Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series) (2 page)

Leyna was a tall and slender blonde, an intellectual who preferred dark colors and wore glasses. She tucked her legs up on the sofa. Leyna was reading a limited-edition hardback copy of 'The Collected Works of Albert Camus," an author I dislike, although I'd no burning desire to confess. She felt me staring; caught my eyes and smiled warmly.

The caller spoke. "Is this Mister Callahan?"

"Last time I looked, it was."

"Call me Kevin," the man said. A long expulsion of breath followed his name. He had the frail, scratchy voice of a heavy smoker. "You're talking about love again tonight, right?"

"Right," I said. "What does that word mean to you? Who do you love?"

A pause. "Don't laugh at me, okay?"

"Nobody's laughing, pal."

"I love my dog."

Let's not go there
. "Okay. And what's your dog's name?"

"Her name is Lassie."

The man coughed harshly. He was quite ill. I heard a dog barking in the background as if alarmed. "She loves me unconditionally. I've been real sick. Lassie, she's been right by me the whole time."

"What's wrong?"

"My lungs are shot."

"But you're smoking."

"Not that much," Kevin said. "I've cut way down."

"With damaged lungs?"

"It's hard to quit, you know?"

"With the dog there. With Lassie there."

"Yeah," Kevin said proudly. "She's always right by my side no matter what. That's why I love her."

I sighed. "I'm going to make two observations here, Kevin. And you're probably going to get all pissed off when I do. Ready?"

Guarded. "Okay."

"One, if you really loved your pet you would do everything you could to safeguard your health so you'd be around to care for her. Smoking with a lung problem doesn't cut it."

"I know, but like I said, it's really hard to quit."

"Two, have you read up on the health repercussions of second-hand smoke?"

"The latest research is saying that's all bull."

"Maybe it is, although I doubt it. You're probably not just killing yourself, maybe leaving your loved one homeless, you may actually be killing the dog, too. She didn't ask for a pack-a-day habit, did she?"

Dial tone.

"Well, too close to the bone that time. Like I said before, love is not mere companionship, and it is not necessarily unconditional. It's a very complicated interactive experience, best defined as an action. It is not a feeling, it is something you do. Anyway, let's all just take a deep breath here . . . sorry, Kevin." I winced.
That was one bad joke.

I left a beat for the hoped-for audience chuckle. "Look, let me put it this way. I had a stepfather who used to beat me. He made me fight other kids for money. I have come to understand that he thought he was teaching me to be a man, but I certainly wouldn't call
that
love. Would you? Obviously that was a rhetorical question. Okay. We're going to go to a commercial. Back with in a moment."

My fingers fed a CD to the board. A huge musical chord sounded, followed by several females chanting "Mick Callahan Live" like porn stars approaching orgasm. Three consecutive commercials would now play, one for an electronics store, one for an Arena Football team, and one for a crooked political candidate.

I winked at my date. We had been seeing each other for nearly two long, very frustrating months. Apparently Leyna Barton had also read, and often referenced, an ancient, dog-eared, first edition copy of 'The Rules.' She came from Beverly Hills, and thus a higher caste, so we hadn't gotten into the damned ballpark, much less to first base. This date was going to be different. She had greeted me with a long kiss, and whispered "tonight's your lucky night" into my hot-and-bothered ear. It was damned difficult to keep my mind on work.

Only ten minutes to go. The calls had been coming in regularly, but my message wasn't getting across.
Singing opera for the deaf?
I made a few more notes, decided to get back on the soapbox. The commercial for the corrupt politician ended.

"Oh sure," I said, before I could stop myself. "I'm going to run right out and vote for a candidate who is facing imminent indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice. This clown would sell his grandmother for more status. Oops, I shouldn't have said that. Just cost the station some money."

The phones lit up. I glanced down at the winking lights. "Those of you calling in please be patient. I'm going to run my mouth for a second. If you don't like it, you can always go back listening to Howard Stern."

Leyna flashed me a seductive grin.

"Okay, love. Erich Fromm quantified it, Freud and Jung and Saint Augustine and Paul the Apostle tried to write about it, we have self-help books up the wazoo on the subject. But what do we really know? Not a hell of a lot, right? Most of us don't even give the matter much thought. Why is that?

"We live in a culture that wants us to eat fast-food for every meal, refuses to accept that delay of gratification is the cornerstone to all dignified living, and peddles us some kind of gooey excrement as erotic mythology with every popular song, television show, and feature film. Many of us think meaningless sex is love, or maybe helpless adoration. Some of us believe that love should be completely unconditional, like it is some kind of constitutional guarantee or government entitlement. It's not. 'I should just be loved for who I am' is one of the most selfish, not to mention downright foolish, things anyone ever said. What was it that idiot therapist Fritz Perls spouted back in the seventies? 'I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you don't have to live up to mine, and if we meet somewhere along the way it's groovy'?
Excuse
me?"

I checked on Leyna, who seemed as entranced as I'd hoped. I modulated to a higher key.

"I'm no prude, ladies and gentlemen. Most of you know I blew myself out of the Navy and nearly killed myself and my career, all behind drugs and alcohol. This was back when a few of you had actually heard of me. But that kind of selfish, hippie idiocy has left us a complete social catastrophe to clean up. Okay, now I'm going to go on a rant."

I switched the microphone off and clicked on my telephone headset. Leyna was now watching with rapt attention. Like a dork, I got up and strolled around the booth, still talking. I could feel her eyes roaming my frame and it felt a bit silly, like a high school jock passing by the cheerleaders.
All I need is a few more hormones and some fresh pimples
.

"Don't worry, guys, I'm going to take a final caller or two, but let me get the rest of this off my chest. We have had more than thirty years of unbridled narcissism in this culture. For the uninitiated, Narcissus was the Greek boy in the myth who fell in love with his own image in a pool of water. That irritated the Gods, so they froze him there to see nothing but his own reflection forever. Healthy narcissism is thinking you're a pretty good person, or that you look nice in that outfit. Unhealthy narcissism is to be so trapped within our own wants and needs that we are unable to connect and properly empathize with the feelings and needs of others. Otto Kernberg once called human evil just a kind of malignant narcissism.

"Living creatures are not objects, people. They are not
things
. And as much as we would like them to serve us unconditionally, they cannot. In fact, it is precisely the tension between us, the struggle to meet one another's needs without surrendering our own integrity, that produces adult love, real love that promotes growth and solves emotional problems, love that matures people and breaks down their infantile concepts and selfish impulses. I can recommend a great essay, although it reads about as easily as the Chinese phone book. It's by a Jewish philosopher named Martin Buber, and it is called 'I and Thou.' Go find it."

I sat down behind the console. "Okay. End of lecture. That diatribe probably pissed
somebody
off, so I'll take another caller now." I selected a button and pressed it.

"Good evening, you're on the air live with Mick Callahan."

"Hi Mick, I love your show," the woman said. "My name is Trudy."

"Thank you, Trudy. What's on your mind?"

"I was just thinking about how my marriage failed. And I was thinking about what you said just now."

"Yes?"

She chuckled ruefully. "The marriage ended with a lot of accusations, you know? You never gave me this or you never listened to me about that. Well, that and oral sex."

I cringed. "Excuse me?"

"Passing each other in the hall and saying 'screw you.' That's a joke."

I laughed. "Back to the divorce. The marriage degenerated into accusations, and a kind of stuck feeling? Just the same issues over and over?"

"On both sides."

"Right."

"Funny thing is," she said, "my ex and I get along okay, now. It's like we are better friends than we were husband and wife."

"And what do you make of that?"

"Being married brought some things up in both of us that weren't there before," she said, thoughtfully. "Something happened. And we both got really locked into what we weren't getting, instead of paying attention to what we could give."

"Brilliant," I gave her applause. "Thank you for saying that. Because that is one of the points I have been trying to make all week, and it feels great that somebody understands."

"Cool," she said, suddenly sounding very young.

"When old patterns surface," I said, "we revert to being frustrated children. We fall into habits created when we were the most egocentric we were ever intended to be." I looked down at her name on the note pad. "Thank you for calling, Trudy."

"Thank you, Mick," she said.

I killed the line and glanced at the clock. "It looks like we have time for one more caller. But now my phone is dead. Come on, somebody. I'll take the third caller right after this word from one of our sponsors."

I slipped in another CD, a musical spot advertising a chain of furniture stores. Leyna was watching with frank appreciation.
The lonely cowboy shoots . . . he scores! Yo, there is a God
. I kept one eye on the phone bank and began to pack up my things.
For an expert on the subject of love, I'm sure objectifying this enchanting young woman. Can we spell hypocrite?

Line one flickered, then died. The second lit and continued to blink. "Hold on, please, I'll be right with you." I punched the line back to 'hold,' shoved the rest of my papers into a briefcase, located the computer mouse and lined up the pre-recorded nighttime programming so it would start with one click. The commercial faded away. I dropped back into my chair just as my fingers killed the CD and flipped the mike back to 'live.'

"We're almost out of time tonight. I want to wish everyone a romantic evening." I grinned at Leyna and continued speaking. "From now until dawn, we're playing cool jazz and classic blues. I will be back with you again tomorrow evening from nine to midnight. But before I go, I promised I'd take one last caller."

I opened up the line. "Hello, you're on the air."

Traffic sounds, far away. Perhaps someone on a cell phone?

"Hello? Anyone there?"

A muffled chuckle followed the question. A man's voice. A chill jogged up my back. After a few seconds, the caller broke the connection with a gentle click. I shook my head and covered. "Just my luck, the last caller on a night devoted to the subject of love ends up doing horny breathing into the telephone."

I flipped off the lights and clicked the mouse. The computer started a choral station ID, which then led to hours of automatic jazz programming.

"Good night, everybody," I said.
Hey, girl . . . here's my best FM voice
. "This is Mick Callahan, signing off and thanking you for being with me this evening. I hope you'll join me again tomorrow night."

Just as the clock hit the hour, my cell phone rang. I put my briefcase on the console and flipped open the telephone.

"It's me."

I pictured a thin young man with a burn scar covering half his face. "What's up, Jerry? Are you in town?"

"No, I'm still in Nevada, just messing around online."

"I'm in a little bit of a rush tonight." A pause. "Are you okay?"

"Me? I guess so." Jerry was slurring his words slightly, like he'd been drinking again. "I just wanted to talk."

"No luck, huh?"

"No luck, Mick." Jerry's voice caught on a strip of barbed wire. "It's like she never existed."

I looked up. Leyna was growing impatient. "Look, Jerry, I have an important business meeting I have to get to." That lie hurt.
Don't be such a dick.
"Can I call you back tomorrow or something?"

"No, it's okay," Jerry sighed booze into the receiver. "I've just been staring at the monitor for hours. I can't find a trace of Mary, Mick, and I'm damned good at this. There's no driver's license, credit card, phone bill, store card, nothing. Maybe something bad has happened. I want to know if she's okay."

"She'll turn up."

"Maybe. I guess I just needed to whine to somebody. No big deal."

"I'll try to call you back in an hour or two." The second lie hurt worse than the first. "Take it easy."

"You too."

I closed the phone again and stepped out of the booth, briefcase swinging at my side. "A girlfriend?" Leyna purred, somewhat coolly. She had been filing her nails, and the file was poking up out of one fist like a miniature erection.

I shook my head. "A friend from Nevada, kid name of Jerry. He's a hacker. He's been searching the Internet, looking for a girl who helped us out of a mess. She up and disappeared a few months ago. He really had a thing for her."