“But you’re not going to tell me.”
“I’m not sure myself about what I’m doing. We’re probably going to find out together. So let’s try, okay? Truce?”
She picked up a cell phone from an end table near the couch and said, “I want to call Raymond again.”
“Why? You’ll have more to tell him after.”
“After what?”
I answered her the best way I knew how. “I told you. I want to talk to the radioman. I know you think he’s an engram but I think he might be . . . well, something else.”
“Oh, so now you suddenly need my help?”
“Will you listen to me, please? The first time we spoke, you told me about a being who looked like a shadow sitting in a room. In a boarding house. You said he was upset, that he was telling me to be quiet but pointing out the window, at the fire escape.”
“That is an image created out of a disturbance in your own mind,” she said impatiently.
“You can go on saying that all you want, but the room was my Uncle Avi’s. And it was me outside on the fire escape. We were listening to satellite signals.”
Maybe Ravenette already knew this part of the story, maybe not. I couldn’t tell by her expression, which remained unfriendly. Nevertheless, I continued.
“I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to ask this,” I said, “but can you find him again? The radioman? Or channel him?”
“I’m not a medium,” she said.
I was exasperated by her response. I wasn’t here to debate the fine points of what one kind of paranormal practitioner did as opposed to another. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever it is you do.”
“Whatever I do?” she said, sounding deeply affronted. “Are you suggesting that I’m a fake?”
“No. Just the opposite. That’s why I’m here.”
She shot me a suspicious look. “You’re serious.”
“I am.” And then I added, “Please.”
That seemed to help—along with the fact that she was likely under instructions from Raymond Gilmartin to do what I asked. “All right,” Ravenette said, “let’s see if I can find out anything.”
She sat down again and took a moment to calm herself. Then, she fixed her green eyes on me. I thought we were going to have some sort of staring contest but almost immediately, she let out a sudden gasp. “Oh my,” she said. “I see him. In that same room. He’s like a gray shadow sitting on the bed.”
Well, all right. Evidently, it was time to begin. There were things I needed to know.
“Ask him if he’s the one sending me all the dogs.”
For a moment, Ravenette was silent. The strength of her presence in the room seemed to dim; it was almost as if the essence of whoever she was had gone away.
And then, suddenly, something returned. A sharp hiss came out of Ravenette’s mouth. It was a threatening, alien sound, high-pitched and raspy that seemed to hang between us in the air, like an invisible snake.
I almost felt afraid to breathe, but when I did, Ravenette was back with me. “That’s his answer,” she managed to tell me, though she was clearly unsettled.
Her voice was trembling and I got the sense that she was in totally new territory. Whatever she actually did as a psychic, whether her “contacts” were real or imagined, what she was experiencing now was something completely new for her, and it was apparent that it was frightening for her. But not for me. For the first time in days—weeks—I suddenly felt focused. I felt like myself, which probably had something to do with my anger flooding back, my one reliable weapon against all attacks. It might go missing from time to time, but it always found its way back to me, or I found it. So, I heard myself thinking, what the hell was this thing hissing at me for? I thought he wanted me here.
It is likely, at that moment and with that thought, I didn’t actually recognize the personal Rubicon I had just crossed: in my mind, whatever that being was in my uncle’s room, he had become real. In what sense real I probably couldn’t have said, but it was the right description. And I knew who he was, who he had always been: my radioman. The shadow I had met on the fire escape all those years ago. And that’s why, unlike Ravenette, I wasn’t afraid. Not at all. I had known him too long.
“Well, hiss back at him or something,” I said to Ravenette. “I’m not here because I want to be. I came here because I think he wants something from me, but he’s going to have to give me some help because I don’t know what it is.”
Ravenette gasped again, like someone in the throes of genuine shock. “Laurie,” she said, speaking my name softly, like she was whispering something she didn’t want someone else to hear. Like for the moment, we were on the same side. “We have to be careful, I think. This is different from last time. He’s angry. Very angry,” she said.
“I’m a little pissed off myself. You can tell him that.”
“I don’t have to tell him,” Ravenette said. “He can hear what you’re saying.”
“How? How does he hear what I’m saying? Through you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
Ravenette opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. She seemed to be struggling, reaching for words. “I don’t know how to explain. I’ve never encountered this before. He’s here. Sort of here. Here, but in a parallel place.”
Well, wherever he was, there was one thing we had in common. One way to bridge the divide—or at least, that was what I hoped.
I looked down at Digitaria, meaning to tap him on the back so he’d stand up, but I didn’t have to. He was already up on all fours, staring straight ahead. He was on high alert, nose twitching, eyes wide.
“I brought a friend of yours,” I said, addressing myself to Ravenette, but not really—that much I knew. Ravenette herself had now closed her eyes. She was so still that she genuinely appeared to be in some kind of altered state.
“You like dogs, don’t you?” I continued. “You brought them here. Something like them, anyway. Right?”
Ravenette grimaced, and once again, that strange, high-pitched hiss emanated from her mouth. She opened her eyes and stared straight into mine as if she were desperately trying to hold onto the reality of me, of the lamp-lit room, the world—this world—itself. “It’s all right,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I didn’t spend any time wondering about it. Instead, I pushed Digitaria forward, toward the couch where Ravenette was sitting. He took a few tentative steps and cocked his head sideways, a look I knew well. He was thinking about something, trying to figure something out. Then, slowly, he began to wag his tail.
He sat down beside Ravenette and leaned against her leg.
“Okay?” I said. “Better now?”
Ravenette nodded but said nothing. After a few moments, the dog stood up again, shook himself and trotted back to me. He remained watchful, but apparently at ease.
“Where is it?” Ravenette said suddenly.
“What?” I asked.
“The Haverkit. That’s what he wants. He needs. He needs the Haverkit,” she said emphatically. “He says that’s what it was called.”
“The radio? It was stolen.”
“Not the radio!” Ravenette screeched.
“The what? Does he mean the horn of plenty antenna? Does he want that, too? I’ve told everybody who will listen that I don’t have it anymore.”
She shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no. Not the antenna. It’s the wrong thing. He says to tell you that’s the wrong thing.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking about all the chaos that had been caused by the search for what a shadow was now telling me was the wrong thing. “Then I don’t understand what the right thing is. Does he mean the radio?”
Impatiently, Ravenette shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said again, sounding even more irritable. “He wasn’t even supposed to be listening to the radio. He just wanted to hear the signal. When you saw him on the fire escape—he wasn’t supposed to be doing that. That’s why he was telling you to be quiet . . .”