Free Radiomen by Eleanor Lerman Page A

from my childhood. If you plugged it into an outlet and held onto the canisters attached to it by coils of wire, it made your hands tingle. I used to play with it when Avi was babysitting me. He was always telling me to be careful with it, but even as a small child, I had the impression that it was something like the joke-shop buzzer some kid in my class had—when he concealed it in his palm and shook hands with you, it gave you a mild jolt. As far as I could see, the only difference among the device in Avi’s apartment, the Blue Box depicted on the long-ago slide show I’d seen at the Introduction to Awareness meeting, and now, the one Ravenette was holding, was the color and the fact that Avi’s was made out of Haverkit parts—the name was clearly stamped on the outside casing—just like his radio. In the apartment, I had asked my father if I could have one of Avi’s radios—the same receiver he had brought with him to Rockaway to listen to satellites—which was on a table in the living room, not stuffed in the closet with the other equipment. It was the era when FM stations were just beginning to switch over to broadcasting rock music and all I had was a small transistor radio; I thought that with Avi’s receiver, I could not only get better reception, but maybe listen to stations from other cities, too. Maybe I was being insensitive, thinking of the radio as a boon to my ability to groove to the Beatles and the Stones instead of mourning Avi, but I don’t think I was feeling much of anything in those days, except sorry for myself. I was already a wild kid, depressed and angry, cutting school whenever I could and sneaking out at night to hang out with my friends and get high. In any event, my father said that I could take the radio, so I put it in a carton and, on a whim, took the joke-shop box with me, too. Maybe at the time it seemed like some kind of memento of my childhood, but not then—and certainly not now—did I even entertain the idea that it had the power to do anything other than let you feel the sensation of a tiny electric current traveling along your fingers.
    “I don’t believe you,” Ravenette said. “You can’t possibly have a Blue Box.”
    “I don’t care whether you believe me or not,” I told her. Then I smiled as widely as I could. “But I really do have one.”
    “You must have stolen it somehow,” Ravenette asserted, sounding furious.
    “I didn’t,” I told her, “but you can think what you like.” I wasn’t in the mood to tell her anything personal about myself, which meant I certainly wasn’t going to mention Avi and how I had acquired my version of a Blue Box. At the same time, I couldn’t resist the impulse to piss her off just a little bit, since it made me feel like I was getting back at her for tricking me into coming here, so I added, “It’s just a toy.”
    “That,” she told me, “is an insulting thing to say. And very stupid.”
    There seemed to be an ominous ring to that last remark, but I decided not to engage her any further. Who knew what an enraged psychic cult member might say to me next. Or do. There was nothing in it for me to hang around and find out, so I finally did turn around and walk out. I rang for the elevator, which luckily came almost immediately, but just after I stepped in and turned around, I saw that Ravenette had hurried after me so that she could slam the elevator door shut in my face. She glared at me through the iron grillwork as the ornate cage began to descend.
    Shortly, I was back on the sidewalk, feeling like I was trudging along the grim, gray edge of a lost afternoon. The anger toward Ravenette that had energized me when I was in her loft was leeching away again and I felt . . . what? Hollow was as close as I could get to describing my state. I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me since I thought I had given as good as I’d gotten in terms of arguing with Ravenette over that damn box, but I didn’t feel like I’d