Love You To Death

CHAPTER TEN

The woman standing behind Nova steps a little to the side. In the full overhead light, I can make out her general appearance. It’s disturbing. She’s heavy-set, middle-aged and dressed in a regulationblue police uniform. She wears a cap with the force insignia. She looks like any other female cop. But there are two false notes. She’s wearing makeup that is applied so heavily and awkwardly that it’s almost clownish. And her cap is askew, allowing a number of platinum curls to escape. As I watch, the wig, of which the curls are a part, begins to slip to one side. Clearly Janet was in a hurry when she donned the wig, and she didn’t have time to make the necessary adjustments. Keeping her left hand behind Nova’s back, Janet grabs the microphone with her right. She puts her mouth too close to it, as amateurs always do. The closeness of the microphone distorts the voice, but the seductive growl is familiar.

“I’m glad to see you, Charlie,” she says. “But there is no Janet. There is no Marion. There’s just Rani now.”

I can’t get my head around it. The purring voice, the grotesque makeup, the wig, the curious positioning of Janet Davidson’s body against Nova’s.

“She has her gun against my spine, Charlie,” Nova says. “I need to be live, Charlie. We all need to stay live. Help me.”

“I’m lost,” I say. “Janet…Rani. Why the gun? And how did Janet stop and you begin?”

“Janet was nobody,” the curious creature in front of me says. “She was just a researcher for the Major Crimes Division. All day long she sat in front of her computer, analyzing other people’s emotions: love, hate, envy, passion, greed, ambition. She became an expert on what drove the lives of other people. She had no life herself.”

“And that’s why you…why she became Rani?” I say. “That came later. At first everything was fine. Janet called your show because she heard that your topic was Nurture versus Nature. She’d read an article that said that the brain of a child who was ignored by his mother for the first two years of his life was different from the brain of a child who was lovingly nurtured. You probably don’t even remember.”

“I do remember,” I say. “The lines were jammed after you-after Janet-called. Everyone had a story. It was a great show.”

“At the end you thanked Janet, but as a joke you called her Marion the Librarian.” The seduction is gone from the voice of the woman in front of me. She sounds dead. “You called her ‘a pearl of great price.’”

“And I said she should call me anytime,” I say.

“That’s exactly what you said.” Rani’s fury is back-hotter than ever. I see Nova’s panic. “Can you imagine what it meant to Janet to be invited into the life of a man like you? To know that, for the first time in her life, she was ‘a pearl of great price’? Suddenly she had a reason to get up in the morning. As soon as she woke up, she would call your studio to find out the topic for that night. She would spend every coffee break, every lunch hour, researching the topic so she would have something to offer you. She lived for those calls.” Nova winces. Rani is jamming the gun into her spine. “Then this person wouldn’t let you take them anymore.”

“It wasn’t Nova’s choice,” I say. “It’s not her fault.”

“She took other people’s calls. Young people. Twisted people. People who sounded…exotic.”

“Charlie, please.” When she calls my name, Nova’s voice is forlorn.

Rani’s face twists with rage. “You sound desperate, Nova. Janet knew that feeling. Every time the show ended and you hadn’t taken her call, she’d go into the bathroom, look in the mirror and then watch herself put the barrel of her gun in her mouth.

“A month ago, I…she almost pulled the trigger. She stared at her reflection for what seemed like hours. Then on the radio, she heard Charlie’s voice. ‘On the air, you can be anyone you want to be,’ he said. That’s when Janet knew that she could be the woman Charlie needed her to be-young, hot, great radio. The kind of woman whose calls would always be welcomed.”

“And Rani was born,” I said.

“Every night Janet practiced the new voice in front of the mirror. It took a while, but it was worth it. When she closed her eyes and listened to the voice, she felt different-desirable, powerful. The voice was easy, but the face was harder. Janet bought the most expensive makeup in the city, but no matter how much makeup she put on, she was still old and plain. And you were perfect, Charlie.”

“I’m not perfect,” I say.

She ignores me. “ Janet knew that a seductive voice might get her on the air, but she realized you’d never be satisfied with just a voice. You wanted a real flesh-and-blood woman. You deserved someone as perfect as you. She bought a very expensive wig. She was ready, but your lines were always jammed. Other people kept getting in the way. There were times when you talked to Ian Blaise twice in a single night.”

“He lost his wife and children,” I say, and even as the words escape my mouth, I know I’m saying exactly the wrong thing.

Rani’s wig slips down over her ear. She moves the microphone closer to her lips. Her hiss is as venomous as a snake’s. “At least he had a wife and children to lose. Janet had never had anybody. Ian Blaise had memories…”

“Marcie Zhang was only fourteen.”

“And she’d already been rejected and laughed at. I did her a favor. I cut her pain short.”

“But James Washington had everything ahead of him.”

“And he still kept calling you. Don’t you see, Charlie? Every minute you were on the air with James Washington, you weren’t with me. I had to get him out of the way. It was nothing personal. He had to go, and now he’s gone. And I’m here.”

Nova is very pale. She sways as if she’s about to collapse. Rani notices and grabs her roughly about the shoulder. The microphone is still in her hand and it knocks Nova’s chin. She winces, but does not cry out. I’ve had enough. “Let Nova go,” I say. My voice is louder than I intend it to be, and Rani tenses-the last thing we need. I try to be reassuring. “Come into the booth with me,” I say. “We can do the show together. Nobody else. Just the two of us.”

Rani looks angrily at Nova. “Your producer will never let me come in there. The minute I move away from her, she’ll stop me.”

“I won’t stop you. I swear,” Nova says.

Rani adjusts her platinum wig. Under the mask of makeup, it’s difficult to read the expression on her face, but her voice is resigned. It’s the voice of a person who feels that events have been taken out of her hands. “Of course, if Nova was dead,” she says matter-of-factly, “she couldn’t stop me.”