Radiomen (37 page)

At some point in the morning, I must have dozed off, because when I woke up, Digitaria was beside me. I took him out for his walk and then went back to the couch and resumed listening to the signal.

In the early afternoon, I turned my cell phone back on and, almost immediately, it rang. Of course, it was Jack.

He didn’t even say hello. The first words out of his mouth were, “Have you heard it?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing exactly what he meant. “I heard it.”

“Amateur radio networks all over the world are picking it up and so are the big observatories with radio telescopes. Actually, I should say, picking
them
up. It’s not just whispering at the Watering Hole; there are more than a dozen ghost signals on different frequency bands. It’s like the whole radio spectrum has lit up.”

“So it’s big news.”

“It will be for a while,” Jack agreed. “But since I’m assuming—just like before—that nobody will be able to figure out what the source of the signals is or what they mean, eventually most everyone will decide that they’re some sort of anomaly and go on to other things. That will leave the usual suspects—the alien hunters and conspiracy guys—to come on my show and tell me all about what they think is going on.”

“And you’re not going to tell them that you know the truth?”

“I didn’t even get a photo, Laurie.”

“No. I didn’t think you would.”

“So what am I going to do? Tell them that I built a repeater out of old Haverkit parts so I could give it to a shadow who wants to find God? I can’t do that. I’d sound crazy—and I’m supposed to be the cool head, the objective host who gives the unexplainable phenomena crowd a place to come and work up a sweat.”

I made a mental note of what Jack had just said: he’d called the radioman a shadow—no mention of the bright, slim being that had revealed itself behind the shape of darkness. Evidently, only I had seen the radioman in his real form. I knew Jack well enough by now to be sure that if he’d even glimpsed anything other than the shadow, he would have been dissecting the experience, going over and over it with me. Then was I going to tell him what I had seen? Maybe, but not now. That was a conversation for another day, another time.

“What about Raymond?” I asked.

“Well, we didn’t exactly kiss and make up but we went our separate ways without incident, as they say. We both lived to fight another day.” Then Jack laughed. “The Blue Boxes are going to be working overtime to soothe the angry engrams that he and that vampire queen are going to be dealing with while they try to fit your radioman and his behavior into Blue Awareness.”

“Ravenette is a psychic, not a vampire.” How odd, I thought. I actually felt a little protective of her. Almost fond, as if she were already fading into the background of how
my
thoughts were arranging themselves around the events of last night.

“I stand corrected. I got my alternative lifestyles mixed up.”

“You know what, Jack?” I said. “I actually have to get ready to go to work.”

“Can’t you call in sick or something? You must be exhausted. Have you even slept?”

“Not much, but I feel fine. I really do.”

After adding a promise to Jack that I’d call him later—or maybe tomorrow—I got off the phone, took a shower, and went through my usual routine of having something to eat, getting myself dressed, and taking the dog for a walk. After I brought him back to the apartment, before I left again, I gave him a pat on the head.

Standing at the bus stop a few minutes later, I saw the moon high up in a corner of the afternoon sky. Planes from the airport where I was headed were pulling themselves up into that same late autumn sky, headed out over the ocean. Down the block on the road between the garages and the bay, I could see my bus come lumbering toward me. Everything was the same as it always was, except that it was not.

And what was not, was me. I was different now than I had been yesterday, different when I got home last night than when I had left. And the difference was irrefutable. I felt the way I thought I must have felt when I was a child, crouching beside Avi on the fire escape, watching him tune around the dial on his radio. I felt energized, awake, alert—and deeply curious, although there were some things I already understood. I suppose it had taken last night to make them clear to me, but they were certainly clear now.

I knew, for example, what Avi had wanted, probably all the years of his life. Avi, who had never traveled more than a few miles from home, wanted his radios to connect him to distant places. And my friend Jack, so consumed with revenge lately, really just wanted to go on listening to people tell him stories about things going bump in the night. Dr. Carpenter wanted everything that he considered nonsense having to do with strange dogs and ancient visitors to stop being any concern of his. Raymond Gilmartin simply wanted to be right, and Ravenette wanted him to be, too. The rabbi who owned the bulldog wanted enlightenment. And the radioman simply wanted to do his job.

And me? What did I want? I could answer that question in the few moments it took me to climb onto the bus, take my seat, and let it carry me to work under the pale light of the afternoon moon.

What did I want? Maybe to believe what I had denied for longer than I could remember: that life could be something other than just a series of days and weeks and years to get through. Slog through, with my head down and eyes averted. Instead, it could actually be interesting, rich with possibilities. It could even be mysterious. Very mysterious. It could keep me up all night, thinking. Wondering. Listening. It could make me want to keep tuning around the universal dial, trying to find out what I might hear. What I might encounter.

What did I want? There was no doubt about that now.

What did I want? I wanted more.