Free Seattle Girl by Lucy Kevin Page A

Thankfully, Bill beat me to it, asking, “So, how’s the show going?”
    Well, if that wasn’t the perfect icebreaker, I don’t know what was. “Great!” I said, feeling a full-on gush on its way. “Really amazing, actually!”
    Bill nodded, his smile as cute as ever. “I’ve listened a few times.” He stopped and flushed a little. “Okay, I’ve listened to most of your shows and-”
    “Wait a minute,” I said, holding up my drink midway to my lips. “You actually wake up early to listen to my show?”
    Sheepishly, he nodded.
    “I swear to god, Bill, I love you right now,” I said, utterly pleased, inside and out, that someone actually made it a point to listen to me on a daily basis.
    The flush spread down his neck into the collar of his t-shirt and I realized I had just thoroughly embarrassed him.
    He swallowed hard. “I was just going to say that I think people are really responding to you. On the air, I mean.”
    I quirked my head slightly at his odd “on the air” addendum. “I was really nervous at first about the show,” I admitted.
    “You were?”
    “Oh my god, yes. I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say for like three weeks!”
    He shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Right from your first show you seemed really in control.”
    “Thanks,” I said, feeling my head get bigger and bigger, but not wanting it to ever stop growing. “I finally feel like I’m starting to get a handle on the whole talk radio thing. I’ve even figured out some important stuff already.”
    Bill slipped off his sunglasses and stared intently at me. “Like what?” he said, and I could tell he was really interested.
    I jumped onto my soap-box. “Well, if I’m really wound up about something, like how unreasonable my parents are-”
    He laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been getting that this week.”
    “—or how men and women just can’t seem to relate, at all-”
    “War of the sexes. Another excellent topic.”
    “-or how I was almost killed crossing the street by a psycho bicyclist—“
    “Righteous indignation always gets people going.”
    “-I can usually get my listeners wound up about it too.” Bill nodded in agreement and I continued. “But if I’m trying to discuss a topic because I think it’s something I should be talking about, like world peace-”
    “So boring.”
    “-or politics-”
    This time Bill finished my sentence for me. “You’d bomb every time, right?”
    I grinned, incredibly pleased that Bill so perfectly got what I was saying. “Exactly.”
    “But you know what the very best thing is?” I said.
    “Tell me.”
    “Every morning when I lean into the microphone to lay down another diatribe on the world as I see it, more and more daring people are lighting up the phones. It’s awesome.”
    “And it doesn’t matter if they agree with you, does it?”
    “Not at all. Even if they’re calling to tell me that I’m a moron, at least I know that they cared enough to call and talk to me.”
    “The best feeling in the world,” Bill echoed.
    For a moment we both sat back in our chairs, sipping our drinks, finally comfortable in our silence together. Feeling like I could share anything with Bill, I confessed, “To be honest, I feel more solidarity with other people on these mornings in the studio than I ever have at any other point in my life. Even when callers say I’m a know-nothing bitch, I still feel good. And I finally have proof that there are a big bunch of cantankerous, opinionated folks out there. Just like me. That maybe I’m not such an oddball after all.”
    “You’re not an oddball,” Bill said.
    “You know what I mean.”
    He nodded, looking incredibly serious, more serious than I’d seen him look before. “I know what you mean. Georgia.”
    And the nicest part of all was that I felt like he really did.

    * * *

    My enthusiasm for my show was genuine, but that’s not to say it was easy in the beginning. My guess is I was talking to approximately