He loves it. Why doesn’t he own one of these mothers? What a wonderful gift this would make. He grabs his glass, takes a quick sip, lines up a second shot, and putts. This time the ball rolls off the green halfway down the carpet and bounces off the baseboard. Speer responds by flinging the mini-club through the air. It crashes into the wall behind the bar, knocks a trophy to the floor. He takes a breath, moves to the bar, finds the club, picks it up, and lets loose on the remaining trophies, taking wild, unaimed cuts, severing gold and silver dancers from their platforms, gouging wood, cracking columns, until finally all the shelves are cleared.
He picks up the martini shaker, moves to the couch, and starts to sit down when professional intuition kicks in. He gets hold of himself, straightens his tie, brushes down the lapels of his suit, and calmly steps over to the fireplace. He crouches down, makes a fist, pauses, then knocks on the brick fire wall.
“Bingo,” he says, and presses with both hands, first one side of the bricks, then the other. The fire wall turns on a hinge and opens a small passage into another room.
Speer gets down on hands and knees and squeezes through with some difficulty. On the other side, he sits on the floor, annoyed with himself for leaving the flashlight behind. He moves a hand into the air, touches a hanging string, and pulls on it. An overhead bulb clicks on.
He’s inside some sort of small vault, maybe five by five by five, windowless. The walls and ceiling are all blueboard. The floor is unfinished plywood. There are two secretary’s typing chairs, swiveled down to their lowest point. He seats himself in one and rolls forward to a homemade, mix-and-match broadcast board. There are transformers, boosters, monitors, an array of microphones and loose speakers, a turntable, cart machines for prerecorded tape loops, and a stack of labeled carts that read applause, wheezing laughter, raspberry, thunder, whistle, lion roar, sneeze, Chinese gong, car crash #1, car crash #2, fire alarm, breaking glass, monsoon, gunshot, balloon pop, foghorn, slamming door, telephone ring, Tarzan yell, typewriter, and bomb drop — whistle & blast. Nailed to the rear wall is a yellowed photo of Harry Houdini.
Speer looks over the board, begins hitting unlabeled toggle switches until the meters light up and then needles swing up into view. He takes an index card and pen from his suitcoat pocket, finds a volume knob, and gingerly turns it to the right. From the speakers comes a sultry female voice saying, “You’ve got to learn to appreciate your inherent carnality.” He points the pen to the frequency indicator, then transcribes a set of numbers onto the card.
He turns his attention to a large reel-to-reel recorder with a flashing red button labeled timer. He hits the rewind toggle and the tapes spin backward on their axles. He hits stop and then play.
“Here we go,” Speer whispers aloud.
The woman’s voice is replaced by a squeal of feedback, then the static cuts out completely, and after a second of dead air, a laid-back voice announces:
You’re welcome. Don’t mention it. We here at anarchy central agree wholeheartedly. “All-talk radio,” my ass. What they’re handing out here is all babble. Straight from the puppet’s mouth. I’m not saying I got anything better. I’m just saying we’re here to knock them on their asses for a while. So, tell your friends. The rumors are true. We’re ba-a-a-ck.
Speer smiles and says, “So am I, dickhead.”
6
… Well, you’ve been even more libidinously confused than normal tonight. I see my services are needed now more than ever. But the hour is late and my tongue is tired. So, until next time, this is Veronica Wilcox, the diva of deviant delights, saying, fuel the fantasy and keep in touch.
As the close-out theme rises, the regulars in Minnesota immediately start their critiquing of Libido Liveline. Flynn starts to file through bodies, moving out of the crowd, either nodding his head in agreement with their assessments or giving a warm and noncommittal laugh. He won’t argue with even the most ludicrous of criticisms. He’ll simply pat the commentator on the back and move on to more lucid company.
Flynn doesn’t like antagonism. He doesn’t see what it accomplishes, finds it reductive and time-consuming. As a result, he ends up spending a large chunk of all his time in Wireless playing the healer, soothing hurt feelings and trying to build shaky treaties between overly sensitive and cliquish people.
A regular named Frank St. Claire starts to rewind the requisite tape they’ve made of the show and Flynn knows this means the heavy-duty analysis is about to start. They’ll be huddled over the reel-to-reel beyond closing time, replaying the show inch by inch, jotting down notes and thumbing through cross-referenced index cards, debating every word of advice that’s fallen from the lips of the goddess. This is the core cult of Libido Liveline fans, the die-hards, the people who just can’t get enough, whose daily meaning and reason for moving and drawing breath has filtered down to a local radio show.
G.T. squeezes a last few arms on his way to the barber chair. He’s not into the obsessive dissection. As a matter of fact, though he’d never admit it to the fanatics, he’s not even that interested in what Ronnie Wilcox has to say. It’s simply her voice that gets to him. For all he knows, he’d get the same sweet charge, the same addictive chill, just listening to her read from the phone book.
He mounts his throne, the antique, handle-pump, brass-trimmed barber chair that’s located in a dim, cavelike niche in the rear of the bar. It’s from this post that he plays big daddy every night, dispensing love advice, floating loans of up to a C-note and occasionally beyond, reinterpreting a painful quarrel between two edgy friends, confiscating car keys for the overindulgent and offering rides home to all parts of the city. Each night, it’s as if a visit to Flynn’s barber chair is an essential part of the Wireless experience. Newcomers sheepishly approach and shake hands and mumble nicknames. Acquaintances swing by on their way to the rest rooms, dropping the latest radio joke or asking a pop fashion opinion. Novice radio-heads solicit quick quotes on antique sets, while the longtime aficionados settle in for ten- minute debates about recent FCC legislation. The punks come by for a free beer. The tech-heads want a pat on the back for their latest innovations. The amorous seek out an introduction to a newfound prospect. And the simply lonely want any kind of exchange, the basic interplay of human voices.
Flynn supplies it all, every night, and quietly, demurely, revels in it. He’s the main player of Wireless, maybe more essential than either Ferrie or Most. Tonight’s no exception to the tradition. Over the course of a half hour he sees most of the congregation. Hazel cruises by to ask if she can borrow his car next week and he smiles and assures her mi Saab es su Saab. Jimmy Donato hits him up for a twenty to lay on an upcoming round of nine ball and Flynn slides him a crisp, new bill. Jojo Mehlman needs some bolstering over the brutal divorce he’s wading through and Flynn goes to work, assuring a quick resolution and predicting lines of new women by spring. Norris Christianson has a need to recount the graphic details of his recent proctosigmoidoscopy and Flynn nods gravely and sympathizes over the strange ways of the lower digestive tract. Everybody seems to have a problem tonight. Laurie Geneva is convinced her new husband the dentist is slamming that bitch hygienist and Flynn assures her Graham would never do this. Nina Texier, lead guitarist for the industrial-funk band Grammatology, has sprained her wrist and Flynn recommends a specialist who owes him a favor and won’t charge her. A three-hundred-pound bald guy, known only as Dix, relays his recent problems with the licensing commission and Flynn promises he’ll make a call to Counselor Donaghue.