He scoops Olga up with one arm, turns her until she’s facing him, maneuvers her into an awkward waltz stance, an arm around her waist, hand in hand, out to the side a bit. Her shoes dangle two feet above the floor.
“Ooh, you’re heftier than you look, dear. Now relax and I’ll lead.”
He starts a strange semiwaltz toward the center of the room, turns it into a sloppy tango, humming music that doesn’t match what the radio plays.
“Please put her down,” Wallace says, helpless, fading toward a whine, frantic for a plan, a course of action.
Speer ignores him and says, “This is really wonderful. Really different. I like this. You tell me if I’m squeezing too tight. Wouldn’t want to snap the spine. You know, I’m not sure I could go back to a full-sized partner now. You’ve spoiled me, Olga.”
Her eyes are closed. She’s fighting both tears and a rage that tells her from where she’s hanging she could get off a perfect pointed-toe into his groin, bring him right to the ground. She hopes that Wallace would be ready to act, to grab a golf club and cave in his skull, shatter the bridge of his nose, break a kneecap. But she can’t help knowing the guy’s a cop. And everything she’s feared since the day she married Wallace has suddenly come true. Finally, tonight, in the safety of their rec room, every bad daydream has been made flesh.
He brings his mouth close to her ear like they were at some eternal high school prom. She anticipates the moistness before it actually comes. And then it comes. His tongue dips in toward her eustachian tube, a quick lick and then a whisper, “What do you say you and I ditch this guy and head out to my car?”
The tears win out and start to stream.
“You want money?” Wallace yells. “I got money. You want to bring me in, then let’s go.”
Speer stops dancing, releases Olga, and she falls to the floor like a heavy, lifeless doll. A look grows on Speer’s face, an annoyed, rigid-lipped squint.
“Change partners,” he says, steps over to Wallace and picks him up in a rougher grip. They start to do something resembling a samba and Speer asks, “This a rented tux?”
Wallace can’t answer. Olga stays on the ground, pulls herself into a corner, and weeps.
“Now, Mr. Browning,” Speer says, dipping, “there are a lot of ways we can do this. And not all of them have to involve losing the deposit on this tux. Not all of them have to involve me taking pretty Olga away with me. Now, I don’t want to bust you. I’d be a goddamn laughingstock bringing in munchkins-gone-bad, you know? And I don’t want your fucking money. I’ll tell you, that was insulting. That was not a wise thing to say. I always picture you people as being more polite or something. I don’t know why.”
He does a sudden, off-balance spin, then lifts Wallace and places him on the fireplace mantel.
“What I want is for the three of us to have a long conversation about your private little broadcast booth behind the fireplace there. And I want some names—”
“We’ll tell you,” Olga yells. “Whatever you want.”
Wallace gives her a confused, maybe pained, look, and Olga’s fear bolts into a surge of anger. She screams, “Don’t you dare look at me like that.”
Wallace puts his hands up over his ears and bites in on his bottom lip. He looks like an oversized pop-art statue, a roadside souvenir that somehow went horribly wrong during the creation process.
Speer’s got them both, turned them against one another. It took less time than he anticipated and he’s more than a little proud of this. He lets his pleasure show by easing the act a bit, smiling, holding up his hands in a joint stop sign to both husband and wife.
“Kids, kids, kids,” he says, “we don’t have to be this way. There’s no need for this behavior. That’s what I’ve been trying to make clear to you all along. I just need a little cooperation. Now, what do you say?”
He saunters to the fireplace, lifts Wallace, and deposits him on the floor.
“Mr. B, you’re an old pro in this department. I took a little tour of your studio there behind the fireplace. Little cramped. From my perspective anyway. But there’s enough evidence behind that wall to take this life away. Take old DeForest Road away. You’ve been here over twenty years. Mortgage is almost paid off, right? We can take away the house, the job, the savings. You’re a CPA, right? Upstanding member of the community and all, right? You’re on committees. You’ve got friends. This little—” he pretends he’s reaching for a correct word—“hobby of yours would surprise them all quite a bit, don’t you think?”
He steps back, offers Olga a hand up without looking at her. She accepts it and gets to her feet.
“Let’s calm down here a second. Let’s catch our breath. Sit down on the couch there, the two of you. Next to each other.”
They comply and he begins a slow pace in front of them, an act he hopes shows just a hint of patience, reasonableness. He stops now and then at the fireplace mantel, leans against it, strikes the pose of a 1950s TV dad, a young Robert Young, a slightly hipper Hugh Beaumont. He gives the tone that he’s rehearsed in the runny mirror of his basement apartment for over a month:
“Okay. I think the three of us need to accept certain givens. Things are not the same right now as they were yesterday. Yesterday your lives had not yet changed. Wallace, you were working on some small company’s tax problems. Olga, you were baking a bundt cake, clearing up last-minute details with Magda down at the Baron. Am I right? Have I done my homework? Okay, overnight things change. That is the nature of life. We don’t like it. As creatures, as animals, we don’t like change. Particularly this type of change. Nightmarish change. And your nightmare has a name. Its name is Agent Speer. I’m your nightmare. I’m sorry, but that’s how it’s worked out. The currents of fate brought us together. Nothing either of us can do about that.”
“Now, Wallace. You have a problem. You’re not alone in this. Thousands of Americans across the country have the same affliction. I view it as a disease, though I really don’t know if, at this point, the AMA would back me up. But I’ve spent some time studying the phenomenon. I’m not some novice jumping into the fray at the last minute. My knowledge has evolved. You people show the same symptoms as an addict, as an abuser. You’re compulsive. Lousy cure percentage, even with help. Help that you don’t want. No matter what the cost to family and friends around you. I don’t know if Mr. Phil Donahue has ever done one of his shows on your affliction, but he ought to. It’d be a genuine public service. To my mind anyway.”
“Right now, you’re saying, ‘What’s the big deal? What have I done that’s so wrong?’ And I want you to know that I understand that type of thought. You’ve been honing it, refining it for so long it’s got a thick sheen over it. But, Wallace, the truth is the truth. At some point, you have to climb up on the step stool and look in the mirror and admit to yourself. You have to look in the mirror, into you own eyes, no one else’s, and say, ‘God save me, I’m a jammer.’
“There. I said the J-word.” As you’re both well aware, there are very specific laws in this country regarding the transmission and content of radio signals. There are licensing requirements and financial obligations. Papers to be filed. Inspections. Legal documentation. Bonds. The Federal Communications Commission oversees this entire enterprise. It’s an enormous responsibility. There’s so much to be considered.
The air around us is bursting with radio waves. There’s only one way to prevent absolute chaos. And that’s to rely on mutually agreed-upon laws and regulations, standards and practices. There’s a complex system that’s been in existence for a long, long time. It’s grown as culture and technology have changed. The system has evolved with the times.