Burying Ariel Read Online Free Page A

they know where I live.”
    Howard frowned. “You don’t have to do this.”
    I picked up my sweater. “True, and you didn’t have to stay up with me all night when Ian died or spend hours convincing me the world hadn’t come to an end when Mieka dropped out of university or come to the hospital with me when Angus got that concussion playing football … Shall I continue?”
    He grinned sheepishly. “Let’s hit the road.”
    As soon as I turned the key in the ignition, Howard reached for the radio dial and punched in CVOX . It was 2:30 – time for Charlie’s show.
    Howard turned to face the window on the passenger side. His voice was a gravel whisper. “Do you think he’s found out yet?”
    “You’ll be able to tell when you hear him,” I said. “He doesn’t hold much back on that show.” It was true. I wasn’t a fan of open-line radio, and CVOX was all talk all the time, but whenever I’d caught “Heroes” I’d been impressed. Charlie’s subject was relationships, and he treated his callers’ problems with intelligence and a wild, subversive wit. He had taken the show’s name from Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces , and the reference was significant. Many would have dismissed Charlie’s callers as malcontents or as charter members of the tribe of the terminally confused. But to Charlie they were heroes engaged in the hero’s journey to find answers that would make sense of their lives. His advice to them was a potent mix of eclectic allusion and dark insight that suggested their problems went beyond the classroom or the trailer court, and his audience, comprised largely of the desirable seventeen-to-thirty demographic was huge and loyal.
    When the drummer from Dave Matthews Band counted the band into Charlie’s theme music, “Ants Marching,” Howard stiffened. So did I, but as the music faded and Charlie began his intro, his dark-honey voice sounded as it always did, intense and intimate.
    “It’s 2:30 on CVOX , Voice Radio, and this is Charlie D, kicking off the first weekend of summer. Hot sun, cold beer, new friends, old loves – a time for revelry. But there are some among us who just can’t seem to celebrate the cosmically embedded self. No matter what you do for them, it’s never enough. This show is about them, or it’s about you if you’re one of them.
“Some people,
No matter what you give them
Still want the moon.
“The bread,
The salt,
White meat and dark,
Still hungry.
“The marriage bed
And the cradle,
Still empty arms.”
    Howard turned to me furiously. “What the hell’s he doing?”
    I raised my hand in a hushing gesture. “Listen.”
    Charlie’s voice was a seeping wound. He was close to the breaking point, but he was also a professional. He didn’t falter.
“You give them land,
Their own earth under their feet,
And still they take to the roads.
“And water: dig them the deepest well,
Still it’s not deep enough
To drink the moon from.
    “This show is about them … the ones who, even after you’ve dug them the deepest well, say it’s not deep enough, because it doesn’t let them drink the moon …”
    Howard glared at me. “Well?”
    “It’s called ‘Adam’s Complaint.’ Denise Levertov wrote it. Charlie uses poetry on his show all the time.”
    “Maybe to you it’s just poetry. But to a cop it’s going to sound like a confession. In cases like this, the boyfriend’s always a suspect.” Howard picked up my cellphone. “Charlie needs a lawyer.”
    “You’re a lawyer,” I said.
    Howard replaced the phone in the well between our seats. “Do you think he’d let me act for him?”
    “Why not?” I said. “You’re the best, and you’ll come cheap.”
    CVOX was a concrete and glass box surrounded by larger concrete and glass boxes that sold such commodities as discounted designer fashions, end-of-the-roll carpeting, and furniture that could dazzle your friends for a year before you had to cough up a single dime. The