The Red Tally Light

The mercury thermometer screwed to the outside frame of the booth read four degrees below zero when the north wind tore the phone antenna from the roof. Renata Ibars was sitting in front of the gray plywood desk with her down parka zipped up to her chin and her fingerless wool gloves on, typing with two fingers on a laptop that had been warning of low battery for half an hour. Through the double-glazed window with iron bars, Turbón Peak was only a white blur where the blizzard erased the crowns of black pines and the stone markers of the logging trail.

"If you keep battering that keyboard with such fury you are going to snap the spacebar," Félix Otal said from the floor, half his body wedged beneath the amplifier rack and a hand-crank flashlight gripped between his teeth. "And let me remind you that this equipment belongs to municipal heritage from 1986. There are no spare parts within two hundred kilometers."

"I am writing the seven o'clock weather report, Félix. The one you should have broadcast forty minutes ago if you hadn't insisted on driving up with summer tires."

"I came up with chains in the trunk, my dear colleague. The fact that the mountain pass has a forty-percent grade and black ice beneath the squall is not the fault of my driving, but of the public works councilor's neglect."

Félix let out a short laugh that ended in a dull clank of metal against metal. He slid out onto the worn linoleum with his work overalls smeared in transformer grease and a number twelve wrench in his right hand. His brown hair was tangled, smudged at the temple by soot from the exhaust pipe of the diesel generator that hummed with a steady rhythm behind the tin partition.

"Besides," he added, springing up and brushing his knees off casually, "nobody is listening. The power transformer in La Solana blew out with this storm. Half the valley is in the dark with candles lit."

"Don Amador keeps a battery-powered transistor radio on his nightstand." Renata countered without looking up from the screen, the stiff wool of her scarf scratching her chin. "And Don Amador decides on Monday who gets the permanent morning host position. I am not losing a civil service position because you feel too lazy to splice two coaxial cables."

"What an obsession with tenure, Ibars. You are going to wither away in this valley before you turn twenty-five. Around here the most exciting news of the month is when the mayor's goat gets its horns stuck in the fronton court fence."

"It is stability, Félix. A word you obviously know nothing about because you still live in your parents' attic repairing other people's toasters."

Silence.

The remark had come out sharper than intended. Félix set the wrench down slowly on the galvanized tabletop with a dull click. Félix's mocking smirk vanished at once, revealing a tired shadow around his eyes.

"My father built that shop with his bare hands before he got sick," he said quietly, with no trace of teasing. "I am not ashamed of fixing what others throw in the trash."

Renata bit her lower lip. The laptop screen flickered twice in white and died abruptly, leaving them alone with the hoarse hum of the generator and the crackle of hail slamming against the glass.

The darkness in booth nine carried the heavy weight of dust accumulated over four decades of forgotten broadcasts. Only the twelve-volt emergency bulb, powered by the battery of the Fiat Panda stranded in the snowdrift outside, cast a dim circle over the analog mixing console.

It was cold.

A dry, biting cold that slipped through the ventilation louvers and nipped at their ankles right through heavy wool hiking socks. Renata leaned her back against the dormant radiator, rubbing her palms together to restore feeling to her fingertips. In the far corner, Félix fired up a camping gas burner with a match that released a brief scent of sulfur.

"Here," he said, extending a dented tin can filled with warm melted snow. "It isn't drip coffee, but at least it will warm your palms."

"Thank you," she murmured, caught off guard by the gesture.

"Don't get used to it, Ibars. I still want that morning slot just as badly as you do."

"I know that. But you have to admit your broadcast delivery sounds like a second-rate teamster."

"And yours sounds like a suburban commuter train announcer delivering delay bulletins in a waxen voice."

Renata couldn't hold back a quick smile that she tucked behind the rim of the can. For two whole minutes neither spoke, listening to the gale howling against the steel guy wires of the transmission tower outside.

Renata reached out to grab her stainless steel thermos covered in college radio station stickers resting beside the power rack. Her fingers were so numb that the metal slipped between her gloved palms. The screw cap gave way and half a liter of scalding black coffee poured directly across the emergency switching keys of the mixer board.

"Renata, pull that back!" Félix shouted, lunging toward the console.

Blue sparks jumped with a hiss of scorched sugar. An internal relay clicked with the snap of a broken spring and the cooling fan of the main transmitter began to spin at maximum speed.

Above the plywood door lintel, a rectangular bakelite box that had remained unplugged for three winters suddenly blazed to life with a brilliant red glare. The white plastic lettering stood out with ruthless clarity against the room's gloom: ON AIR.

"Tell me that is a blown fuse short," Renata whispered, stepping back.

"It is not a short," Félix answered, staring at the analog VU needle meters swinging wildly into the red modulation zone. "The coffee just bridged the master live-broadcast relay. We are transmitting on 102.4 at five kilowatts of power across the entire valley."

A radio booth at two thousand meters is the worst place in the world to discover that your enemy is right.

Before either of them could pull the ground cable, the black bakelite telephone mounted on the back wall—dead and draped in cobwebs since three in the afternoon—began to ring with sharp, continuous rings. On the small liquid crystal display illuminated by the red tally light, the private number they both knew by heart was blinking: the home number of Don Amador.