A Voice In The Night (3 page)

Chapter 5

California was a dream. Nearly perfect weather every day, save for the dense morning fog along the shoreline that burned off by 9 a.m. They snatched up a converted carriage house in La Mesa, on a side street where they could walk to a dozen restaurants and shops. The rent seemed too low to be in, what seemed to them, a resort. Every day was vacation. Regularly there’d be a realization of where they were and how much their lives had been transformed.

“This is all because of you, ya know. We’d still be back in Connecticut, getting ready to freeze our asses off if you hadn’t started this.” Luke knew what he said was true. He had a big inertia problem. “Thank God one of us has some balls,” he shrugged.

“Most guys would just say ‘I love you,’ but that’s OK,” she mocked, warmed more deeply by his acknowledgement. “That too.”

He rose from the table of the outdoor café, moving to her side. He guided her out of her chair and kissed her lightly. A middle-aged couple watched from their quiche Lorraine, longing for their youth and certainty again.“You kinda like me, huh,” she beamed up to him from their embrace, her chin pressed into his chest.

“Let’s go home and I’ll show ya.”

They walked the three blocks faster and faster until it became a full-bore, laughing foot-race to bed.

At the hospital, patients eyed her name tag and asked if she was related to “that one on the radio.” ”Married to him,” was her reply, pleased with the celebrity status it conferred. But she had a status of her own. To her surprise she was a natural at nursing, especially the patients whose barely concealed terror she could calm with a few words of reassurance, or just by listening, stroking their hands while they talked. She wondered where this facility had come from, and came to see that her own happiness had created more emotional space inside her.

She had become a whole person.

Her mother noticed too. During one of their weekly telephone visits, she blurted, ”You’re different now.”

“How?”

“Just different. You’re grown up. You never seemed that happy when you were a kid. Now you’re  – I don’t know. You’re not mad at me anymore.”

“I wasn’t mad at you. Just scared. Of everything.”

Zack had summoned Luke to the station late in the afternoon, to his tiny office with the obsolete title, sales manager, on the door. There was room for his small grey metal desk and two chairs, nothing more. While Zack was clearly in charge, the station owner’s office across the hall was ludicrously large and vacant. On the rare occasions of his visits it was startling to see someone at the highly polished, kidney-shaped desk that was buffed to a high luster. Not a scrape of paper occupied the richly glowing space. The owner intended, apparently, to keep it that way. On his rare visits a strange nervous tick took over. He would repeatedly sweep the desk clear with his hand as though sweeping crumbs or remnants of a meal to the floor. He was thoroughly unconscious of it.

Zack’s modest cubby and outdated title was part of his legend, and Luke wondered if it was a deliberate prop. Or perhaps it was to amplify his tiny stature. He stood 5’4”, including a piled-up pompadour of gray hair that added an inch to his scant size. Luke settled his gaunt frame into the guest chair, his knees pressed painfully against the front of Zack’s desk. Was this a ploy to make Zack’s victims uncomfortable?

Zack liked this kid. Luke wasn’t the least intimidated by his usual tactics. And he was a true talent, an original idea in an industry of sound-alikes. Zack had been nurturing the notion that was spreading around broadcasting circles that he had developed another programming breakthrough. It wasn’t true. Luke had invented himself, and would become a prototype in later years. But for now he was Zack’s and he wanted to lock him in.

He pushed the stapled papers across his desk to Luke without a warm-up. “I’m not gonna bullshit you, Luke. I like what you’re doin’ for us and I don’t want somebody else to steal you away for a few more bucks.” Luke squinted through the pages, his eyes landing on the salary line of the contract. It was three times what he was making now. He felt dizzy. The room looked suddenly like a movie he was watching from inside himself, detached.

“And if you sign it, this is yours too.” It was a check for $5,000.

“Ya don’t need a lawyer or agent. Just sign it. It’s for two years, then you’re on your own. But it gives us first rights on you for a network deal. And there’s the same contract for Jake, too.”

Luke’s first stop was to deposit the check. The second was the car dealer where the yellow MGB still occupied center stage in the showroom. He drove it home to her an hour later, the salesman following behind in the Healey. In their driveway Luke leaned on the horn hard. She came out to the front porch with a paintbrush in her hand. When she saw him grinning from the driver’s seat, it dropped from her hand, painting her jeans and sneakers on the way down.

She skipped down the steps and vaulted into the two-seater.

“My car. You bought me my car! She ran her tiny tan hands over the dash, the Walnut, the leather seats. “Switch. Let me sit there.” Luke watched her glowing behind the wheel, and knew then that making her happy was the only thing he really cared about. Not radio. Not money or celebrity. She was so good, so real. The fleeting idea of life had he not met her descended on him for an instant then and he felt a dread so deep he pulled her to him and held her as hard as he could.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” He couldn’t talk about it, even to her. In the months ahead, the dread would come sometimes as he felt the potential of loss as a real thing, a possibility. By then he’d learn to dismiss it and return to the present. “Luke, how can we afford this?”

“Well, as of today we’re a little rich.” He showed her the contract and the bank deposit slip. “I paid cash for the car and we have enough for a down payment on the house if she’ll sell it to us.”

Chapter 6

Margaret Mann owned the carriage house and the restored Victorian out front that went with it.

She’d rented the smaller place to them after turning down several applicants. In an hour over tea with Eileen, she knew she’d found her tenant and a friend, someone to love the jewel box she’d been restoring for years, a curator for her masterpiece.

“She’s hinted at it a couple of times. You know, in passing. Nothing really overt.”

“Honey, we’re the kids she never had. I’m sure she’d want us here.” Eileen had never thought of it that way, but now she saw it. Margaret had poured out her life to her over the months. It was a story of almosts. She had been a Pan American stewardess for 25 years, starting on the early Clipper flights from San Francisco to Honolulu. There had been three near marriages, all to the pioneering airline pilots whose dash and daring drew her and cautioned her at the same time. Now in her mid-’50s, she looked back with regret on her retreat into the safety of singlehood. Luke and Eileen were, for Margaret, what might have been. “I know she’d probably sell it to us, but let me talk to her at the right moment. Just put the money in savings for a while.”

“OK. Now take me for a ride in your new car.”

The salesman, who had waited patiently by the Healey, scrunched himself into the jumpseat behind them. After dropping him off, they headed out past Torrey Pines, pulling into the narrow parking with a small the beach. The green water thundered onto the sand. She turned toward him as though to deliver a formal address. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say for a long time but I never could.” She looked out to sea, as though she could find the courage there. When she returned her gaze to his, the hesitation was gone. “Luke, I just want to thank you. For everything. For loving me. For California. The house. The car.”

He looked away, overwhelmed by the emotions that her forthrightness caused in him. Then he turned back to her, and she saw her gratitude returned. With his fingertips, he brushed the hair that hung down in front of her eyes. “Let’s never forget to do this, OK? I mean, talk about us – just about us.”

Two weeks later, she eased into the subject of the carriage house with Margaret. “This is the first real home either of us has ever had. It’s like part of our marriage. I can’t imagine how we would leave it.” The very idea of them gone drained the color from Margaret’s face and Eileen saw her flustered and frightened for the first time. “Well, what do you
mean
? There’s no possible reason to – leave. Where would you go? Why?

“No. No. We’re not planning anything. Really. We were just talking about the future and kids and stuff. That kinda thing.”

“This is
your
house. You and Luke. Nobody else could live here now. I won’t
have
it. I couldn’t.” They closed on the sale later that summer. What they didn’t know was that Margaret had also modified her will to provide that the main house would eventually be theirs, too.

It was that same summer they started going to Mass on Sundays. Eileen couldn’t remember just when it started, but she was uneasy at first by the way it transformed him for a few seconds every week. At the consecration, as the host was held aloft and the bells softly chimed, he would cease his restlessness and stare toward the altar, his head cocked slightly to the side, completely absorbed, almost enraptured.

“So, when did you get this religious calling,” she asked on the way home one Sunday.

“Ah, it’s nothing like that. I guess all those years of parochial school or something. Who knows.”But he wondered too. Something had changed in him that he couldn’t brush off as habit. Maybe it was the idea that they’d have kids sometime soon, and this was building a foundation for them. Or was it that he felt so blessed by all that had happened that this was a thanksgiving, or a prayer to protect it?

Even as a boy, he had always felt certain that, at the moment when the priest intoned, “This is my body . . . ,” Jesus was
actually there
, just as if he had appeared in robes and sandals and stood before the congregation. All those years of nuns and priests had made a believer. No. It was more. Finally, he opened up to her. ”I’m not turning into one of the wackos that call the show,” he promised her. “But there’s something going on. Maybe it’s just a lot of things coming together. All those books I’ve been reading, you and me, the idea of a family, having this place. It’s all so much more than I ever expected.”

“Well, so you’re grateful . . .”

“But it’s more than that. I get this feeling sometimes that everything’s planned. Not just random. Like, what if I never came up to you that day after class? If we never met?”

“Yeah.” She nodded.

“See? Everything would be different. Everything.” But she didn’t want to think about it. The idea troubled her. The next Sunday, she wrapped her arm around his at mass. She needed to believe that they were not a matter of chance. They talked late into that night about all of it. And as they sat there in the glow of his cigarette, she was silently thankful for this man she was just beginning to know. Later she lay next to him and knew they had made new life. “Thank you,” she whispered, just barely aloud, only enough for her to hear. Then she fell into a sleep as safe and certain as a child. Six weeks later, the doctor confirmed what she and Luke already knew.

Chapter 7

It would later be referred to by some as The Returning.

It began without notice until Jake whispered into Luke headset,” I-don’t-know-where-this-guy-is-coming from.” Luke thought it a reference to the caller’s point of view, and shrugged. “Luke, he’s-not-coming-through-the-phone-lines-anywhere-on my-board-or yours. He’s-just-there, on-the-air. I-can’t-find-him.” Luke waved Jake off, listening more intently now to the caller. This would turn out to be another one of Jake’s electronic gremlins that surfaced occasionally, a selector switch he’d inadvertently turned on or off in his lurches around the control room.

“Caller, what was the name again?”

“That’s not important, Luke. I just wanted to tell your listeners that the answers they’re looking for are unknowable. You don’t have the vocabulary yet to understand. That’s all.”

“So we can’t know if there’s life elsewhere in the Universe because of semantics?”

“More than semantics. Think of it as a language, or a frame of reference. But I want you to know that there
is
life. Just like you. All having the same experiences in thousands, multiplied by thousands of places.” Then he was gone. After the show Jake summoned Luke into Master Control. “Sit. Listen.” He punched on the huge Ampex tape recorder that was used to create the

tape delay for dumping obscene calls before they made it to the air. Listeners were actually hearing the playback of the tape, recorded three seconds earlier.

Luke heard his question to the caller.
“So we can’t understand if there’s life elsewhere in the Universe because of semantics?”

Silence.

Luke looked over at Jake, a question etched on his face. “Go back. Go back to my first question.” The tape reversed.

“
Caller, what was the name again?”

Silence.

Jake looked at him over the top of his horn rims. “What you just heard was the input to my board from the telephone lines and the playback side coming out of your board. Nothing. Nadda-nobody fucking there. Now listen to
this
. This is the air-monitor tape we keep for the FCC. It records the final transmitter signal going out over the air.” The caller was there, heard on the ultra slow-moving tape that turned almost imperceptibly, 24 hours a day, hearing everything.

“Again.”

There it was.

“Luke, Jake explained, “This is science – basic electricity. That guy wasn’t coming in over the phone or even out through the line that runs to the transmitter. He was just on the air, somehow.”

“How?”

“That’s my point. I don’t fucking
know
.”

“What do we do now?”

“Nothing. What’s to do?” The next night he was there again. “Caller, I’m puzzled about where you’re calling from. You seem to be outside of our equipment, so to speak.”

“Yes. I knew Jake would notice.”

“How do you know about Jake?”

“I am who you think I am, Luke. Do you need another sign? Your baby will be a boy. He’ll be born 238 days from today.” Luke just sat doing the math in his head. He didn’t care about the dead air. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I know you believe. That’s why I chose you.”

“Why have you come?”

“We’ll talk more another time. There’s a lot to be said. It’s enough for now that people know I’m here and that I’ll reveal more soon.” The station’s telephone banks went wild. In thirty minutes, Pacific Bell called out 20 emergency switching crews to try and release the main telephone feeder lines that were jammed all over the city. They got the hospital, police and fire department and the station’s circuits back up, but that was all.

The next day, Zack Osfelder was in top form. “We have a contract for those lines, and you’re gonna keep them up. I don’t care how much cable you have to run or what it costs.” The telephone lawyer huddled at the other end of the huge conference table. They had him by the throat, and he knew it. The attorney looked ill. “OK. But can you keep this visitor or whatever off the air until we can gear up? If we have a major emergency, this city is cooked, and so am I.”

“Yeah. We can keep Luke off the air until you’re ready. But you gotta move ass and get this done.” On the way out, Zack pulled Luke and Jake aside. “You guys have gotta dummy-up on this. Don’t talk to the press or anything. I owe Pac Bell and the city
that
much. Just refer everybody to me until they get the new lines in. By the way, I have a feeling this is for real. And I’ve been an atheist for a long time.”

The local news reports ranged from skeptical to sarcastic, making all the obvious arguments. The national media picked up the story next, feeding off the local coverage. Even Cronkite had an amused “kicker” report at the end of his newscast, but his usual, “And that’s the way it is,” closing carried a more solemn undertone that night.

Luke remained above it. He believed in what had happened and it offered him some measure of confidence, as it would in the months to come.

Zack met him for lunch up the coast in Carlsbad, to avoid reporters. “The network is already calling me about picking you up but I’m stalling them. If your visitor doesn’t come back or turns out to be a hoax, we’ll both be looking for another line of work.”

“I know this is real, Zack. I’m certain and I can’t tell you why.”

“Yeah, but let’s just cool it a little longer. I also got a call from Ray Volpe. He’s the top agent in the country and he wants to represent you. He’s a decent guy though, and he’ll take good care of you. You oughta talk to him.”

“I don’t care about money right now, and besides, KOGO and I have a contract. You’ve been more than good to Eileen and me.”

“That’s fine, but you’re gonna need him with the networks. He knows all the angles.”

Luke and Eileen talked endless hours about what was happening, but kept coming back to the same place. “Nobody knew about the baby except the doctor. I haven’t told anyone yet, not even my folks or yours. But your
friend
had my due-date exactly.”