‘Hey Jude’ is playing. I fought with Andy over whose ‘Hey Jude’ we should play. He wanted his CD version, but of course that’s only because he doesn’t remember how to queue up vinyl. But what’s ‘Hey Jude’ with the chemical gloss of a CD?
The track ends and I hit Mic 1 and Mic 2.
‘‘Hey Jude’, for all you Beatles fans. And you know, Andy, wasn’t that better than that CD version? C’mon Andy, be honest with Jimmy.’
‘Jimmy, only tossers refer to themselves in the third person. Queue the next track. This is Nine Inch Nails with a number that was recorded for CD. Press the damn button, Jimmy.’
Andy gets up from his chair, throws his headphones onto the desk with more than his usual disdain, and flops onto the green vinyl couch in the corner of the studio. He shuts his eyes and his arm dangles over the edge of the couch onto the floor like a lazy ape. I don’t know how he can even sit on that couch; it must have been from the 1950s and had never once been cleaned. The foam stuffing is bursting out of it like pus from a green blister and whenever anyone sits on it puffs of dust form clouds like a swarm of micro-beasts. It is rank.
‘You’re on 89.9 Community Radio, it’s three-thirteen am on the knocker, here’re the Nails,’ I say as I watch Andy become engulfed in the ancient spores of the couch.
‘No one’s listening, Jimmy, you don’t have to sound like such a wad. And no one says ‘the Nails’.’
‘No one’s listening? No one? I beg to differ, my friend. Last week we put a call out and the phones lit up. Two callers.’
‘Yeah, I’ve never been so flat chat in all my life. That was crazy, man.’ Andy’s eyes flick up to the On Air sign above the studio door, directly in his line of sight from his reclining position on the couch. ‘You didn’t turn the mics off, for fuck’s sake!’
I follow his glance. Andy is right, I haven’t turned the mics off. I press the buttons.
‘Jesus.’
‘Don’t worry, like I said, no one’s listening.’
‘Really?’ I ask, pointing to Line 1, flashing red.
‘Hello, 89.9 Community Radio,’ I say.
‘I’m listening.’
The line goes dead.
‘What was that?’
‘Someone said, “I’m listening” and hung up.’
‘Proves my point, only weirdos and freaks listen to community radio at 3am on Thursday morning.’
It is hard to build an argument against Andy on this one. We’ve been doing this show together for two years now and we’ve only had a few calls in all that time. The first one was my mum, on my first show. But even she stopped listening after a week or two. After that it was just the odd pot smoker up late requesting ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. I’d tested Andy’s theory, that no one ever listened, a couple of times by asking a trivia question and offering an old cassingle as a prize. Someone always called up and answered the question and then got shirty ‘cause I wouldn’t post the cassingle to them – they had to come to the station and pick it up. Don’t they know I don’t get paid to do this job, unless you count unemployment benefits?
‘Someone could break in here and hack us to bits with a cleaver and we could be yelling out a detailed commentary as it happened until the air goes dead when they smash the blood-soaked panel to smithereens and no one would come and save us because no one is listening.’ Andy says from the couch.
Sometimes I hate Andy. For one thing he always programs these long Nine Inch Nails songs that make my ears want to puke, and for another he has a knack for giving voice to these things that happen to me in my sleep at night. In truth, the only reason I keep him on the show is because I feel a bit safer with someone else around.
‘Or, one night, if you don’t shut up about ‘Hey Jude’ maybe I might be the one to come in here with a cleaver.’
Andy thinks he is hilarious.
But, seriously, can he read my mind? I’m trying not to feel paranoid, but it is getting harder.
The phone rings again and Andy springs up from the couch, sending up another storm of spores, and grabs it before I can get to it.
‘Hello, 89.9 Community Radio, I’m listening.’ Andy says the last bit in a spooky voice, the kind of voice you use in grade five to scare the girls during a séance.
‘Shut up, Andy,’ I say, snatching the phone from him. I queue up the next track – ‘Ingrid Bergman’ by Billy Bragg – and speak to the caller.
‘Hello, caller?’
‘He’s right you know, I could hack you up and no one would know. Not even your mother listens to this show.’
I check the panel – mics are off. This guy, whoever he was, couldn’t possibly have heard us. We are in a sound-proof studio for fucks’ sake. And anyway, that thing about my mother...I’d only been thinking that, hadn’t I?
‘Who are you?’
I flick my eyes up to Andy, now resting his head on the panel looking lazier than ever – maybe he’d set up one of his loser mates to spook me. I kick him under the desk and he looks up at me. His face shows nothing; no glimmer of a smirk, but no fear either. In fact he looks strangely wax-like.
As Billy spins around, I wait for the caller to answer me.
He hangs up.
‘Alright, so who’ve you set up to call?’
‘What’re you talking about? I didn’t do that.’
As much as I don’t want to, I believe Andy. I know his faces – all three of them – and the one he has on now is his ‘I don’t really give a fuck’ face (incidentally, his most common face). That face doesn’t lie, because Andy genuinely doesn’t give a fuck about most things. He’s gone back to playing with his phone – another thing that pisses me off about him. We’re supposed to be working.
Billy Bragg is winding up (he’s always short and sweet) so I queue up the next track: Martha Wainwright. I just shove it in and hit play. It is unlike me to not carefully select a track and announce it. It’s fair to say I’m freaked out.
I look down at the panel to check the sound levels – sometimes Martha needs to be turned up – and see a liquid pooling at the edge of the desk. It is tan, syrupy and, yes, it smells. Bad. Like days old veggie scraps. The liquid spreads, oozing down into the cracks of the panel. I look up at Andy, and he is still fiddling with his phone, oblivious and waxy.
‘Andy?’ I say, as Martha croons around us.
Andy looks up at me and then pointedly fixes his eyes on his elbows and I can see that he is in fact the tan-coloured sludge. It is dripping off him and pooling around his elbows where he’s leaned them on the desk. It is running from his elbows and into the panel.
Andy’s wax-face has changed. This is not an Andy face I know. It is melting, softly drooping downwards towards his neck. To my horror, his neck is pooling around his chest. His chest is starting to look concave as things slip further and further south.
Grabbing my old windcheater, I use it to mop up the mess, soaking Andy into the fibres as Martha becomes prickly and fuzzy. The panel is dying, I can’t mop him up fast enough.
‘Andy, help me! At least get your elbows off the desk! Can’t you see what’s happening?’
I drop the windcheater – it’s soaked and useless anyway – and it falls, laden with Andy, to the floor. Andy begins to seep into the coarse fibres of the studio carpet and become indistinguishable from the rest of the dirt that has been trodden into it for decades before us. I panic. I don’t want Andy to vanish into the floor – how would I ever get him back again? I rip some old laminated posters from the walls – Beck from his Loser days and Regurgitator in their Unit era – and put them underneath the windcheater so that Andy can coagulate on the laminate.
It works. I begin to see parts of him forming over the poster images. Unit was a good choice – the yellow album cover is a clear backdrop and I see parts of Andy against it.
Martha has stopped and there is dead air all around. It has probably been like that for ages. I do the only thing I can: take a mic, turn it on and start a commentary.
‘Ah, sorry for the dead air folks, but the strangest thing just happened. My colleague Andy just melted into the panel. I mopped him up with my windcheater, and when he was all gone, I threw my windcheater onto the floor. He started to... hell! He’s coming back! It’s okay, folks! I can see him taking shape again. It’s starting at the floor, with his shoes. It’s slow, but it’s happening! He’s going to be okay! Andy! Can you hear me mate?’
The phone panel lights up. I pick up Line 1.
‘Jimmy, your mum called me. We’re putting the plan into action. What’s going on there?’
It is Michelle, the station manager.
‘Michelle!’
How much did she hear? Was she listening? It was a train wreck, even for the graveyard shift, one hellava train wreck.
‘Jimmy...’ her voice holds a warning. ‘You’re still on air. Queue up a track and turn off the mics.’
I do as she says, then go back to the phone.
‘All set, Michelle. It’s the strangest thing, first there was this call from a guy, he seemed to be reading my mind, and then Andy – ’
‘Jimmy. I’m sending around some people. They are going to help you. Just stay where you are, okay. Promise me you will stay where you are?’
‘Sure, there’s still twenty minutes of the show left, I’m not deserting my post! But wait ‘til you hear about Andy – ’
‘Jimmy, Andy hasn’t been around for over three years.’ Michelle’s voice is very calm and soothing. Maybe she just woke up. ‘Since before you joined the station. Remember you told me in your interview that if Andy came back I was to call the police? That Andy messed with your head, that you hadn’t heard from him for a long time, but that he might come back someday? And that if he did...?’
‘If he did?’
I don’t want to think about what Michelle is saying. But Andy is back, she’s right.
‘The ambulance will be there any minute, Jimmy, just hold tight. While we wait, why don’t you queue up the emergency tape? I’ll walk you through it if you like. We wouldn’t want dead air, would we?’
Michelle is right, of course. But I don’t need to be told what to do. I know the procedure. I quickly set up the tape.
‘Good job, Jimmy. Now, can you leave the studio and walk to the front doors. But stay inside until the ambulance comes.’
‘What about Andy? I can’t just leave him alone on the floor. Maybe they can help him? The ambulance people?’
‘Andy will be just fine, you said he was coming back, didn’t you? He will be just fine.’
‘I think it was the spores from the couch, you should get that replaced.’
‘Yes, you’re right, it’s a terrible couch. Now, put the phone down and walk to the front, but stay inside until the ambulance comes, okay?’
I do as Michelle instructs. She is very calm and her voice is soothing, and as soon as I leave the sound-proofed studio I can hear the sirens.
I lie on the gurney in the ambulance as they ask me questions.
‘Name please?’ the paramedic asks.
‘Jimmy Absolom.’
‘Address?’
‘Unit 8, number 1, Plane Tree Drive.’
‘Suburb?’
They continue to ask questions and I continue to answer, but as I am talking what I am really thinking about is what Michelle had said about Andy. He did always manage to pull himself back together. If it takes him a while to soak out of the carpet and onto the Regurgitator poster and reform into his Nine Inch Nails loving self, well, that isn’t such a bad thing. We can do with some time apart.