Jack O'Connell - Wireless

“What,” Billy says, “this is funny to you?”

“First of all,” Wallace says in a lowered voice, “this is not the time nor the place and you should know that by now. More importantly, and once again, you speak without thinking. You open your mouth and dump everything out, without bothering to think. I don’t know why I make an effort with you—”

Billy is stunned and his face shows it. “I don’t get it,” he says. “This doesn’t bother you? This news doesn’t upset you?”

He cups Billy around the back of the neck. “I pray that someday before I die, just once, you’ll learn to look for a bigger picture. You think that’ll ever happen?”

“I just don’t get it.”

“Think now, Billy. What are we at heart? You and I?”

Billy’s terrified of a wrong answer and his fear makes it difficult to concentrate. He decides he has to go with the obvious and says, “Dwarfs.”

Wallace gives him a sharp, open-palmed slap to the cheek, so fast he hopes that even if any of the guests witnessed it, they’ll spend the night questioning their vision.

“You infuriate me, you little bastard.”

Billy cowers, hangs his head, wishes the band would start playing.

“We’re anarchists, you schmuck. Remember that word, Billy? Did you read even one of the books I bought for you?”

Billy prays he’s not required to answer.

“Anarchists don’t wear uniforms, Billy. Anarchists can’t worry about splinter groups. We are a splinter group, for Christ sake. We’re antiunity, we’re antiregulatory. We’re goddamn anarchists.”

“Listen,” Billy says, avoiding eye contact. “There are more strangers down Wireless every week. Everybody’s getting nervous. Nobody knows who could be what, okay? The Spy says the FCC’s all pissed off. You think we need a bunch of people all hot to blow things up? You think we need them out there bringing heat down on us?”

“Now, you lower your voice right now, mister. There’re a lot of friends here who would not think too much of our little hobby. Now, I will deal with Hazel and her people. That’s not your problem. I will square Hazel and company away. But I want you to burn this into your memory, Billy: don’t you ever, ever, never again, approach me at an affair like this to discuss anything to do with jamming. Do you understand me, Billy?”

Olga’s concerned. She’s half-turned in her chair, head-motioning for Wallace to return. But surprisingly, Billy’s a little stubborn. He says, “I just think we got some problems starting up here.”

Wallace leans in toward him and says, “Son, you wouldn’t know a problem if it pulled out a sword and sliced off your ear.”

Flynn heads for the rear of Wireless, beyond the pool tables. He realizes the best course of action is a logical one, something planned and systematic — divide the room into geometric blocks and eliminate them one by one, a steady pace, a thorough search. All he’d have to hear would be hello; even get lost could confirm or deny. His ears could play polygraph. He’d know the truth the second the sound penetrated down the canal, impacted on the drum, one syllable, even in the midst of this bar din, the brain could tell him— Veronica .

But, as always, his body won’t cooperate. It insists on being erratic, patternless. His eyes spot possible women by their likely age, but they won’t stay focused on the subject long enough for his intuition to react one way or another. He ends up randomly moving in big sweeping circles, only occasionally singling someone out, pumping them for a response, a word, a way to know. He hears Fuck off, Hello again, Flynn, Excuse me , and I’m with someone . He starts coming up from behind, placing his hand on shoulders and the backs of necks. Mostly, he gets glares or confused looks. He turns down a single offer to dance.

He’s about to head back to the bar, grill Most for any piece of information — eye color, length of hair, height — but he’s stopped by the voice as he passes his antique barber chair against the wall.

She says, “You look lost.”

What he’s hit with is something very close to fear. He looks down to his feet for a second, suddenly not sure he wants to know what she looks like. The classic pilgrim, willing to search for years, but terrified to end the pilgrimage.

Like leaping into ice water, he makes himself do it without thinking. He brings his head up, stares directly at her face. It’s hard to say that she’s just what he’s imagined, since he’s imagined a wide variety of possibilities. But she is beautiful. That part of the projection isn’t compromised at all. Her hair is shorter than he’d expected, darker. She’s a bit smallerboned than her voice indicates, but not delicate. Her eyes are deep blue — he’d pictured them brown or green. Her skin is as pale as he’d thought. He’s always imagined her inside, artificially lit, and though he’s never thought about this before, he knows now, in this instant, this is because he often hears the voice late at night, at home, enclosed himself, wrapped up under a blanket in the dentist’s chair.

He widens his angle, takes in the full body, wonders if there’s any significance to the fact that she’s in his barber chair, tilted back, almost the same angle he falls into when listening to her show. He likes the way she’s dressed, the short black suede skirt and the white silk blouse. It’s a style he’s pictured, sensual and hip and completely fitting.

“Some nights,” he says, “you just can’t get on track.”

She reaches over, pats the seat of an empty chair next to her. The pilgrim’s chair. He hesitates, then climbs in, lets his hand fall down to touch the tilt lever, but refrains from pulling, stays upright.

“So,” she says, “know where I can get a secure annuity? Maybe some exceptional life with a reducing premium? I’m a nonsmoker.”

It works. He’s caught off guard and he lets his face show it. He recovers with a forced laugh and says, “I’m at a disadvantage here—”

She cuts him off. “C’mon, G.T. I thought we’d save some time by not lying to each other. This place closes in less than an hour.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, well, the inner core can stay as long as they want.”

“The inner core? Is that what you are?”

“One of many. Can I ask how you know me?”

“I don’t want to get too specific. I’ve got a lot of fans, you know? Lot of teenage boys, little hackers, up all night in their bedrooms, just my voice and the light from their P.C.’s. It’s weird. It gets so there’s this language, this verbal shorthand between you and your hard-core listeners. You just refer to something, ask a question, and bang — they’re calling the station with more than you want to know.”

“You asked about me? On the air? I’m a pretty constant listener, you know—”

“Oh, I can imagine.”

“And I never heard any mention—”

“I’ve got an inner core, too. Lots of ways to communicate in this town.”

“You know, Ronnie, you wanted to buy life insurance, all you had to do was look in the yellow pages.”

“And if I want to find out who’s been knocking my station off the air? What directory do I look in then?”

He flinches, genuinely surprised by the comment. “That’s how I came up? You think I’ve been jamming QSG? Some kid gave you my name as the jammer?”

“So, this would be a denial?”

“Who told you this? Who gave you my name?”

“Oh, c’mon, please, Mr. Flynn—”

He lets his head fall back in the chair till he’s looking at the tin-plated ceiling. He lets out a low whistle, shakes his head slightly.