Jack O'Connell - Wireless

Flynn needs to put some food in his stomach. He grabs Ronnie’s hand and starts to maneuver the two of them faster through the throng of revelers. But before he can spot an open cafe, Ronnie squeezes his hand, gives a quick squeal, and points across the street. Between two identical red brick tenements, someone’s erected an ancient wooden Ferris wheel. It just barely fits into the alley between the buildings and it rises just as high as the seven-storied apartment houses. Each carriage is painted a different color and the spokes of the wheel are trimmed with ropes of multicolored lights. Tenants sit in the open windows of the top-floor apartments on either side of the alley and when the wheel halts to let the occupants of the bottom carriage exit, the tenants lean out and touch fingertips with the riders stranded up top.

As Flynn stops to watch this display, Ronnie grabs his arm and starts to run for the wheel, yelling like a kid, “We’ve got to go up.”

She buys two tickets from a large black woman wearing an old cotton housedress covered by an ankle-length leather coat with huge flaplike lapels and metal-studded epaulets. Ronnie’s excitement is genuine and Flynn thinks that if he can just catch a bit of it, he can turn the day around. He can kill the haunting in his stomach and end the night slow-dancing in front of an abandoned runway.

They climb into a sky-blue carriage with the name Ghost Rider stenciled in glitter paint on the front, buckle the heavy safety straps across their laps, and the carny woman latches the metal crossbar, then yanks down a lever behind her and they start to rise. It’s a slow climb — they stop briefly every few minutes as someone below exits a carriage and new riders get on. But then it’s a full ride and the continuous loops begin. For some reason the wheel is running backward and though Flynn has never been afraid of heights, he hopes Ronnie won’t get funny and start rocking their rig.

She huddles into him like some midwestern teen surprised by love at a church fair. She lowers her head onto his shoulder. She’s trying, he knows. She wants some fun, a little romance. She wants some possibilities. Why can’t he give her that? It should be simple, as natural as the movement of his feet on the cracked tarmac the first night, or the progressions of the saxophone that guided their hips and arms.

Something’s lacking now. Something’s fallen away. He simply doesn’t know how to restore trust. And though Ronnie can’t know the cause of his discomfort, she knows something’s wrong.

They come to the crest of the wheel’s arc, maybe sixty feet up, and the tenement witnesses smile out on them. Flynn thinks he and Ronnie must look like some kind of icon for love or courtship, some sort of current definition of the first stages of mating. Something in him wants to yell to the people in the windows — two paint-spattered young men on his side, a trio of college-age women, all dressed in green camouflage garb, on Ronnie’s side— Don’t believe it yet, the facts aren’t all in .

As they linger at the top of the arc, the lights that line the spokes start to flicker and then die out all at once. The sputter noises of the wheel’s generator cease and a gust of greasy-smelling smoke blows up past them. From the ground, the French-Haitian accent of the woman in the leather storm coat starts to bellow a string of bilingual curses. Flynn looks at Ronnie, then peers out over the side of the carriage to see the attendant pounding on the generator.

Flynn shakes his head and Ronnie says, “What?”

“I think we’re stuck up here.”

Ronnie seems more excited than anxious and says, “Tremendous.”

“You’re kidding,” Flynn says, again annoyed.

“This is fantastic,” Ronnie says, leaning forward and tilting the carriage a bit. “Look at the view.”

“This isn’t funny, Ronnie,” Flynn says. He looks down again and yells, “Hey, move this thing.”

Now Ronnie pulls away from him and in an equally annoyed voice says, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Like hell.”

Flynn runs a hand over his face, exasperated, and says, “You know, I tried to tell you I didn’t want to come to this thing.”

Ronnie sighs. “Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”

Flynn looks to the window and the painters give him a smug pair of smiles.

He looks away and says, “It’s not a big deal. I’m just … Just a bad day.”

Ronnie lets her feet stretch out into the air, stares at them, and says, “Am I keeping you from Wireless?”

“For Christ sake—”

“I just don’t get it. You’re like night and day. What, do your radio friends disapprove—”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Flynn says.

“Have you broken some club rule?” she asks. “Is your heart reserved for the jammers?”

He lowers his voice and says, “I wish you wouldn’t use that word.”

She can’t let it go. “Does it have some connotation I’m not aware of?”

“For one thing, it’s illegal. And for another, like I’ve already told you, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

There are a few beats of silence as they both pretend to study the street below. Then Ronnie ignores her instincts and says, “Sounds like I’m pushing a button here, G.T.”

Flynn turns sideways to face her and says, “And it sounds to me like maybe your interest in this thing is greater than I thought.”

She tries to keep a smile on her face and says, “Which means?”

“I’m not sure what it means. That’s what worries me.”

“You’re questioning my motives, G.T.”

“You’re giving me reason to.”

“You think I want you to lead me to the people who are knocking QSG off the air? You think that’s why we’re together?”

He stares at her a long time before saying, “Hey, Ronnie. We’ve known each other about forty-eight hours. Okay?”

She cocks her head in a way that makes him think she’s about to start rocking the carriage. Instead she says, “So how much time has to go by before I can ask you questions?”

“I’ll let you know,” he says, trying to sound like he’s joking.

“My curiosity is piqued. I want to hear the life story. Birth to our meeting at Wireless.”

“Never invite that kind of boredom on yourself.”

“What’s the matter, Flyrin? Am I suspect for wanting to know about you?”

“You’ll notice I haven’t asked any questions.”

“Yeah. And I’m starting to take it as a sign of disinterest.”

“Wrong. Incorrect. Couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Isn’t there anything you want to know about me?”

Flynn shrugs. “I just figure we’ll come to it as we go, you know. I figure we’ll just naturally run into things. We take a walk, we see a dog, you say, ‘I had a dog like that when I was little.’ Okay, now I know you owned a retriever.”

“I never had a dog,” Ronnie says.

“Okay. There you go. Now I know that.”

“What? Is every discussion an interrogation to you? I mean, you sell life insurance for a living, for God’s sake. You’ve got to be good at small talk.”

“Now, that’s different,” Flynn says. “That’s a device. Tool of the trade.”

“Funny, we both talk for a living.”

“Well, we both get paid for talking. Big difference.”

“You’re disagreeable today, Flynn.”

“You wanted to know something about me. There you go — I’m pretty discerning about the choice of words.”

“A word fetish, huh?” Ronnie says. “A little anal retentive in that department—”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Did I do something to put you in a bad mood?”

He looks at her, gives her his best Whole-Life-with-Decreasing-Premium smile. Then he catches himself, kills the smile, shakes his head in frustration, and says, “No. You haven’t done anything. There’s just a hell of a lot on my mind. I should have left work problems behind.”