Daniel Alarcon - Lost City Radio

IT WAS the tenth year of the conflict, and Rey’s contact had gone underground. Among the literate classes of the city, fear had become recklessness. Those who could flee were already gone. Yerevan had been dead for twelve months, not spoken of for nearly that long.

Rey and Norma were invited one summer evening to a dinner party at the home of a prominent socialite. She was a stylish woman of considerable wealth, who had married a man handsome and vapid enough to be elected senator. They owned a stake in the radio station. It was said that they had secretly pushed for the director to be eliminated after he made some controversial statements, and had handpicked Elmer as his successor. The senator, it was widely assumed, wished to be president. He had survived an assassination attempt four weeks before, in the first week of the new year. The radio had obligingly portrayed him as a hero, and this was his celebration.

They had to pass security twice to enter the party: once at the front gate, where the cab dropped them off, and then again, at the door. There were off-duty policemen in the foyer, one in each corner of the great open room, and one stationed at the foot of the staircase at the far wall. It was a pastel-colored wonderland, this party, full of charming men and well-dressed women. A soft, inoffensive music could be heard just beneath the sibilant chatter. There was something anachronistic about so much wealth: the very place smelled of money, and Rey said as much to Norma.

“Let’s be worldly,” she whispered. She had spent more than an hour getting ready for this night. Her hair shone, and she was beautiful. “Let’s pretend.”

The hostess greeted them warmly, apologized for the security. She gave no impression of knowing who they were, nor did she question their presence. She smiled with well-bred elegance and shuffled them off toward the drinks. Norma led Rey through the crowd. They saw Elmer, standing in the center of a tight circle, holding forth on the war and its meaning. As the newly installed director of the radio, his view on the state of the nation was quite sought after. He nodded at them both, but Norma pulled Rey on. A dark-skinned man in a tuxedo poured them drinks.

“At least the drink is strong,” Rey said to his wife.

She kissed him, then leaned into him and finished her drink quickly. When she kissed him again, her mouth tasted of liquor. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she said. “We’re celebrating.”

“Are we?” He took a sip of his drink. “The senator’s brush with death?”

“Not that.” She asked the bartender for another drink, then clinked glasses with him. “We should say hello to Elmer.”

Rey frowned. “I’ll wait here.”

It was petulant, and he regretted it immediately. But Norma didn’t mind; she pinched him and stuck her tongue out. She went off into the maw of the party. He admired her confidence, and couldn’t describe this mood he felt. Fearful? Anxious? It was noisier than he would have expected from a crowd like this. He stood by the table; he saw Elmer’s circle raise a glass to his wife. There was a smattering of applause. He should have gone with her. He was remote, and in this crowd, more alone than he had been in many months. When he thought no one was watching, he stirred his drink with his pinkie, then downed it.

“Ah, a connoisseur!” Rey looked up. A red-haired woman was smiling at him. “You’re Norma’s husband, aren’t you?” the woman asked him. When he nodded, she added, “She’s going to be a star.”

“She is,” Rey said, a bit unsure.

“Give me one just like his,” the woman said to the bartender. “But I’ll stir it myself.” She winked at Rey.

The woman was part of a group of people who had come to refresh their drinks. They all knew each other and looked familiar as they jostled good-naturedly for the bartender’s attention. It was early still, but already the woman was glassy-eyed and drunk. “Join us,” she said to Rey with a languorous wave of her hand. “We’re talking about…Oh, I don’t know. Gentlemen, what are we talking about?”

“The world? The war?”

“Life?”

“Oh, all of it,” the redhead said. “Everyone, this is Norma’s husband. What was your name?”

“Rey,” he said, and they all nodded approvingly, as if his were a special, accomplished name. “What a voice your wife has!” said a fat man. He smiled mischievously. “Does she…Pardon me, I’ve had a few and I shouldn’t ask, but I simply must know…Does she talk dirty ?”

Rey was too stunned to answer.

“Gentlemen, I remind you this is mixed company!”

The fat man nodded at the redhead. “My apologies,” he said with a slight bow. “You’re a tough bitch.” Everyone laughed. “But sir, her voice is really quite marvelous.”

The rest agreed and offered congratulations, and someone brought him another drink. He drank it quickly. The lights, Rey decided, were too bright in this grand room.

He stood at the edge of the circle, and soon they had forgotten him again. They were indeed meandering from topic to topic: the price of shoes, the strange weather, the awful traffic just before curfew. Occasionally, the name of someone dead or missing surfaced, was lamented briefly, and then dismissed.

At one point, Rey heard his contact mentioned by name.

“What became of that one?” the fat man asked. “I haven’t seen him in ages!”

How long has it been? Rey thought to himself.

The redhead said he was on sabbatical. He had gone abroad, she said, to Europe. She was very pale, almost somber as she said it. Rey nodded; was she lying or had she been lied to?

“Who?” Rey asked, pretending.

“Oh, you know him,” the woman said. She looked familiar, though Rey was sure they had never been properly introduced. She was a physicist at the Tech, Rey thought, but couldn’t be sure. Was she IL?

“I took him to the airport myself,” she said.

The fat man shrugged. He took off his jacket and was sweating through his shirt. The flabby skin of his neck hung over his shirt collar. A cigarette dangled from his lips. “Where is that bastard?” he asked behind a curtain of smoke. “Italy? France? That lucky fuck.”

Rey smiled with the rest. He breathed deeply. He was, in a sense, free. Was his contact living in a dank basement in The Cantonment, or in a palatial Italian villa? It didn’t matter really. Rey scanned the room for Norma. He wanted to get away. The fat man was telling the sad story of how he’d been turned down for a visa.

“Where do you want to go?” someone asked.

“Anywhere.”

Rey offered the small group a smile and excused himself. He didn’t know anybody, and nobody knew him. The redhead raised her glass to him as he turned away.

A few hours passed quickly. Rey wandered in and out of a few different conversations, each touched by the war. A gaunt, well-dressed man described being kidnapped. He was lucky: he’d been held for only two days and so hadn’t been fired from work. Rey met a woman whose maid, it turned out, was IL. “Imagine,” she said, appalled, “the nerve of the girl to bring that ideology into my house!” Throughout it all, Rey stayed near the drinks, so much so that the bartender had one ready for him each time he approached. At one point, they struck up a conversation. Rey recognized the accent. He was from the jungle, but no, the bartender told Rey, he didn’t miss it. “There was no one left in my town,” he said. “Everyone is here now.”

Rey sat briefly on the steps. He wandered out onto the patio, where he was offered a cigarette. He smoked without pleasure, his first in many years. He watched the lights of the city bubbling in the distance, and when he came back into the great room, the party had swelled, and he felt, in his drunken state, that he would never find his wife in this multitude. It was nearly midnight by then, and the guests were separating into two groups: those who would leave before the curfew and those who would stay the night. The hostess milled through the crowd, encouraging everyone to stay. “We have a generator!” she proclaimed. She held a glass unsteadily in her right hand, its contents spilling on the hardwood floor. Her husband, the senator, stood by her side, and he, too, was visibly drunk. His face puffy and red, he swayed slowly from right to left. Rey wanted to hug the poor man. He still hadn’t recovered; this much was clear. His bodyguard had been killed, his driver wounded, and the senator was lucky to have escaped with his life. It had all happened in broad daylight, on a busy avenue four blocks from a police checkpoint, not far from the radio station. Rey smiled to himself. In a way, it was satisfying to know that the war had gone on without him. The usual spate of bombs and blackouts and extrajudicial disappearances had continued — but Rey felt, for the first time in many years, divorced from it and therefore innocent. He could embrace this stranger, this poor senator. He could appear at the good gentleman’s party and bemoan the nastiness of the current situation without feeling responsible for any of it. The senator had un-buttoned his shirt now, and was calling for the music to be turned up, for the lights to be turned down. In an instant, they were, and the grand room was entirely different. He’ll be president, Rey thought sadly, and he won’t live out his term. Host and hostess smiled. They didn’t want anyone to leave. They were afraid of being alone.