Jack O'Connell: Wireless

Most puts a cognac down in front of Flynn and walks to the other end of the bar without a word.

“Then I guess I owe you.”

“Do you work at being a smart-ass? Do you practice when you’re alone?”

“I just want to be straight. This would be banter, right? We’re bantering?”

“Not even close. I’m just working on not liking you.”

“You have to like me, Flynn. I’m one of the fold. That’s the rules.”

“The rules are,” Flynn says, “that there are no rules, my love—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Speaking of which, I understand there might be some trouble.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I got a message on my machine from Wallace in that voice. You know that voice, darling?”

“You’ve been warned.”

“You know I hate playing the mediator schmuck. I hate that crap.”

“Who asked you? I never asked for a mediator.”

“Why do you always want to stir up trouble?”

There’s a beat and then they both burst out laughing. Flynn shakes his head, puts a flat palm up to his forehead, and says, “Look what you’ve got me saying.”

“That,” Hazel says, “is an instant classic, G.T. Stir up trouble . That won’t be forgotten, I promise.”

“Look, dearest, heart of my heart, I get the feeling Wallace is going to do a little saber-rattling.”

Hazel gives the smile that she knows gets to Flynn. “Well,” she says, “you know Wallace. Tiny saber.”

“Come on. We don’t need these kinds of problems right now.”

“Look, Flynn, Wallace is losing it. He’s getting more paranoid every day. I don’t know how Olga lives with the little bastard. He’s lost the point of the whole thing. Little brain’s gotten corrupted. What’s that quote about ultimate power?”

“Don’t know it. Listen, Wallace is just a little uptight about bringing the heat down. He hates press and the Spy ’s been running these articles on the brothers and all. I think he’s just afraid you might escalate things, you know, over the line—”

“Whose line?”

“—and ruin it for everyone. You know, for Wallace this is still a lark, a prank kind of thing. He’s not into the whole philosophical thing. He just likes the reaction, the way it makes him feel. He doesn’t come at it from a — I don’t know — a political angle. He’s not going to change—”

“And neither am I.”

“And neither are you. And I think if we just have a little powwow—”

“Powwow?”

“—upstairs, and try to talk this out, find some agreement—”

“I hate sitting on those orange crates,” Hazel says. “I get splinters in my ass.”

“—make everyone secure to some extent. Reach a compromise — sorry, sorry, I know how you hate that word, my mistake, not a compromise, but an agreement, an understanding.”

“So where is the little toad?”

“That annual dinner-dance thing. Down the Baron.”

“He’s coming by after?”

“He loves to gloat. He’ll probably bring the freaking trophy in with him. Sit it up on the bar.”

“He does that,” Hazel says, “I swear to God he’ll carry it out of here without using his hands.”

Flynn looks at Hazel, smiles, and shrugs. “Look, I’m just saying give me a chance here, okay? Think unity.”

Hazel makes a face like she’s bitten into something rancid, but even with a sour expression there’s something about her Flynn finds endearing. Despite all the sneering-punk accessories and the rumors of obscene tattoos and the slightly spiked blond hair that she insists on running a strawberry streak through, Flynn finds something vulnerable in Hazel. He’s sure no one else can see it, that they’d probably laugh him into the parking lot if he mentioned it. But he can’t get around it. For all her tough-as-nails rebel act and tomboy-from-hell attitude, he wants to somehow protect her. Maybe from herself. Sometimes he wonders what she’d look like without all the shock makeup. Beneath the eyeliner and occasional nose ring, she’s got a sweet, kind of open face — blue-green eyes and smallish features. Her diet of speed and veggie pocket-sandwiches has turned her body into a cadaver-thin reed, but Flynn thinks she has a sensual walk, a kind of languid, careless sway that, were she aware of it, she’d eliminate immediately.

Somebody yells, “G.T.,” from somewhere deeper in the bar and Flynn says, “I’ve got to make the rounds. Just think about what I’ve said, okay?”

Hazel reaches over and pinches his cheek, then disappears into the crowd. Flynn heads for Minnesota. He enters the billiards room to a hail of calls and whistles, then endures several minutes of back-slapping and arm punching. Someone slides a drink into his hand and finally the room settles back down and turns its collective attention to the antique Philco radio. Flynn listens for just a second, then asks, “Who’d they go after tonight?”

In unison, several voices yell, “WQSG,” as if it were a cheer of some kind.

“QSG,” Flynn says, then glances at his watch. “Jesus, the boys are cutting it close tonight.”

From the speaker of the Philco issues the hottest broadcast in Quinsigamond this season — the O’Zebedee Brothers’ Outlaw Network, radio pirates extraordinaire, myth creatures of the airwaves, an urban legend without rival in this town.

And as if the brothers could somehow sense the growing tension in Minnesota, they start to confront the crowd’s main concern:

… and a glance to the digital in the dash tells us that about now all the radio rats huddled down under the big neon G are starting to sweat just a little as it begins to look like their allegiances could be tested. But listen up and lighten up, subcitizens, ’cause James and John are fellow devotees of the one and only erotic empress herself. And we promise we will never come between you and Veronica. So rest at ease, the goddess will embrace your ears on schedule …

It’s not until after she’s parked in the deserted mall garage that Ronnie realizes she never turned on the radio, that she drove from her apartment to the radio station in silence. She likes to put herself on, joke with herself, so she sits in the Jeep and starts acting out a five-second tragedy, her head down on top of her hands as they grip the steering wheel. Where’s my loyalty , she pretends to think, where’s my devotion? She brings her head up, laughing, her own best audience. She grabs her old Girl Scout knapsack and says out loud, “Ronnie, why are you wasting your time in this city?”

She climbs out of the jeep, slams the door so that it echoes the length of the cement garage, walks down the exit ramp toward the small quadrangle of Astroturf between the garage and the mall. She loves stopping in the quadrangle at this time of night, the place eerie and filled with this smoky mist she never sees anywhere else. She likes to stop midway across the fake grass, look back at the wall of the garage, seven stories of cement levels with windowlike symmetrical squares cut in everywhere. She likes to stand there, enclosed, caught inside this pocket of air between the parking garage and the glass rear wall of the mall. It makes her feel like she’s the only character in some forgotten French or Italian art film from decades back. She wishes she spoke a foreign language so she could ad-lib a scene. Something about an invading army just miles away. She’s the broken-down servant girl, abused beyond description, the sole carrier of information that could hold off the enemy. Her warrior lover is waiting here on these foggy moors. He’s bleeding from behind the ear, deep red oozing into the ragged cotton cloth he’s wrapped around his neck like a bandanna. She runs the last few yards toward him, throws herself into his arms. They both fall to the wet ground. Mud covers their legs. It begins to rain. The wind picks up, gets even worse. He looks down at her, his vision obscuring. He says only, “My brave one.” She stares back up at him, one foot over the borderline of delirium. Her red lips quiver, part. She says, “We, we …” He waits, desperate for her news. She draws in a breath, tries again. “We …’ll be right back after a word from our sponsor .”