Ghost Radio Read online

  “You like it because it makes me look hot.”

  I felt a little guilty about it, but I had to set certain boundaries and I decided to start then and there.

  Our relationship was about to spread beyond intimacy and private space, making us into media celebrities, and I needed to establish strict rules about the way we portrayed ourselves through our microphones. Joaquin didn’t have a problem with that; he’d developed an alter ego who was sometimes maniacal but sometimes restrained, who could listen patiently, and didn’t treat every public appearance as an opportunity to show off. But I was more interested in ensuring we wouldn’t turn the program into a farce, a grotesque vaudeville show starring us as one of those monstrous couples who put themselves on display. I couldn’t shake the image of Jim and Tammy Bakker. But when I mentioned this to Joaquin, he just laughed and said:

  “I think secretly you want to be Tammy Faye.”

  I know I was exaggerating; maybe I was even being a little hysterical. But anyone who values their independence feels threatened when they embark on someone else’s project.

  It’s a basic survival instinct.

  I agreed to be on Ghost Radio because I thought it would give me material to work with once I got back to the university. Plus, it might be fun. But if my guard went down, I was lost.

  As a matter of fact, it was fun. For me, sessions on the air were like living Star Trek episodes. We listened to stories in isolation from the world; we commented on them, we argued to the point of shouting. Most of the stories were really about loneliness, primal fear, maternal abandonment, Electra complexes, sexual frustration, spiritual suffering. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that these were the things our callers were really afraid of. It didn’t matter whether we imagined them as transparent specters, chupacabras, mummies, tentacled monsters, or any other malformed creature; in essence, all these beings were reflections of everyday fears and traumas. Discovering this, which was obvious to so many, was a revelation.

  Joaquin understood where I was coming from. But didn’t always agree.

  “Sometimes a ghost is just a ghost,” he’d say.

  Perhaps he needed that attitude to make the show work. You can’t be psychoanalyzing all your callers, and still create entertaining radio. And Joaquin created entertaining radio.

  I loved watching the different emotions he went through, from enthusiastic, to arrogant, to bemused, to excited. Occasionally, he went into a trancelike state. Those episodes made me nervous.

  At first, I was convinced it was theatrics, that he was putting on an act to impress me. But I soon realized that it wasn’t that at all, he was truly entering an altered state—and when he did so, he was oblivious to the world around him.

  I eventually got used to his sporadic trips into the world of unexplained phenomena. He was able to wade through the mist covering the borderland between the normal and the paranormal. Although it scared me a little, part of me admired it. But I had concluded it was just one of those things better left alone. I chose to ignore it, but that wasn’t always possible.

  In time, Ghost Radio became my home, a space where I felt comfortable, where I could express myself without fear. Our little program was a tunnel, a highway of voices: Sometimes I was behind the wheel, sometimes simply a passenger. I’d earned my slot on the program. I got along well with the staff, and participated in the decision-making process. That was already several times better than the relationship I had with my fellow professors at the university, with whom anything more personal than an exchange of “good afternoons” was unthinkable.

  As always in my life, I assumed from the beginning that this was just a passing phase, that at some rapidly approaching moment everything would change. I couldn’t imagine any other outcome, even though, unlike practically every earlier stage of my life, I was really satisfied. I didn’t feel like going through another change, lugging my suitcases somewhere else, saying good-bye to people, and filling garbage bags with the things I couldn’t take with me.

  One afternoon, I was having a coffee at Joaquin’s apartment, which was now my apartment too, and thinking about this, when I looked out the window and saw a couple fighting in the park. He was trying to hug her, but she pushed him, gently at first, and then with more force. He gestured emphatically, trying to make her stay. She didn’t seem convinced, and walked off, but he ran after her and stopped her. Once again, he waved his hands around, speaking in a voice that, although I couldn’t hear through the closed window, was obviously growing louder and louder. I could almost hear him through the closed window. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, though; I didn’t want to know what he was saying to keep her from leaving him. He didn’t seem to care that passersby were watching. Shame and discretion had vanished; there was only his desperate attempt to conquer this woman. She dug in harder, looking at the ground, not like someone who’s embarrassed, but sternly, refusing all contact. She raised her hands to keep him from even touching her. Finally, she turned and walked away. He watched her, his shoulders drooping.

  Their separation affected me in a way I had difficulty understanding. I couldn’t stop thinking about them, about his enormous sadness and her detachment. I walked through the apartment, appreciating it more than ever, its wide windows that let the sunlight in, its wooden floors, its kitchen and cozy bedroom. It was going to be hard work leaving this place; it was going to be even more difficult to peel myself away from Joaquin. When he returned the next morning, the first thing he said to me was:

  “How’d you like a change of scenery?”

  It seems he had a chance to test Ghost Radio in the United States, possibly leading to a syndication deal.

  The notion of going back to the United States didn’t seem very attractive at that point, but it wasn’t something I completely ruled out either. I figured I’d have to return eventually, but going back now felt like cutting off something vital, sacrificing important experiences, abandoning ideas and projects. Above all, leaving Mexico made me think of my mother, who’d followed my father to America and was never happy there. Was this history repeating itself? Fate, genetics, emotional programming?

  “You’re going to have to go alone. I’m staying,” I told him. I didn’t get emotional.

  I didn’t know if I was right. I had to take this position. But I also had to hear his arguments.

  We spent weeks debating the advantages and disadvantages of moving. It was a major opportunity for Joaquin and it made me feel guilty to think of him sacrificing something so big. He was in the same situation. He didn’t want to leave me, but he didn’t want to pressure me to go. It seemed that no matter what, we both came out losers. Joaquin spoke of the violence, the kidnapping, the misery, and the pollution in Mexico.

  “And you really want to live in a country at war where you’re an ethnic minority? You want your program to target the marginalized and dispossessed?” I asked him.

  “Don’t go all intellectual on me.”

  “I’m stating facts.”

  “But avoiding the real one.”

  I stared at him, trying to diminish the anger in my eyes.

  “What are you afraid of, Alondra?”

  I was about to challenge him. But I knew he was right. I was afraid. But why? And of what?

  I shook my head slowly, and looked at the floor.

  Nothing was resolved. The discussions continued. Joaquin became more convincing and I faltered. I conceded certain points, but held fast on others. He hadn’t won yet. But a tiny voice inside me told me he would…eventually.

  Adding to the mosaic of issues that came with a return to the United States, Joaquin was counting on me to form part of the Ghost Radio team. I didn’t find out until later, but the corporation buying the program did not want the format changed, and my presence was fundamental because I was American; I was the link between both cultures. Joaquin didn’t dare tell me that they were pretty much buying me. He was afraid, and rightly so, that this would be too much pressure. At any rate,
he said:

  “They want the entire team. They want to reproduce the program’s formula exactly.”

  “Well, I guess you and Watt will have to find someone else.”

  I asked Joaquin not to talk about it for a few days. I wasn’t interested in hearing any more about moves, changes, or cultural transplantation. I needed to weigh the pros and cons myself. I needed time to think.

  chapter 23

  THE CONTRACT

  I sold my soul to the devil.

  That old cliché never felt more apt. I won’t go into detail. When you’re talking about business, the minutiae of contracts, unions, safety, and benefits bore me to tears. After all, it all boils down to one question: How much?

  I know it might sound mercenary, even flat-out selfish, but what can I say? For the first time in my life, someone had managed to stir my ambition. It began, like so many other things, with an e-mail. The message was signed by a guy named Dan Foster and sent from an address at InterMedia Enterprises. I answered courteously, as I always do. Dan kept sending me messages for a few weeks, like he was just another fan commenting on the program and giving his opinion on my hosting. Then one day he traveled to Mexico to see me, and tossed out his proposal. He didn’t waste time.

  He offered me a nationally syndicated program, a fabulous salary, an apartment, and a car. But Dan Foster, who it turned out was president and CEO of the media conglomerate, presented all this as if it were a mission, an unprecedented adventure in social upheaval.

  “We’re going to break barriers in every sense of the term—not only because they’ll be able to listen to you across the United States of America on the radio and around the whole world on the Internet, but because on top of crossing over into the afterlife, you’re also going to be crossing linguistic and cultural barriers that no one’s ever been able to penetrate. Can you imagine what this will mean to the Hispanic community?”

  I could imagine and nodded my head, but it all seemed abstract to me. Besides, I wasn’t interested in being a pioneer in my field. My life wasn’t what you would call chaotic, but I considered it well stocked. The way Foster was talking, this program was going to turn me into the general of a Hispanic broadcast revolution. I told him this.

  “You’re going to pave the way for your countrymen.”

  “To be honest, I didn’t get into radio to change the world.”

  “You’re gonna be a hero.”

  I won’t deny having ridiculous delusions, but becoming a hero wasn’t one of them, and certainly not from a broadcasting booth.

  “Dan, it’s a little program about ghosts and horror stories; we’re not writing declarations of independence here.”

  “I know, but believe me, it’ll be revolutionary anyways.”

  It didn’t make sense to argue; to him, a Mexican hosting a successful radio program was groundbreaking. To me, it didn’t seem any more relevant than the fact that there were Mexican actors and directors like Salma Hayek, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro González Iñárritu in Hollywood. Apparently, to him, this was not only more important but more subversive.

  Next, we talked about money.

  I didn’t go into radio for the money. What I earned allowed me to live well, but the InterMedia offer was very impressive. We’re talking serious cash.

  He did say I’d have to go through a “test period,” but suggested with their promotional backing I’d pass through that with flying colors. I wasn’t so sure.

  I originally developed an interest in radio after I accepted that I’d finally reached the inevitable age where I was too old for rock and roll, and too young to die. I played with lots of bands and recorded hundreds of tracks after the dissolution of Deathmuertoz, but I was never satisfied with the results. I had never been able to recapture the kind of sound I’d had with Gabriel. None of what I’d done afterward seemed like it was up to the standards of our music.

  And Gabriel wasn’t there.

  Without him, making music felt like work.

  For me, radio was a space for reflection. On the air, I submerged myself in music and literature. I listened along with my audience; I read to myself and to them, I discussed all kinds of ideas with total strangers. It was the perfect medium: intense, warm, interactive, and highly volatile. From my very first session in the broadcast studio, I felt like I was in a time capsule, a sensory-deprivation chamber. It was a protective bubble where nothing and no one could touch me. The semidarkness, the illuminated panel, and the on-air light combined to create a cozy, womblike environment, a sort of cosmic solitude. I had the sensation of floating in space, completely isolated from the real world. My only human contact was with the disembodied voices of callers. Everything seemed dusted with an ethereal—yes, I’ll say it—ghostly quality. I could touch and hear the whole world, while no one could be sure of my existence; I was just one more voice in the teeming concert of hertzian waves. It was a land of the blind, where we were guided by sounds and voices, and space took the shape our words gave it. We transformed it with every description, comment, insult, or digression. It was almost like death, floating aimlessly at night, listening to spectral voices that in turn spoke about specters, indifferent to their own condition.

  One day, I read a fragment from Edgar Allan Poe on the air: “The Telltale Heart.” My audience responded well. The calls poured in. Some, who already knew the story, praised me for “elevating the abysmal level of discourse on that pigsty you call a program.”

  Others, younger or more ignorant, wanted to know more about Poe. Did he teach at a local university or sign autographs at shopping malls? The surprising thing was that a few, inspired by my reading, started calling in with anecdotes, stories that seemed to them mysterious or inexplicable.

  “Hello, my name’s Manuel. I work as a security guard at a building downtown that’s under construction. I couldn’t resist the temptation to call, because I really liked what you read. I already wrote down the author; I’m going to buy the book. But what I really wanted to tell you is something that happened to me.

  I’m forty-two years old, and about twenty years ago I worked in construction, you know, as a builder. Anyways, one night I was working overtime with my uncle at a site. I had to push wheelbarrows full of mixed cement up to the third floor on top of some wooden planks. One night my uncle, who got me the job, showed me a bottle of tequila. “How ‘bout it, nephew, want some? It’ll warm you up!” I said no, it was a bad idea. I could get into trouble or even fall. He said: “Don’t worry, just take it easy. We aren’t getting drunk, we’re getting warm.”

  Back then I drank. Not anymore.

  The last time I had one was about five years ago and I don’t intend to fall off the wagon. But back then I thought my uncle might be right. Besides, he was almost as important as the foreman, so I figured nothing would happen. I took a drink and started up with a load. When I got back down, I walked past my uncle again. He told me to take another shot, and I did. By the fifth round, I was real tipsy, singing and talking shit. And then I fell. I fell into the wheelbarrow, rolled a few yards, and then dropped about six feet. I was covered in liquid concrete. Everything hurt; I thought I’d never be able to move again. Then I heard my uncle’s booming laugh. His guffaws echoed on the naked walls of the construction site. He finally stopped laughing and came down to see if I was still alive. He wiped the cement off of me and helped me up.

  “What a fuckin’ idiot you turned out to be, nephew,” he said over and over again.

  I’d had enough and I was really hurting, so I told him a few times to knock it off, but he’d have none of it. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world, me falling like that. He kept making fun of me as we climbed out, but then he slipped, hit his head, and landed in the same place where I’d fallen. I limped down there to take a look. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were open but it looked like he wasn’t breathing.

  “How ’bout that, motherfucker, who’s got the last laugh now!” I shouted at the old bastard.

  I
was so angry I threw the wheelbarrow down after him. But it wasn’t long before I sobered up and realized that this was serious business and I could end up in jail. I brought more cement and poured it over my uncle. By the second full wheelbarrow, though, he started moving. Terrified, I ran for another full wheelbarrow and threw it on him. Then I carefully smoothed it over. By the next morning, the cement was dry and the floor looked pretty good, maybe a little higher than it was supposed to be. Luckily, it was hardly noticeable. When the architect arrived that day he asked me why we’d poured that floor already. I got nervous. I said my uncle had told me that it had to be done so they could put in the stairway. He looked at me curiously, and asked how my uncle was doing.

  “I don’t know, last night he went home by himself,” I answered.

  “When you see him, tell him to please come and see me.”

  “What, the floor isn’t good enough?” I asked him.

  “It’s fine, but I need him to hurry up with the stairs.”

  No one ever saw my uncle again. Some thought he’d run off with a woman. His wife couldn’t understand it, because he’d never been a Don Juan and he always checked in. After some months, she accepted that he’d either gone up north or been killed during a mugging.

  I continued working at the site. One night, I woke up tasting blood and tequila. I washed out my mouth several times, but it wouldn’t go away; on the contrary, every time I passed the place where my uncle was buried, the taste grew stronger. Sometimes, I thought it was going to choke me; sometimes it even made me throw up. I went to see several doctors, even a healer. No one found anything. I chewed mints all day long. I ate raw onions and garlic, but the tang of blood covered everything. I became desperate; I had all my teeth extracted, thinking that would cure me. Nothing. It pursued me long after we finished that building. The people living there now would never imagine that they walk over my uncle every time they climb the stairs. Yesterday, in fact, I almost went over there to yell to the whole world that my dead uncle is buried in the cement down below. My nerve failed me. But when I heard that story just now, I knew it was a sign. Finally, I must confess.