Aye. That’s richt. It’s a kilt day.
Catriona had been trying for weeks to crack his pattern of kilt-wearing days vs. pants-wearing days, but truth be told, even he didn’t know what inspired him to don the kilt in which he’d arrived in the twenty-first century. Maybe he felt a little extra homesick on the days he wore the kilt. Who could blame him? He’d moved five thousand miles and nearly three centuries from ancient Scotland to modern day Los Angeles. He’d traveled from cool, green countryside to cold metal, hot sand and burning pavement. He liked the sun well enough in small doses. The palm trees were pretty, and of course he loved Catriona—but he deserved to be a little sentimental for his homeland once in a while.
On wistful days he wore the kilt. Then there were the days he wore the kilt for no other reason but to send Catriona into a tailspin wondering why he’d worn the kilt.
This was one of those days.
It made him chuckle thinking about her eyes widening at the sight of him, her lips pressing into that adorable little sandwich of frustration...
She made a mistake letting me ken she wis trying tae figure mah pattern.
But as eager as he was to saunter by Catriona, at the moment, he couldn’t take his attention from the television show being filmed below him. He watched the four women gabbing from their flower-print sofa perches, white lights trained on them from the scaffolding above. He could hear their voices over the speakers in the room. The path leading to them, down wide stairs, was lined with people sitting in plastic chairs.
The clappers.
No, Catriona called them something else—
The studio audience.
Broch recognized the women below him from the television in his apartment. It fascinated him to see them in real life, full-sized and truly alive. While he’d come to understand the concept of television, it still felt a little like magic to him. Even Catriona had been unable to explain to him how the picture-box worked exactly. Something about images beaming through space—
“Who else has a love problem they’d like to share with us?” asked a tiny Asian woman from her corner of the sofa.
Niko. Broch remembered her name.
A woman from the audience stood and worked her way through the crowd to the stairs as the others clapped and hooted. She approached a standing microphone not far from the stage and tucked an errant hair behind her ear.
“My husband won’t stop leaving his bath towels on the ground.”
In unison, a grumble rose from the crowd and Broch watched the largely female audience nod their heads as if they, too, suffered the same towel-dropping husband.
Broch scratched his chin, trying to remember where he put his bath towel that morning.
Oan the hook oan the back o’ the door.
He’d assumed that’s what the hook was for. Maybe this woman’s husband didn’t know where the towel hook was?
“Dae ye hae a hook?” he asked aloud.
Heads in the audience turned to him. The woman complaining about her husband followed the stares of the others and turned to peer up at Broch.
“Oh my,” said one of the talky women in their microphone It echoed through the studio as giggling rose from the crowd.
“What’s that sir? Can you come this way a bit?” asked a heavyset black woman from her spot beside Niko. She flashed long violet-painted nails at him as she motioned for him to come forward.
Broch recognized her as TeeTee. She was his favorite. She’d made him laugh out loud in his apartment.
“Me?” he asked, placing a hand on his chest. He wore his new favorite t-shirt, white with the printed image of a shaggy brown Highland bull in the center of it. Catriona had bought it for him. He’d thought it might be lucky and here he was, singled out by TeeTee.
TeeTee motioned to him again, nodding. “Come down where we can see you better.”
Broch wandered down the stairs toward the mic. The woman standing there stepped away so he could take her place, but as he moved in, she slipped her arm around his waist.
“Is he my parting gift?” she asked.
The studio exploded with laughter.
TeeTee rolled her eyes. “No, you cannot keep that man. You go sit yourself down.”
Cackling with laughter, the woman smacked Broch on the butt before making her way back to her seat. The audience erupted with giggles a second time as Broch jerked, shocked by the feel of a hand on his posterior.
Broch hooked his mouth to the side. He’d had to take a class on sexual harassment for his job with the studio, and in the training video, when the man patted the woman’s behind, warning alarms had sounded.
“Now, you were saying, sir?” prompted TeeTee, flashing the ass-paddling woman one last disapproving glare.
Broch faced forward and cleared his throat. He glanced to his left and then his right.
It felt as if everyone was staring at him.
“Em... Whit?”
His voice boomed over the speakers and he snapped back his neck to look skyward. He leaned toward the mic again.
“Hullo?”
His voice echoed through the studio and he grinned, singing softly.
“You’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore you.
Where me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond—
Ho, ho mo leannan
Ho mo leannan bhoidheach...”
He’d expected the audience to join in during the last bit, but they only stared at him. Pulling back from the mic, he sniffed and smoothed his kilt before trying again.
“Ah’m sorry. Whit did ye want noo?”
“Tell us what you wanted to tell us,” prompted TeeTee. “When you were up there. Before you started singing.”
Broch realized
