~IX~

When I finally got home from work around two A.M. on that first night I had the dog, I was surprised to find him sitting just about where I had left him, facing the front door. I told myself that of course he hadn’t simply been waiting there all night; probably he had heard me at the door and the sound of my key in the lock had brought him back to what he seemed to regard as his post. Later, when I went to bed, the dog jumped in as well, settling himself at my feet. Since my two small rooms were set up like a railroad flat, you could see through the bedroom doorway straight through to the front door of the apartment and the dog had positioned himself so that he was pointed right at that door. He kept his attention focused there as sharply as if he were looking at it through a nightscope. I found this very comforting. I hadn’t expected to be able to sleep very well, and I didn’t, but each time I woke up, the fact that the dog was there was reassuring enough to allow me to drift off again.

So I got used to him, but more than that, I quickly grew fond of him. I’d never had a dog before but even so, I was pretty sure that as dogs go, this one was unusual. For example, he rarely made a sound. And though I had bought him some dog toys—rawhide bones and a ball—he didn’t seem much interested in playing. He liked walks, the longer the better, and he liked to be let off his leash to run around at the edge of the marshland near my bus stop where he could chase seagulls, but that seemed to be enough activity for him. All he seemed to want other than his daily exercise was to sit next to me, or to lean against my feet—in other words, to be where I was. And every night when I came home from work, I found him sitting at the front door, waiting for me. And he continued to sleep at the edge of the bed—or at least, I assumed he slept sometimes. Those times when, for whatever reason, I woke up in the middle of the night, Digitaria always seemed to be awake, too. And he was hypervigilant. Any noise in the hallway, even Sassouma and her family or other neighbors passing by, sent him running to the front door. He didn’t bark but simply stood at alert, staring at the door until whatever sounds had disturbed him finally subsided. And then he’d march back to bed and curl up in exactly the same position he’d been in before, but with his eyes open, glittering in the darkness.

During the next few weeks, Jack checked in with me once in a while to be sure that nothing else had happened, but each time he called I was able to tell him that nothing had. That was both good and bad; good, because it meant no more threatening letters and not even a hint of anyone trying to get back into my apartment for any reason. Not that—at the time, anyway—I thought there was anything left that could be of any value to anyone in the Blue Awareness. Bad, because the police were clearly not going to do anything about the break-in. I called once and was told they had indeed talked to a representative of the Blue Awareness, who said my claim that they were responsible for the theft of my property was not only absurd, it was also an egregious example of the religious persecution that they were often subject to. It was pretty clear to me that as far as the NYPD was concerned, that was the end of that.

I missed listening to the radio so, eventually, I bought another one, but even though it had world-band capability, it was still a poor substitute for what I’d lost. Avi’s radio had been a kind of magical portal for me, able to pull in distant stations and mysterious broadcasts in foreign languages from the far-flung outposts of the world. Low-watt stations boosted by the Kennelly-Heaviside layer of the ionosphere, booming shortwave frequencies sailing over the curve of the Earth—picking up these broadcasts was something that was exciting to me, as I guess it must have been to Avi. I couldn’t exactly explain it, but even if I didn’t understand most of what was being said, when it was late at night and I was tuning in a station drifting in from Siberia or the Seychelles, I felt like I was listening to strangers whispering their secrets, which made them not really strangers anymore. And I liked listening to the marine-band chatter of ships approaching the New York harbor or waiting in the deep-water channels outside the Jersey ports. Hearing the clipped, stentorian tones of the news readers on the London-based BBC or the cheery discussion programs on the Voice of America—which anybody with a decent world-band set like the one I’d bought or even a backyard antenna could pick up—wasn’t quite the same thing.

One night, it occurred to me that maybe I could find some interesting stations on the Internet. There was certainly a lot of online music from all over the world that could be accessed, but though I listened for a while, I couldn’t develop any real enthusiasm for what I was doing. Maybe it was because there was no challenge to locating or hearing these stations—click a hyperlink, open a media player and you were instantly connected to clear channels emanating from Prague or Gdansk—and there was no surprise at what you could or could not tune in on a given night. Listening to online music didn’t depend on how the troposphere was feeling from one hour to the next or on seasonal temperatures or the reflective qualities of the cloud layer above the Sargasso Sea. And you rarely heard the sound of a human voice unless it was some robotic tone repeating the station’s call letters.

But there was a different kind of voice I found on the web that did interest me. In fact, I developed a kind of obsession with it for a while because it was like listening to the greeting of an old friend. Actually, friends would be more accurate because, as Jack had once told me, Sputnik—the original satellite and all its successors—was online.

The sound of the satellites’ telemetry signals had been digitized and posted on various websites. I first found them by accident, on a website devoted to the history of both Russian and American satellite launches, but once I did, night after night when I came home from work, I clicked open the files and listened in. All the recordings sounded pretty much alike, but of course, my favorite was Sputnik 10, which was the satellite that had once had little Zvezdochka aboard. Zvezdochka, who got home safely. Night after night, I sat in my living room, with my own dog leaning against my leg, listening to the scratchy, metallic ping, ping, ping of Sputnik’s telemetry signal, faint but steady as a distant heartbeat. There was something about the sound that I found comforting.

The telemetry recordings were on my mind one night at work a couple of weeks after I got the dog. I was pouring beer for an order that had been placed by the waitress I was working with that night and, at the same time, wondering what other kind of interesting historical recordings I could find online, when my attention was diverted by some kind of commotion outside the bar. It was always pretty dark in The Endless Weekend, but quite bright outside in the wide walkway between the bar and a row of fast-food restaurants across the way. Looking out into the square of lighted space that was my view of the outside area, I saw a crowd of photographers walking backward. The corridor pulsed with the lightning-like flash of their cameras, and then the swarm of men and women quickly passed out of my line of sight. A few moments later, behind a phalanx of bodyguards, the object of their attention came into sight: a slight man, dark-haired and intense-looking, wearing a suit that looked as sharp-edged as a razor. Surprisingly, he stopped in front of the bar and then, even more surprisingly, turned and headed in.

The waitress was still standing near me, waiting for her order, and when she saw who was about to enter the bar, her eyes widened and she took a step back, as if she wasn’t worthy of being in the presence of the man who was, apparently, about to become our customer. “Ted Merrill,” she breathed. “I don’t believe it.”

But indeed, it was Ted Merrill, mega movie star, who was now entering The Endless Weekend, accompanied by his entourage. He took a seat at the bar—near the end, where I was standing—while his three bodyguards and a few other assorted members of his party arranged themselves at a nearby table. As they did, the scrum of photographers returned and positioned themselves outside the bar where they continued to snap pictures.

I placed two mugs of draft on the waitress’s tray and practically had to push her away from the bar to go serve the pair of businessmen who were her customers, though they, too, were staring goggle-eyed at our unexpected visitor. In contrast to the star-struck trance that everyone else seemed to be in, I was feeling a little weird about the appearance of Ted Merrill in my particularly unremarkable workplace. There was absolutely no reason I could think of for him to have stopped for a drink in this specific bar—except for the fact that I knew him to be a prominent member of the Blue Awareness. In fact, he was probably their most visible and vocal spokesman. I had seen him talking about it often enough on the TV gossip shows. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, indeed. What was he doing here?

I walked the few steps over to him and asked what he’d like, while the waitress scurried back to take the drinks order from his group at the table. He showed me the grin that was always referred to as “Ted Merrill’s famous smile”—and in person, I had to admit it was dazzling—and then asked for a complicated cocktail. It took me a few minutes to mix it up, and while I was adding crushed ice, I heard him ask one of his bodyguards for a pen.

When I brought him the drink, I saw that he was doodling something on one of our napkins, which had a printed border meant to look like confetti. He tasted the drink, pronounced it delicious, and smiled at me again.

“I hope I’m not causing you too much trouble,” he said, gesturing toward the photographers. “At least they know enough to stay outside.”

“We’re happy to serve you,” I said.

“Well, I’m happy to be served,” he replied. He leaned forward a little, just enough to suggest that he was about to tell me something meant only for my ears. Because I was on my guard, I registered this move as a trick, one meant to imply an immediate intimacy between the great movie star and the lowly bartender. “I was in the mood for just this,” he said, taking a sip of the jewel-colored drink I had prepared for him. “I’m having a late dinner with some very sober-minded people and I thought I needed something wonderful first. Something edgy and beautiful. And prepared just right.”

If he was trying to make conversation, he was actually doing a poor job of it. I thought he sounded false, even silly, though I guessed that the glittery chatter was another ploy—this one intended to disarm me in some way.

“Then I hope it’s just what you needed,” I said, playing along.

“Oh, it is,” he told me. “But it’s just one thing. One thing out of many.”

Now what did that mean? I wondered. Because I had a strong feeling that it meant something, that every word Ted Merrill had said to me since he sat down at the bar was freighted with subtext. All I could do was wait for him to decide when, and if, he was going to make himself any clearer.

As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait long at all. The next thing he said was, “There are a lot of different things people need. Special things, sometimes. Don’t you agree, Laurie?”

Was I really surprised that he knew my name? Not really, though it did give me a chill. And when he lit up the megawatt smile again, it seemed decidedly menacing. I had the sudden thought that if I had my dog with me I could have told him to take a bite out of Ted Merrill’s leg. I wasn’t exactly sure how I would have conveyed the message, but I was sure that Digitaria would have received it, and just the thought of my little shadow-colored pet digging his incisors into Ted Merrill’s shins emboldened me.

“No, Ted,” I said. “I don’t, really. Myself, I don’t feel in need of anything special. Why do you ask? Do you?”

“Oh, maybe,” he said. He downed the rest of his drink, then picked up the pen again and resumed doodling on the napkin. “I find that it’s hard to be specific about what I might need these days. But sometimes, someone gives me something and it turns out to be exactly what I needed at a particular moment.”

“Do things like that happen to you a lot?” I asked.

“You know,” he said, “they seem to. I guess I’m just lucky.”

He finished whatever he was sketching on the napkin and then held it up to examine his work. “Not bad,” he said. “How about if I sign it and give it to you as a present?”

I didn’t reply, but apparently, that wasn’t necessary. He placed the napkin on the bar in front of him and added an elaborate signature. Then, he lit up his smile again, this time making it a little lopsided, which also brought out a web of crinkles around his eyes. The smile was beginning to seem like it led a life of its own, cleverly deploying itself in many different, useful versions. This was clearly the endearing version, one that had won countless fans. I, however, was not among them.

Ted Merrill put a hundred dollar bill on the bar and pushed it over to me, along with the napkin. “Time to go,” he said. “But it’s been nice talking to you, Laurie.” He tapped his finger on the napkin. “I hope you’ll keep this as a souvenir of our time together.”

As soon as he got off the stool, the members of his entourage all stood up and made ready to leave with him. Each one seemed to have assigned places and they formed themselves into a kind of human exoskeleton that surrounded the movie star. Then they all walked out together, moving as a unit.

Once they were gone, the waitress came back to join me at the bar. She was a young, pretty girl with very long hair dyed the color of ink; in her black uniform, she seemed to only partly emerge from the darkness of the bar. I focused on the pale disk of her face, a little moon bobbing in the nearby shadows.

“Wow,” she said, seeing the money on the bar. “The guys at the table only left me a ten.”

“I’ll split it with you,” I said.

I was actually tempted to give her the whole thing, since I had a feeling that the money came wrapped with an invisible helping of very bad vibes. But I didn’t have much time to dwell on that idea because the waitress was now examining with a studied interest the sketch on the napkin Ted Merrill had left behind.

“Well, look at that,” she said.

“What is it?” I asked her, since I hadn’t yet glanced at what Merrill had drawn. I didn’t really have a lot of interest in some doodle he’d signed—just more bad vibes as far as I was concerned.

But I’d asked, and so she showed it to me. The drawing on the napkin seemed to depict a kind of ribbed cone lying on its side, spilling out a variety of things that I took to be apples and peppers and maybe a small pumpkin or two.

“I guess he’s no artist,” the waitress said, “but you can see what it is.”

I certainly could. It was a cornucopia.

I asked the waitress to spell me for a moment and carried the napkin to the back, where our lockers were, folded it carefully and placed it in my shoulder bag. Then I did my best to put a mental shield between myself and the last half hour so that I could finish the rest of my shift. The less I thought about Ted Merrill and the message he’d drawn for me on the napkin the better off I was until I could call Jack. Because that was my plan, to call Jack. I couldn’t think any further than that.

When I finally got off work, I dialed Jack’s number as I was heading down the road at the far end of the airport that ran between the warehouses where the food service trucks dropped off their pallets of packaged meals. He didn’t pick up, but I hadn’t expected him to since he was still on the air at this hour, so I left him a message and kept on walking in the direction of my bus stop. It was a cool spring night, netted with stars.

He called back when I was on the bus, just as we were passing by Flushing Meadow, where there was a lake that looked like black glass. Tiny red lights seemed to skip across the lake’s dark surface like bursting bullets, then disappear, then suddenly sizzle back into view again; but this was an optical illusion, the reflection of the blinking airplane warning lights that topped the high-rise apartment buildings on nearby Queens Boulevard, which were right under the flight path leading to the airport.

“Guess who came into the bar tonight?” I said. “Ted Merrill.”

“Oh?” Jack replied. For a moment he sounded puzzled, as if he were wondering why I had bothered to call him about this, but he quickly made the connection. “Oh,” he repeated. “I gather it wasn’t a coincidence?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “For one thing, he knew my name. For another . . . well, he drew me a picture, on a napkin. He even signed it.”

“A picture of what?” Jack asked, sounding like he already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“A cornucopia,” I said. “In other words, a horn of plenty.”

There was a long pause in our conversation. My bus had passed the lake now, and was turning off the parkway into the residential streets of Queens where the monolithic ranks of apartments gave way to rows of small brick and stucco houses leaning one against the other, and all shut up against the night.

Finally, Jack said, “They’ve got the radio. Now they want the antenna.”

“That’s what I thought,” I replied. “But why?”

Jack fell silent again. The bus rolled on through sleeping neighborhoods, past shuttered stores and empty streets.

“Well,” he said finally, “maybe when your intruders broke into your apartment, they were after the Blue Box, but once they saw the radio, and saw that it said Haverkit—just like your box—they knew to take that, too. Or someone told them to look out for it. The Blue Awareness considers itself to be a religion and religions have sacred objects: maybe Avi’s Haverkit radio is one of those things. Only it’s missing an important component: a very unusual antenna.”

“I still don’t understand. How would they know about the radio?”

“Remember I told you that Avi and Howard Gilmartin had some kind of relationship way back when? Well, before it fell apart over the Blue Box thing, Avi and Howard likely exchanged alien encounter stories. Howard saw something—someone—tinkering with his radars. Avi had a niece who told him that she saw a very similar figure years later, adjusting the tuning dial on his radio receiver . . . and don’t argue with me right now about whether or not that actually happened, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed. I wanted to hear where this was going.

“So let’s say for a while, at least, Gilmartin and Avi were kind of friendly. Collegial, at least. You have to bear in mind that they had something else in common: whatever else these guys were, at heart, they were both ham radio operators. Hams love to talk about their equipment, love to compare the parts they use, the quality of the parts, who builds them, stuff like that. And of course, one of the main things they always focus on is the kind of antenna they use, the kind the next guy uses, what kind of reception they get, what’s the best time of night to send and receive broadcasts using what kind of antenna. The fact that Avi had constructed a horn of plenty antenna—one small enough for an amateur to use, because back then, the only ones that anyone knew of belonged to observatories and you needed a flatbed truck to haul them from one place to another—that would have been a fascinating piece of information. So if he shared it with Howard Gilmartin . . .”

Now, I couldn’t help but interrupt. “So what if he did? That would have been more than thirty years ago, Jack. And maybe the Blue Awareness doesn’t think Howard is dead, but really, we know he is.”

“Yes, but his son isn’t. And from what I understand, Raymond Gilmartin has studied every scrap of information about his father’s life, every document, every memoir. Whatever went on between his father and Avi—good and bad—you can bet Raymond knows about it. And you did tell Ravenette that you’ve got a device she thinks—no, believes—is a Blue Box, because she can’t imagine how anyone but an Aware trained to use one to scan a devotee would have a Box. But Raymond knows how—he knows that Avi Perzin built it. Well, if Ravenette is a Second-Level Aware, she’s certainly got access to the only person who’s ever been awarded First-Level status, and that’s Raymond. So put all this together, Laurie, just like Raymond probably did. It’s not hard to figure out who your uncle’s niece is—I did it in about ten seconds. To begin with, Perzin isn’t exactly the world’s most common surname. Now add in the fact that Haverkit was the only manufacturer thirty, forty years ago that was producing high-quality electronic and radio kit parts and it’s more than likely that whoever was in your apartment was told to look for anything that said Haverkit—after all, if you’ve got Avi’s Blue Box, there’s a chance you’ve also got his radio, no? And then whammo; right on your shelf, there it is. Think about it, kiddo: you gave them all the clues they needed.”

Jack was right. I might as well have drawn them a map to my apartment, handed them the keys and told them to look around. “Crap,” I said, which seemed to sum up exactly how I was feeling about this.

“So back to the antenna,” Jack continued. “I’m sure these days, on the web, you could certainly find the plans for building a small enough horn of plenty antenna to make the radio work the way they want it to—meaning, to be able to draw in signals outside our atmosphere. But I guess they don’t want any antenna—they want the original.”

“But I don’t have it. I’ve told you that. My father cleaned out Avi’s apartment after he died. I took a few things, like the radio and the box, but that’s it. I never even saw the antenna.”

“All right then,” Jack said. “Let’s tell them that. Exactly that.”

“How?”

“I’m going to call Ravenette. As I said, she’s got to have something to do with the creep show they seem to have given you a starring role in. Or at least she’ll know who to pass the message to, and I’m guessing that person’s name is Raymond.”

“You don’t have to call her for me. It’s a good idea, but I could do it myself.”

“Sure you could,” Jack said. “But we’re friends, and friends don’t let friends deal with the Blue Meanies by themselves.” He paused for a moment and then repeated, “Friends. That’s what we are, right?”

“Sure,” I said. “I thought we cleared that up.”

“You’re right,” he replied. “We did. So now, a couple of friends are going to wake up a psychic who seems to have a bunch of friends of her own. Nasty ones.”

I stayed on the line while Jack dialed Ravenette’s number. Once it began ringing, he conferenced me in. When she answered, though, she didn’t sound like she’d been in dreamland. Busy, sleepless—who knew why she sounded wide awake. But Jack decided that he did.

“So you’re up,” Jack said after telling her who was calling. Then, not waiting for her to reply, he added, “Of course you are. You’re a psychic. You knew that we would call.”

Ravenette ignored the jab. But she did pick up on the fact that Jack had implied he wasn’t the only one on the call. “We?” she said. “Who’s we?”

“Laurie Perzin is on the phone with me.”

“Oh really? Well what do you want?”

I thought she sounded annoyed, but in a fake sort of way. There was a note of caution behind her bravado. Jack must have picked up on this, too, because he wasted no time in going after her.

“So tell me something,” he said. “Why is it that you and your buddies can’t do anything in a normal way? Everything has to be weird and mysterious, right? Or downright threatening. And when even that doesn’t work, you send your moviestar poster boy to play games for you. Did it ever occur to any of you that you could just pick up a phone and say Hello, I’d like to talk to you? Isn’t that a lot easier than breaking into someone’s house? And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I did talk to Laurie,” Ravenette said smoothly. “I’d be happy to talk to her again.”

Exasperated, I finally broke into the conversation. “I’m on the phone,” I reminded her.

“Oh, yes. Yes, you are. Well, Laurie, how are you doing, dear?”

“Come on, Ravenette,” Jack snorted. “Can we just stop this? Laurie doesn’t have the antenna for the radio. She hasn’t even seen it since she was a kid. So you’re just going to have to make contact with your alien overlords some other way, okay?”

“Now I am going to have to tell you that I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please. I know the backstory, Ravenette. But maybe it’ll make you feel better if I rephrase. If the aliens are our ancestors, I guess you’re just going to have to wait for them to call you instead of the other way around because Laurie can’t help you out there. So maybe we should get off the line. They could be dialing in at any moment.”

“Don’t mock what we believe, Jack.”

“What you believe,” Jack said acidly, “is that you’re the only ones who know the truth and that makes you special. Smarter than everyone else, so you can do whatever you want to anyone else. Well, you know what that really makes you? A bunch of fanatics. A cult. You’ve just got more money—and a better public relations operation—than most.”

I could hear the controlled fury in Ravenette’s voice as she said, “So that’s what you really think, is it, Jack? Then I guess you won’t be inviting me on the show anymore. Such a pity. I do so love taking those piece-of-shit town cars you send to drive me all the way to the ass end of Brooklyn to that palatial studio of yours. Really, I’ll miss the star treatment. I’ll rue the day. But good luck with all that, Jack. The show, I mean. You’ll need it.” And then she hung up.

The bus had now arrived at my stop. Still holding the phone to my ear, I waved good night to the driver and descended the steps. The bus pulled away—a glowing box of light disappearing down the dark road—leaving me standing alone by the chain-link fence that separated the bay and its bordering marshland from, to use Ravenette’s term, the ass end of my particular urban landscape.

It was a mild night, pretty enough, with a sharp slice of moon overhead and the salty smell of deep water riding in on the currents, so I stayed where I was, leaning against the fence as Jack and I finished our conversation.

“I’m sorry, Laurie,” Jack said. “I could have handled that better. I just lost my temper with her.”

“It’s an easy thing to do,” I told him. “I know. Believe me.”

“But I probably just made it worse.”

“Well, I think you just dropped yourself into the blue soup with me. So to speak.”

At least that made him laugh. “What?” he said.

“She likes to make threats. They all do, I guess. What was that she said? Good luck with the show? I don’t exactly think she meant it.”

“No, probably not. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next. If we’re lucky, nothing will. And if we’re not, we’ll deal with it.”

“Maybe I’ll just have to find another fire escape to climb out on and ask whatever shadow is lurking around to intercede. If I can find him.”

“I thought you didn’t believe that,” Jack reminded me.

“You know what? It’s late, I’m tired, I’ve had a weird night and a long ride home. I’m liable to say anything right now.”

“Okay,” Jack said, “Let’s leave it on that note. Good night,” he said.

“ ’Night,” I replied, and clicked off my phone.

I crossed the road and started to walk down my street, past the locked body shops and garages. As usual, a big rig was parked on the block, though someone had made more of an effort than usual to hide it. Beyond the sodium glow of the streetlamps, I could just make out the dimmed-down running lights of the Peterbilt cab nosing out of the end of an alley beside a scrapyard. As I walked by the truck and approached my building, I happened to glance up at my window and thought I saw a pair of twitching ears framed behind the dark square of glass. Since Digitaria was usually positioned by the front door when I came home, I wasn’t surprised that he was waiting for me, but that he had figured out that he could stand up on his hind legs and watch out the window for me was something new. It made him seem anxious, peering out into the night like that. I quickened my step and was in the building, up the stairs, and unlocking my front door just a few moments later, greeting my dog with a pat on the head. In response, he uttered a soft yip.

It was the first time I had ever heard him make a sound. “You can stop worrying now,” I said to him, since I realized that having lingered outside to talk on the phone had made me later than usual in getting home, and perhaps that had disturbed him. Maybe I was attributing to him qualities of mind and heart that he didn’t have—he was, after all, just a dog, not a person watching a late-night clock tick off the time that a friend should be home—but I assumed that all people who owned pets did that. And so I patted him again.