Jack O'Connell - Wireless

“Shut up for a second and let me finish. I understand. Flynn’s the center cog. Flynn’s the one you need to keep it going. He does all the favors. He wipes all the noses and gives all the pep talks. He’s the voice of reason. I can see it. He’s slick. I like the guy. A lot.”

She pauses for Gabe to say something. He seems to think for a second, to weigh something. Then he says, “You d-don’t know how it is. W-Wireless is deeper than you think, all right? It’s like, not everyone is at the sa-same level. There are different, I don’t know, sa-sa-circles. Different groups. Things are ch-changing. We’ve g-got … W-w-we …”

He seems to be having some problem choosing his words. “We’ve got d-d-different people supplying different info to different groups. There’s a lot of fighting right now, okay? There are these hackers who aren’t exactly inside yet. They keep spreading rumors. And no one knows for sure, but everyone feels like something b-big is coming at us.”

“The problem is,” Ronnie says, speaking slowly, “I don’t like you assuming I’m the enemy. For people so concerned with image, you’re pretty careless how you look at others—”

“Nobody na-knows I ca-called you. I da-did it myself. They’d be ba-ba-bullshit.”

“I don’t like you assuming I’m some sleazy errand boy who’d rat out you people for the employer. I don’t like you assuming I’d play up to Flynn just to find out his secrets and turn him in. I think it sucks. You don’t like the accusations coming your way, but you’ve got no problem asking me down here to call me a liar and a phony and an informer—”

“N-n-no. No wa-way. That wa-wasn’t—”

“You piss me off, you know that?”

“La-la-look, I da-didn’t ma-mean—”

“You’re over your goddamn head, junior. I’m the last person in the world you should get angry.”

“Pa-pa-please,” he says, and he sounds sufficiently contrite, so Ronnie stops and breathes and looks him up and down.

After an awkward minute, Gabe says, “I da-didn’t know what to do. Everybody’s so ta-tense. I didn’t want Fa-Fa-Fa …” and he trails off.

“Yes,” she prods.

Gabe shrugs. “I don’t want to la-lose Flynn,” he says, and turns back to the magazines.

Ronnie stares at him a second longer, then turns to the bin in front of her and slowly starts to flip through the old pulps.

“How old are you, Gabe?” she asks.

“Fa-Fa-Fifteen,” he says without looking up.

There’s a few seconds of silence, then Ronnie says, “I’m not some cop for QSG, I swear to you.”

Gabe nods and says, “And Fa-Flynn isn’t the one hitting the st-station.”

Ronnie raises her eyebrows and suddenly, without thinking, gives Gabe a playful punch on the arm.

“The thing is,” she says, “we both have to take it on faith.”

The Anarchy Museum was the brainchild of a Canal Zone artist and radio freak known only as Throttle who has since disappeared. It’s housed in what once passed for a workers’ lunch room on the second floor of Wireless. It’s in the rear of the building, partitioned from a storeroom loaded with liquor cases and broken radio housings that Ferrie can’t bear to part with. The Anarchy Museum was completely underwritten by G.T. Flynn.

The permanent exhibit is a half-finished mishmash. No one knows what Throttle’s final plan for the museum was and so it’s left in this half-completed state, waiting for his unlikely return. The room is filled with what the creator termed evidence of disorder, turmoil, lawlessness, and general chaos. The brick walls are hung with caricatures of terrorists, of both the political and the artistic kind. There are display cases filled with broken china soup tureens that contain the black ashes of the King James Bible, the compact edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, Robert’s Rules of Order, Black’s Law Dictionary, Hoyle’s Rules of Games , and A Layman’s Guide to F.C.C. Regulation, by Brink Johnson.

And there’s an enormous, spinnable Wheel of Chance mounted on a sidewall, a big wooden roulette-style wheel that makes that nervous ticking sound whenever anyone gives it a spin. Flynn paid a carnival barker a ridiculous sum of money for the thing, then scratched the roof of the Saab transporting it to the club.

These days, the jammers are the only ones who go into the museum. They’ve claimed it as an unofficial clubhouse. Lately the room has seen nothing but loud and spiteful feuding. Flynn thinks he can change that this morning. He’s whistling as he walks into the Anarchy Museum, carrying two dozen fresh Danish from the best bakery in town. He realizes he should bring a more sober tone to these proceedings, act semidour and contemplative. But he feels like he’s ten years younger and six inches taller. He’s wearing his favorite gray-pin double-breasted suit and the new Bally loafers. He spent the morning at the barber’s, then stopped by the florist on his way to the meeting. He had a dozen roses sent to Ronnie with a card that read: To Lulu, With Love, Sir Syd .

He thinks it’s possible his upbeat attitude could be helpful, that his general demeanor could be more harmonizing than any speech he could make. Isn’t it always best to lead by example? He could just let them all take in his mood, drink it up. He could get a firm arm around Wallace’s shoulder, another around Hazel’s, bear-hug them into understanding, walk them a full, bouncing circle around the museum like some choreographed trio from a forties movie— For Christ’s sake, people, look how sweet life can be. Twenty-four hours back, I’m busting my hump like everyone else, kissing surly ass and hawking policies no one wants to buy. And then, bang — the voice of my dreams takes me waltzing in the fog at the top of the city …

No, he can’t get too specific about things. He can’t actually tell about Ronnie. Not yet. The general mood is enough. It’s simple. Just let them know that joy is still possible in this life.

But now, looking at their faces, divided into two distinct sections on opposite sides of the room, he’s almost deflated. He picks out Wallace Browning’s face and their eyes meet. Wallace looks like a mess, his face gone a papery shade of gray, his eyes narrowed to veiny slits. But in classic Wallace fashion, he doesn’t want Olga’s accident discussed in public. So Flynn will abide by his wishes and not say a word in front of the others.

Flynn’s eyes appraise the rest of the sullen crowd. He wants to walk back outside, yell over his shoulder, I’m part of something else now . They’re both pathetic, he thinks. Both camps. Wallace and the old boys, chauvinists, know-it-alls, segregationists. And Hazel and her New Wave brats, cold, more and more humorless, superior in their imagined decadence. Does this always have to happen when a movement grows? When a family gets larger?

The museum is filled with smoke, cigars from Wallace and company, imported Gitanes, and maybe a joint or two from the kids. Ferrie and Most wouldn’t appreciate this. But Flynn won’t mention it. Why start things off more negative than they already are? In a sense, this is just another sales call, and the emphasis has to be upbeat. He has to keep his voice full of possibility and enjoyment. Unfortunately, Flynn’s coming down with the salesman’s worst enemy. He’s losing faith in his product. And he’s losing his ability to hide that fact.

There’s only one fallback when this happens: let the words take over. Just keep talking until something comes to you. Let your subconscious steer you toward a current you can’t yet see.

So Flynn brings his hands together in an air-snapping crack that’s made louder by the acoustics of the old factory and jolts both groups from their muttering daydreams.