The receiver belonged to my father. Its tuning dial had a crack through the number nine, and its leather handle smelled of the rain that had soaked his coat on the night he disappeared. I kept it unplugged for eleven years. On Tuesday, it began speaking anyway.
“Service interruption,” a woman said. “Please remain where you can be found.”
I turned the dial. The voice remained. I removed the batteries. There were no batteries. Then she read a name, an age, and an address. My address. The name belonged to the woman who would move into my apartment after the landlord finally stopped expecting my rent.
Under the kitchen window, someone tapped twice on the glass. I lived on the fourth floor. I did not look. The radio made the small, embarrassed noise a person makes when they realize you have caught them listening.
“Earlier than scheduled,” the woman said.
In the hall, the elevator chimed. Our building had stairs. I opened the door far enough to see a strip of green carpet where the hallway’s cracked tile should have been. At the end of it stood a platform clock, its hands turning patiently backward. Beneath the clock, my father waited in his wet coat.
He lifted one hand. Not a greeting. Five fingers, then four.
I slammed the door with two fingers left. For a moment there was only the sound of the refrigerator. Then the radio clicked. A man spoke in the exhausted voice of someone completing a form.
“Attempt unsuccessful. Next of kin has declined collection.”
I carried the receiver to the dumpster behind the building. When I came back, the crack in the tuning dial was gone. The leather handle was wet. A yellow ticket lay beside it, printed with my apartment number and a departure time eleven years ago.
This morning, I found my father’s coat hanging behind my door. In the pocket was a photograph of an old man I did not recognize, holding the radio. On the back, in my handwriting: If he calls, let it ring.