Box Nine (46 page)

“We need to talk soon,” Wallace mutters, and shifts the car into drive.

“You worry too much,” Flynn says, and squeezes Browning's shoulder. Then he steps back and watches the Volvo ease out of the lot.

Whenever he sees Wallace wearing that classic 1940s tuxedo, Flynn can't help thinking the guy looks like some bizarre waiter in a decadent Nazi restaurant, a curiosity hired for the diversion he might provide the easily bored customers.

What must it have been like growing up a dwarf? Flynn wonders. Was it a matter of surviving an endless barrage of repeated, unfunny jokes and taunts? Or was it more a matter of isolation, of being set apart, unincorporated right from the womb, right from day one on the planet, no one pulling you into the breast of the normal, the full-grown?

He leaves the question in the parking lot, turns, and heads for Wireless.

Flynn enters through the diner entrance, stops in the doorway next to Tjun the bouncer, says, “What kind of a night?”

Tjun shrugs. He's an Aborigine, tall, bearded, achingly slender, of indeterminate age, and, supposedly, deadly with a long-blade knife that has a name no one can pronounce. He showed up at Wireless five years ago, responding to a help-wanted ad in the
Spy
. He's been the head bouncer ever since. No one seems to know where he lives. He keeps himself above the social politics of the bar and doesn't even seem too interested in radio in general. When Flynn asked Ferrie about him once, the co-owner went melodramatic and said, “Guy saved my life once and I don't want to say anything else about him.” Flynn treats Tjun with a rare respect, never uses his sarcastic brand of humor in the man's presence.

“Hazel and her friends inside?” Flynn asks.

“At the bar,” Tjun says in an odd, clipped accent that Flynn loves.

Flynn moves past him, steps into the smoky-blue glow of the room, blinks a few times. Each time he steps inside Wireless, he has to give Ferrie and Most credit for achieving the atmosphere that almost all clubs reach for and the majority look foolish missing. Flynn thinks of it as expensive decadence, a place that can feel foreign even if you've spent a year's worth of nights there, a place where all kinds of verbally coded purchase and sales agreements might take place and payouts feel like they could require three different types of currency. It's even more amazing that the club has this feel when the fact is that most of the regulars are stunningly middle-class and usually short on funds. And yet, there's no denying the room has a tone to it, an envelope of pure mood, a sensory tide produced by no more than two dreamy men with a vision of weird, unstriving hipness and the resurgence of an almost-bygone medium.

Flynn spots Hazel and slides up to the bar between the college boys, clamping an arm across each of their backs, saying, “Guys, I think there's a free pool table around in the back.”

The two look at each other as if one should argue, then walk away in a slow double sulk. Flynn moves in close until his arm is touching Hazel and she says, “You really get off on screwing up my fantasies.”

“They're babes in the woods, dear. I'm saving you from the law.”

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 …

3.

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
.”

She moves up to the glass elevator affixed to the mall wall and says, “Girl, what is wrong with your brain?”

The elevator door opens and she enters and turns around to look out on the quad as she rises. She reaches under the olive-green flap of the knapsack, digs down into the canvas folds, pulls out with one hand an antique silver hip flask. She screws off the flask top and swallows a warm mouthful of mescal. She secures the flask, resacks it, and turns toward the inner wall just as the elevator arrives at the third floor. Once again, a master of timing.

She steps out onto the slippery Spanish-tile floor, lets her eyes adjust to the dimmed after-hours lighting of the mall. This is the only time she can stomach the mall, and thankfully ten-to-two has always been her shift since she came to the station. Sometimes, after she turns the mike over to Sonny, who does the two-to-six occult show, she goes window shopping. Security doesn't seem to mind. She passes them on their rounds, makes risque comments that they love, scratches the German shepherd behind the ears.

Ronnie knows every store in the mall, but she's never purchased a thing here. She buys everything mail-order, through catalogues. She wishes she could get her groceries this way. She doesn't know what it is about the mall in daylight, when the stores are open for business, that repels her. She's never stopped to analyze it, find a meaning that could alter things. She just takes it as a given that she can only accept the mall when it's closed, a retail ghost town. Last month, peering into the display window of Lear Jeweler's, she thought of herself as the vampire browser—she walks by night, skulks through the shadows of the Orange Julius kiosk, swoops past the crypt of the shoeshine bench.

Down the enclosed alley from the elevator, Wayne, the engineer, is playing catch, bouncing a red rubber ball off the cement wall that leads up to the studio. This is not a good sign. Beyond him, inside the huge plate-glass window that lets shoppers look in on the daytime announcers hard at work, like they were as interesting as pizza flippers, she can see Vinnie, the station manager, and Ray, the Nazi who mans the six-to-ten shift. They're having another mini-fit, flailing arms and screaming at each other. The broadcast booth is soundproof and this turns their raging into a silent comedy, an Abbott and Costello bit set in the not-so-golden age of radio.

“Would this be a good night to call in sick?” she says, starting to approach Wayne.

He goes into his baseball routine. He makes exaggerated moves with his body, somehow jumps and leaps in slow motion, turns on his cigar-scarred, hysterical, play-by-play voice. “What a shot … the Wayne-man can kiss this one … No, no sir, no siree, it's off the left-field wall … the runner is barreling around second … Mr. W fields it and fires for home … the runner is sliding … Wilcox takes position …”