I watch the hands on the studio clock. It ticks off the seconds with agonizing slowness. Finally, Rani turns away from Nova, and like a sleepwalker she begins to move. I hate and fear guns, but I have never seen a more beautiful sight than the light glinting off Rani’s Glock 22 pistol as she moves toward me. She raises the hand that is not holding the gun to straighten her wig and arranges her face in a tortured smile. When I’m certain Rani will not turn back, I allow myself to look at Nova. She is inching her way slowly toward the door that will lead her out of the control room to safety. For the first time since the show started that night, I exhale.
My relief doesn’t last long. Within seconds, Rani opens the door to the studio. “It’s so dark in here,” she says.
“That’s how I like it,” I say. “Follow the sound of my voice.”
“I want to see your face.”
“Do you?”
“I’ve imagined it a thousand times. I lie awake at night, touching your perfect body with my mind.”
I reach for the light that I keep on the desk for an emergency and flick the switch. I tilt the lamp toward me, so that Rani can see my face clearly. She gasps. “My god. What happened?”
“I was born,” I say. “It’s a birthmark. The human stain. Not the stuff of your dreams, huh?”
Rani raises the gun, so that it’s pointed at me. Despite her crooked platinum wig and her clownish makeup, she’s a commanding figure. Her hand is steady as she takes aim. Behind her in the control room, I can see police officers moving into position. They, too, have their weapons drawn. I am beyond being frightened.
“You were supposed to be perfect,” Rani says. “We were supposed to be perfect.”
“And now you’re going to shoot me because I’m not the man you wanted me to be.”
“I killed for you.”
“No, Janet. You didn’t kill for me. You killed for Charlie D. He only exists on the air. He’s someone I made up because I didn’t want to be me. Just the way you made up Rani because you didn’t want to be Janet Davidson. My real name is Charlie Dowhanuik. Maybe it’s time for Charlie Dowhanuik and Janet Davidson to meet.” I stand and hold my arms out to her. “You’re going to have to put that gun down,” I say.
With agonizing slowness, she places the gun on the desk. In the control room, the cops move into position. “Give us a moment,” I say. Janet Davidson moves toward me. I reach up and remove the wig. Her hair is short and brown. I touch it. “You have pretty hair,” I say.
She reaches out and touches my cheek. “Your skin is very soft,” she says.
“Would you like to sit with me while I finish the show?” I ask.
And so Janet Davidson sits down beside Charlie Dowhanuik. Facing us in the control room are six cops with their guns drawn. But until the program ends and the microphone is turned off for the night, the police are not a part of our world. The world of Charlie D and of Rani, Queen of the Air, goes far beyond this small dark room in the glass-and-concrete cubicle of CVOX radio. As long as the microphone is on, our world is the air. Our voices travel into rooms and minds and lives we can’t even imagine. I turn to Marion. “They’re waiting,” I say.
“Then help them,” she says.
I smile at her and lean into the mike.
“You’re listening to ‘The World According to Charlie D,’” I say. “It’s March twentieth, the first day of spring, the season of love. Our topic tonight was love-the crazy things we do for love. So…lessons learned? I don’t know.
“I was born with a birthmark that covers half my face. It’s still there. I’m a freak. I look as if I’m wearing a mask of blood. My mother told me that when the doctors and nurses saw me there was absolute silence in the delivery room. They handed me to my mother. She asked them to wash off the blood, but they told her nothing could take the stain away. Then my mother took me in her arms, kissed me and said, ‘Then…we’ll learn to live with it.’
“Maybe that’s the lesson. Maybe we just have to learn to live with the stains that make us human. And you know what? It helps if there’s someone who loves us enough to touch their lips to our imperfect bodies-to see the beauty in our imperfect minds.
“So be kind. As the poet says, ‘There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ Put your arms around each other. Forgive one another for being human.”
Janet smiles and reaches her hand toward mine. Our eyes lock and the split second of our communion is so intense that I don’t notice she’s picked up the Glock again. She aims it before I understand what’s happening.
Janet may be a researcher, but she’s also a cop. She was trained to know that the one place a shooter can be certain of achieving the desired result is the heart. There’s a noise-surprisingly loud in our hermetically sealed world-a pungent odor that I learned from watching CSI is the smell of nitroglycerin, and then the hot sweet smell of human blood.
I look at my computer screen. One word: Hallelujah. It takes me a moment to realize that before she left, Nova keyed in the title of the last song for the night. I take a breath, lean into my microphone and announce the music that will take us out. “Here’s K.D. Lang singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’ For those of you who are still with me, thanks for hanging in.”
I look at Janet. “Not everybody made it,” I say. “Godspeed to those of you who had to leave. And Rani, Queen of the Air, keep flying.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
It takes time to clear a murder scene, but the cops are merciful. They lead Nova and me down the hall to the CVOX offices-well away from the stench and the sadness of Janet Davidson’s death. They interview us separately. As I answer, I stare up at the photographs of the CVOX hosts that line the office walls. We are talk radio’s heavy hitters. My photograph is a murky profile shot that shows only my good side. I decide that the next day, I’ll get Nova to take a picture of me as I am. We’ll get it blown up and hang it up for the world to see.
The police don’t keep us long. They have most of what they need on the tapes of tonight’s broadcast. The police officers are grave as they go about their business. I overhear two of them talking. Both officers had worked with Janet Davidson. They liked and respected her. Dr. Steven Apple, a gnome of a man with a carefully trimmed beard and hard-shined shoes, arrives and announces that he is there to counsel the officers through their grief. One of the cops who knew Janet Davidson tells Steve to take a long hike off a short pier. I give him two thumbs up.
When Nova and I walk outside, the air is sweet with the lilac scent of a soft spring evening. The breeze is gentle. Mick Jagger’s tongue in the red-lipped mouth that forms the O in CVOX is blazing neon. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a junkyard dog bays at the moon. We are back in the known world.
Nova puts her hand in mine. Like children in a fairy tale, still haunted by the memory of a forest where every step led us deeper into darkness, we move quickly down the street. Past the shop that sells bargain wedding gowns. Past the pawnshops with the barred windows. Past the businesses that promise Instant Ca$H for your Paycheck. We reach the corner where Nova can catch the bus that will take her home.