MOLLY ANDREA-RYAN

In the Dark

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The only light in the booth came from the glowing buttons on the control board. Colleen never turned on the desk lamp unless she lost something—usually her car keys, occasionally the business card of a dad who wanted her to DJ his kid’s birthday party. (A gig, if you could call it that.) She preferred the booth dark, using her sense of touch and sound to operate it. She preferred the solitude, the feeling that she had the airwaves to herself. When she spoke into the microphone, she imagined that she was speaking to no one, and she was probably right. At 2 AM in a town like this one, everyone but the occasional mother and infant would be sleeping. 

She lowered the stereo volume as one song ended and raised it as another began, the fade unnecessary but soothing. There weren’t many rules she had to follow: announce the names of the songs and artists, promote upcoming farmer’s markets and church luncheons. The rest, she improvised. Every two hours, for example, she gave an account of the previous day’s weather. Some days she shared stories about her life or told jokes, avoiding personal details or controversial topics. Once, she told a fairly innocuous Catholic joke, assuming that along with the rest of the town, the Catholics were sound asleep. Evidently, at least one was awake and called the station manager the next morning, who let Colleen off with a warning.

“What are you telling jokes for?” the manager asked. “Just stop talking. Play music. That’s the job.”

The station genre was Golden Oldies, a term that shifted with the passing of time. The station’s library of CDs now stretched all the way through the 1970s, side stepping anything metal or anything the station deemed too blatant in its message of free love. 

Colleen lowered the stereo volume again and turned on her microphone, pressing her right hand ritualistically to the right side of her bulky headphones. “You’re listening to Disco in the Dark,” she said, using what she thought of as her radio voice: soft, sultry, deepened an octave. “We just wrapped up ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’ by a Taste of Honey and now it’s time for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. That’s right, it’s Donna Summer time, so sit back, relax, and ‘Dim All the Lights.’” 

Colleen rocked absently in her swivel chair as the song started, slow and soulful at first before picking up the pace. When most people thought of disco, they thought of one-note verses and mindless repetition, music meant for dancers in clubs rather than quiet enjoyment or contemplation. Colleen knew better. She could detect the heavier side of Donna’s musical sensibilities in a bridge or a guitar solo, left over from her early days in a psych rock band that never took off. She sensed the authenticity of her lyrics, the way she told stories about women and the men they put up with. Sure, there were the artists that got in, made their one hit, and got it, but Donna was something different. She had dreams that didn’t come true and dreams that did. 

Colleen had her own psychedelic rock days, which was to say that she’d studied and prepared for journalism and found herself spinning music on the radio, instead. 

Donna was holding one long note as the song became its whole self when the phone next to the control board started to ring. Colleen had seen the phone’s bright red light flashing during the day, but never at night. At night, it lit the dark booth like a carnival game. She fumbled for the receiver with one hand while shading her eyes with the other. 

“Hello?” she asked, forgetting entirely the proper way to answer the station phone. 

“Is this Colleen?” a man asked. 

His voice was distant, tailed by an echo, as if he were speaking through layers of tinfoil punched with holes. Colleen couldn’t identify the voice, but he’d said her name with such familiarity.  

“Yes,” she said. She hoped she sounded professional, confident, rather than jumpy. She held the phone to her ear with her shoulder while shuffling through the CDs in front of her and tossing on a Sylvester song that would buy her almost seven minutes. 

“I’m enjoying your show.”

“Oh,” Colleen said, softening. “Thanks. Want to make any requests?”

“Actually yes,” the man said. “It’s kind of a strange one, though. I’d like to ask you a question. Not about your show. Just about you.”  

“Oh,” she said again, picking sightlessly at her chipping nail polish. She wondered if the man was a local reporter doing profiles, or maybe a recent graduate feeling around for internships. “Shoot.”

“Okay,” he said. “Are you happy doing what you’re doing?”

“What?” she cried, nearly pitching herself from her chair. “Who’s asking?” She was thinking suddenly of guys she had dated in college, guys who had gone on to work in television or in the field, guys who had married petite women with small dogs and big hair. What if they were calling to see if she pitied herself as much as they did? What if they were organizing a reunion?   

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” the man said. 

“No, I mean fine. I mean yes, I’ll answer,” she said, unnerved by the answer he might come up with on his own. “It’s not what I thought I’d be doing, but that’s life, and in this economy, you know? What I mean is, why give up a good job? Not that I think I’ll be here forever, but it’s working, I’m working. It’s good. Happy? I think so.”

She could hear the whizzing background noise of highway traffic and realized that the man must be driving somewhere. 

“I guess that makes sense,” he said. “I mean, I think I get what you mean. I think that’s how a lot of us feel these days.”

“Did we go to college together?” Colleen asked. “I’m not going to a reunion.”

“What? No.” The man was quiet for a moment and Colleen, though she knew nothing of his face, imagined that he was frowning. Then, he hung up.

Colleen stared at the phone in her hand, the sound of the dial tone tasting like metal on her tongue. She placed the phone back in its cradle and tugged at the ends of her hair, wondering if her answer had been a smart one, if it had left the caller thinking that she had an advanced sense of self. She neglected to change the CD, and so one Sylvester song was followed by a another. Until now, she’d had a perfect streak, had never missed a transition, had never broken the rule (one of few) that DJs were not to play the same artist twice in a row. The man who had called to ask if she was happy had broken her perfect streak, which, she thought, was irony-adjacent. 

She flipped through the stack of CDs she’d created earlier and queued up “Tragedy” by the Bee Gees. The song always made her feel a little bit anxious, a little bit on edge. She hoped it would have the same effect on her caller, assuming he was still listening. It was his turn to feel uncomfortable. 

Barry Gibb had only just begun singing when the phone rang again. Colleen grabbed it with both hands and pressed it to her ear, aware that the move was melodramatic and relieved that no one was there to see it. 

“Yes?” 

“Colleen,” the man said. “There’s more I’d like to ask you.”

“Who are you?” Colleen demanded, the use of her name making her feel as if it no longer belonged to her.

“What difference does that make?” the man asked. “Don’t other people call, too?”

No one had ever called in during Colleen’s show, but she didn’t want to admit her lack of experience. “Yes,” she said. “But for normal reasons. To talk about music. Request a song. Do you want to do that?”

“I like what you’re playing,” the man said. “I don’t really have much to say about the Bee Gees. I think the oldest one is knighted now. Do you understand that? What it takes to be a knight? I’m not sure I do.”

“Is that what you wanted to ask me?” 

“No. No, I have a different question.” 

“I don’t know what it takes to be a knight, either.”

“Well, there you go,” he said, then paused, filling the line with the rattling of air and ice melt being sucked through a straw. “What’s the earliest thing you remember?”

“I woke up,” Colleen said. “Because my alarm went off.”

“Not today,” the man said. “In your life. What’s your first memory?”

Colleen grabbed the well-worn Gloria Gaynor case, its plastic hinges broken so that the cover came off in her hands, and shoved the CD into the player. 

“I’m not sure,” she said. 

“You can’t be unsure about something like a first memory,” he said. “You’re the only source, the only authority. You remember something or you don’t, that’s all.”

Colleen wondered with alarm if perhaps the man was someone who her mother had enlisted, a spy sent to verify that Colleen had enjoyed her childhood—and she had, for the most part. She’d grown up in a suburb not unlike the one she lived in now, a place that was meant for bicycles in the streets and porch light curfews. She’d had a pleasant, albeit uneventful, go of it. Still, the thought of being investigated by a proxy filled her with unease.

“Maybe my birthday,” she said. “My fourth birthday. We had a party in the basement. All the kids on my street were invited. We played musical chairs with this cassette tape of nursery rhymes, which I hated. I wanted to play real music. The Go-Go’s or something. There was a big cake with a Barbie sticking out of it sitting on a table.”

“And?”

“And all I wanted to know was whether or not I got to keep the Barbie and who would wash the cake off her legs.”

“Did that make you upset?” the man asked.

Colleen thought for a moment. “No,” she said. “Impatient, maybe. I don’t think many things upset me.” Silence grew like a puddle. “What’s your earliest memory?”

“Sitting in the living room of my grandmother’s house,” the man said. “It was winter and there was a fire and no central heating, so we were all crowded together, my whole family. My grandmother told stories until it started to snow and then she sent all of the kids out to play.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was. Were you happy then? As a child?”

“I’d say so.”

“And are you as happy now?”

“Who wants to know?” Colleen hissed. “My mother?”

“Your song is about to end,” the man said, and hung up again.

Colleen scrambled to load another CD, paying no attention to which one she’d chosen. It took effort to see the covers and track lists in this dim lighting, and her mind was still lost in the phone line. She skipped to the third song, hoping she’d land on a hit. The first lines of “Jungle Boogie” played through the speakers and she breathed a sigh of relief, setting the Kool & the Gang case aside. 

She thought about ripping the phone cord out of the wall, disconnecting herself. She pinched the cord between her fingers, then hesitated. The last conversation made her sweat. She could feel the cold wet cotton in her armpits. The digital clock above the booth door read 12:35, which meant nothing. It always read 12:35 now, something Colleen liked because it made her feel as alone in time as she was on the airwaves, as if her time in the booth didn’t really count as time at all. These calls were a disruption, an upheaval, a re-placing of herself onto the plane of shared existence. She wanted to throw the phone out onto the street, tie it to the train tracks, and yet she couldn’t. She was buoyed to her caller and would be until she understood.

It felt like ages before he called again. Colleen played six more songs, announcing the titles and artists on autopilot. She skipped the personal anecdotes, the jokes. The fade from one song to the next was choppy, abrupt. When the phone finally did ring, she answered it immediately.

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t know who you are or why you’re asking me these questions. Why do you care if I’m happy? Why do you want to know what my earliest memory is?”

“Do you feel the need to regret?” the man asked calmly.

Colleen sighed. “As in, do I regret anything?”

“No,” he said. “I mean, does regret feel necessary to you? Or guilt? Do you hang onto these things even if you know that you can’t change the past?”

“Everyone regrets. Don’t you?”

The man was quiet. “I do regret some things,” he finally said. “But I wonder what good that does me.”

The last song Colleen had queued up came to an end. She leaned across the control board and pressed the yellow button at the top, turning on an automated loop of approved tracks. She’d never even considered this button an option before. It was more of a help line, an emergency exit. A Shirelles song started to play, jingling and bright.

“I used to regret taking this job,” the man said. “Truck driving. Long hours. Far distances. It ruined my marriage. But there was nothing else for me to do, no other job that would cover the mortgage, the insurance. And we were saving up for a vacation. We hadn’t taken one in almost seven years.”

Colleen held her breath for a moment, her mind flashing to her brother’s semi, his broken home, the alimony checks that had taken the place of his wife. “Ricky?” she asked, practically whispering.

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Anyway, I just keep thinking. I don’t know if it does me any good to wish I’d made different choices. What kind of choices did I really have? What if everything starts with that first memory, that first real moment of recognition of what’s going on around us, and we’re just ticking away after that? What if we’re not in control of anything and striving for happiness or wallowing in regret are just ways to think we are?”

Colleen stared at the glowing buttons, tracing her pointer finger with her thumbnail and thinking of all the songs that had played tonight with minimal input, minimal interference on her part. No fading from one song to the next, no real voice breaks, no flair, and it hadn’t made a difference. Just play music. That’s the job. 

“I don’t want to believe that,” she said. 

“Of course, of course,” the man said, not unkindly. Colleen wondered what the inside of his truck looked like, if he was driving with both hands on the wheel or one. At night, the booth had always felt to her like a rocket ship coasting through deep space and she couldn’t help but feel like this man in his truck was in the same orbit, that they were two survivors of some kind of catastrophe on earth that set the stage for a very lonely story.

“Did you get to keep the Barbie?” the man asked.

Colleen smiled. “Yeah,” she said. 

“My niece loves Barbies. There’s a disc jockey Barbie these days. Little microphone and headset and everything.”

Colleen’s Barbies hadn’t had jobs. Not just because they were designed around their outfits, which they were, but because she hadn’t imagined them with jobs. They weren’t reporters. They weren’t disc jockeys. They were just plastic women Colleen used to make sense of things. Conflict, desire, envy. Plastic figures that were stripped of a place in the world and given over to a stage of ideas and words and feelings. 

“How do you know me?” Colleen asked. “Please.”

“I don’t,” the man said.

“But you know my name.”

“You said it when your show started,” the man said. “Along with the phone number. I just decided to call.”

“Oh,” Colleen said. It came out like a sigh, like a question. It was loaded, that oh.

“Was there someone you hoped it would be?”

“No,” Colleen said, wondering at herself for imagining that she was the center of someone’s thoughts at such an odd hour. “Maybe.” 

“Well, I’m sorry that it was just me. But I’m glad you answered.”

After hanging up with the man for good, Colleen turned back to her stack of CDs. She had only a few minutes left in her show and wanted to end things on a high note, a dramatic note. Yvonne Elliman, she decided. “If I Can’t Have You.” It was orchestral, yearning, perfect for the projection of whatever pain the listener might be feeling. She wasn’t in pain, exactly, but she wanted to cry. The song played and for four minutes, she did cry, wondering if it was by choice that she’d kept answering the phone, wondering if she’d ever cross paths with her caller again, wondering if any of that truly mattered before turning on the lights and reshelving her CDs, making space for the next DJ to come in. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour, and Colleen’s headlights danced alone on the streets, two cosmic beams seeking something to land on. 

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