Equilibrium

Playboy's College Fiction Contest Winner

Columbia University

I am living with a woman as strong as a nightclub bouncer. She lifts her weights and does her dances with hell-bent intensity. She takes her morning coffee coal black and chases it with a juice mix: light on the mango, heavy on the lime, straight from the blender. She is up by six A.m. at the latest, donning her tight black jogging bra with the turquoise straps, contorting herself into various positions to stretch out. She leaves me behind--or, rather, leaves me her behind, just a flash of it, shiny spandex, a convex tease of muscle and flesh disappearing through the bedroom door. Her keys jangle down the hallway. The front-door locks snap open, the door slams shut. Her running shoes bounce lightly down three flights of stairs and onto the empty street.

We met as seniors at the state university and called it dating. The summer after graduation, we began living together in this one-bedroom apartment here in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, just behind the bakeries on Market Square. When I met Mary she had soft curves and long, reddish-brown locks. She was girlish. Vulnerable, I suppose, but irresistible in a baggy denim jacket adorned with pins that said Lovergirl and I Stop in the Name of Love. She also giggled a lot, loudly, at nearly everything I said and did.

In the year and a half since graduation she has transformed herself. She met a weight trainer-dancer named Stevie down at the bar where she works, and she metamorphosed in the gym. Now, at 24, she has a body that issues demands just moving across the kitchen tile. She walks with a self-assurance that practically glows. Her thighs are fibrous walls of tissue, rigidly toned and taut, impervious. Her biceps seem permanently flexed, her breasts raised and poised. Mary is firm everywhere, as though her curves have been chiseled down. She could easily strangle me now. I am quite certain.

•

When Mary returns from her jog I am still in bed, sprawled across the futon, embarrassed to find my hand between my legs, squeezing gently. She is in the shower before I can pull my hand away, wipe the sleep debris from my eyes and begin an intermittent succession of smelly yawns. I hear her hums and moans through the sizzle of steam and spray: She is satisfying herself in the shower, no doubt. It happens. I lean forward. The voice is rich, self-obsessed, reciting a low, incantatory chant that gets louder fast. The sound is sensual, urging on the voluptuous hot, the rushing wet, the steady, driving pulse of the nozzle itself to ...well, yes: to justify her love.

"Madonna's a blonde," I shout dryly when the shower ceases.

The curtain draws back with a vibrant scrape. The door is yanked open. Mary stands naked, shoulder-length hair crinkled and dampened black. She wraps a crimson towel firmly around her waist and brushes her hands lightly across her behind.

"She's a brunette, really," Mary says. She looks down, stretches back, admires her sleek, pinkish torso. "In heart, soul and spirit, a natural-born brunette. Get with it, babe. She's dyed for effect."

•

Mary seems to dance all day, aerobics and jazz, though the latter has little to do with Miles or Coltrane. She takes dance classes downtown at the Portsmouth recreation center. On weekends she dances to her workout tape in the living room, wearing a loose-fitting halter top that hangs above her navel and skintight leotards. Late afternoons she changes into jeans with frayed cuffs and a torn white T-shirt (Jesus Sweets printed across the chest) and heavy Doc Martens. Her bartending job down by the harbor starts at six, and at five-thirty Mary throws a metal cross around her neck and is gone. She eats at work.

She is home before I return from the radio station. I am a DJ, strictly local. The studio is within walking distance, four blocks away. I do a jazz show between midnight and two A.m. called Joey's Swingshift. It is not a good job and it's getting worse. WZSZ is under new management as of a month ago--some investors from Boston--and they're trying to phase out what they call in their staff memos "eclectic" programming. I've been told by reputable inside sources that Joey's Swingshift is near the top of their list. Even now, with my coterie of listeners, and live, in-studio interviews, I am not attracting new sponsors and I am not paying my share of the rent.

•

While Mary pulls on her leotards and sweatpants over by the closet, preparing for her morning classes, I contemplate having a cigarette. To her credit, Mary does not pressure me to quit. She half jokingly considers self-destruction a sign of masculine intelligence. I am trying to quit on my own, but at times like this--mornings especially, when Mary is getting dressed less than 15 feet away--a good dose of nicotine might help. I can't stand these feelings of need.

'Joey, baby," Mary says slyly, slowly, not turning around. I grunt, feigning indifference. Then I yawn. "I might be going to New York this weekend," she says. She looks at herself in the full-length mirror. "That MTV audition. I already told you. Last week." She spreads her feet apart and begins to stretch, left to right, bending at the middle. "Do you remember?"

I try to retrace the week's conversations in my mind: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. No, Friday is today. I run my fingers through my hair and squint, feeling grumpy and ugly and (continued on page 90)Equilibrium(continued from page 80) looking worse, I'm sure. Ever since college the days of the week have seemed to spill into one another like dominoes. I have to check the digital calendar in the studio at work just to remind myself which day's weather I'll be reading from the wire. Without classes, who can keep track?

"Ah, yeah. That's right," I say, though in fact I cannot remember a New York conversation. I reach for a tissue and blow my nose noisily, emitting the hissing-honking sound I used to associate with older men. "That's right," I repeat. "But I thought you thought it wouldn't happen."

"I still don't know," she says. She straightens up and leans toward the mirror to rub at the corner of her eye with her pinkie finger. "Stevie'll let me know tonight. But if we go, we're leaving tomorrow morning. Early."

Stevie: a huge man, a silent man, high cheekbones and a deep, dark, almost mahogany complexion. He trains with Mary at Body Pain Plus and she sleeps in his apartment on occasion, though Mary denies there is any sex between them. According to Mary, the issue is beyond discussion. I do not talk to Stevie, he does not talk to me. I do not want to know the details of their relationship. What could I do anyway?

Mary turns and faces me, stands solid, stiff-backed, arms akimbo. "Go back to sleep, Joey," she says. "You look miserable."

•

We are still lovers, but it is not easy. We have lost the equilibrium of love, I think. She is too strong now, too fast. The balance has been tipped.

In my view, Mary and I have sex a lot. I am beginning to think that love-making is something you do in the early stages of a relationship, before the need for ritual sex takes hold, before a standard is set and must be maintained. There is no reason for Mary to want lovemaking anymore. With her body and drive, she makes conventional love seem inefficient, too passive.

When I go home from the station, Mary is hiding. I climb three flights of stairs, turn the key in the lock, open the door to a dark apartment. One of Mary's sex cassettes is playing low--90 minutes of pure Madonna. Our apartment is barely furnished; there aren't that many places to hide. She is behind the sofa, the shower curtain or inside the closet. I close the door gently, slip my glasses into my satchel and ease it to the shag carpet. I proceed cautiously, quietly forward, arms extended in defense and a kind of titillating fear. This lasts for about a minute, two at the most, with me creeping forth in the black, losing my bearings, expectant and deeply aroused. Mary is upon me then, naked, leaping out of nowhere to wrestle me down, sometimes slamming me hard against the floor. She struggles with my shirt (she has ripped through several), tears at my belt buckle and zipper, throws my shoes back at the wall. My cries of resistance--some half genuine, others wholly staged--spur her on, make her crazier, hungrier. She applies a series of paralyzing holds: half nelsons, leg scissors, full nelsons, headlocks. The pain is momentary and oddly erotic; Mary keeps moving, never in one position very long. She grips me until it hurts, then lets go. She pinches, tugs playfully at my hair, flips me over and lands on my back. Everywhere we touch, her body is solid and slippery, surfaces of brawn and bone and breast.

When she grows bored with this stage, tired of toying, she leads me by the arm (or drags me by the legs) into the bedroom and onto the futon. She is on top, looming above in a pale blur, stroking fast, swatting me to attention. Finally, I am allowed to enter. The penetration is sudden, a pair of hands at my pelvis, fingers pressing flesh, seeming to push me from below out of the futon's hot fabric. She forces herself down and I strain in, violently, again and again. She shoves me away when I come, stands up and places one foot on my stomach. She licks her finger and begins touching herself, groaning softly. I fall asleep, exhausted. I will awaken the next morning, sore and dazed, as Mary dashes out in skin-shaped spandex and jogs.

•

Mary is late returning from her afternoon training session with Stevie, so I sit on the living-room couch to eat a bologna sandwich and the remains of a pasta salad. Because Mary rarely eats here, I do the shopping, and because I have very little money, these are the things I buy. The bologna has the vaguely nauseating smell of what it is: processed meat. But it tastes OK.

The playlist I've drawn up for tonight's show is packed with saxophone giants: Coltrane, Parker, Carter, Webster, even some Stan Kenton big band from the Fifties. My interview guest is a young player from Boston--older than I am, of course, but young for his sudden success. Bobby Gladstone is already a name in New York, or so I've read in his promo clippings.

I finish the sandwich and plunk the nearest video into Mary's VCR. It is a compilation labeled Madonna Shots on a piece of masking tape attached to the side. The screen blinks, quavers, then clears and brightens. Madonna appears in black and white wearing dark lingerie and shoving a muscular black man into a bed with huge, bright pillows. I turn the volume down and watch as she slowly mounts the man without addressing the camera, without even bothering to lip-sync. The camera pans across the room and there are more men, arms crossed over husky chests, positioned around the bed in a semicircle, eyes fixed on Madonna and her partner. The men approach the bed and appear to join in, and soon there is a mass of bodies on-screen, clamoring, touching, licking and kissing in slow motion.

The image flickers and twists and is gone, replaced by Madonna onstage arching her back while two male dancers--shirtless, in black suspenders--squat beside each of her legs and paw at her thighs. This Madonna's hair is drawn up high in a long, platinum ponytail pulled back tight and erect. A portable microphone device is wrapped around her head, extending a small, black orb in front of and just below her mouth like a morsel of bait. Her breasts are covered by two white conelike cups with spiky points. Her face tenses suddenly as she reaches down between her legs and grabs at her crotch. She closes her eyes.

I switch off the television and VCR and stand up to stretch. My body still aches from two nights ago, the last time Mary and I had sex. The VCR flashes 12:00, but my watch reads just past four and Mary is still not home.

Back when she was just beginning to hold her workouts with Stevie, I asked Mary about Madonna's appeal.

"Control," she said. She hovered over the blender, gazing at the swishing mess of mango and lime. "That's what Madonna's all about. The power to be who you want, when you want."

"Looks like simple exploitation to me," I said, leaning against the kitchen wall. "Sexploitation, to be exact. Part of a long tradition of pornography."

"You're wrong, Joey," she said. The blender has stopped. "Madonna's (continued on page 163)Equilibrium(continued from page 90) is self-exploitation. It's totally different. Everyone's exploited anyway. But Madonna's got it on her own terms. She turns the tables. That's power."

They didn't sound like Mary's words then, not the Mary I thought I'd known. I couldn't think of a good comeback. I wondered if Stevie was teaching her those things, but I kept my mouth shut. It was risky.

She lifted the cover off the blender and stuck her finger inside, then brought it dripping to her mouth.

"Yuk," she said, licking her upper lip. "Not enough lime."

•

The old Mary had a diary--a slim, private journal bound in pink cloth. She kept it on a bedside table in her tiny dormitory single, conspicuously accessible, tucked beneath her clock radio. I searched through the pages for my name while Mary showered in the stalls a few doors down. I found it as a heading, Joey, underlined and written above the question "Am I a priority in his life?"

I stared at it. I imagined Mary's voice--slightly plaintive, direct, earnest--speaking the words: "Am I?"

I thought I heard Mary's slippers shuffling down the hall, so I closed the book and slipped it back under the radio. But the question stayed with me. It was troubling. "Priority" seemed like such a heavy word. I was busy back then. I managed the campus radio station, played rhythm guitar in a blues band, drank beer with the artist types downtown. I was a communications major, a budding media star, with my measured delivery and silken on-air voice. Everyone listened to my show.

And Mary was an English major who liked pink. I didn't want to be with her too much. I kissed Mary in her room. I slept with her. But I didn't want to be identified as hers: the boyfriend of a simple girl.

Alone with me Mary would talk of missing Peterborough, the small town where she grew up. She talked about her friends there as if they were still in high school; she reminisced about climbing Mount Monadnock, about ice-skating after midnight, about slumber parties and long walks around her snowy neighborhood. She laughed easily and sometimes started crying in the same breath, sniffing quietly, reaching around for an embrace. She had a little Gund teddy bear on her bureau. She joked that I was her big teddy, her big bear. I never knew what to say.

•

The phone from the kitchen frightens me, ringing in sharp, loud bursts. I am supposed to be reviewing my Bobby Gladstone questions, but instead, I have spent the past half hour sifting through clothes in Mary's closet, trying to find a diary, a notebook, anything in her handwriting. Mary doesn't talk about her past anymore. Apparently, she doesn't keep track of the present, either.

The answering machine clicks on and Mary's voice filters through the speaker. She starts to say something about Stevie as I pick up the phone.

"Oh. Hi," she says. "I didn't think you were there."

"I'm always here," I say.

"Aw, Joey. Lighten up. Listen. I'll be home soon, but I'm eating dinner at Stevie's tonight, so I won't be around long."

"What about New York?" I ask.

"That's why we're eating together. We still have to work things out."

"Don't you have to bartend tonight?"

"I called in sick." She pauses, says something to someone away from the receiver. "Joey? I'll be home in a few minutes. I just called to let you know. I didn't want you to be worried."

"I am," I say.

"Well, don't be."

•

When Mary enters the apartment she heads directly for the bedroom and closes the door to change--no time for a hello. Usually she leaves the door open at least enough for us to talk. I am listening to a Bobby Gladstone demo tape on her stereo in the living room. I turn the music down and knock.

"Can I come in?" I say.

"I'm changing," she says. "Come in if you want."

I push open the door as Mary is zipping up her jeans. She looks up, brushes the hair back from her face.

"Whatsa matter, Joey?" She pouts her lips in mock pity. "You look so sad."

"I don't want you to go to New York."

It doesn't have much of an impact. She folds her arms across her breasts and tips her head back, smiling. "Well," she says. "That's nice to hear, but you're a little late."

I would like a cigarette now. I lean against the wall, pressing my hands to the smooth plaster behind me.

Mary picks up her shoes and walks by me quickly. I follow.

"I don't have time for this," she says, flopping down heavily on the couch, making the springs squeak. The corner of my playlist sticks out from beneath her thigh. Mary tugs at it and it rips. Then she lifts her legs and pushes the paper to the floor.

I sit down next to her, watching as she ties her shoes. "I thought we could do something this weekend," I begin. "Together. Maybe go dancing on the harbor cruise, have dinner, see a movie. Whatever."

"Bad timing," she says. "Besides, since when do you dance?"

I think of putting my arm around her while she is hunched over, drawing her close to me. But her shoulders jut out sharply, looking reproachful as she works at her laces. I reach toward her, eyeing her pumping back muscles, then rest my hand on the cushion.

"I'm not happy with things," I say.

Mary leans back and sighs. "That's not my fault," she says. Her voice is toned down, painfully reasonable. "I've told you before you could get another job on the side. And there are other radio--"

"I'm not happy about us," I say. "You and me, I mean."

She turns to me, her brown eyes dark and stubborn. "Joey, let's not argue now," she says. She reaches behind my neck and pulls me to her lips, kissing me roughly. She winks. "We can fight later."

"I'm serious," I say. As she makes to rise from the couch I reach out to grab her arm. It is a sudden movement, and I am surprised by how thin her wrist feels in my grip. I am more surprised when she sits down again, closer to me.

I let go of her wrist. My eye muscles tingle. I take off my glasses.

"Could you just spare me a couple minutes?"

Mary is silent. I press my fingers to the inner corners of my eyes. Without my glasses, everything near me is blurry.

"I miss the old Mary," I say.

"There is no old Mary," she says. "There is just me. I may have changed a little, but I'm the same person, Joey. You know that."

"Then I miss what we used to do. Or what you used to do, what you used to say to me. You used to keep a diary."

"You read that, didn't you?"

"Not the whole thing," I say. "I took a few peeks."

"You shouldn't have," she says.

"Why?"

My neck feels hot. I put on my glasses and turn toward her. Mary leans back, places her hands behind her head. She stares at the ceiling.

"Because it was my private life, Joey. That's why. It's none of your business."

"But it is my business," I say. "It's my business to know what you think of me. Isn't it?"

Mary regards me distantly, her eyes direct, focused, motionless. She tilts her head to one side, squinting darkly. "If it was so important," she says, "why didn't you just ask me?"

I hadn't actually anticipated Mary's response, a question easily superior to mine. The advantage shifts in an instant. Just holding her gaze becomes a struggle.

I take a shallow breath that is meant to be deep. My left eyelid starts to twitch. "All right then," I say. "Why do you stay with me?"

"Joey."

"I mean it. I don't have much to offer you now. I'm no muscleman, my career is going nowhere, and even sex--"

"Don't talk like that," Mary says. She puts her hand to her forehead. "My God. You are so blind sometimes. You get fixated on one thing, and then you define the rest of the world that way."

"What do you mean?"

"Listen to yourself, will you? You're trying to fit me into some stereotype just because I work out. What makes you think I want a muscleman?" She shakes her head. "Jesus. I'm not that simple, you know. If you'd been paying any attention to me, instead of snooping around in my diary, you would know that by now."

I look away. Mary's portable TV stares back at me from the corner, distorting our reflections on its curved screen.

Her hand closes around mine and I tense.

"I don't know what it is you want anymore."

"Stop saying that," she says, her voice close to my ear. "It's so self-defeating, not to mention boring. This isn't a business. I don't want some kind of product from you. You're supposed to surprise me, remember?"

I feel her entwining our fingers together, clasping tightly.

"You're not who you've come to think you are, Joey. Give me credit for knowing at least that much about you. And give yourself a chance. Stop pretending that the past is romantic just because it's gone."

I am frightened by how patiently Mary can say these things. When she gets serious like this, she makes me feel naked, skinless even, as if she is shining a bright light over everything.

"What about Stevie?" I ask.

She leans forward and kisses me on the cheek, resting her lips there momentarily, leaving a fine, moist, sensation behind. "Now, he's just a muscleman," she says. I glance down, half relieved to see her smile. "I've told you many times that Stevie is a friend, but just for you I'll repeat it. He's given me a lot of confidence. And," she draws away slowly, releasing my hand, "he just might get me a dancing gig so I can quit that ratty bar."

She stands abruptly, pushing her hair back behind her shoulders. "But I'm late now, Joeykins. I have to go." She pivots and heads for the front door, grabbing her keys from the hook on the wall. I watch as she stalls, placing one hand on the doorknob, adjusting the cross around her neck with the other.

"Maybe I'll tune in tonight," she says, looking down. "So play something for me, will you?"

•

In the elevator on the way up to the studio I scan over my interview notes one last time. My Gladstone angle is going to be jazz and the younger audience. Most of Bobby's listeners are older than he is, middle-aged or beyond, and they often ask him to play tunes that were popular 40 or 50 years ago. The music can't survive on nostalgia. Neither, it appears, can a DJ.

I am greeted by a yellow Post-it note attached to the glass of the studio door. "See me," it says. It is signed by Ernie, the new station manager. Inside the booth, Boommaster Billy is playing his funk-and-rap show, bobbing up and down to his throbbing headphones as he smokes a tiny hand-rolled cigarette.

Ernie is not usually here when I come in. No one is, in fact, except Billy. But there is light in the office across the hall, so I go over and tap on the door with my pen.

"Joe?"

"Uh-huh."

"Step inside."

Ernie is sitting behind a computer and a calculator and a mass of papers scattered over the top of his desk. He is a heavyset man in his early 50s and he is almost entirely bald. Tonight he is wearing a stiff white dress shirt with a dark bow tie. His sleeves are unbuttoned, rolled back above his wrists.

"Sit down," he says, still gazing into the computer screen and motioning to a chair filled with account books and assorted paraphernalia. He glances at the chair. "Ah, forget it. You've got your show coming up anyway, right?"

I nod. "Jazz."

"Right, right. Jazz." Ernie switches off the computer and swivels to his side to face me directly. He places his elbows on the desk and folds his hands. "Look," he says. "I am in the unfortunate and unenviable and highly unpleasant position of having to officially cancel your show." He spreads his palms out briefly, looking stern and apologetic at the same time. "Now, I want to put this to you straight: It is not a position I like, believe me. I'm a tired man. And I know you fellows work damn hard. Just today, in fact, I've been in here since six this--"

"I saw the memos," I say. "I don't mean to interrupt, but I was aware of the situation. I understand. At least I've got my regulars. I'll do the last show for them." I manage a pinched smile.

"Regulars, regulars," Ernie says, picking up his pen and pointing it at me. "You see, right there's your problem. Regulars aren't enough in a town this size." He drops the pen, scratches his brow and sighs. "It ain't Boston, you know. There aren't enough regulars to go around. Your show's for purists. You're a bit of a purist yourself, Joe. And what happens is, you get a tiny audience for this show, a tiny audience for that, but no definitive mass, no real numbers. And then," he gestures toward me with his index finger, "you're not getting any newcomers. No new listeners. That's the problem."

I smile again, wanting badly to leave. The studio door opens in the hall behind me. "Hey, anybody seen the swing guy?" Billy asks.

"He's right here," Ernie calls back.

"Tell him he's got 15 minutes."

Ernie rises, reaches across his desk and shakes my hand. "You better get in there," he says. "I'll tell you what. Come in on Monday. We'll talk, see if we can give you some office work till you find something new. How's that?"

I continue grinning and nodding as I turn toward the door.

"Oh, and by the way," Ernie says, "the Gladson guy won't be here. He, uh, got stuck down in New York. Other obligations. You know how these musicians are."

"Glad stone," I say.

"Right, right. The jazz guy."

•

I play the opening theme music--Miles Davis' Kind of Blue--and listen to my prerecorded voice-over introducing "two hours of hip and happening tunes." Mary once said I sound like I'd been smoking pot when I made the recording. Tonight the voice sounds exactly the way I feel: weary and distant, struggling in tape hiss.

"Welcome to Joey's Swingshift," I say, fading the introduction with one hand and presetting a commercial with the other. "We will be doing an all-request show tonight, so I want all you swingin' night owls and werewolves to get to the nearest telephone and give me a call. 555-9079 is the number. Show some life and let me know what it is you really need to hear."

I flick on the commercial tape and fine-tune the output frequency. If no one calls, I'll put on the Bobby Gladstone CD and crank it up here in the booth. What the hell.

While a woman's voice rambles on about the importance of environmental action, someone raps on the studio door. It is Ernie, dressed in a beige trench coat and smoking a pipe. He shrugs his shoulders at me, then breaks into a big, goofy smile that seems to say "C'est la vie."

I shrug and smile back. "Goodnight, Er-nee," I sing out, approximating the tune of Goodnight, Irene, the old Leadbelly classic. I wave my right hand in a broad, exaggerated way.

Ernie's smile evaporates. He gazes at me numbly for a moment, then turns and heads off down the corridor. Either he didn't think the joke was funny, or he didn't get it.

The McDonald's spot is the last in the series, and I am about to cue up Coltrane's Giant Steps when the red light on the studio phone begins to flash. I turn down the mike input and grab the receiver.

"ZSZ," I say.

There is silence on the other end.

"Hello?" I say.

"Uh, yes. Is this Mr. Swingshift?" The voice is slow and wobbly. An elderly man.

"That's actually the name of the show," I say. "I'm Joey."

"Oh."

"But that's Ok," I add quickly. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, I was wondering if you would play a favorite song of mine. An old chestnut. Goes way back." He chuckles.

"What is it?"

"It's a song called Chelsea Bridge, I believe. Has a nice saxophone melody and, I think ... now, let's see if I can remember this right. Ah, I think it's Ben Webster who wrote it."

Chelsea Bridge. I reach for the Gladstone CD case and read through the track list. Number six. It's a beautiful rendition.

"Yes. Of course. I'll put it on. But it was written by Billy Strayhorn. Webster used to play it a lot and he recorded it. In fact, a lot of musicians have recorded it since, but Strayhorn wrote the tune."

"Oh, that's right," he says, and I imagine him glancing away, squinting, looking into himself, into the past. "Billy Strayhorn wrote that, didn't he? That's right."

"I'll play the song," I say. "But who is it for?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"Do you want to dedicate the song to somebody?"

"Well, no," he says, as if I'd just asked him something mildly embarrassing. He chuckles again. "No, this one's just for me, I guess."

Suddenly I realize I forgot to start the Coltrane record. The VU meters are motionless, stuck on zero. Nothing's playing. "I have to go," I say. "I ... I'll play it." I hang up.

I fumble for the mixing board and hit the turntable with my elbow. The needle draws across the vinyl with a sickening scrape. I lift the stylus from the record, trying to steady my hand, and set it down on the opening grooves. Then I hit Play. The album spins, the music starts.

I lean back in the tattered studio chair and sigh. Three minutes of dead air, at least three. I let the airwaves go silent--no commercials, no DJ, no music. Nothing but hiss. If Ernie heard it he is fuming right now. Dead air is a no-no on any show, even after midnight.

I push off with my foot and wheel the chair over to the jazz library--two shelves of compact discs, one of vinyl. Ben Webster is nestled in the W's, right where he should be. I pull the record from its sleeve and dust it off. The label reads Newport Jazz Festival, 1958.

I decide to play both versions--Webster's first, then Gladstone's. As I place the vinyl over the turntable, then slip the CD into the player, I think about the man who called. What is a man of his age doing awake so late at night? He probably lives alone. Most of my listeners are like that, I'm sure: loners who use the music for companionship. Maybe his kids are grown, his wife is dead. Maybe she's away. Perhaps she left him.

But then, what can I ever really know about my listeners? I hear their voices, they hear mine. I sit inside this dark booth and imagine their lives.

Maybe the man who called is not at all who I think he is.

The Coltrane slows, his solo descends and fades. I adjust my headphones and lean over the mike. "We have a dual dedication tonight," I announce, lowering my voice to convey wee-hour intimacy. I have never dedicated a song to anyone before--it's against station policy for DJs to use the airwaves that way. But in less than two hours I won't be a DJ, at least not an employed one. "The first is for the swinging gentleman who requested the song, and the second--"

I set the turntable into motion with my free hand, raising the volume carefully. "The second is for the Swingshift's most loyal listener, our A-number-one groove sister. This being the last night we all spend together, dear listeners, it's about time I sent one out to the sweetest soul ever to savor these smooth sounds: my Mary."

It is a winning dedication, I think. My delivery was impeccable.

I turn up the studio monitors, and Webster's full-bodied tenor breathes to life. The applause from years ago trickles away in the background. You can hear the air through his reed, and the sound aches.

•

Outside the apartment door I pause while fitting the key. There is no good reason for doing this. Mary's probably spending the night at Stevie's place, planning for their early departure together, planning for New York.

I turn the key and press the door open. The dark of the apartment recedes from the hallway light. Out of habit I creep in slowly, quietly, but there is no Madonna music playing and, I am quite sure, no Mary lying in wait. I keep my glasses on.

"Mary," I whisper. Nothing.

I straighten up and let my satchel drop to the floor. It lands on the carpet with a dull thud. This whole thing is absurd. There's no one here.

"Mary, Mary, come and scare me," I say aloud. My voice sounds singsongy, comical in this little apartment. "Come and scare me if you can, come and scare your only man." I'm beginning to feel light-headed. Giddy. It doesn't matter what I say now. I'm off the air for good.

I close the front door (the neighbors might think I'm nuts) and flick on the overhead light. Next to Mary's TV against the far wall is her big black boombox, surrounded by stacks of cassettes. I kneel down beside them and slip the top one into the deck, not bothering to see who it is. Surprise me. I press the power switch, I turn it up a little, I hit play. I feel like dancing.

The music starts in the middle of something I don't yet recognize. The beat is strong but bouncy. If it's not Madonna, it's close enough.

I rise to my feet and start doing a kind of wiggling thing, trying to get my body to move fluidly, down and dirty. I grind my hips, raise my arms above my head. My back arches as far as it will go. I'm a bit stiff and I'm sure I look like an idiot. But I close my eyes and refuse to think about it. I'm not doing all that badly.

"Shake your body," the singer says.

Suddenly, someone's hip slams into my own and I am knocked off balance. I steady myself.

"Use your knees, boy!" Mary commands over the music. "You're swaying like a tree."

A smile flashes across her face, then contracts into a grimace. She is dancing in her boxer shorts and an oversized T-shirt. Her eyes flutter shut. Her hair flops around unevenly, lank and matted on one side.

"You're here," I say dumbly, standing motionless while she gyrates only a few feet away. "It's you."

"Move, Joey, move!"

I hesitate, watching her as she whirls around and works her backside into the air. Mary has a way of inhabiting her dancing, of living inside the moves. It's mesmerizing. I have questions to ask, but the rhythm seems to insist, so I start to dance again, using my knees as much as they will allow me to. "Shake your body," the voice sings over and over.

When the song finally finishes I reach down and click off the tape deck. Mary reaches for my free hand. "Come on," she says, pulling me toward the dark bedroom.

"Wait a minute," I say. "Hold on. What the hell are you doing here?"

"I live here," she snaps. She curls her arm round my waist and draws me to her side. She raises her chin provocatively. "Got a problem with that?"

"You were in the bedroom?"

"Bingo! That's where I was. Sleeping--or at least trying to. I thought you'd come in and crash. I didn't expect to be entertained."

"Are you still going to New York tomorrow? With Stevie?"

"Today. In a few hours, in fact. Six A.m. sharp. Stevie's picking us up. Got that? We have to catch an eight o'clock flight out of Boston, so I've already packed your duffel for the weekend: three pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks, four shirts and two pairs of pants, one casual, one formal. Oh, and also your blazer." She runs the tip of her index finger along my collarbone and stops at the base of my neck. "Unless, of course, you'd rather stay here and learn how to dance alone."

I search for the right response, a quick comeback, but I am totally unprepared. What I say emerges without prompting: "They fired me tonight, Mary. They let me go."

She presses her lips to my chest. "I know," she says. "I heard your announcement on Stevie's radio. I said, 'Isn't that great? Joey has no good reason to stay home this weekend. No more reasons to say no.'"

I encircle Mary with my arms and press my hands against her upper back. Her muscles relax, softening beneath my grip.

I whisper into her ear. "Did you hear the song? My dedication?"

She nods. "Mmm-hmm. At Stevie's. I heard the show."

"Did you like it?"

"Loved it, babe. Loved it."

I hold her to my chest with all my strength. Her body is solid, steady, warm. In a few hours the sun will rise. And I feel wide awake.

"Mary struggles with my shirt, tears at my belt buckle and zipper. My cries of resistance spur her on."

Other prizewinners in Playboy's College Fiction Contest: second, "A Cooking Man's Story," by Lee Harrington, Emerson College; third, "High Louisiana," by Ken Morris, University of Denver; "No Cause for Alarm," by Jay Prefontaine, University of Arkansas; "Damp Lace," by Joshua Talley, University of California, Los Angeles; "Nuts," by Caleb Wiggins, Harvard College.