Ghost Radio (3 page)

Gabriel stretched out
in the backseat, but the minute sneakers met leather…

“If you lay down back there, take your sneakers off.”

Gabriel moved his legs slightly, so his feet just dangled over the edge.

“Gabriel, I'm serious.”

“Dad, they're not touching the leather.”

“Gabriel.”

With a grumpy sigh, Gabriel sat up.

Dad and his pristine leather seats, fuck him. What's with him and this car? Gabriel thought as he stared out the window. It was all so boring. Another day with his parents. Another drive in the “fantastic Swedish machine.” Tedium.

This would have been a great day for jamming with his band or just hanging out in his room listening to records and smoking a little weed. But once again he was forced to endure the unbearable ritual of the drive.

It was just a pretext for taking a spin in his Dad's brand new Volvo Turbo. Fuck him. And fuck pristine leather. And fuck Swedish engineering too.

Gabriel was so sick of hearing this crap.

The only thing that excited Gabriel about his father's new car was the sound of its engine. He liked that. He imagined recording it in all different ways. How would it sound, he wondered, if he poured two pounds of sugar into the gas tank? What if it blew up, or was showered with a powerful acid? How would it sound then? Gabriel imagined amplifying
and replaying, in slow motion, the sputter of gasoline as it combusted inside the pistons. Gabriel had no love of cars. Music and sound were his passions…his obsessions, they were what he knew best.

A penchant for sonic experimentation awakened in him when he discovered Hans Heusser and Albert Savinio, the Dadaist musicians of the early twentieth century, industrial bands from the eighties like Throbbing Gristle and Coil, and the synth-pop groups Art of Noise and OMD. After diving deep into numerous avant-garde bands and immersing himself in the entire musical spectrum, inch by inch he formed his own concept of what music should be. One of his first compositions was based on a Diana Ross record played backward.

Sound fascinated him, from the crackle of static electricity to the brutal, sordid, macabre, and raw qualities of
Einstürzende Neubauten
. He was also fascinated by playful compositions, elegant sound collages, and smart paraphrases of the Pixies, Bad Brains, and even the Carpenters. His taste was eclectic. He enjoyed Stravinsky and folkloric
jarocho
songs from Veracruz. He liked listening to pop, he loved the most demented virtuoso performances, and he could fall into a virtual trance surrounded by the loud and ferocious sound of prog-metal. He didn't have a favorite genre. He believed that styles should merge and fuse in order to produce something more vital. He knew that was what he wanted to do.

He had no doubt that he was meant to be a musician. The only reason he hadn't already quit school was that it was the best place to meet girls. Of course, there was the little detail that his parents would never, in a million years, allow that, even though they generally supported his musical adventures. Their support was no small matter; his acoustic arrangements were loud, incoherent cacophonies of incongruous sounds that would drive anybody crazy—and frequently did. They always encouraged his desire to be a musician, as long as he finished high school and got into the conservatory first. Likewise, if he continued with photography, he would have to take it seriously and probably go to art school. This, they said, would allow him time to give it careful consideration, to avoid making a decision he'd regret.

“Imagine what it would be like if you realized at forty that you chose the wrong profession. Just think about how hard it would be to change your direction at that stage,” his father always said.

Gabriel knew he was right. The life of a musician could be difficult. Most ended up doing menial jobs just to put food on the table. On one occasion he had even answered his father by saying: “I don't plan on living that long.”

Because of this offhand remark, Gabriel's parents sent him to a psychologist. Dr. Krauss. Right out of central casting, he was bald and bearded, with a stern mouth and soft, considerate eyes. By the second session Gabriel had the doctor snowed. He made Krauss believe that he had religious hallucinations, homosexual desires, parricidal instincts, and later, as he improved his routine, bulimia and attention deficit disorder.

Gabriel read psychiatry books to better craft his imaginary conditions. He studied Freud, quoting cases verbatim, leaving Dr. Krauss confused and frustrated. After six months he resigned from treatment. A final admission that Gabriel was immune to his methods and techniques.

To the untrained ear, Gabriel's music sounded chaotic, an auditory jumble. Yet a patient, educated ear heard form and structure. Gabriel had a natural aptitude for composition. He created strangely elaborate soundscapes: canons, fugues, exceptional paraphrases and interpretations of a variety of musical forms, both classical and popular. Of course, few people understood what he was trying to do. Since he didn't have any formal training, he could only write rudimentary music, which often didn't fully express what he intended.

But it didn't matter. He felt music. It was his language. He could say things with tone, note, and meter that he could never have done with words.

While Gabriel listened to the engine, his father fiddled with the car's numerous gadgets, turning handles, pushing buttons, changing the radio station. He switched quickly from classical music to an interview with an astronomer discussing radio telescopes, and then to “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. He looked back at Gabriel:

“Do you want to hear the real masters?”

“Stop fooling around and focus on the road. I don't like the way that van is driving in front of us,” said his mother. She had been very quiet up to now.

“Not crazy about the Stones,” said Gabriel.

“What do you mean? The Stones started everything.”

“Yeah,” answered Gabriel without any interest.

“Okay, your loss,” said his father, and he changed the station again.

Then Gabriel noticed the gray van that had worried his mother. It swerved wildly.

A deep voice came over the radio:
You really should listen…

A van skidded
out of control…wheels lifting off concrete…flipping.

Joaquin saw a woman flailing inside the van, her eyes wide with horror. He thought he could smell the sparks flying off the vehicle as it scraped across the concrete. Then he heard a squeal, and turned to see a Volvo hurtling toward them.

“Gonna kill kill kill kill kill the poor: Tonight,” Biafra howled in his ears.

His voice made everything seem like it was happening in slow motion. A strange apathy overcame him. He found himself studying the Volvo driver's face as it careened toward him. It was a pleasant face, only slightly marred by the rictus of fear. It looked familiar. Did he know this person? he wondered. No, he told himself, it must be some kind of “future memory” without really knowing what that meant.

In this expanded moment he thought about a lot of odd things. He realized the accident meant they wouldn't get to the hospital in time to visit his grandmother. This would delay them for hours. Bummer. Then he thought about telling this story to Claudia. She was deadly afraid of car accidents. She would be scared as he described it, then he could console her…console her with sex. It would work, he knew it.

Oh, right, he thought, I'm about to be in an accident. The notion seemed distant, remote. I could be disfigured. Would Claudia still love me? Would she still want me with a face full of scars?

Could she be that superficial? Maybe. Joaquin had no idea how she'd react. What if he injured his hands or fingers? How long would it be be
fore he could stroke a female body, or his guitar? What if he never could? He hoped the accident wouldn't affect his mother's promise to buy him a guitar, even if it was just a cheap one. In
Guitar Player
magazine he'd seen an ad for a store in suburban Houston where they sold used Fenders at unbelievable prices. He'd written the address down on a piece of paper that he put in his pocket.

Maybe he'd at least get a Fender. Not the cheap Japanese job he'd almost settled on.

He'd forgotten about writing down that address.

Why had he forgotten?

The moment this thought crossed his mind, a sound like a thousand power chords filled his ears. Bits of twisted metal flew at him from every direction.

Oh, right, he remembered, I'm about to be in an accident.

What's happened to gravity? he wondered.

Everything went black.

Gabriel opened his eyes.
Through a chrysalis of jagged metal, he saw a woman in the distance, covering her face and repeating, “Shit, shit! My skin's burning, my skin's burning! Come quick, Roger, it burns!”

He wanted to see what was wrong. He turned.

Searing pain.

Blackness.

Fourteen minutes later, Joaquin awoke on a stretcher with an oxygen mask strapped over his face. He could only see rough shapes, and he heard voices, distant, garbled.

“Front seat…killed instantly…meat wagon…”

Another voice mixed with his, complaining:

“Can you imagine? What would you do if your boss said something like that?”

The first voice again, clearer:

“You did the right thing, but you got to think about how this is gonna affect your retirement. Pass me the scissors—thanks. There's nothing more we can do here. How long before the meat wagon arrives?”

He couldn't understand what they were talking about. It was as if they were referring to strangers. For a moment he thought he was hearing a medical show. He continued to listen.

“If we can't stop the hemorrhaging, this one's gonna code on us,” said another voice farther away.

I don't like these shows, Gabriel thought. I'm going to change the channel.

“Where's the remote? Will someone pass the remote?”

He heard laughing and a joke about couch potatoes that he didn't understand. Then he sank back into the blackness.

Wonderful, welcoming blackness.

Blackness…

The lights flickered several times and then sprang back to life, filling the plane's cabin with a warm glow.

Joaquin glanced at Alondra. She was asleep. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, and she let out a peaceful sigh.

Sleeping, she looked like a different person: a calmer, more centered soul. Joaquin wished he could join her. But he always had difficulty with this, and on planes it was virtually impossible.

He picked up his book and tried to read, but his mind wandered and he found himself becoming intrigued by the sound of the engine. What had been a mere background hum revealed deeper and more specific characteristics.

He put down the book, cocked his head, and listened. Concentrating, he heard organic rhythms, almost like breathing, hidden within the blare. He looked around the cabin. The other passengers went about their business unaware: reading, chatting, drinking, and eating. Oblivious to the symphony surrounding them.

Joaquin looked away, drawn in by the sound. It pulled him away from the mundane concerns of the moment into a universe where layers of meaning rested in bizarre and unknown places. Where overlooked details of life become a secret code embodying hitherto unimaginable mysteries. Dragging him deeper into this world was the increasing feeling that there was sentience coiled within the engine noise.

He leaned his head against the window, pressing nearer to the vibrations. He hoped this closeness would not only allow him to hear more
clearly, but bring him into communion with this awareness…make him part of it.

With his ear to the window, he did pick up new layers. The pulsating rhythm under the hum shifted from merely organic to distinctly human. It became the labored breath of a human being: a person gasping for air. A person trying to speak.

He mashed his ear harder against the window, and stilled his own breathing, willing himself to hear, willing the engine to speak.

A part of his brain told him this wasn't real, an aural illusion. But he quieted that voice and listened more intently.

All the extraneous noise fell away and only the strange labored breathing remained. Joaquin heard the rasping of dry, cracked lips. The suggestion of a tongue sliding across the roof of a mouth. He almost saw the mouth. A mouth flecked with blood, the victim of some trauma. An act of violence that made speaking all but impossible. He held his breath and sent out calming, soothing thoughts, hoping to ease the being who owned this injured mouth. Ease its mind and help it speak.

At first, he sent this request out as a feeling, just an amorphous suggestion. But his desire to hear more coalesced into words. Not spoken, but as real as if they had been. The sentence in his head began in a vague and rambling form:

“C'mon, please speak! I want to hear your voice. C'mon, c'mon!”

Then he pared it down, simplifying it into the essential request.

“C'mon, talk.”

Then it just became:

“Talk.”

He repeated the word over and over again in his head.

“Talk…talk…talk…”

He waited and listened. He heard the dry lips crack and the breath gasp in an elephantine struggle for speech.

“Talk…talk…talk…”

The gasps increased, a desperate attempt to fill lungs (which could not possibly exist) with air. Air so this hidden sentience could finally deliver
its message to Joaquin. And he desperately wanted to know what that message was. He switched to a coaxing word:

“Yes…yes…yes…”

The gasping stopped. Joaquin's skin prickled as he waited for the first word. The seconds ticked by.

Tick…tick…tick…

The moment expanded. The cloud of “now” hovered around Joaquin, embracing him with its large maternal hands. Thoughts of destiny and the buried mists of his painful past rose slowly to the surface, as he waited for a word.

He closed his eyes willing himself deeper into the communion, deeper into this new world. Images flashed through his mind: faces contorted in pain, burned flesh, walls splashed with blood.

Still the being did not speak.

Joaquin felt his entire body tense, his eyelids jamming together, his hands clenching into fists.

The plane shook, knocking his head against the window. The lights flickered. He sat back, rubbing the side of his head. His link with the being, the sentience was gone.

The plane lurched again. Something skittered across the floor, knocking against his foot. He bent down and picked it up. It was an iPod. Through the headphones he could hear the words of a familiar song:

“Kill, kill the poor.”