Radio

By John Pender

The gentle tones of Pink Floyd's “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” crept stealthily and nearly silent from the cheap little Korean knock-off radio Mac Sugg kept on the windowsill. Years of dust had settled upon it, revealing the odd fact that Old Mac never cared to change the station – its thin vertical  (and faded) red line sat comfortably between 94 and 98 – as evidenced by the undisturbed mass atop its dial. An equally thick mass sat perched atop the volume dial, long ago concealing its exact setting.

The windowsill it proudly sat on boasted, quite pitifully and sadly if I do say so, its original coat of green paint. Numerous cracks spider-webbed their way across the vertical face and sections had long since peeled away, remaining hanging in space until something should come along and break them off, but nothing ever did. The top was covered in the same thick blanket of dust that covered the little radio. A small something had sprouted in the left corner, where the sun shone and warmed the area through a nickel-sized hole where a clump of dust had fallen off. The rest of the window was so thick with it one could barely make out anything within ten feet of it on its other side.

Once proudly broadcasting the sounds of his favorite radio station, the years had taken their toll on Mac's little radio. Music still flowed from it, now down to a whisper – a whisper so quiet only Mac could hear. Yes, it still played, and the station Mac tuned in to had changed hands and names many times over, but never the format. It was perfect; Mac's favorite tunes, all the time.

Sugg Entertainment Group finally took off in 1972, making Mac a millionaire many times over at the age of fifty-four. He was a true genius at buying the rights to movies from no-name authors and selling them to producers in Hollywood. The results of his transactions were often showcased in film by the likes of Yul Brynner, Faye Dunaway, and Sally Field to name a few – something he prided himself in to great extent.

He rewarded himself lavishly: fancy cars, a yacht, passport after passport filled to the brim with stamps. Mac had to have the latest and greatest and boy, did he ever shell out for it. Shell out as much as he did, Sugg Entertainment shelled out even faster; it was almost like he was earning two dollars for every dollar-fifty he spent. His lady friends were adorned with mink and pearls when they accompanied him. In fact, a mink in a lady's closet with a personal adoring love note by Mac himself sewn into the lining was of great value among the ladies of New York in the early ’80s, commonly fetching tens of thousands of dollars. Mac was a force to be reckoned with among New York's playboy millionaires, even at his advanced age. His stunning, almost youthful, but hardened looks – rough, yet refined – from his years of working his fingers to the bone for his money, his holdings, and his great wealth made him the target of ladies from the Bronx to Upstate. Espoused or not, young or old, they sought after him with green in their eyes and smiles on their faces.

At one point, Mac Sugg's fortune exceeded five-hundred million. Sugg Entertainment was valued at four billion at its peak. Mac never married and never had children – children he knew of anyway; although numerous claims were made for paternity throughout his life, none could be proven. As a result, his nieces and nephews were given the bulk of his estate in his will, allowing all six of them to enjoy retirement in more comfort than they had ever dreamed possible. He left his home and everything in it, his cars, his yacht, everything, along with one-hundred million cool ones, to his housekeeper of twenty-two years, Rosa. The forty-six-year-old Peruvian immigrant had come to New York and found her first job as a part-time maid to Mac; Senor Sugg as she called him in the presence of company, by his first name in private. Rosa was one of two women in Mac's life who didn't want to fuck him for his money. He offered her work, she offered him friendship. Simple as that, but greatly she was rewarded. She fainted when she received the news at the reading. The only other person to receive anything from Mac was Gladys, the other of the two, the waitress down at Jesse's Diner he would visit every Tuesday morning for his usual breakfast: two eggs over medium, toast, three slices of bacon, hash browns with cheese and onions and a large orange juice. Once a month he would drive his beautifully restored 1969 convertible Camaro. She admired that car and often told him the story of how she had one, once upon a time.

“Delicious, Gladys.”
Leaning on her forearms from across the counter, she gazed into his eyes. “Like always!” she exclaimed.

Rising from his perch on the stool, he replied, “Yep.”

“What, no tip today, Mac?” she joked to him as she did every Tuesday. His response was always “Keep the change” as he plopped a twenty down on the counter. His breakfast was always $7.67 and he always gave her twenty. That day was different. That day, instead of reaching for his wallet, he reached into the pocket of his long black trench coat and pulled out an envelope. “Gladys, baby” he said, and tossed the envelope on the counter.

“For me?”
“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

With that, she snatched it off the counter and hurriedly, with raised eyebrow, suspiciously opened it. Unfolding the yellow paper inside, she raised her eyes to meet Mac's, lowered them, raised them again, and lowered them again. Then he tossed a set of keys on the counter. “She's yours.”

“What? Mac?”

“She's yours,” he replied with the shit-eating smirk she was all too familiar with.

Her scream drowned out Neil Young crooning from the jukebox by the window.

Mac Sugg's black limousine stopped at a nondescript street corner that afternoon after an outing with old college friends. He found himself in a neighborhood he had never visited and enjoyed sightseeing as he was slowly chauffeured down the boulevard. Out of the corner of his eye a small electronics store caught his fancy. In the window was a tiny radio amid a stack of bigger, more expensive ones with names like Sony and RCA that had more buttons and lights. But it was that one little radio that caught his eye.

“Twelve nine six,” the little Asian man said as he held out his hand. Mac Sugg handed him a fifty and said “Keep it!” and ran out the door with his prized find tucked into his arms like a linebacker with a football running for a touchdown. As soon as he returned home, Rosa – Mac's housekeeper, remember her? – was ordered to promptly disconnect all the stereo equipment in the entertainment cabinet in the living room and find someone who could use it. It was promptly replaced with the Lenox flatware set he had bought to give to his mother for her birthday years before. She died two days before her seventy-ninth, and he kept it boxed and wrapped on the table by the front door ever since.

Mac set his new radio on the windowsill next to his plush velvet chair. He found a station he liked, set the volume to a comfortable level, and left it there. And there it sat, untouched until after he passed away some thirty years later. Rosa cleaned meticulously everything around it, but never dared go near the window. At the end of the day, he would sit in that chair and listen to his little radio and arise recharged and at peace. It was as if it were breathing life into him. He felt that it was his place to reward it, as silly as it seemed, by leaving it on so it could live as it pleased.

Mac felt the end coming when his time came. He had his lawyer finalize his affairs, wrote letters to his family, submitted an article entitled “The Life and Times of MacDonald Sugg: An Autobiography” to the New York Times (which, by the way, was printed in its entirety, two full pages, without edit, as the editor-in-chief was a close friend of Mac's from his thirties) and made one last visit to his mother's grave. In one last burst of inspiration, he jotted down a six-page letter to Rosa, his loyal housekeeper, whom he had confided in, laughed with, and cried with for years on end. He said his final goodbye to her, confessed his love for her, and wrote on the front Open after I'm gone.

In the days before Mac passed, he sat in that room, alone in his velvet chair, and listened intently to his little knock-off radio. His world quickly became just him and his radio – nothing else. The outside world was gone. Somehow or another even the disc jockeys were gone; it was music and only music, all the time. And it was only music Mac liked; not one song played that didn't suit his taste. On the third day he realized what the radio was doing – it was playing back his life in chronological order through song!

On December fourth, nineteen ninety-four, after three decades of loyal service, the cheap, dust-blanketed Korean radio sitting on the pathetic windowsill with peeling green paint petered out halfway through John Denver's “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The tiny rectangular red power light on the front with the eyebrow of dust faded out at 9:22 p.m. and the room went silent.

Mac Sugg died at 9:23.