She was shaking.
She let go of the knob.
Although ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ was a melodic and appealing song, it sounded harsh and even curiously ominous at that volume. Each thump of the drums was like the approaching footsteps of some threatening creature, and the wailing of the horns was the same beast’s hostile cries. She grabbed the cord of the radio, jerked on it. The plug popped out of the wall socket.
The music died instantly.
She had been half afraid that it would go on playing, even without power.
* * *
When Dan didn’t put down Joseph Scaldone’s address book — a pocket-size booklet, actually — Mondale reached across the desk, clamped his right hand over Dan’s right hand, and squeezed hard, trying to make him drop the thing.
Mondale was not a tall man, but he was thick in the shoulders and chest. He had powerful arms out of proportion to the rest of him, thick wrists, big hands. He was strong.
Dan was stronger. He didn’t let go of the address book. His eyes fixed unwaveringly on Mondale’s eyes, and he put his left hand on Mondale’s hand and tried to pry the bastard’s fingers loose.
The situation was ludicrous. They were like a couple of idiot teenagers determined to prove that they were macho: Mondale trying to crush Dan’s right hand, and Dan refusing to flinch or in any way reveal his pain while he struggled to free himself.
He got a grip on one of Mondale’s fingers and began to bend it backward.
Mondale’s jaw clenched. The muscles popped up, quivering.
The finger bent back and back. Mondale resisted that effort even as he attempted to apply a stronger grip to Dan’s right hand, but Dan wouldn’t relent, and the finger bent back farther, farther.
Sweat had appeared on Mondale’s brow.
My dog’s better than your dog, my mom’s prettier than your mom, Dan thought. Jesus! How old are we, anyway? Fourteen? Twelve?
But he kept his eyes on Mondale’s eyes, and he refused to let the captain see that he was hurting. He bent that goddamned finger back farther, until he was sure that it would snap, then farther, and abruptly Mondale gasped and let go. Dan remained in possession of the address book.
He kept a grip on Mondale’s finger for a second or two, long enough so there could be no mistake about who had relented first. The contest had been silly and juvenile, but that was no reason to believe Ross Mondale didn’t take it seriously. He was dead serious. And if the captain thought he could teach Dan a lesson with physical force, then perhaps — just perhaps — he could learn a lesson himself by the same method of instruction.
* * *
They stood in the silent kitchen, staring at the radio. Then Earl said, ‘How could it—’
‘I don’t know,’ Laura said.
‘Has it ever—’
‘Never.’
The radio had ceased to be a harmless appliance. Now it was a brooding, menacing presence.
Earl said, ‘Plug it in again.’
Laura was irrationally afraid that if they brought the radio back to life, it would sprout crablike legs of plastic and begin to crawl across the counter. That was an uncharacteristically bizarre thought, and she was surprised at herself, startled by the sudden rush of superstitious dread, for she thought of herself as a woman of science, always logical and reasonable. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that some malignant force was still within the radio, and that it waited eagerly for the plug to be reinserted in the wall socket.
Nonsense.
Nevertheless, stalling, she said, ‘Plug it in? Why?’
‘Well,’ Earl said, ‘I want to see what it does. We can’t just leave it like this. It’s too damned weird. We’ve got to figure it out.’
Laura knew he was right. Hesitantly, she reached for the cord. She half expected it to wriggle in her hand and feel slimy-cold like an eel. But it was only a power cord: lifeless, nothing unusual about it.
She touched the volume control on the radio, and she found that it could be moved now. She twisted it all the way down, clicked it to the OFF position.