privacy fence and gardens and dense plantings all around that made seeing into it almost impossible, even with the nice binoculars she brought with her. As she reached the south edge of the road, and turned back toward the west, three big black dogs loped out of the back of the house and started towards her. They couldn't have spotted her! But they stayed parallel to her path around the house, just inside the fence, not barking, but she felt their eyes on her. This was going to be harder than she thought, but Robbie was worth any price!

.....

By the time I got back down the family room, there was already a girl's only grocery and produce shopping trip planned for early tomorrow morning and my dad had arrived. He greeted me warmly, and took the same kind of liking to Nora that Eldee had, also virtually unprecedented, and then took me aside to ask if I had seen the strange car circling the house. Grandma and I took Nora out to the garden, to give her a tour and to gather what was available for supper tonight. It was the very end of the line for the fall outdoor crops, but the greenhouse cheated the seasons pretty well. There were bush beans and squash enough for tonight, plus lettuce, tomatoes, onions and peppers from the greenhouse. My Dad fired up the grill, having already defrosted some venison steaks in anticipation of our arrival, and soon we were sitting down to simple but very nice meal. Afterwards, Grandma and my mom took Nora back into the family room for the inevitable photo album game of 'look at Robbie when he was little' while my Dad and I cleaned up and put the dishes in the dishwasher. This was an old family custom that allowed both groups to talk privately.

"So, Robbie, I saw your midterm grade report, and it looks like you are on plan for the class work part of things. How is the dating game going?" I was surprised he hadn't just gone for the Nora issue right away. I told him about my early Suzie signal experiences with Janet, the frat mixers, Suzanne, and Lara, and then my bad experience with Melanie. He seemed surprised about me being able to detect Melanie's melt down, saying it took him until he was in his mid twenties to learn to detect that, or that maybe he just didn't encounter anybody as unbalanced as Melanie until then. I told him about Suzanne being the first 'dream girl' that also sent Suzie for me, and my tennis game with Lara, and understanding what Lara had really wanted and needed, and being able to give it to her, and how the relationship with Lara and Suzanne had evolved.

He whistled. "That can be very touchy stuff, son. I played with that kind of fire a few times when I was younger, and I almost always got my fingers burned, among other things! So tell me about Nora."

I went through my meeting Nora in the dorm, and seeing how classy she was, but detecting no Suzie from her and being disappointed, then hearing the 'little bubbles', and how easy she was to talk to, and how smart, ...

"Good grief, son. Do you realize how bad you have it for her?"

I told him about Suzanne, and our discussion of wanting Nora to be with both of us, and he looked alarmed. But when I told him about Nora telling me she knew I was a 'talent' and how she could suppress her signals, his face turned a strange shade of grey. "Holy Shit, Robbie, what are the odds? Did you say she was from England?"

He went on to explain that we had distant relatives from England, and some of the males had 'the talent' but only a little bit, but others supposedly had a lot. Most of the 'American' branch of the family had just the low level ability, until My Granddad and then my Dad came along, both with a much stronger 'gift' than anyone before. Then he really shocked me, by telling me that my cousins from Boston, who were supposed to arrive Friday, had all three made it to age eighteen now and showed no hint of any ability at all, even though their father, my uncle, had a little bit of it. My uncle had never told his wife, and he had decided not to tell the boys anything about an ability they were never going to have, and my Dad warned me not to talk to them about it either during their visit. I told him about meeting Cactus Jake, and what he had said about Nora.

He made a snort. "I have been involved in planning two campaigns that Warner was bankrolling. He does have amazing insight into politicians, but I didn't know that his talents extended to handicapping women."

I told him about my increasing sensitivity in the last few weeks, and about being able to send 'pings' and 'blasts' and reading images on carriers and accessing a woman's 'flight data recorder' and what it revealed to me. He asked me a lot of questions about where the signals were in relation to the ones he knew, and how the images appeared to me. He said he had never heard of anyone being able to do these things, but had heard stories from my great grandmother about some different abilities that some of the distant male relatives from England supposedly had. His first major concern was how closely Nora and I might be related.

By then the three women were calling to us to join them in the family room, where apparently the photo album ritual had just about played out. When we came back in to join them, my mom took one look at my dad's face and knew immediately that something was up. Eldee was still lying at Nora's feet, happy as a clam, in fact the last time I had seen her be this calm and contented was when she was nursing her final litter and she had a pup at every teat. The other dogs, however, were very nervous, and kept going in and out of the doggy door, as if at least one of the three was always on duty outside.

My Mom rose, taking my Dad by the hand. "Help me make doubly sure that the guest room is ready, dear! Y'all just relax with Grandma for a little while and we'll be right back."

With that they trooped up the stairs, and I knew my mother would quickly get everything that I had told him out of my Dad. She was nothing if not persistent. Nora and Grandma discussed the division of labor for cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and Nora slowly drew her out about the things she wasn't planning to do this year because of her physical limitations brought on by age. Nora was remarkably patient and insightful, and eventually had my grandmother promising to let Nora do them all, under the guise of teaching her the recipes. Nora had never made cornbread dressing, for example, and she sure didn't know how to make any of the various kinds of tamales that we traditionally had for supper on the night before Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve. All of this resulted in expanding the shopping list for tomorrow morning's excursion, and adding a few stops for the additional items.

My parents returned from upstairs, and I was afraid my Mom would organize a card came or something. My stomach was already growling, since I had burned a lot of energy reading Nora's Suzie history in the car, and there had been no dessert after dinner tonight. I began plotting some way to get out for some ice cream, but Nora solved my problem for me.

"Robbie, would you take me to a film tonight? I am too wired to get any sleep yet, and because of my course load in school, I haven't been to one since early September." She already had one picked out on her phone, and my Dad volunteered the keys to his nondescript 'airport car', that spent most of its time in long term parking, and we were on our way. Nora immediately texted Alley and invited her along! WTF?

Nora put her phone away and said "I want to have a talk before we pick up Alley!"

"Is this the part where you ask me whether I wanted Alley to come along or not, or did we skip that part?"

.....

Sarah had found a spot to park where she thought she could watch the comings and goings at Robbie's house, but she couldn't stay here all night, because some passing cop would get very suspicious of any car parked out here instead of at a house.

.....

"It only takes about three minutes to get to Alley's house, Nora, so talk fast!" I was pissed off, but not exactly sure why.

"Is this our first fight, Robbie?" Nora said in her best upper class British biting tone.

"No. Our first fight would have been when you dressed me down for 'taking advantage of' Suzanne and you were off base then, too!"

"Aren't we stroppy tonight? Why do you treat Alley so poorly?

"She chased me incessantly all through high school, but I could tell she really didn't like me, if you know what I mean."

"Not like Suzie liked you, you mean?"

"Yes. Plus she was always so pushy and had to have her way and have the last word every time! If her Mom and mine weren't friends, I would have told her off long ago."

"So you suffer in silence and then vent your spleen on me, is that it? And she hasn't been pushy so far. She has been very nice to me!"

"She does seem to have gotten a little nicer, I'll admit that. You two seem like best buddies already."

"I like her, and I'm guessing she has lots of acquaintances but few friends. Can we agree to treat her based on how she acts now, not how she acted in your prep school?"

By this time we were at Alley's house, and she got in the back seat. "Thank goodness! My mom was about to drive me insane already! I'll go to any movie just to get out of the house!"

.....

Sarah was using her smart phone to try to find a motel room nearby when a pair of moving headlights caught her attention, and dark sedan pulled out of the driveway and headed west toward Preston Road. She followed. They turned north on Preston, and soon pulled up to a house at least twice as big and three times as ostentatious as Robbie's, but on a much smaller lot. That same Alley girl that had driven them up from Austin came out of the house and got into their car. As it pulled back out onto Preston, she caught a glimpse of Robbie driving. Her heart leapt into her throat. Why was her Robbie with those other women instead of her?

She followed them west and south to a giant and brand new looking mall that seemed as big as the entire ESU campus. There was a sixteen screen cinema complex on one end, and that's where Robbie drove. She stayed with them as they parked and went into the theatre entrance, but she took so long parking and did not see which individual screen they went into. She also did not notice that Robbie led the two girls, over protests that they might be late for the start of the film, to an ice cream place inside the mall where he bought a large dish and began to wolf it down. Scanning the show times, she saw three likely movies, and checked all three, not spotting them, and then her cover was almost blown as she just about walked right into Robbie when he put his ice cream dish in a trash can as both of the other girls urged him to hurry up. Luckily, Sarah had on her blonde wig and big white plastic glasses, also suggested by the article she had read. They went into SkyFall, and Sarah took a seat many rows behind them. Robbie sat in the middle with the two interloper girls on either side of him.

.....

Robbie thought he sensed a strange Suzie signal just before he went into the movie, and it made his hair stand on end. It was not as disturbing as Melanie's meltdown, but it was in that direction and yet it somehow seemed familiar. Maybe it was just being around Alley and Nora plus an insulin reaction to the big dish of ice cream he had just polished off? His hunger pangs were happily almost gone. The girls tugged him into the movie, and suddenly they were all lost in the world of James Bond. Robbie knew he would like to get lost in the arms of Nora Upman.

.....

Ronnie Roberts chuckled to himself as he thought about his son's return home. Robbie had never done anything by half measures, and his college education was apparently no exception. Ronnie used to be worried that the boy would be born retarded and talentless, but he spoke early, leaned to read early, and when he did start school, immediately got moved up several grades. He seemed to physically mature a little more slowly that most, like most Roberts males did, but when his voice finally began to crack at age 14 he almost immediately began to ask why Suzie Packard made him feel funny, like she was staring at him behind his back. When he went off to ESU, Ronnie was hoping that his boy would just manage to connect with a few woman and get laid his first semester, but it sounded like he already had enjoyed a lot more and better action than Ronnie himself got in four years of learning to use his talent at the University.

He sure brought home a rattler with that Nora, too. Classy, gorgeous, smart, well spoken, and also some sort of anti-talent? How could Robbie just be friends with someone like that? He was right about her signals, though; they were strangely attenuated, almost like they were being strangled. And he had never, ever seen that suspicious old war hound Eldee take to someone like that, but the tough old bitch was now defending Nora like she had her last litter of puppies, and seemed just as content about it too. The other dogs were acting strange also, and Ronnie had learned to pay attention when any of them did that, much less all four of them. As soon as Robbie and Nora left, the other three dogs stopped running in and out of the doggie door and checking the yard every two minutes, and came in, drank some water, and settled down and went to sleep. Eldee, on the other hand, began going out of the door in their stead. Ronnie watched her, and she went out the driveway and sniffed the air toward the road, perhaps wondering how long until Nora got back? It made him nervous.

.....

Sarah figured her targets would be in the movie for a while, so she found a spot in the food court from which she could watch the movie exits and had some supper. She didn't want to overdo it: she had to keep her figure nice for the wedding. She used Orbitz to find a hotel room in nearby Frisco, Texas, and made a reservation: she was getting a little tired. She used the restroom and then went back to her car, from which she could watch Robbie's car. She just had to make sure not to fall asleep.