Jack O'Connell - Wireless

Now I need you to step into the water. Feel its warmth surround your legs. Feel the steaminess, the slickness of the water. Go down into it slowly, feel it lap up against your buttocks, then slide down, let it cover you totally, let it wash over you, come up over your sides and cover your belly and come up around your breasts. Can you picture what I’m saying to you?

Yes. Absolutely.

You and about fifty thousand listeners , Flynn thinks. He swivels the chair so she’s lined up directly in front of him.

Do you know what I want you to do now?

Yes, I do.

He puts his hands on each of her knees. Her legs are already spread apart, but he pushes them outward till they touch the arms of the chair. She places her hand on his arm and he can’t tell if it’s a signal to stop or to keep going.

Okay, let’s say it. I need you to touch yourself. Can you say it?

Touch myself.

Stimulate yourself. Arouse yourself. Love yourself.

Arouse.

That’s right. You know what I’m saying here.

She’s squeezing his arm, applying a tremendous amount of pressure. He suddenly realizes how strong she is. But he has no idea what she wants him to do. And he hesitates, does nothing.

[Deep breath] The big question is, can you do it?

So she takes control and starts to push his hand upward under the skirt. She guides him to the center and she’s already wet and now the hesitation is gone and he knows what to do. He looks up and her shoulders are moving slightly up and down and she bites her bottom lip and releases it. He wants her to finish with the caller, go to an ad, get off the air. But it’s clear that’s not what she wants. He knows she wants to stay on the air to the end.

Yes, I can. I think I can.

You know you can.

Can they hear her? Does every listener know what’s going on here? Is Wayne in his car, weeping, pounding the dash with the fist that holds the food money?

You do what I say now. Tonight.

Her voice is urgent and her words are interrupted slightly by grabs for air. It seems so obvious to Flynn. She’s grabbing the arms of her chair and her knuckles are going white. He rotates his hand for better position.

I want to thank you—

You just do what I say. Promise me—

I do, I promise—

Then good luck, and we move on to our next caller.

Flynn looks up at her shocked, but he doesn’t stop. He wants her to grab an ad cart and jam it in, fill up the studio with the promise of sales from the raspy language of pitchmen. But that’s just not going to happen. She pulls a hand off the chair arm, punches down on a board button, brings her hand back to his head, and grabs a fistful of his hair.

Yes. You’re on Libido Liveline.

She’s overly loud and there’s a catch to her voice at the end of her words as if she’d just emerged from below water.

Yes, Ronnie. Tremendous show tonight. A real classic.

He waits, but there’s silence, so he stops and she yanks on his hair and then speaks.

Yes. Your question.

Is everything all right? Is there a problem?

Flynn begins to withdraw his hand and she shakes her head, both her lips pulled into her mouth. He makes a head gesture to the microphone and she nods rapidly, then unclenches her teeth and leans forward.

Not at all. Do you have a question?

I’m a first-time caller, Ronnie. First-time caller, but a longtime admirer.

[Pause] Thank you. And your question?

Flynn moves his hand to her thigh and leaves it there, motionless.

Well, it’s more a comment than a question. A warning,’ you might say.

A warning?

Yes, that’s right. I know your show is very popular among the Wireless crowd.

At the mention of the bar, Flynn straightens up slightly and turns his head to stare at the flashing lights of the board.

And I’ve got a feeling those O’Zebedee Brothers might be fans of yours also. And I feel a need to be open here, to inform the whole miserable cult of bastards of my intentions.

There’s a minute of dead air as Ronnie catches her breath and stares down at Flynn. Then,

Ronnie, you there? Hello?

I’m afraid, sir, you’ve called the wrong show. We’re here to discuss human sexuality. That’s our topic here. I think maybe you want Ray Todd’s—

They know who I’m talking to. They’ve been warned. The joke is over, okay? They’re screwed. I’m in town and I won’t be leaving till the job is done. They know what I mean.

I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong show, caller. I’m going to have to cut you off now—

I am in town, you little bastards. I know who you are—

She reaches out and kills the line.

We’ll be right back after these messages.

She jams home a cart, and an announcement for a bluegrass festival starts up.

“Why did you stop?” she says, head back, looking up at the ceiling.

“You were losing it. You couldn’t speak.”

“You shouldn’t have stopped,” she says.

He doesn’t know what to do. He feels foolish and inept. He starts to say, “I could still—”

But she cuts him off, smiles down at him, and removes his hand.

“I don’t think so,” she says.

She swivels until her back is to the board and then starts to get dressed.

“I don’t get it,” he says.

She tucks the last of her blouse into her skirt and says, “Relax. Food’s here.”

And he turns to see the doors of the glass elevator closing behind Wayne. The engineer starts to walk slowly toward the studio. He’s got a brown paper bag in his arms. It’s gone wet and dark near the bottom.

Ronnie stands up and runs her hands through her hair. She gives Flynn a soft punch to the shoulder.

“Better luck next time,” she says. “God, I hope he brought some curried beef.”

Speer cuts the engine of the Ford and slouches a bit in his seat, but it’s no longer possible to fall into the comfort of a standard surveillance posture. So he tries to ignore his twitching muscles and the rhythmic ache that pulses through his temples. He tries to concentrate instead on the landscape.

The Goulden Ave whores are smoking dusted joints, trading stories about the kink of the week and generally hanging out, waiting, squeezed into their Lycra and spandex, maybe mildly hoping for that one mythical all-night john who’ll pop for a room in the Penumbra and a bottle of Johnnie Walker. There are probably thirty to forty of them spread down the two blocks of Goulden between Granada and Grassman, but there’s one core group, a semilegendary clique of hustlers that congregate around the entrance of the Hotel Penumbra. They’re sometimes called “the best and the brightest” by the bachelor-party yuppies who cruise in from the suburbs.

Just a year ago, the Penumbra was an improbable but absolutely gorgeous piece of work, a hundred-year-old, five-story arc that served as preposterous crib for Cortez, onetime neighborhood mayor for the Latinos. Cortez dumped an enormous percentage of his income into mutating the hotel into a surreal vision that spliced elements of spooky High Gothic with splashes of Euro-industrial. It never should have worked, but Cortez willed it into being and shined a barrage of klieg lights on it so the city had to look.

Then Cortez disappeared. And the vision that took ten years to refine toward perfection took only twelve brutal months to decay into a darkened hulk of looted rooms, graffitied walls, and burned-out floors. No one knows for sure who owns the Penumbra today, though it’s possible the city has been saddled with it. But in the absence of a resident landlord, a pimp named Bedoya has taken to renting out the uncharred rooms by the hour.

Speer grips the steering wheel, sweating, habitually moistening his lips and gums, wondering if the dozen women loitering in front of Cortez’s desecrated monument realize the fierceness of this devolution, if they understand it as a simple and beautiful example of eternal laws, not the humanist babble about survival and extinction, but the most ancient stories, tales concerned with the expulsion of the unworthy, vignettes about vile, unfit creatures being cast downward.