Jack O'Connell - Wireless

She stares at him for about thirty seconds, then puts her foot back on the floor and says, “Very good. What did she want? And if you make any kind of joke — any lewd reference or comment — I’ll pick a bone in your face and break it.”

He believes her. Even with six of his best muscle-boys shooting billiards outside, he knows she’s telling the truth.

“She’s looking to immigrate. Into the Park. She wants Hyena protection. She wants a franchise.”

Hannah makes a long sigh in spite of herself. She gives Loke a single, long bow of the head.

“Is she connected to you?” Loke asks. “Is there a problem with this?”

“Did you touch her?”

“I didn’t lay a hand on her,” Loke says. “I don’t touch white women.”

Hannah stares at him, but somehow his comment defuses itself, drains her edge, and she decides it’s time to leave. She takes a step to the door, stops, and says, “Wise policy, junior. That woman’s a walking plague.”

Loke’s face gives nothing up.

“If you hear who lit up the priest,” Hannah says, “be sure and give me a call.”

Loke simply says, “Come again, Detective.”

“Believe me,” Hannah says, “I will.”

In the glass elevator, on the way up to the studio, Ronnie and Flynn neck like anxious teenagers, breathless and dizzy, mouths overly wet and heads bobbing and twitching in an imitation of panic. They’re awkward, hands colliding in midgrope, feet stutter-stepping as they reposition. And they’re both gleeful about their awkwardness, as if it was a sign of youth and unexplainable innocence.

Flynn especially finds the feeling a wonder drug, a therapy sent from God, unasked. Since their airport slow dance his body has started to believe he’s seventeen again, bone and muscle still growing, every possibility untapped. There was no loginess or heaviness when he woke in the morning, no preoccupation and instinctual prioritizing. He feels like his vision is sharper, his teeth more rooted in his gums. He feels like his lungs have been stripped of some greasy film that caused them to work at minimal efficiency.

He moves his mouth to Ronnie’s neck and sucks there and he can feel her shiver and push in against him. He entwines his legs between hers. He lets his hand fall from her breast to the waist of her skirt. His fingers hook over the edge, nab her shirt, and start to untuck it.

The elevator bell rings and she steps backward from him in a stumble and starts to straighten clothing and hair, staring at him the whole time, no words, but a lot of breathing and the wetting of her lips with her tongue. Flynn looks at her and shakes his head and says, “There’s no way I’m going to make it till two A.M.”

She tucks her shirt in slowly and says, “Maybe you won’t have to.”

They move out of the elevator and turn right toward the studio. He falls behind her and gooses her and she makes a playful, blind swat backward with her hand.

Through the huge plate glass they can see Ray in dim light, hovering behind the microphone in a cloud of cigarette smoke. The corridor speaker is shut off, but his mouth is moving. Ronnie stops for a second to watch him.

“Well, he didn’t get bumped tonight. Your pals must be vacationing.”

“Not my pals,” Flynn says, surprised by her comment.

“Look at him,” she says, “I wonder what the topic is now.”

“Isn’t it always the same?”

“It’s weird. He’s got a short menu. Strictly seventies rants. Fluoride. Interferon. The trilateral commission. Teddy Kennedy. Sun Myung Moon. It’s like his buttons jammed in ’75 and he’s never moved on. I mean, he doesn’t even slag the Japanese. Not a word about Latin America. I always figure even the other nuts must think he’s a relic.”

They move inside and Wayne waves to them from behind his board. Ronnie nods and then leads the way through a side door to a small break room. It’s a little brighter inside. There’s a green vinyl couch, a coffee table covered with trade magazines, a brown mini-refrigerator with a Mr. Coffee on top of it, and a few mismatched folding chairs.

“All the luxuries,” Ronnie says.

The walls and the ceiling are all faded white acoustic squares with hundreds of tiny pinholes. One wall is dominated by a huge cork bulletin board that’s plastered with pushpinned newspaper clippings, more than half of which have yellowed. It’s a depressing sight. Ronnie gestures to the board with her head and says, “It’s Ray’s. News for the brain-dead. I don’t know where he gets them.”

Flynn spots a headline that reads, “Soviets Using Psychic Clone Moles Deep in Pentagon.”

The other walls are filled with a few promotional posters from station advertisers and there’s a large, wood-framed photograph of a red-faced barrel-chested middle-aged man wearing a charcoal suit with shoulders so square they look like they were fitted with two-by-fours. The man has a severe look on his face, like he’s ignoring a migraine long enough to plot military strategy. He’s posed, holding a pair of bifocals out away from his body.

“That’s Federman,” Ronnie says. “The station owner.”

“Looks like a real pit bull.”

Ronnie shrugs. “Never met him in my life.”

She hands him a kelly-green coffee mug with WQSG in white block letters stamped on the side. She fills both their mugs halfway, then digs her mescal flask from her bag and fills the rest with booze.

“That’s the beauty of this stuff,” she says. “You can mix it with everything. It doesn’t corrupt. I’ve tried.”

“You’re on the air in ten,” Flynn says. “Isn’t this illegal?”

She smiles and rolls her eyes. “You want to spend four hours unmedicated, talking to the sexually dysfunctional? Show some mercy.”

Flynn sips at the mescal and Folgers, makes a face, and says, “I’m saving all the mercy for later.”

Ronnie says, “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.”

He wants her to smile, but again she doesn’t. She walks over to the mounted wall speaker and turns a knob on the bottom. The room fills with Ray’s voice.

What is it you’re trying to suggest to me, sir? What is it you want me to accept? What I’m asking, very simply, is, what is your agenda?

And if you’ll give me a minute to—

Because perhaps we can save everyone some time and aggravation. Because if what you want to poison us with — no, wait — more to the point, if what you want to poison our children with is more evolutionary clap-trap from the camp of leftist atheistic homosexual heathens, then I’m going to have to pull your plug, my friend—

I’m sorry, but not everyone who sees the scientific inconsistencies in creationism is gay or a socialist or an atheist. You want to paint everyone—

Yes, honey, we know, it’s a tough life. Are we going to have a little tantrum now?

Can we stay on the point? Can we please just stick to the topic—

Listen, darling, you have begun to bore me. Next call, Earl from the north side.

“Creationism,” Flynn says. “We’ve picked a good night.”

“Not bad,” Ronnie says. “Gun control is a good night. Nixon is a good night. The Knights of Malta is a fantastic night. He gets screaming. One time, Wayne and I had a bet about a coronary. I think that was the night he said Klaus Barbie has been misunderstood. Bad press and weak-minded historians. You should’ve read the mail that week.”

Flynn walks over to the bulletin board and starts to read clippings.

“How much of Ray is gimmick and how much is from the heart?”

Ronnie moves up next to him and he thinks he hears her sigh.

“Radio’s a weird business,” she says. “I think Ray’s like a lot of people. It starts out as gimmick. You pick a schtick you’re pretty good at. Something that comes natural. Then a lot of late nights go by and you talk to more loons than most people see in a lifetime and at some point your voice sort of takes over. The words just slide out. You don’t think about it a whole lot.”