ALBERTINE sat on a stool at the bar for my reading of episode forty-five of Dead Air, “Project Number 102: Electronic Eavesdropper.” She was drinking champagne and beaming, glowing with the relief that had come with the news that in a few days she would be free.
ABOUT 13,320 DAYS AGO, I installed a piece of sophisticated spy equipment in the bedroom of an attractive housewife who lived nearby — across the street, around the corner, down the block — I’m no longer sure. In the weeks before that day, I had been a busy boy: I had built flying-saucer detectors, electric eyes, and radio transmitters; I had helped dig a cave; and I had single-handedly camouflaged the site of the cave with an artful imitation of an idyllic little piece of the Adirondacks. The deception was so successful that one afternoon I found my mother hosting a picnic on my camouflage. One of her guests was the attractive housewife from across the street, around the corner, or down the block — Mrs. Jerrold, Betty. I had reason to believe that Betty was cuckolding her husband with Mr. Yummy, a man who delivered baked goods, and I was jealous. I didn’t mind her cheating on Mr. Jerrold, but I was hurt by her having chosen Mr. Yummy instead of me.
In the manner of all jealous suitors, I wanted to know the worst, and my friend and business associate Porky White had given me an idea for a way to learn the worst, a way to eavesdrop on Mrs. Jerrold. He had pointed out that most people weren’t likely to recognize the difference between one of my deluxe flying-saucer detectors and one of my radio transmitters. If that was so, and I agreed with him that it was, then a person could be deceived into thinking that a radio transmitter was a deluxe flying-saucer detector and only a deluxe flying-saucer detector, with no talents as a transmitter at all. If, for example, I were to assemble a transmitter, take it over to Mrs. Jerrold, and pass it off as the latest in flying-saucer detectors, I could install it in her bedroom in place of the flying-saucer detector that I had installed there a few weeks earlier. Then, in secret, hiding in my cave, I could tune in to the Mrs. Jerrold show and savor the worst, like the pain of a rotten tooth.
Assembling the false detector was simple, thanks to the 101 Fascinating Electronics Projects kit. The idea behind the kit was that a young electronics enthusiast first mounted all the components on a piece of pegboard and then wired the components together on the underside of the pegboard. The enthusiast could change the project from, say, Number 56, Rain Detector, to Number 23, Lie Detector, by unsoldering the connections that had enabled the components to detect rain and resoldering them in a way that enabled them to detect lies. When the wiring was finished, the young technologist attached the piece of pegboard to a base, a black metal box, as if the pegboard were the top of the box, so that none of the wiring showed. This arrangement spared the novice solderer the embarrassment of having the evidence of his ineptitude on display, and, because the wiring was hidden, one finished, fully assembled project looked just like another. The electronic eavesdropper that I was making would look like a Magnetomic Electronic Five-Stage Distant Early Warning Saucer-and-Warhead Detector, since all the differences lay underneath, hidden within the kit’s black box, camouflaged by the unvarying arrangement of the components visible on the top.
When it was finished, I took it across the street and knocked at Mrs. Jerrold’s back door.
“Hi, Peter,” she said. “Junior’s not here. Roger took him roller skating.”
“I noticed that the car was gone,” I said. “I brought you the latest flying-saucer detector.”
“Pretty fancy,” she said. “It looks like a whole radio you’ve got there.”
“A radio?” I said. “Does it look like a radio?”
“Well, it’s got those dials and knobs and — ”
“Oh, those. Those are for adjusting the range and the — ah — sensitivity — and — this one — the volume — because you get an audible alarm with this model, not just that little light that you’ve got on the detector you have.”
“So you think I should trade mine in?”
“I would recommend it,” I said.
“I don’t know — ”
“Tell you what I’ll do,” I said. “I need some people who would be willing to participate in field tests of this new model. I’d be willing to install it free of charge if you would try it out and give me a testimonial.”
“Sounds like a pretty good deal.”
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” I said.
She tousled my hair and said, “You’re a cute kid, Peter. Okay. Sign me up for the free trial.”
“I can install it right now if you want,” I said.
“Okay,” she said.
She led me through the living room and up the stairs. When we reached her bedroom, she threw herself backwards onto the bed, put her hands behind her head, and smiled at me in a way that made me realize that she knew nearly everything I was thinking, and that she thought she knew everything I was thinking, but she did not, because just at that moment I was thinking that because I had camouflaged myself so thoroughly as an ordinary adolescent boy with the usual set of dreams and desires she couldn’t see that I was a spy.
[to be continued]
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