Jack O'Connell - Wireless

She looks down to his Ballys and slowly back up till she’s focused on his face. Then she brings out her best heckler-squelching voice and says, “I’m not buying.”

“Pardon?”

She takes her hands from the pockets of her jacket and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m not buying it,” she says. “I’ve got a different theory on what’s happening here.”

He doesn’t like the tone or the direction she’s heading. “Want to fill me in?” he says, though he’s not sure he wants to hear the rest.

“I think we’re intrigued by each other. I think there’s some real infatuation between us. I think we want to follow it, give in and see where we end up. I think we know the sexual possibilities look very good. Neither one of us can stop thinking about the studio the other night—”

“So, where’s the problem?” he asks, getting nervous with the buildup.

“The problem is we’re not sure of each other’s motives or intentions.”

“Who is,” Flynn says, “when you first meet some—”

“No, no. This is a little different from your standard new romance. Okay? This is something else, beyond the normal doubts like has this person got some dark side I won’t see for six months? This has to do with different kinds of questions.”

He thinks she wants him to say such as , but he stays silent.

Ronnie goes on. “Questions like — is this person, maybe, setting me up? Using me to get information? I mean, I’ll admit you’ve got some reason to be suspicious. I came to the bar to find you. Specifically, to see what you knew about who was jamming the station.”

He stays quiet for another minute, then says, “Okay, you’re sure you want to get into this?”

She nods. “Got to happen sooner or later and now’s as good a time as any.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” he mutters, glancing down to the ground.

“It’s not that far a fall,” she says. “Odds are one of us would survive.”

He doesn’t like the comment, but he lets it go.

“Okay,” he says, “first of all, it’s a fact that I have other things on my mind lately. There’s a lot of pressure at work. Sales are down. The competition is brutal.”

“You just didn’t strike me as a guy who worried a lot about competition.”

“Everyone worries about competition, Ronnie.”

“Especially radio stations.”

“I know that you think that, at very least, I know something about the jamming. You think I know who’s knocking Ray down. You tapped into some fringe adolescent somewhere who heard of my name and passed it on. Okay, the fact is I do hang out at Wireless quite a bit. I know the owners. I handle some money for them. I spend quite a few nights there. So you’ve got guilt by association. You sure you’re comfortable with that?”

She lowers her voice. “Look, Flynn, what we’ve done in the past two days should tip you off to the fact that I’m, you know, a little quirky. Unconventional. Let’s say unconventional. I’m kind of intrigued by anything that’s a little different, a little off balance, okay? So the jamming interested me. I wanted to know more. So I called some horny fans, some kids who listen to the show and try to picture what I look like. And, yes, they gave me Wireless and they gave me your name. And a bunch of other names—”

“What names?”

“What does it matter? Let me finish here. So I went the other night. And I asked some people, some women, who you were—”

“Which women?”

“And they pointed you out. And I liked what I saw. Where’s the crime? My point is I don’t know exactly why I went to Wireless the other night. I just wanted to take a look. I wanted to start something new. I didn’t have a specific motive—”

“Like hell. You started asking questions as soon as we met—”

“And it worked,” she says, her voice rising enough for the people in the tenement windows to stare. “It got you interested. It started things rolling. That’s what I do , for Christ sake. That’s why I’m so good on the air. It’s instinct. I just feel where someone’s buttons are. And then I push. I like to dive into new water all the time, G.T. What’s the problem? It keeps life interesting. Jamming is something I know next to nothing about. And the jammers seem interested in me, remember? I’m the one they leave alone. I’d like to know why.”

“I’ll bet the people you work for would like to know why.”

“You’re really starting to annoy me,” Ronnie says. “You know that?”

“Just reassure me. Just say to my face that no one asked you to check things out.”

“The other night in the studio. You think I did that at someone’s request?”

“I’m just saying—” Flynn begins, but she cuts him off and he can see the anger flooding her face.

“You’ve got two choices, Flynn. You can think we stumbled into each other and something interesting is about to happen. Or you can think I’m using you to get the jammers.”

“Now, wait—”

But she cuts him off again and he knows he went with the wrong response. His instincts are failing him.

“Well, screw you. You bastard. You think I rent my body out so the management can cut losses?”

“No, Ronnie, look—”

“You look. You little scumbag—”

“Please. I didn’t mean—”

“What? Tell me.” She’s yelling now.

“I loved last night. I didn’t mean to say—”

“I don’t know what you mean, Flynn. I don’t know anything about you.”

“Just let me explain, give me a second here.”

She lowers her voice again, but brings her face up close to his. “You blew it. You’re a schmuck.”

There’s a burst of applause from the women in the window. One of them yells, “Give him hell, sister,” and balls her hand into a radical fist.

Ronnie turns and starts to unbuckle her safety belt. She turns and gestures to her newfound comrades. “Move over, I’m coming in.”

Flynn reaches over and takes hold of her arm. She bucks, flails her arm out of his grip, enraged.

She says, “Let go of me,” loud enough for the whole street to hear.

“Hey, people,” one of the painters yells from his window, “you’re going to get hurt.”

“Jesus, c’mon, Ronnie,” Flynn rasps with his molars clenched together.

She glares at him and starts to climb up onto the seat. The carriage rocks forward and Flynn screams, “Jesus Christ, sit down.”

Ronnie braces herself with a hand on a strut and starts to raise her leg. Flynn reaches out and grabs the back of her jacket and without any thought she pivots on one foot and puts a quick, sharp boot into his ribs. He lets go of the jacket and doubles up over his lap and Ronnie starts edging out of the carriage and reaching for the windowsill.

Voices start to yell from every angle, riders in other carriages, people in the lower tenement windows, the crowd in line below. Flynn starts to unbelt his strap as the generator starts a run of coughs. And then it catches and the wheel bucks and starts to turn again. Ronnie’s hand falls from the sill and she yells out and grabs onto the wheel’s wooden spoke. She starts to lose balance, then swings her legs out of the carriage and wraps them farther down the strut.

“Shit,” Flynn yells. “Ronnie.”

He gets on his knees, faces backward, trying to look into the big central gears, but he only gets seconds before his carriage reaches the ground. And then the attendant is in front of him, furious, ripping open the guard bar, barking, “What the fuck you think you doin’ up there?”

Flynn jumps out of the car and pushes past her. He sees Ronnie running across the street, into the swarm of the crowd. He starts to push people out of the way and some start to push back. But when he gets to the curb, he’s lost sight of her and now, finally, the Todorov Memorial Parade is moving through Rimbaud Way. The lead float, an antique hearse trimmed with twirled black crepe paper, is weaving from curb to opposite curb, followed by a long procession of dozens of Zone insiders, all of them dressed up in heavy black robes with cowled hoods pulled over their heads, each carrying their own, tiny, individual pine box up on their shoulders and chanting in singsong, made-up Latinish babble to the accompaniment of a squad of high-stepping saxophonists wearing rubber death heads and decked out in deep purple zoot suits, blowing a frenetic version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”