Jack O'Connell - Wireless

He moves to the metal stool at the kitchen table and takes a seat, flips on the plastic gooseneck lamp, and turns on the Kenwood. Static eases into the room. He opens his spiral notebook, glances at the wall clock, and starts to finger the tuning knob. Small, mostly unintelligible sounds make clipped entrances and exits as the indicator band slides down the range of frequencies. At 12,750 kHz, Speer stops and locks the tuner. He waits with his eyes closed and then a flute-like instrument sounds, something like a cheap penny whistle. It plays a simple, twenty-one-note melody, stops, then plays it again.

And then again. It’s a loop, a continuous pattern. The repetition soothes Speer. It’s like a forgotten childhood song that’s been given back to him. And now he can go on with the night.

He uncaps his Paper Mate and turns to a clean notebook page.

3 A.M.

Dear Margie,

Perhaps, finally, when all, as they say, is said and done, my dearest hope is that you come to own this notebook. I will admit that the likelihood of this happening is probably not very great. I could take precautions — place the book, at some point, in a safe-deposit box, list it in a will, contact an attorney, and legally establish you as my beneficiary. (In fact, your name is, of course, still on my standard Bureau-issue policy.)

But it seems to me that this could be thought of as tantamount to forcing my thoughts on you. And that is the last thing I want.

No, the best thing is to place this pulpy volume on the wings of chance. Perhaps it will be burned by Corny, the building super, just hours after the incineration of my own tired and all-too-mortal bones. Why the mention of death? you might ask. Simply because a large, essential part of me feels dead, has felt this way since your departure.

What does it feel like to be dead? It feels like the hiss of static, Margie. Does that make any sense to you? Do you find this inept hyperbole? I’m being very honest here. I’m attempting to explain the nature of my mind to you. Do you recall the sound? In the dark, in the middle of the night, often in the summer, when I was sweating and suffering insomnia, and I would go into the next room and turn on the receiver?

You despised the noise. Do you remember the incident, years ago, that Fourth of July? Our own fireworks. You said, “If you’d only tune something in. Anything but that static.” The next day I found the Koss headphones you’d left on my desk. But I have to admit, I still cannot wear them — that feeling of pressure over my ears.

Can you possibly see why I’m in such a void today, Margie? Why your leaving has shorted many of the deepest relays of my brain.

Again, part of me feels DEAD, Margie. And, I’m sorry, but you must accept responsibility for this status.

My current plan is to feed my (in your words: “legendary”) anger. I hope that this will resurrect me, lead me out of this cave of numbness. I feel that it’s working already. Certain organs are humming — that needles-and-pins feeling of returning life. My eyes and ears and, maybe most important, my intuition are all coming awake. Soon, I’ll be seeing things clearly again. Hearing all the sounds on all the bands.

THIS is why I used to listen to the static, Margie.

Recall, above, I referred to it as “seemingly” meaningless. All in the ear of the beholder, my once-loved. The truly angry man, the absolutely enraged man, can ferret out patterns and signs that all others will miss. His rage will bring him a hard-won purity with which to hear all the plans and plots and subversive information below the surface skin of this world. He will come to know his enemies. And he will triumph over them in his newfound wisdom.

To you, I’m sure, this doesn’t appear to have proved the case in my own personal history. But like most people, I’m sorry to say, you look at circumstantial evidence and accept it at face value, already having placed a particular meaning and value on it. You would say that my superiors dismissed me because my “legendary anger” resulted in the torture-death of a suspect. You would say, like those well-intentioned colleagues, that had I simply gunned down Mr. Ruggles — a genuine subversive as heinous as any I’ve tracked — we could have built a case of self-defense. But, instead, I cuffed the man around a telephone pole, took the emergency gas can from the trunk of the car, baptized his full skull with cleansing petrol, then slowly smoked a Tiparillo down to the glowing nub as I paced circles around this pleading conspirator.

But let me explain to you, Margie, what I could not tell my coworkers or the ranking agents of the review committee that dismissed me and then buried the facts of my actions anyway: When you are striving to save the soul of this world from absolute chaos, you must do more than fight the good fight. You must display a savagery that knows no conclusion. You must prove your willingness to always take the next step. To always exceed the limits of the will and the imagination. We will have order. And we will stop at nothing to achieve it.

Ruggles’s flaming head was a transmission to the agents of disorder.

But, I ramble.

I have much work to do now, sweet ex. I remain yours, with my ear to the ground.

“I finally get to see the den of iniquity,” Ronnie says as they climb up the stairs to Flynn’s apartment.

“More like the den of indemnification,” Flynn says.

Ronnie raises her eyebrows and Flynn shakes his head and says, “Insurance joke. Forget it.”

He unbolts both locks on the steel door, swings it open, and extends an arm for Ronnie to enter. Then he steps in behind her, resecures the door, opens the small foyer closet, and punches buttons on the box mounted to the rear wall to deactivate the alarm.

Ronnie smiles at him as he slides out of his jacket. “Expecting the S.S., maybe?”

“Can’t be too careful these days, right? I sleep easier knowing I’m wired.”

She moves in and puts her arms around his neck and says, “We’ll see about that.”

They stand clenched in the entryway for a while, just kissing, like high school steadies desperate for the date not to end. Finally, Ronnie brings her mouth away and says, “What have you got to drink?”

“How ’bout a couple brandies.”

“Sounds perfect.”

He steers her into the living room, takes her suede coat from her shoulders, and hangs it on the hook of an antique brass post. He slides out of his leather jacket, tosses it on a couch, and moves around the corner to the den, yelling back, “Get comfortable. I’ll just be a second.”

“My God,” Ronnie says, “you’ve got so much space.”

She hears Flynn laugh from the next room. “That’s the beauty of owning the building. This used to be three separate units. I knocked down some walls and spread out.”

He comes back into the room holding two snifters filled halfway with a smoky auburn liquid. He hands her one, raises his glass, and says, “To Marconi.”

“You romantic,” she says, then she raises her own glass and says, “And to the diode rectifier tube.”

“You tech-head,” Flynn says. “I’m impressed.”

They both take a small swallow. Flynn gestures to the couch and they sit. It’s a slightly odd moment for them both — two people who’ve spent a good chunk of the past twenty-four hours groping each other with no restraint, suddenly sitting back for some quiet conversation. It feels a little planned, a little formal.

Ronnie takes another sip and says, “This is a great building.”

Flynn tilts his head and smiles, pleased by the remark.

“Almost a hundred and twenty years old,” he says. “Designed by Tuckerman Potter. It’s on the historical register.”