Ghost Radio (19 page)

Joaquin pointed at the mark on his face and lifted his shirt to show her the bruises the preacher's fists had left behind.

“What happened to you?”

“I fought with a fat man in a bathrobe on a today that never happened.”

“Well, sometimes we psychosomaticize events. We can physically manifest things we've imagined. Or maybe you just hit yourself on something. It could be plenty of things.”

Alondra carefully inspected the bruises on Joaquin's torso. They definitely looked like the marks of a beating and not the cutaneous symptoms of emotional disturbance.

“You didn't fall down some stairs?”

“At this point, I don't know what to believe.”

The hospital had long,
endless corridors. The facility had been army property, and during World War II, it had seen its share of action. Joaquin and Gabriel spent their first wheelchair ride without nurses slowly exploring the many wings on their floor. They read the commemorative plaque that hung in front of the administration offices and watched the nurses. Especially one who they both agreed had the most impressive breasts in the hospital. They did everything together as long as they could avoid talking about personal things.

After days of anxiety and loneliness, watching game shows, talk shows, and soap operas, Joaquin went looking for Gabriel again. He felt the need to be close to him, to get to know who he was, what he did, where he went to school, and what music he liked. What worried him the most, though, was the question he couldn't muster the courage to ask: What was going to happen to them after they left the hospital? At that time, he had no idea what arrangements were going to be made for him: How would his custody be resolved? Where would he live? It still felt as if his parents' death had never happened. He had to believe that Gabriel was going through a similar, excruciating process, coming to terms with a new reality.

As soon as he had permission to move about more freely, Joaquin searched for Gabriel in his wheelchair. One morning, he found him in one of the gardens reading a book. Joaquin stopped a few yards away.

“It's good to see you. I just finished this novel that I borrowed from the guy in the bed next to me,” said Gabriel.

“What is it?”

“Stories by Stephen King. Do you like horror stories?”

“A lot. And I like Stephen King too.”

“Do you want to read this one? Just give it back to me when you're done or my neighbor will hit me with his crutches. That was literally what he said.”

“When you're in a wheelchair, that's a serious threat.”

“Don't you have anything to read?”

“No. To be honest, I didn't plan on being here.”

Gabriel chuckled.

“I didn't plan on this vacation either.”

They talked a little about music, trends, the techniques used by certain guitar players, and the equipment used by keyboard musicians. They went on to discuss styles and reasons to make music at a time when the field was completely saturated. The conversation didn't end there; in fact, it became one of those critical elements in their relationship—a contentious point that was impossible to resolve but vital to the way they made music.

“I think that as long as you feel the need to express yourself with music, as long as you're having fun and like it…” said Gabriel, whose attitude was more relaxed.

“That's fine, but it's important to know that what you do is important, innovative. To say something that no one has ever heard before.”

“Why would that be more important? First and foremost, you make music for yourself.”

Joaquin was dismissive.

“That's bullshit. Everybody makes music for an audience. Maybe on a certain level it gives you satisfaction, stimulation, maybe you even need to do it, but I think that if you don't consider the listener, the whole thing is meaningless.”

“No, that's secondary. First you have to enjoy it and feel the satisfaction that what you're doing is good. Then you can see if someone else likes it.”

“Well, maybe that's fine if you play classical music where what mat
ters the most is the technique. In that case you can view it like a sport that you try to perform with more and more grace, speed, and agility each time. Or I guess if you're a mariachi or studio musician, without any aspirations beyond playing a gig and collecting a paycheck.”

“No, you're completely wrong. You have a very mercenary vision of music.”

“And you're just talking nonsense. The only person who could fulfill your idea of ‘playing music for yourself' is a retarded sixteen-year-old girl who's never had her period.”

The argument was endless. It varied in intensity and typically lost coherence until suddenly one of them would lose patience, become irritable, and tell the other to fuck off. A minute or two later, they would be talking again as if nothing had happened.

Gabriel and Joaquin began conquering more territory within the hospital. They spent a lot of time together, and eventually arranged a transfer to a semiprivate room.

Most of the nurses were affectionate and gave them more attention and privileges than the other patients. They didn't force them to be on ridiculous diets, they let them use an old radio with a tape player, and one of the nurses even lent them a guitar as a friendly gesture. Of course she thought they would start singing popular songs for the rest of the patients. It was a bitter moment for her, hearing their first strange collaborations, in which they incorporated organic, metallic, guttural, even gastric noises. There was a lot of Zappa-like humor, but there was also a seed of what would become their future sound. Regardless of being the favorites, they soon lost their musical privileges; apparently it annoyed the patients, the medical staff, and the neighbors. Gabriel built a very simple synthesizer with electronic parts he'd liberated from a storage room full of old medical equipment. He used tape recorders to amplify the sounds made by his invention. Joaquin, for his part, constantly collected cans, bottles, pieces of metal and wood, and other objects he would use to improvise percussion instruments. Unfortunately, on several occasions he returned to the room to discover that his instrument had been tossed into the gar
bage. Gabriel had heard about the tape cut-up technique used by beatniks like William Burroughs; he explained to Joaquin the endless possibilities that existed if they incorporated rhythms, textures, and voices appropriated from the radio into their music.

“Sounds a little like what the Dadaists did,” responded Joaquin enthusiastically.

“That's right. Something like that—like found art.”

When your hours are long and idle, it's almost inevitable that you make your own entertainment, one way or another. A poor man with an advanced case of pancreatitis had a collection of cassettes; apparently his daughter preferred sending recorded messages to writing letters. Joaquin and Gabriel figured that given his condition, it was unlikely he would miss some of the tapes, so they “borrowed” a few. They recorded hospital noises, voices, radio interference, then used a sharp knife and cellophane tape to make some loops, and played them on the tape player.

One night, when they'd been up late talking, Joaquin was fiddling around with the radio. He turned the dial idly, searching for patterns that could be incorporated into a piece they had composed that day, when he came across
Ghost Radio,
a program in which the public would call in to retell all kinds of horror stories, unexplainable anecdotes, and macabre experiences. Some tales were fascinating, some unbelievable; some defied description. In general, the broadcast was enthralling and they were hooked from the first moment. After that, they listened to the show faithfully, every night. Change was important because it broke the stifling monotony of the hospital, but doing something regularly gave them a pleasant sensation of normalcy. Soon their horror session was the day's most exciting activity.

Of course, stories of horrible deaths, phantasms, and accidents seemed like the last kind of entertainment one would recommend for a couple of teenagers who had just tragically lost their parents. But in a certain way, the stories were like vaccinations that helped them share the pain. Most had a naive, camp element that neutralized the horror and transformed it into something acceptable, human—even ridiculous. Gabriel
and Joaquin listened attentively to the callers and drank Cokes they'd smuggled into their room.

Every once in a while, a nurse would walk in and catch them. Most of the time the nurses just let the boys continue listening, although on occasion they objected and tried to impose their authority, turning off the treasured radio or even threatening to confiscate it. Fortunately, none of them ever followed through.

Sometimes, the boys even managed to get a hit of weed acquired from one of the janitors in exchange for the most diverse and unusual objects that they could get their hands on, from almost full boxes of chocolates to electric razors that they “found” while they were left unattended somewhere.

Gabriel often claimed that his school friends would visit him soon. He said that he would introduce Joaquin to the members of his band, but days went by and no one ever came. After some time, Joaquin realized that it was a delicate subject. He didn't know the details, but evidently Gabriel's friends didn't miss him that much. Gabriel made several calls to his friend Mike; each time, Mike promised that he would visit. Joaquin, on the other hand, had no expectations that any of his friends would come, but he waited anxiously for his grandmother to pick him up. The situation had been explained to her, and he had spoken with her on the phone, and it had been an extremely difficult conversation. Neither of them had cried. Both made a tremendous effort to be restrained, holding in their feelings, as if a single tear would unleash an uncontrollable avalanche of emotions.

One morning, Gabriel appeared.

“Come on, follow me. You're not going to believe it.”

Joaquin followed him down the corridor and up a ramp; when they reached a doorway, Gabriel spoke.

“Here we are. What do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“The track, you idiot,” he said, pointing to a path surrounding a part of the garden that was not well traveled.

Abruptly Gabriel lunged down the ramp, picking up speed and pro
pelling himself with all the strength in his arms. Joaquin was startled; he had thought Gabriel was about to tell him something personal, and suddenly he was going full speed down an empty hospital corridor. His natural reaction was to race after him, trying to gain the fastest speed possible. He had no idea how strong the wheelchairs were, and the thought of what would happen if he ran over someone didn't even cross his mind.

The slope was quite steep, and soon Joaquin was speeding just a few yards from Gabriel. A nurse saw them and started to scream, “Stop! Stop!” Joaquin focused on reaching Gabriel. Suddenly a door opened, and Dr. Scott, a pediatrician, and one of the hospital administrators, Mr. Garcia, walked blithely out into the corridor. Gabriel swerved to the left, but Joaquin didn't have enough time. As the doctor saw the wheelchair speeding toward him, he covered his face and weakly cried: “Nooo!”

Fortunately, the wheelchair race didn't have any major consequences. The doctor just received a few scrapes and a bruised ego; Joaquin didn't run him over, even though he had to launch himself into a bush in order to avoid doing so. Mr. Garcia was not injured at all. The boys justified the incident by explaining that Gabriel had lost control of his wheelchair as he was going down the ramp; Joaquin, frantically following to try and stop him, had accidentally pushed him instead, causing the chair to accelerate. The offended doctor felt sure that it had not been an accident at all, that the boys had targeted him. He wanted to press charges against them for assault and property damage. The hospital's director, Dr. Friedman, pointed out to him that the assailants were simply two boys in wheelchairs who had recently lost their parents.

“Scott, I'm not sure that you'll be able to convince a judge that these young boys are guilty.”

“But they assaulted me.”

“Let's leave it at that. It was an accident, and they won't ever do it again. Right?”

Both boys nodded, holding back snickers.

Joaquin received a new wheelchair since his was completely wrecked. The pair started to get a reputation, which could have been a good thing
since some of the nurses, especially the younger ones, were intrigued and interested in them. But at the same time other people were watching them more closely, so they had to be careful. Scott had decided that he was going to make them pay for what they had done; he followed them, spied on them, and did whatever he could to have them removed from the hospital. Friedman, who had defended them, was not particularly happy with the two bored and wild youths either, and would have preferred their transfer to another facility. Fortunately for the two boys, legally, there was nothing he could do. The bureaucracy was complicated and the process would take weeks or months.

At night, Joaquin and Gabriel continued their ritual of listening to
Ghost Radio,
and even though they had fewer opportunities to find the contraband that would enliven their evenings, they still enjoyed the program tremendously.

One night, they quietly left their room, gliding silently down the hallway. They knew that it would be difficult to reach the director's office without being seen, but Joaquin had succeeded once before. Stealth wasn't easy rolling down the hallways in the middle of the night in two wheelchairs that squeaked more loudly than the decrepit cots in a brothel.

They synchronized their movements to make as little noise as possible. The journey lasted almost an hour: an hour of barely suppressed giggles. At last they reached the door of the director's office. Joaquin tried the key he had gotten from an employee in exchange for a nearly full bottle of Aramis shaving lotion. It opened. They quickly went inside, closing the door behind them, and headed for the telephone. Gabriel got there first and dialed a number. It was busy. He tried again. Busy. And again, same thing. Disappointed, he dropped the receiver back onto its base. Joaquin placed his finger in front of his lips, motioning not to make any noise, and dialed the number himself. Busy. He tried again, and this time heard a young woman's voice.

“You're calling
Ghost Radio
. Do you have a story to tell?”

When he heard this, Joaquin quickly handed the telephone over to Gabriel.

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “I want to tell a story.”