One Fine Day You’re Gonna Die

CHAPTER ONE

Tonight as I was riding my bike to the radio station where I do the late-night call-in show, a hearse ran a light and plowed into me. I swerved. The vehicle clipped my back wheel, and I flew through the air to safety. My Schwinn was not so lucky. The hearse skidded to a stop. The driver jumped out, sprinted over and knelt beside me on the wet pavement. “Are you all right?” he asked.

I checked my essentials.

“As all right as I’ll ever be,” I said.

The man bent closer. The streetlight illuminated both our faces. He looked like the actor who played Hawkeye on the old tv show M*A*S*H. His brow furrowed with concern when he saw my cheek.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“It’s a birthmark,” I said.

As birthmarks go, mine is a standout. It covers half my face, like a blood mask. Nine out of ten strangers turn away when they see it. This man moved in closer.

“The doctors weren’t able to do anything?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“But you’ve learned to live with it.”

“Most of the time,” I said.

“That’s all any of us can do,” the man said, and he grinned. His smile was like Hawkeye’s-open and reassuring. He offered his hand and pulled me to my feet. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” he said.

He picked up my twisted Schwinn and stowed it in the back of the hearse. I slid into the passenger seat. The air inside was cool, flower-scented and oddly soothing. After we’d buckled our seat belts, the man turned the keys in the ignition.

“Where to?” he asked.

“CVOX Radio,” I said. “728 Shuter.”

“It’s in a strip mall,” he said. “Between a store that sells discount wedding dresses and a place that rents x-rated movies.”

“I’m impressed,” I said. “This is a big city.”

“It is,” he agreed. “But my business involves pick up and delivery. I need to know where people are.”

Perhaps because the night was foggy and he’d already had one accident, the driver didn’t talk as he threaded his way through the busy downtown streets. When we turned on to Shuter, I saw the neon call letters on the roof of our building. The O in CVOX (“ALL TALK/ALL THE TIME”) is an open mouth with red lips and a tongue that looks like Mick Jagger’s. Fog had fuzzed the brilliant scarlet neon of Mick’s tongue to a soft pink. It looked like the kiss a woman leaves on a tissue when she blots her lipstick.

“I’ll pick you up when your show’s over,” the man said.

“I’ll take a cab,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”

He shrugged and handed me a business card. “Call me if you change your mind. Otherwise, I’ll courier a cheque to you tomorrow to pay for your bike.”

“You don’t know my name.”

The man flashed me his Hawkeye smile. “Sure I do. Your name is Charlie Dowhanuik and you’re the host of ‘The World According to Charlie D.’ I’m a fan. I even phoned in once. It was the night you walked off the show and disappeared for a year. You were in rough shape.”

“That’s why I left.”

“I was relieved that you did,” he said. “I sensed that if you didn’t turn things around, you and I were destined to meet professionally. My profession, not yours. You were too young to need my services, so I called in to remind you of what Woody Allen said.”

“I remember. ‘Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering and it’s over much too soon.’” I met the man’s eyes. “Wise words,” I said. “I still ponder them.”

“So you haven’t stopped grieving for the woman you lost?”

“Nope.”

“But you decided to keep on living,” he said.

“For the time being,” I said. We shook hands, and I opened the car door and climbed out. As I watched the hearse disappear into the fog, the opening lines of an old schoolyard rhyme floated to the top of my consciousness.

Do you ever think when a hearse goes by

That one fine day you’re gonna die?

They’ll wrap you up in a cotton sheet

And throw you down about forty feet. The worms crawl in,

The worms crawl out…

There was more, but I had to cut short my reverie. It was October 31. Halloween. The Day of the Dead. And I had a show to do.