During the next few weeks, Jack checked in with me once in a while to be sure that nothing else had happened, but each time he called I was able to tell him that nothing had. That was both good and bad; good, because it meant no more threatening letters and not even a hint of anyone trying to get back into my apartment for any reason. Not that—at the time, anyway—I thought there was anything left that could be of any value to anyone in the Blue Awareness. Bad, because the police were clearly not going to do anything about the break-in. I called once and was told they had indeed talked to a representative of the Blue Awareness, who said my claim that they were responsible for the theft of my property was not only absurd, it was also an egregious example of the religious persecution that they were often subject to. It was pretty clear to me that as far as the NYPD was concerned, that was the end of that.

I missed listening to the radio so, eventually, I bought another one, but even though it had world-band capability, it was still a poor substitute for what I’d lost. Avi’s radio had been a kind of magical portal for me, able to pull in distant stations and mysterious broadcasts in foreign languages from the far-flung outposts of the world. Low-watt stations boosted by the Kennelly-Heaviside layer of the ionosphere, booming shortwave frequencies sailing over the curve of the Earth—picking up these broadcasts was something that was exciting to me, as I guess it must have been to Avi. I couldn’t exactly explain it, but even if I didn’t understand most of what was being said, when it was late at night and I was tuning in a station drifting in from Siberia or the Seychelles, I felt like I was listening to strangers whispering their secrets, which made them not really strangers anymore. And I liked listening to the marine-band chatter of ships approaching the New York harbor or waiting in the deep-water channels outside the Jersey ports. Hearing the clipped, stentorian tones of the news readers on the London-based BBC or the cheery discussion programs on the Voice of America—which anybody with a decent world-band set like the one I’d bought or even a backyard antenna could pick up—wasn’t quite the same thing.

One night, it occurred to me that maybe I could find some interesting stations on the Internet. There was certainly a lot of online music from all over the world that could be accessed, but though I listened for a while, I couldn’t develop any real enthusiasm for what I was doing. Maybe it was because there was no challenge to locating or hearing these stations—click a hyperlink, open a media player and you were instantly connected to clear channels emanating from Prague or Gdansk—and there was no surprise at what you could or could not tune in on a given night. Listening to online music didn’t depend on how the troposphere was feeling from one hour to the next or on seasonal temperatures or the reflective qualities of the cloud layer above the Sargasso Sea. And you rarely heard the sound of a human voice unless it was some robotic tone repeating the station’s call letters.

But there was a different kind of voice I found on the web that did interest me. In fact, I developed a kind of obsession with it for a while because it was like listening to the greeting of an old friend. Actually, friends would be more accurate because, as Jack had once told me, Sputnik—the original satellite and all its successors—was online.

The sound of the satellites’ telemetry signals had been digitized and posted on various websites. I first found them by accident, on a website devoted to the history of both Russian and American satellite launches, but once I did, night after night when I came home from work, I clicked open the files and listened in. All the recordings sounded pretty much alike, but of course, my favorite was Sputnik 10, which was the satellite that had once had little Zvezdochka aboard. Zvezdochka, who got home safely. Night after night, I sat in my living room, with my own dog leaning against my leg, listening to the scratchy, metallic ping, ping, ping of Sputnik’s telemetry signal, faint but steady as a distant heartbeat. There was something about the sound that I found comforting.

The telemetry recordings were on my mind one night at work a couple of weeks after I got the dog. I was pouring beer for an order that had been placed by the waitress I was working with that night and, at the same time, wondering what other kind of interesting historical recordings I could find online, when my attention was diverted by some kind of commotion outside the bar. It was always pretty dark in The Endless Weekend, but quite bright outside in the wide walkway between the bar and a row of fast-food restaurants across the way. Looking out into the square of lighted space that was my view of the outside area, I saw a crowd of photographers walking backward. The corridor pulsed with the lightning-like flash of their cameras, and then the swarm of men and women quickly passed out of my line of sight. A few moments later, behind a phalanx of bodyguards, the object of their attention came into sight: a slight man, dark-haired and intense-looking, wearing a suit that looked as sharp-edged as a razor. Surprisingly, he stopped in front of the bar and then, even more surprisingly, turned and headed in.

The waitress was still standing near me, waiting for her order, and when she saw who was about to enter the bar, her eyes widened and she took a step back, as if she wasn’t worthy of being in the presence of the man who was, apparently, about to become our customer. “Ted Merrill,” she breathed. “I don’t believe it.”

But indeed, it was Ted Merrill, mega movie star, who was now entering The Endless Weekend, accompanied by his entourage. He took a seat at the bar—near the end, where I was standing—while his three bodyguards and a few other assorted members of his party arranged themselves at a nearby table. As they did, the scrum of photographers returned and positioned themselves outside the bar where they continued to snap pictures.

I placed two mugs of draft on the waitress’s tray and practically had to push her away from the bar to go serve the pair of businessmen who were her customers, though they, too, were staring goggle-eyed at our unexpected visitor. In contrast to the star-struck trance that everyone else seemed to be in, I was feeling a little weird about the appearance of Ted Merrill in my particularly unremarkable workplace. There was absolutely no reason I could think of for him to have stopped for a drink in this specific bar—except for the fact that I knew him to be a prominent member of the Blue Awareness. In fact, he was probably their most visible and vocal spokesman. I had seen him talking about it often enough on the TV gossip shows. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, indeed. What was he doing here?

I walked the few steps over to him and asked what he’d like, while the waitress scurried back to take the drinks order from his group at the table. He showed me the grin that was always referred to as “Ted Merrill’s famous smile”—and in person, I had to admit it was dazzling—and then asked for a complicated cocktail. It took me a few minutes to mix it up, and while I was adding crushed ice, I heard him ask one of his bodyguards for a pen.

When I brought him the drink, I saw that he was doodling something on one of our napkins, which had a printed border meant to look like confetti. He tasted the drink, pronounced it delicious, and smiled at me again.

“I hope I’m not causing you too much trouble,” he said, gesturing toward the photographers. “At least they know enough to stay outside.”

“We’re happy to serve you,” I said.

“Well, I’m happy to be served,” he replied. He leaned forward a little, just enough to suggest that he was about to tell me something meant only for my ears. Because I was on my guard, I registered this move as a trick, one meant to imply an immediate intimacy between the great movie star and the lowly bartender. “I was in the mood for just this,” he said, taking a sip of the jewel-colored drink I had prepared for him. “I’m having a late dinner with some very sober-minded people and I thought I needed something wonderful first. Something edgy and beautiful. And prepared just right.”