THE NEXT TWO and a half days were mercifully uneventful, although the tension in her back and neck made turning her head nearly impossible. There were no new comments from DeadJohnDonati, no new websites, no sponsorship cancellations. Nessa had even gotten a decent night’s sleep the previous night. But on Thursday, the silence had an unsettling effect on her, one of dread and horrible anticipation. The troll was not done with her, she was sure of that, felt it in her bones.
At eleven P.M., Otto called. “Hey,” he said. “I’m going to be late tonight. I’ve been up in Kansas City all day at an antinuclear power rally, and my car won’t start even with a jump.”
“How late, do you think?” Nessa asked, irritated he was calling so close to air, irritated that he spent his time performing random acts of environmental kindness.
He sighed. “I’m hoping by three.”
“Three? Why bother coming in at all, then? I’m going to call Kevin and see if he can come in and—-”
“No, no,” Otto said. “I feel bad for leaving you high and dry. Let me call him. I’ll offer him a six--pack or something to cover for me. I’ll call you back if he can’t do it. But you’ve seen me do my job. You know what to do. You’ll be fine.”
“Wow,” Nessa said. “That’s maybe some of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”
IT WAS A starless, moonless night as she approached the station, all light blocked out by high cloud cover with a hot west wind blowing. Otto had been as good as his word and called back to let her know that Kevin wasn’t available, and once again reassured her that she would be just fine.
She wasn’t so sure.
Once inside, she locked the outside door of the glass vestibule, and then the inner door. On deep, dark nights like this one, the reflections of the inside light on the glass walls of the vestibule doubled and tripled and warped in on themselves until she swore she was seeing ghosts—-and not the friendly kind. Until recently, she was never nervous coming here alone at night. But now, there was a burning in her chest and she couldn’t keep her hands from shaking.
Without Otto here to annoy her, she started to imagine what it might be like if she were actually arrested for the murder of her almost ex--husband. Who would raise Daltrey? Of course Linda and Tony, John’s folks, would swoop in and take him.
This thought gave her chills. Sure, their parenting hadn’t made him bipolar. That was biology. But even though she got along with her in--laws fairly well, the thought of losing her son and them raising Daltrey the same way they had John nearly paralyzed her with fear.
By three A.M., Otto still wasn’t in, and she started to worry about him. She called his cell phone four times, and it went straight to voicemail. She really hoped he was okay.
Nessa had maxed out her caffeine intake, her skull felt like it had been hollowed out, and she started seeing things: sharp--angled, barbed, darkly malevolent characters out of the deepest part of her ugly subconscious. She needed to stop obsessing and scaring herself. Enough.
She decided to play stump the music expert.
“This is Nessa, you’re on the air,” Nessa said, opening up the phone line.
“I have a trivia question,” the female voice said.
“Shoot,” Nessa said, swiveling in her chair, watching the clock’s secondhand sweeping toward her release.
“Who played lead guitar on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’?”
“Really,” Nessa said. “You’re asking me a Beatles question. Is that right? You’re asking me a Beatles question.”
“But who played—-”
“It was Clapton. Everyone knows that, even -people who don’t listen to music. Even the hearing--impaired.”
She realized, grudgingly, that had Otto been here screening calls, this question never would have slipped through.
Nessa clicked the end button. As she could have predicted, the phone lines lit up after that. She answered another call.
“Why do you have to be so mean?” a whiny, plaintive voice asked her.
“Because my producer isn’t here to screen the calls,” Nessa said, and hung up, and immediately realized she’d made a huge mistake, broadcasting that she was alone at the station. Of course, most -people didn’t know where this show originated, but still, it was a stupid move.
“He’s at a Minecraft convention,” Nessa amended, giving herself a little thrill at demeaning her coworker. As a rule, Nessa didn’t demean -people who weren’t there to defend themselves. But she was desperate.
“What’s the spine number on—-”
Nessa hung up unceremoniously. “Come on. You know the rules. No spine number or album--cover color questions,” Nessa said.
“What’s Elvis Costello’s real name?”
“Declan MacManus,” Nessa said, and hung up. “Next?”
“Four famous rap artists went to the same high school in Brooklyn, New York, called George Westinghouse Jr. High School of Career and Technical Education. Busta Rhymes, DMX, and Jay--Z are three of them. Who’s the fourth?”
“Let’s see . . . the fourth would be—-”
Was Nessa imagining it? Was there a masker on that voice? It had the low bass line of an old Funkadelic song, almost outside of the range of human hearing. Suddenly it was as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the room. Nessa couldn’t breathe, couldn’t finish her sentence.
“Come on,” the caller said. “You know the answer.”
Yes. She did.