Gail Bowen: Love You To Death

“Are the cops listening in?”

“They are indeed,” she says. “In their opinion, we’re two for two. They think both Emo Emily and Podcast Pete have real nut-bar potential. Officers in their hometowns are on their way to question them as we speak.”

“So we betrayed them,” I say tightly.

“Charlie, we had no choice.”

“Damn it, Nova, neither did they. No one chooses to be screwed up. Our listeners had the bad luck to draw losing numbers in the great lottery of life. Now it looks as if they got another lousy number when they called me.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Nova says. “You talk people through crises. You make them laugh. You give them hope. You make sure they have referrals, so they can get the help they need. And more times than I want to think about, you give our listeners your home phone number. You’re there, Charlie, and that’s what matters.”

Nova’s voice is small and strained. She cares about our listeners, and she believes in our show. Calling the cops flies in the face of the trust she has built with our audience in the nine years we’ve been on the air. “It’s going to be all right,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, “and some day I’m going to wear size zero jeans. Back on in two seconds, Charlie. You’ll be talking to Rani-long time listener, first-time caller. She’s an archaeologist.”

“A student of human cultures,” I say. “I wonder what she makes of our rag-tag band of the walking wounded?”

“Ask her,” Nova says crisply. The tiny light on my microphone base comes to life. I’m back on the air.

“That was the Barenaked Ladies with ‘Straw Hat and Old Dirty Hank,’” I say. “Our next guest is Rani. Welcome. My producer tells me you’re an archaeologist, Rani. That’s a first for our show.”

Her laugh is deep and musical. “That surprises me,” she says. “So many of your callers are unexplored ruins. You’re a magnificent ruin yourself, Charlie D. It would be fun excavating you.”

I relax. The fingers on my temples ease their pressure. Rani is going to be a five-star guest. “Fun for me but futile for you,” I say. “I contain no hidden treasures, Rani.”

“Maybe the wrong women have been doing the digging,” she purrs. “I’m experienced. I know where to look.”

Through the talkback, Nova groans. I hold up my hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, Rani,” I say, “you’re making me forget these are public airwaves. Time to focus. Our topic tonight is Erotomania: the belief that another person is secretly in love with you and is sending signals that only you can understand. We’ve just met, but you strike me as a woman over whom a man might fantasize. Am I right?”

Rani’s chuckle is X-rated. “I’ve had my share of dysfunctional lovers,” she says. “They’re fun until you want them gone-and then it can be challenging.”

“Did anyone ever take it too far?” I ask.

She sighs. “Ah. There was one lover who was…inconvenient.”

“Care to share?”

“He was another archaeologist,” she says. “We were on a dig at the Giza Necropolis in Egypt.”

“Home of the Great Sphinx,” I say.

“Do you know the riddle of the Sphinx?” Rani asks.

For the first time that night, I’m in the groove. Talking to Rani is like playing tennis with a pro. “I do,” I say. “Which creature goes on four feet in the morning, on two feet at noon and on three in the evening?”

“Do you know the answer?”

Now I’m having fun. “The answer is man,” I say. “He crawls on his hands and feet as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age. Of course, I’m still crawling. I plan to stick with it till I get it right.”

Rani’s contralto becomes even huskier. “I find the image of a man crawling toward me…appealing. But no reward for you, Charlie D. You had the wrong Sphinx. The Sphinx who posed your riddle was Greek.”

“Does it matter?”

“Oh yes. If you’d given the wrong answer, the Sphinx would have…”

I finish her sentence. “Devoured me.”

“You sound eager,” she says. “My lover at the dig was like you-preferred his sex on the… risky side. When that became a bore, I told him to go away…and he wouldn’t.”

In the control booth, Nova draws her index finger across her throat. The lines are jammed. She wants me to cut short the fun and games with Rani. I ignore her. I lean into my microphone. “I understand why your lover wouldn’t go away,” I murmur.

“Do you?” she says. “Then maybe you’ll understand why finally I had no alternative but to seal him in a tomb…with a picture of me…just me and the darkness…This has been delightful, Charlie D. We’ll have to do it again.”

It appears our tennis match is over. Rani smashed a ball past me, and I didn’t even see it coming. “Wait,” I say. “I’ve got more questions.” But I’m talking to dead air. She’s gone. I glance toward the control booth, but Nova’s on the phone, so I carry on. “ O-kay. Looks like Rani went off to dig something-or someone-up,” I say. “The topic tonight is Crazy Love. You heard Rani’s story. She sealed her too-passionate boyfriend in a tomb. How do you handle a lover who won’t take no for an answer? And what if he or she is somebody you’ve never met? Give us a call. To get you in the mood, here’s a song that honors trapped lovers everywhere: Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love.’”

The music starts, and I call Nova on talkback. “That was a trip through bizarro world,” I say. “So was Rani just having a little fun with me, or is she really a man-killer?”

Nova’s voice is tense. “The police couldn’t trace the call. They think she was probably using one of those cheap phones you can buy at convenience stores.”

“So my move is to keep charming her on air and hope she’ll call back on a landline.”

“Or make a personal appearance here at the studio,” Nova says. “And you’re back on air.”

I give it my all. “Rani, Rani, Rani,” I plead. “Why did you hang up on me? We were just getting to know each other. You enchanted me. You bewitched me. And then-you ditched me. Give me another chance, my seductive student of mysterious cultures. I am a ruin in desperate need of excavation.” For the tenth time that night I tell listeners how they can reach us by phone or email. Then I glance at my monitor and read the name of our next caller. It’s Britney-another regular. She’s young, self-absorbed and sweetly crazy. Britney’s sentences tilt up at the end. It’s as if, before committing herself to an opinion, she has to see which way the winds are blowing. Despite the winds that are battering me tonight, I try to be a gentle breeze for her.

“Hey, it’s Britney, the devil baby,” I say.

“ Oh, Charlie,” she trills. “You know I’m not the devil baby. I don’t even have any real problems. I just like to hear myself on the radio.”

“Don’t we all,” I say. “So, Brit, what’s on your mind on this first day of spring?”

“Orlando Bloom,” she says. “Because I’m, like, no longer addicted to him.”

“Ah,” I say. “So you’re a recovering Bloomie.”

She corrects me. “A recovered Bloomie. And I was, like, so into him.” Her words cascade like a waterfall, shining and unstoppable. “I saw every one of his movies nine times-even The Curse of the Black Pearl , and that movie really sucked. When I read on his website that he and the other members of the Fellowship got the elvish word for ‘nine’ tattooed on their wrists, I got the elvish word for ‘nine’ tattooed on my wrist. And my mother just about disowned me because I used my birthday money. It was supposed to go into my college fund-like I’m ever actually going to go to university.