He listened to the sad souls calling in. None had a possible death on their conscience, but the anguish of their lost loves, or broken romances and marriages, their ill children and parents, wove a quilt of guilt and suffering that seemed to blanket the entire country slumbering in the dark of night across the miles.
A radio show was at once as intimate as a confessional and as public as the stocks in a Puritan village.
Matt couldn’t believe he did this, six nights out of seven, for his daily bread.
The Midnight Hour remained the name of his show, even though its popularity had extended it to two hours. Beyond that it would not go. Matt sensed you needed to ration the music of night, the whispers of the soul, even when they were interspersed by tasteful, wry ads for biofeedback devices and magic crystals.
He was beginning to see the program as a sort of midnight mass offered to an invisible congregation.
Once a priest, always a priest. Ambrosia had no such formal calling. Yet there she sat, as sacred as a mountain, as certain and immovable, touching buttons, touching hearts, reaching out electronically as she never could personally, or physically.
Watching her, Matt mourned his missed opportunity with Temple. Opportunities, plural. He had glimpsed a truly personal, consuming connection, and had retreated. To what? An impersonal encounter with a call girl. A call girl. Not a person. A role. It hadn’t worked either. Neither of them could be as impersonal as their ritual roles demanded. Me Tarzan, you Jane. Me pay, you dance. Me lost, you lose.
He regretted “Vassar’s” death. Mostly he regretted her short life. He had to wonder what he had contributed to that. A shot of curiosity? A condescending pity?
It was easy to get maudlin at a late-night radio station. Ambrosia, pseudonym for a strong, lost soul, was a fantasy, but it worked for her and for her listeners.
Mr. Midnight was a fantasy too. Matt didn’t know if it would work for him anymore. And in only two hours that simulacrum of himself would be “on.” Could he still do it?
“Yes, honey, I hear you,” Ambrosia crooned in her soft, maternal, omni-ethnic voice like liquid jazz. “Life hurts. All the great artists knew that. That’s why we love them. That’s why they always made it hard for them. Here’s a little Ella for you. Go with the flow. Let go of the ‘no.’ Say, ye-ess to life.”
Jazz. Beethoven gave him a headache. Duke Ellington gave him hope.
Ambrosia looked up at him, and winked.
The control board blinked. A call coming in.
“Miss Ambrosia?”
“That’s my name.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a pseudonym.”
“As Miss Red Riding Hood said to the wolf, ‘My, what big words your big teeth have got.’ What can I do for you, honey?”
“Play ‘Misty’ for me.”
Ambrosia’s mellow eyes snapped to Matt’s.
They both knew the reference: Clint Eastwood’s direc-torial debut was a film of that very name. Play Misty for Me centered on a male deejay stalked by an obsessively possessive female fan.
“What a golden oldie!” Ambrosia’s voice was still as smooth as whipped cream. “I don’t know if it’s on my play list.”
“Maybe I’ll call back later and ask Mr. Midnight to play it for me.”
“He doesn’t do music, dear. He just talks.”
“Such a shame. I’d think he could play beautiful music if he set his mind to it.”
“I play beautiful music. What do you want to hear besides ‘Misty’?”
“Nothing. I want to hear `Misty’.”
“I’ll find something just right for you, honey.”
Matt waited, wondering what Ambrosia would come up with. She always surprised and always satisfied.
Her long, artificial nails twisted a dial, punched a button. Matt had never paid attention to the mechanical aspects of radio. They pointed at him, he talked. They mimed cutting their throats, he stopped. He watched a clock. He listened, got lost in the river of voices.. He was a dilettante.
In an instant a sinister male voice was intoning, “I’ll be watching you.”
Matt knew the song, loathed it, and so did Leticia. It was an eighties hit by the Police, a stalker’s anthem. The singer promised to observe every move and every breath the victim took, and tacitly threatened to end both.
Anybody who knew anything about domestic abuse recognized the stalker mentality, and the song seemed to glorify the omnipotence of the deranged rather than indict it. It was raw threat, very real. And even more threatening after 9/11.
Ambrosia’s Cleopatra eyes narrowed at Matt. She was aiming a stalker’s attitude right back at the caller. Both of them had instantly recognized Kathleen O’Connor, of course, who had called Matt’s show before to taunt him.
Matt wasn’t sure about fighting fire with fire in this case, but he guessed Kitty the Cutter would get the unspoken message: the police will be watching you.
Ambrosia made an up-yours gesture through the glass, and leaned into the mike, which was off-air now that the song was playing. “Guess your unwanted girlfriend will get the idea,” she cooed into the foam-guarded metal mesh.
Matt managed a pale smile. Ambrosia had encountered Kitty only once. She didn’t know how lethal the woman could be. And he worried. Kitty had already stripped Ambrosia of a necklace. This act of on-air defiance might motivate a more personal attack.
“You okay?” Ambrosia was asking Matt.
“Yeah, sure. I was hoping this would be a therapy session, though.”
“That woman does need therapy. A good rolfing.”
Matt’s smile became a weak chuckle. Rolling had been a trendy form of rough massage for decades. It was supposed to release inner demons. There were a lot of alternative physical and mental health therapies, but none of them addressed dealing with actual, outer demons.
Matt started thinking exorcism.
And then … the show rolled on. Ambrosia’s usual callers lined up to make the usual requests. In their voices, as if in a confessional, Matt heard the quiver of deep emotion expressed in half sentences and long pauses. There was nothing slick about personal pain. About losing a live lover or a dead child. They weren’t clever or glib, just honest. Just hoping a song and prayer would move someone’s heart, maybe even their own. Matt heard the truth beneath the hope: the fatal cancer that wouldn’t recede without more of a miracle than an upbeat song on the radio; the broken relationship that was obviously over with the other party, and obviously not with the caller. There were some happy calls, like McDonald’s Happy Meals: warming fast food for the soul. The thanks given for a relative’s recovery from a terrible car crash, for a child’s progress in physical therapy, for living with/loving/having “the best” man/ woman in the world.
Sophisticates might laugh at the hit parade of songs played to soothe or reflect the feelings on semianonymous display: John in Reno. Mary in St. Helens. Matt supposed people made these universal sentiments popular because they spoke to them as nothing else quite did, words and music in perfect harmony. It was a rite, like much of religion. Soul food.
And … after a few hours of listening, he felt better. Other people had troubles. His might be a bit more extreme, but no different, really. Guilt. Loss. Hope. Fear. Hope was always the leveler for a mountain of helpless feelings. For him, there was another word for hope. Faith.
He wondered how much of it he still had left. Perhaps enough.
Radio stations signed off by playing “The Star-spangled Banner.” Ambrosia signed off her show at midnight by always playing one song. After five hours of mellow, it was an odd choice: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
In the aftermath of 9/11 and, personally, in the aftermath of Matt’s own disaster, it seemed to strike just the right note.
She gave him a fierce thumbs-up through the glass, and then leaned into the mike again.
“The hot seat’s all yours again,” she said. Threatened. Affirmed.