The Voice on the Radio (11 page)

But Reeve said courteously, “Sure is. What’s your name?”

There was a pause, as if the caller needed to think about this, or needed to be prompted. Needed Reeve to say Yes, your airtime has started, the world is listening, go ahead.

And yet, not that kind of pause.

Not a person uncertain about whether it had started.

A person choosing to start something.

“I,” said the voice, “am Hannah.”

CHAPTER
NINE

Reeve turned to Styrofoam.

Hannah
.

No. Absolutely not. It was not probable. Statistics were against it. It was not logical. It was—

It was the worst thing that could happen.

He felt so light. He might float off the chair and tap against walls, a lost object in a space flight.

Hannah
.

Vinnie was still in the hall, still talking to the stranger. Not even enough time for a change of posture had passed.

Nobody was paying attention to Reeve.

The reel-to-reel tape, in its slow, old-fashioned way, circled on. It was taping silence now. Neither Reeve nor his caller spoke.

He said to himself: It’s not Hannah. It’s some college sophomore joking around. It’s Cordell paying Pammy to lower her voice.

But could Pammy’s high, annoying burble be transformed into that rough smoker-drinker voice?

He tried to calm himself.

It was Visionary Assassins. They’d hired a voice. For the Assassins, the more attention, the better. They, too, could up the ante.

It’s giggly girls with nothing else to do. Junior high kids listening after they’re supposed to be in bed. Kids in the student center, sick of video games. The professor’s wife, filling in her chart.

But not Hannah.

He felt cold from the inside out.

He needed to swallow and couldn’t. He needed to throw up and couldn’t. He needed to think and couldn’t.

“I need to know one thing,” said the voice. “Just one.”

They all said that. But this voice shivered on the words. It was not a demand. It was a plea.

Reeve disconnected. With the slightest pressure from just one finger, he got rid of the voice.

Then he stared at the phone. Why did I do that? I know so much that almost nobody else knows. I could have asked a single question myself, and if it’s Hannah, or if it’s not—I’d know.

She’s gone now. I can’t ask.

His mouth was full of something. A towel. Probably his tongue.

And what if it is Hannah? What then, stupid? he said to himself. His pulse whacked in his temple. It felt like a golf ball under the skin. Hire a real Visionary Assassin to do away with her? Invite her for dinner? Suggest a friendly local FBI agent?

If it was a listener trying to increase the action, he thought, she’ll call back.

He waited. His heart beat as fast as a humming-bird’s.

This is a college town, he reminded himself. Boston in November equals bored college kids with nothing better to do than listen to a dumb college radio station and make dumb calls.

Around him, clocks with sweep hands ticked off seconds.

Then, once more, the clear plastic bump on the telephone twinkled.

He tried to wet his lips. Couldn’t. Tried to look away long enough to find his Coke. Couldn’t.

Should he answer?

One more ring and the answering machine would pick up. He could not have Vinnie notice anything amiss.

Vinnie would love it, thought Reeve. He’ll make it be Hannah even if she’s not Hannah. In fact, Vinnie is the likeliest person to set this up.

His eyes flickered to Vinnie out in the hall. Vinnie was not subtle, could not act. If he was in this, it would show. But Vinnie continued to wave his clipboard at the stranger.

Reeve picked up the phone, finger poised over the Disconnect button. Reeve had large hands: hands meant for circling basketballs or carrying one end of a piano. A voice on a wire had reduced his hand to quivers.

Janie loved his hands. Loved resting her thin fingers against his big ones. He could not think of Janie now. He could not allow himself to think what he might have loosed upon Janie.

It’s not Hannah, he repeated to himself. That call was a joke.

And what was selling Janie?
he thought.
A joke
?

He had been building a bomb here, as carefully as a terrorist in a basement. And hadn’t even realized it.

But who would be blown up?

Not me, he thought. I’m the talk show host. Nothing happens to the host. Hannah isn’t my daughter. She isn’t my kidnapper. She’s theirs.

Reeve managed a swallow. Dry, no Coke.

Hannah would explode Janie, and both families.

It’ll go away, Reeve told himself. I didn’t really do anything, and nobody really listens to this station. It isn’t Hannah, and I’ll stop doing janies. I’ll attend class, I’ll study, eat at McDonald’s instead of the cafeteria, pick up my mail in the dark of night, sleep in the park. “This is WSCK! We’re Here, We’re Yours, We’re Sick, how can I help you?” Only his fingers quivered, not his vocal cords.

“I just have one question, Reeve.” Chipper, perky voice. Demanding, in a Hills College way. “I wanna know if Visionary Assassins look like their songs. Somebody told me that in real life, they’re wimpy, weedy nerds. I picture them as big, lean thugs. What’s the truth?”

Reeve’s horror faded to nothing. He felt thick and somewhat silly. His racing pulse dropped, and his sweat dried.

“Ah, the elusive truth,” said Reeve. “Only if you see the Assassins live will you come close to the truth.” He disconnected.

Well, that was a relief. No Hannah. Just an ordinary evening in the life of a deejay.

He’d have to put a third CD on. He couldn’t fill his lungs enough to talk on the air. Couldn’t wet his lips.

He felt like somebody who’s just missed having a fatal car accident and has to pull over until the jelly-legs go away. He took two extremely deep, calming breaths, the way he used to do in high school before a wrestling match.

High school. Talk about remote. He’d been a kid then, with kid-sized problems.

This is a kid-sized problem, too, he reminded himself.

The phone lit once more.

He tried to plan what to say to the fake Hannah, but no plan came to mind. He’d have to wing it. This time he would not hang up. He had to hear the woman out, find out who was behind her nonsense.

“Hey! You’ve reached WSCK! We’re Here, We’re Yours, We’re Sick, how can I help you?”

“Reeve? This is Brian Spring. Jodie and I are here in Boston for her college interviews. We heard your broadcast.”

Reeve had been braced for a fake Hannah. Not a real Brian Spring. Reeve’s head splintered. Brian and Jodie?
But they would tell Janie
.

“We’re at the Marriott. We’re not alone, Reeve. Janie came up with us,” said Brian. “The Marriott. Room six sixteen. You better come here.”

Janie was here.

Janie had listened.

It felt as if the blood had been siphoned right out of his body.

He had thought Hannah’s voice the worst-case scenario.

No. Janie hearing his worst janie was.

An hour ago, Reeve had considered it his best.

The coldness in Janie’s system made it hard to think. She was freezing up like an arctic pipe-line.

Could she have borne it if Reeve had spilled her to a sympathetic roommate? Maybe.

But he had chosen the world. Radio existed wherever a dial existed. Millions of locations. Millions of listeners.

And so many lies! He was a gofer, he’d said, the new kid on the block, a filer of papers and a sorter of cassettes. Not so.

“I don’t want him in this room with me!” Janie shouted at Brian. In times past, when life or truth had threatened, she’d had torrents of weeping, bad dreams, woozy desperation for weeks. Go through that again, without Reeve to lean on? Instead, Reeve to blame it on?

Jodie found an extra blanket on a shelf and put it over her shivering sister. Janie cocooned in it, rolling up into the wool. Only her hair showed, a frizzy ripple of red at the end of a green cloth tube.

“What do we say to Reeve once he gets here?” asked Brian.

“You’re the one who called him,” said Janie from inside her muffler. “I’m certainly not going to say anything to him. He sold me! Like he opened a store, and I was the product!”

“You can’t breathe like that,” said Jodie, yanking the blanket down a little.

I don’t feel like breathing, thought Janie.

Jodie flopped down next to her. “But Reeve is the good guy! I can’t understand how he could have done this.”

“If somebody told us,” said Brian, “we wouldn’t believe it. But we heard him.”

“Maybe I should call Mom and Dad,” said Jodie nervously, getting up off the bed again.

“
What
?” Brian jumped between her and the phone. “Forget it! We’re going to get rid of this, not make it bigger. Bring parents in? Are you crazy?”

“Right,” said Jodie, “you’re right, Bri, I was crazy.”

Yet another enormous horror that I cannot tell my mother and father, thought Janie.

She thought of the tremendous effort she had put into protecting her parents. Her “I’m okay, we’re okay, it’s okay” stance. She knew as an absolute that neither parent could endure this betrayal.

She would have to bear it.

Reeve had not thought of the janies going down roads, into hotels, inside travelers’ cars. The dorms, yes; the student center, the occasional professor’s house.

He saw himself as an ignorant fool; somebody who really did not understand the technology behind radio.

It existed. It had a life. Anybody could turn that life on.

The phone at WSCK continued to ring. Three more calls.

His bright, cheery voice identified the station. “How may I help you?” said his very own voice.

They were not Hannah. They were not Brian. They were two janie and one Grateful Dead requests. “We don’t do the Dead,” Reeve said, “call a commercial station for that.”

For the first time since he had begun at WSCK, he wanted the phones to shut up. No more calls. Don’t invade me! I have to think.

But I’m not the one who was invaded. Janie was
.

He glanced at the air check. He would play back tonight’s tape, listen to his janies, so that he could—what? Plan his defense? He didn’t have a defense.

He saw the unfolding of this evening. Janie telling her mother and father, who would be sick and shocked and would hate Reeve. The Johnsons telling his own mother and father, who not only would be sick and shocked, but also hold themselves responsible, because they should have brought him up better. He saw Thanksgiving vacation, only days away, during which his excellent sisters and brother would tell him how worthless and disgusting he was. And they’d be right.

“Reeve?” said Derek. His voice was strange. Reeve could not analyze it. “You okay?” said Derek.

It was concern. Derek, who was jealous of him, was concerned.

“I’m fine,” said Reeve. He still couldn’t focus on the Coke; Derek had to hand it to him. Everything was air. Air talk, airtime, air check, air brain.

“You didn’t even log in the last few calls,” said Derek.

Reeve’s neck bent with difficulty, as if he had a brace on it, and he saw that he had made no entries.

There was no record of the Hannah call; no record of Brian.

The person who really counted was Janie, and of Janie there was a record, all right. Weeks and weeks of it.

Courtesy of Reeve.