PILOT OF THE AIRWAVES

by Dean F. 
(Written in 1991) 

 

“Light, relaxing favorites from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and today. We’re Lite Ninety-Four FM.” 
           
            As Wilson Phillips warbled, Danny switched off the mike, removed his headphones and shouted, "This music su-u-u-ucks!” 

            He usually did just one overnight a week, but with Larry on vacation Danny was covering both their shifts. Sure his next paycheck would be decent—if you called six dollars an hour “decent”—but the hours he was working?  
           
            Danny said to himself, as he had taken to doing, “Oh, well. I’m the schmuck who wanted to do radio.” 
           
            Growing up in the ‘70s and dreaming of someday being a disc jockey, it had never occurred to Danny that doing so would entail staying up all night long to push buttons and read from index cards; nor had it occurred to him that a computer-generated music log would tell him exactly which song to play at exactly which time. 

            As a kid, Danny had dreamed of hosting an oldies show as ‘50s and ‘60s music was his first love. Unfortunately, The Rock ‘N’ Roll Revue, as he would have called it, never came to be. Now he worked part-time at this place. “Lite Ninety-Four,” indeed. “White Ninety-Snore” was more like it. 

            Twirling the handle of an empty plastic cup around his right index finger, Danny left the air studio. Wilson Phillips’ whining resonated throughout the building courtesy of the ceiling-mounted speakers placed every twelve feet or so. 

            A dank, musty smell assaulted Danny’s nostrils as he opened the men’s room door. Sighing, he flicked on both the light switch and the exhaust fan. Once the fan had been off for several hours, the smell in the men’s room was none too pleasant. Of course, the nine-to-fivers had no way of knowing that. 

            He left the bathroom and walked down the hallway. Danny passed the receptionist’s desk, on top of which was a table lamp that provided the other light in the building besides the reading lamp in the air studio. Right of the desk was a short corridor that led to the rear parking lot. Danny proceeded down the unlit side path, quietly cursing as he tripped over a pile of reel-to-reel tapes in front of the program’s director’s office. 

            At the end of the hallway, Danny squinted out the window and skimmed the lot. The only light was the winking red and silver beacons on the transmission tower. After a few seconds, Danny spotted his car and sighed in relief. It was still there. 
           
            As he headed back toward the main hallway, facing the glass-doored entrance to the building, Danny gasped and instinctively grabbed his chest with his free left hand. What did he just see out front? Slowly, and forcing himself to breathe, Danny approached the front door. Its glass, which provided the outside world with a full view of the reception area, made Danny feel naked. Bracing himself, he looked outside to discern what that sudden movement had been. 

            He laughed in self-reproach. It was just the headlights of a passing car. Though able to laugh about it, Danny still jogged the last few yards down the hallway. 

            The first thing he saw in the kitchen was the luminous readout of the digital clock in the Sales office down the otherwise dark opposite corridor. There was something both hypnotic and disconcerting about those red numbers that burned a hole in the night. Danny turned on the kitchen lights and purchased a can of soda from the Coke machine. The humming of the machine, coupled with the speaker in the ceiling, kept this end of the building from being devoid of sound. 

            By sheer coincidence, the day before Danny’s first fill-in for Larry, both the Coke machine and the ceiling speaker had stopped working. At about 2:00 that morning, Danny had come down to the kitchen and, for the fist time in his young life, experienced absolute silence. He heard no sounds at all, not even the outside chirping of insects. It was one of the few times in his life when Danny had genuinely panicked. Before it became crippling, though, he’d had the presence of mind to run back to the air studio, actually relieved to hear Elton John singing “Candle in the Wind.” 

            As he filled his cup with ice from the freezer, Danny realized that the Wilson Phillips atrocity was about to end. 
           
            “Shit!” The music log had the song’s running time wrong. 

            Danny took a moment to flick off the kitchen lights, leaving the clock to act as sentry. Holding his cup and soda can, Danny flew back to the studio to prevent dead air. He got back with seven seconds to spare, hitting the “start” button of the next tape-cartridge player. As Wilson Phillips ended, Billy Joel launched into “Piano Man.” 

            Popping open the soda can, Danny reflected that he didn’t mind working one or two overnights a week. However, filling in for Larry, he was now on number five of nine consecutive overnights. At least on his regular weekend shift there was the occasional phone call, but not at 3:30 a.m. on a weeknight. He wondered if anybody was even tuned in. 

            The next song was Neil Diamond’s “Heartlight.” Danny groaned and turned the volume way down, wondering how Larry could do this shift full-time. 

            As Neil Diamond faded, Danny sighed resignedly, put on the headphones, and recited from an index card, “If you need a friend, we’re here, twenty-four hours a day. Lite Ninety-Four FM.”