Jack O'Connell - Wireless

[Pause. Sips coffee]

Ronnie’s in a fine mood tonight, friends. Ronnie feels like anything could be possible tonight. She’s dying to hear your voices. But before we begin, I’d like to pass on a general suggestion, a small idea that might spark the senses a little. Maybe heat things up. When the show finishes tonight and you’re still wide awake and wondering what to do, give the great outdoors a try. I’m serious now, all right? We’ve got such gorgeous weather lately. Get outside. At night. Find a secluded park. Find a wooded grove. Bring your partner and dance. Tango, maybe. Under the stars, in the moonlight. I know.

[Deep breath]

Sounds a little retro, a little kitschy. Little Doris Dayish. Sure. But trust me, ten minutes with the breeze moving in your hair and the sound of the leaves blowing past your feet … it’s different. Anything can happen. The moon goes to work on the blood, you know. Try a little slow dance out in the night. See where it leads. Call me. Let me know.

[Pause]

Now, on to our first call. Hello, Carlo, you’re with Ronnie. Relax and talk to me. My assistant tells me you’ve been having some bad dreams lately.

Flynn stares at her back and listens to the caller relay a nightmare of snapping, foaming Dobermans surrounding his naked body. It’s an awful image and the person on the phone is articulate enough to make it detailed and vivid. The voice chokes up a little once or twice, but Ronnie has a knack for calming and reassuring. She leads the caller through to the end of the nightmare and then gently starts to probe for its cause, the real reason this man has called.

And as Flynn stares at her back, the slope of her shoulders, the mild sheen of light off her hair, he starts to think that possibly a turning point has already been reached, that the days ahead may have little resemblance to the ones past. The idea of this not only excites him but fills him with a kind of distracting pulse, a wave of energy that feels like a benign, enervating tension running down his spine. It makes him feel like he has to move, do something to release pressure.

So he gets off his stool and walks up to her, puts his hands on her shoulders, and starts a slow rubdown. For a second, he flinches, wondering if he’s done something wrong that might disrupt the broadcast. But Ronnie’s a pro. She places one of her hands over one of his and never stops talking.

Flynn leans down and kisses the top of her head and takes in the smell of coconut. Then he pulls away and walks out of the booth.

Wayne looks up from the board, startled, maybe even a little frightened. Flynn tries to put him at ease with a smile and a hands-in-his-pocket shuffle.

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” he says.

Wayne shakes his head too fast. “Once enough calls are lined up, the rest is cake. Ronnie does her own carts. I just keep an eye out for problems.”

“G.T. Flynn,” Flynn says, sticking a hand out and nodding.

Wayne shakes his hand and doesn’t think to offer his own name. Instead he says, “You known Ronnie long?”

“Not too long, though I’ve been a listener from the start.”

“Ever call in?”

Flynn smiles. “No, but I probably wouldn’t tell you if I had.”

“Oh yeah,” is all Wayne can think of to say. “Right.”

The guy’s got some feelings for Ronnie, Flynn thinks. The poor bastard has to work with her every night and will never give any indication, any sign of attraction or desire. He’s probably furious that I’m here tonight .

“Ronnie was telling me …” Flynn starts, looking down at the board, appearing to study the banks of knobs and sliders and meters.

“Yeah?”

“She was saying how it usually goes during the show. How you two operate. Quite a team, huh?”

Wayne likes to hear this. He’ll remember the exact words. He says, “We’re pretty good. We work well together.”

“You can tell,” Flynn says, nodding and pulling down the corners of his mouth. “You can see the rhythm. That’s why I had to come down here tonight. I didn’t want to get in the way or anything, but I really wanted to see you two do it. After listening for so long. I’d hear her mention your name all the time. I always wondered what you two looked like.”

“Now you know.”

“Yeah. Now I know,” Flynn repeats. “Tell me, is it always so natural? I mean between the announcer and the engineer. I mean, you two seem like you could do this with your eyes closed.”

“Well, we’re pretty good. Not everyone—”

“I mean does every night go this smooth? All the calls lined up, all the ads timed right.”

“Well, we—”

“And when do you go out for the food?”

Wayne just stares at him, then finally says, “The food?”

Flynn smiles. “Yeah. Ronnie was telling me how the night goes and she was saying you know all the great takeout places. Chinese. Mexican. You can get them to hang around after closing till you pick up. She called you the King of Takeout.”

“Oh yeah? The King of Takeout?”

“Yeah. I thought that was great. So, when do you go? ’Cause I insist, no argument now — I want to treat you two tonight. This is on me.”

Wayne stares at him a little bewildered, then says, “Well, we really didn’t discuss—”

Flynn cuts him off. “Ronnie said she was dying for some Tandoori. That Indian place down San Remo Ave—”

“She wanted Indian? We’ve never gotten—”

But Flynn has already pulled a fifty from his pants pocket and is tucking it into Wayne’s hand.

“Yeah, we were driving down here tonight and she started going on about how she could go for some biryani and some Tandoori shrimp.”

He puts an arm around Wayne’s shoulder and starts to steer him toward the door.

“Usually we wait until—” Wayne begins, but Flynn talks him down, saying, “Looks like everything is under control here. All the lines are lit. You take your time, we’ll be fine. And you know, if you could find a bottle of wine, your choice, that would be great.”

Wayne stares at him, bewildered and cowed.

Flynn chucks him under the chin, gives him a small push out into the corridor, winks, and says, “I think there’s a liquor store over on Seventh that stays open till midnight.”

Hazel and Eddie do a sweep around the block, then ease the van over the curbing and drive down a gravel and weed slope into the burned-out cavern of old Gompers Station. They drive in as far as they can and Eddie jockeys the van behind the remains of the marble stairway where it can’t be seen from the street.

In its day, in the twenties and thirties, Gompers Station was Quinsigamond’s answer to Grand Central. For decades it was the second largest train station in the state, a depot for every major line that passed through New England. Survivors from that era will tell you it had style. And a deceiving sense of permanence.

When the Gompers was opened in 1911, the public was let into a holy palace of the high industrial age: From atop a heavy granite base rose a white marble basilica consecrated to the religion of fast travel. Two symmetrical baroque towers shot up two hundred feet from street level. One hundred and sixty Ionic columns trimmed the exterior walls. The main waiting room was an elliptical vault that contained eighteen thousand square feet of space, capped by a domed ceiling in gilt frames.

Sometime after World War II, the railroads began the steady decline that led to the downfall of Gompers Station. By the early seventies, the last freight company pulled out and the worst of the erosion got under way. Anything of value was drilled or blasted out of place and carted away, and once the main ceiling was destroyed, the Quinsigamond winters began to go to work.