Ghost Radio (14 page)

Joaquin slept for hours.
When he awoke, the first thing he saw out the window of the SUV was a sign reading:
WELCOME TO MEXICO CITY.

But Mexico City was different than he remembered it. The capital had turned into a gigantic, indescribable monster, an amorphous mass of gray and ocher. The city of Joaquin's childhood had disappeared, buried under a mountain of toxic sludge. He barely believed what he saw. It was like the landscape in a fever dream.

He'd longed to return to the capital after his parents died; he'd dreamed of home, school, the Zocalo, the Zona Rosa district. He had imagined the feelings that would course through his body: feelings of nostalgia or dread or desire. But now, entering the streets of his city, he was just tired and hungry.

The driver handed him a bottle of water. After taking a few gulps, Joaquin considered the driver. He had a clipped moustache, cinnamon-colored skin, and blue eyes; he chain-smoked as he drove.

His cell phone rang several times, and each time he glanced down at it but didn't answer.

Joaquin refused to speak to him. He didn't know what the relationship was between this man and the killer who'd liberated him from the clutches of the police, but he guessed the driver must be a subordinate. Another killer, no doubt, who, for the time being had been relegated to the lesser station of chauffeur.

Joaquin had grown accustomed to silence during his hospital stay. Silence was good, he told himself. Silence was comforting. Silence was his new religion.

Of course, this didn't stop his mind from racing. He couldn't stop the questions: Why had he been rescued? Who were these people? Where was he being taken? There was no point in interrogating the driver; he felt his only advantage lay in the fact that his identity remained a secret. If the drug lords thought he was someone else, he'd be in serious danger when they found out they had the wrong man. He didn't think these particular businessmen would take it lightly if they found out they'd made a mistake. Moreover, a lot of cops, and who knows how many others, had been killed during the rescue, and Joaquin was tortured by the thought that it was all his fault.

Then again, there could be no doubt that whoever had done this possessed a grim determination. After the events in the hospital, he knew that this was no game, knew they must think he was valuable in some way. His only consolation was the fact that he hadn't hurt anyone, and that in a way he was just another victim of these monstrous crimes.

Joaquin looked out the window of the SUV at this city of scars, of sad expressionless buildings. Where was the famed City of Palaces, the flower-filled capital of gardens and majestic structures? Maybe the Mexico City of his memories had never really existed: a childhood fantasy that had accreted over the years, finally achieving mythic proportions. This disappointed him, devastated him even. But given his current condition, there were more important things to worry about.

Just as he'd spent every moment in the hospital trying to devise a way to escape, now he considered the question of how he could jump out of the moving vehicle—or should he wait until they reached a street with heavy traffic, get out at a light, and lose himself in the throng? He wondered if the driver would fire into a crowd. Then he remembered the hospital, and his doubts evaporated. These people were capable of anything.

They drove past avenues that looked familiar. Gradually, in spite of the traffic, the atrocious pollution, the kids who cleaned off windshields at the street corners, he began to feel like he was back in his city. As they approached the downtown area, the Alameda, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Mining Palace, and all the other postcard attractions, the wounded
megalopolis recovered its mystique and charm. Joaquin felt a wave of optimism. Nothing bad could happen to him there; not even a cartel of drug lords and murderers could harm him in these streets. This was his city. Here he could be a king. These thoughts encouraged him and helped him keep his cool even as the SUV started winding through the narrow streets near Garibaldi Plaza.

Suddenly the driver stopped the car. He turned off the motor and lit another cigarette.

“We're here.”

Joaquin looked at him, trying not to give himself away. He nodded his head as if he knew what the man was talking about.

“You're going to go to that hotel over there. Lie low for a few days, maybe weeks. Don't call any attention to yourself. It's most likely that in a little while, they'll stop looking for you. After all, you're lucky: they don't know anything about you.”

“That's it?” Joaquin finally asked, unable to restrain himself from speaking any longer.

“Don't worry,” the driver said through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Someone's watching your back.”

Joaquin wanted to ask what he meant, but he had already started up the SUV's motor. His stare made Joaquin understand that he didn't have any more time for him.

“They're expecting you at the hotel.”

Joaquin got out, knowing that he could go wherever he wanted now. He weighed his options. As he moved away from the vehicle, he thought about looking up the house of some friend or relative, but no one came to mind, so he walked toward the hotel. The driver yelled a few parting words:

“He'll be in touch when the time is right.”

He closed the windows and took off.

Joaquin went in and found the front desk of the hotel. An old man gave him a key.

“Room 303. They told me you needed some rest.”

“Yes, I've got to lie down. But first I'd like some food,” he said. Then he remembered he had no money.

As if he could read minds, the man handed him a fat envelope. “They left this for you,” he said.

Joaquin opened it discreetly and saw a bundle of crisp pesos secured with a fat rubber band. There was also a note. It read:

Take it. You'll pay me back later.

No signature. But he couldn't shake the nagging, inexplicable feeling that Gabriel somehow had something to do with all this. Now, though, he was tired and hungry. Without wasting another thought on it, he put the money in his pocket, took the key, and headed for the restaurant.

“Reality isn't my friend.”

“What a great way to begin a call,” said Joaquin, chuckling.

“Perhaps…but it's not a great way to live a life,” the caller said, a note of controlled desperation in his voice.

Joaquin recognized the tone.

“That was a laugh of commiseration. Reality isn't my friend either,” he said, hoping to relax the caller.

“I can't seem to get a handle on it. Most of the time I just accept that I'm crazy, dreaming of the day the insanity takes over, obliterating everything.”

“What exactly is happening?”

“It began with my furniture. Each day I'd wake up to find it had changed. One day I have a leather sofa. The next day it's some ratty cloth job from the Goodwill. The tables, chairs, pictures on the walls, everything would change. One day I had no furniture at all: just a mattress on the floor of my bedroom and a few old lamps in some of the other rooms. And no matter what furniture I found in the morning, it always looked familiar. I could remember its history. A friend helping me pick it out. Or lugging it up the stairs. Or whatever.”

Joaquin liked the caller's voice: a cool baritone. Perfect for radio. He wished more callers had good radio voices.

“But I also remember the old furniture. Even right now I have more than six hundred distinct memories of decorating this apartment, all memories from the same week: the week I moved in.”

“And then what happened?”

“It began spreading to other areas of my life. First with friends, I'd wake and have a completely different circle of friends. And sometimes friends that were dead one day would be alive the next. Some days I was married, some single. Some days I was even gay. And all of these facts were tied to distinct memories…to lives I'd clearly lived…but hadn't. Then it was everything: jobs, family, even the city I called home. Everything changed. Everything. Every day I woke to an entirely different life, and went to sleep knowing I'd find a new one in the morning. One day last week I was on Death Row.”

A man who lived in a state of pure quantum flux. Joaquin had never encountered a person like this. He'd never had a call like this. It always made him happy when he found a treat for his listeners. Even if this guy was lying, it was still a great story. It was also great radio.

“In the last few days, it has gotten worse. It used to be that one reality would maintain itself through an entire day. That was a small comfort. But a few days ago, that changed. Now the shifts occur suddenly. I barely know from minute to minute who I am, where I am. And yet part of me knows it all.”

Joaquin sighed. This was getting tedious.

“Jack, we like your story. But you can't keep calling and telling it. You've already called three times this month with the same story.”

“I know. I'm sorry. But when I began this call, I'd never called before; I'd never even listened to
Ghost Radio
before tonight.”

“That's a nice spin. But it's not going to fly. Call back when something new happens, Jack.”

“I didn't even give my name.”

The line went dead.

Joaquin took a pull off his coffee and smiled. He liked Sam's calls and his weekly reports about his shifting reality. Joaquin hoped he would call again.
Ghost Radio
needed more callers like Bert. He hoped the next time Tim called he'd put his wife, Phyllis, on the line. Sarah made for good radio too. He hoped she'd never call again.

There were nights
when, no matter how insistent the calls, how heated the debates, and how tearful the confessions, I had a tough time maintaining my focus on my callers' voices. I drifted, losing my concentration. My mind wandered, filling with thoughts unrelated to the show: thoughts of women I'd slept with, great meals I'd eaten, and cool summer evenings on the beaches of Chiapas. What kind of life was it, to grow old in some decrepit broadcasting booth? To become a radio institution, or, more likely, one more disgusting old goat who stays on the air until he's dead? When this happened, I drank dozens of cups of coffee, splashed water on my face; all the tricks one uses to stay alert. But nothing worked.

Well, that's not true. One thing always worked: a great call. A call that electrified the entire studio. That night I felt a bit dizzy; I thought maybe I was coming down with a cold.

A call came in. Not great. Not electrifying.

He told a story about a “friend of a friend” who'd met a gorgeous blonde, taken her to a club, and after a few hours of passion toasted her with champagne in which she'd dissolved some kind of narcotic. The next morning—

“He woke up in pain with a strange scar on his side. Right?” I said, cutting him off.

“No way. Yeah.”

“Because they'd removed one of his kidneys to sell on the black market,” I continued impatiently.

“Yeah.”

“That's what we call an ‘urban legend,' a story passed down orally through the naive complicity of people who believe the phrase ‘it happened to the friend of a friend of mine,'” I said, emphasizing the last few words.

“No, it's true. It really happened to my friend's friend.”

“Anything can happen to that mysterious friend of a friend, because it always happens far away from us and there's never any way of proving it. It's the folklore of our era, the constant reappropriation of grotesque anecdotes.”

“No, I'm telling you, it really happened. You don't believe me?”

“What I can't believe is that there's still someone out there who believes this crap. I've heard this one before, with a couple of variations. In one, the gorgeous woman writes a message to the friend of a friend on the hotel mirror that reads ‘Welcome to the world of AIDS' or something along those lines. In others, like the one about your friend's friend, it's all about organ trafficking. If one percent of these stories were true, this blonde of yours would not only be an active threat but an authentic serial offender. So, I guess I have no choice but to warn our listeners to never,
never
trust a gorgeous blonde who is ready to hop in the sack with you. Fortunately, in the real world, at least the one I live in, the danger of that happening is extremely low.”

“You're making fun of me.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Jeez.”

“I'd make fun of anyone who believes this crap. Because if you buy those stories, I can't imagine the other kinds of bullshit your friend and your friend's friend are gonna make you swallow. And people like me might suffer the blowback. People who aren't total morons.”

“To some extent, these stories have a lot in common with jokes,” Alondra interjected, trying to lighten the mood. “They're passed around and we can repeat what we've heard without necessarily having to cite
our sources. The objective is to trigger a reaction. In both cases, there's often a moral, a twist; in jokes, obviously, it's comical, and in urban legends, horrific.”

But Alondra's interruption did not change my mood. I entered what she called the “Annoying Spiral”: an intensifying state of fury, in which the whole planet conspires against Joaquin to drive him up the wall. Or so I think.

“Bullshit, bullshit. It's for real, it really happened. And Miss Wikipedia can just keep out of this,” the caller said.

“Miss Wikipedia?” Alondra repeated in a low voice, her finger on the “cough button.”

“I'm sorry to inform you that you've been conned. In fact, now that you mention it, it might not be a bad idea for you to consult Wikipedia before calling. And by the way, my colleague Alondra has a Ph.D. in urban folklore.”

Alondra grimaced. She didn't like to be defended when she could do it herself, nor did she like her credentials to be flaunted as if they were medals.

“Goddamn stupid broad!” the caller exclaimed.

“In other words, in addition to suffering from a pitiful, childlike gullibility, you also hate women. Tell us how it all began,” I said. “Your mommy didn't nurse you?”

“You're a major asshole. Go and get yourself—”
Bleep.
Watt cut off the caller's last words.

I engaged in conversations like this every night, sometimes several times a night. Usually I'd just let it go, but other times I'd take it personally, as if the caller had picked a fight directly with me and not with my disembodied voice. I wanted to hit, to punch, to kick. I wanted to take something beautiful and make it ugly.

This was how I felt when a call came through on line two.

“Joaquin, I want to tell you about something that happened to me.

None of us spoke for several seconds. Several long seconds. Any of us could have said this was another urban legend, one more tall tale passed on along “biological vectors” by people who circulated it, enriched it, added credibility by including emotions and an element of spontaneity. But no one said so, because we knew this wasn't the case.

I offered clumsy words of compassion for the caller's loss. The caller had already hung up.

The tone of the show changed at that moment. It became darker, more serious, and remained that way for the rest of the night. It felt like a funeral parlor rather than a radio station. The link between the inhuman voice and the child's disappearance was tenuous, unbelievable, and barely justifiable, and yet, it seemed unquestionable.

It felt true.