Carol shakes her head. “That’s what they said.”
“ ‘That’s what they said in Germany’ is what they said in Germany? It’s not even in German.”
“What about the Russians!” Jerry shouts, from the grill area.
“Oh God,” I wail. “Can we have one party not ruined by political talk? It’s fucking July!”
Tex’s date Svetlana, in her dark turtleneck, drinking a mystery drink that Tex keeps refilling, rises on our porch like a daimoness. Thick Russian accent.
“Let me tell you Serbian joke. So, Satan is sitting around hell being bored—”
Tex: “Satan jokes are great, aren’t they? Quick Satan joke from the New Yorker. Satan is giving a tour of hell. He says, ‘The good news is there are four meals a day. The bad news is that they’re all continental breakfast.’ ”
“Hm,” says Svetlana. “So, Satan is sitting around hell being bored. Around him are former dictators Nicolai Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Miloševic. They want to phone their former countries, to check in, see how their people are doing. The devil charges them accordingly: One million for two minutes to Romania, two million for two minutes to Iraq.
“When it comes to Miloševic’s two minutes to Serbia, however, the cost is surprisingly nothing. Why?
“ ‘This is local call,’ Satan says. ‘Hell to hell.’ ” A beat.
Tex: “As opposed to Americans, for whom hell is continental breakfast!”
Svetlana inhales her cigarette, crushes it out.
“Horrible leaders get elected around the world every day. Now for the first time, you know how other countries feel. Get over yourselves.”
Andie is cutting and sorting figs like a madwoman. “The midterm elections. It’s all about—”
Svetlana: “You’re spoiled in California! If you open your fridge and food is there, revolution is not going to happen.”
Carol suddenly bursts into tears. Her dog starts yapping. I am looking for a Bolivian to drink myself into.
Shouts erupt.
Charlie and Jerry are arguing, heatedly, about grilling.
Jerry: “Michael Pollan says that’s exactly where you shouldn’t place the coals—”
Charlie yells back: “Michael Pollan? Are you kidding? That’s some kind of fucked-up Williamsburg shit!”
“What’s that smell?” Julia asks suddenly.
“What smell?” I ask.
Andie looks at Julia intently. “It’s like . . . smoky.”
“Burning? Is something burning?” Julia asks.
“Oh my God!” Carol screams suddenly, in a high-pitched voice. “Fire!” Immediately, Mr. Pimpernel’s yapping turns into shrieking, as though he himself is being spitted on a hot skewer.
And indeed, there is crackling, smoldering, small orange flames flicker from the carpet of dead leaves in our yard—the perfect summer kindling.
Everyone now is screaming and tumbling toward the BBQ area—except for Carol, who is trying to rush inside the house with her dog. . . . But she has so many complicated bags and satchels, now a water bottle is rolling, a vial of pills has splattered open. . . . “Call 911!” she screams. “Call 911!”
My phone is God knows where, so I step into the kitchen to try the landline. Because we get so many robocalls, it’s disconnected. “Where’s the power cord?” I yell. “Charlie? Where’s the cord?”
Bradford is—what? He is spraying his beer all over a bouquet of flames, hopping back and forth on his feet as though it were a tribal dance.
“Dude! Don’t do that. That only makes it worse!” Jerry yells at him.
“A blanket! What about a blanket?” Tex exclaims, rushing toward the flames with—
“No!” I scream. “Not that blanket! That’s my grandmother’s!”
Svetlana has her head thrown back and is cackling like a witch: “HAHAHAHAHA! The American apocalypse! Bombs burst in midair!” She lifts her iPhone and begins to take selfies of herself, fire in the back.
The howl of fire trucks begins— Neighbors gather and look over our fence— If only swim diapers would have cut it! Worst BBQ ever!
A Very Hindu Audit
IN THE MAILBOX. A thick 8½" × 11"-sized letter from the IRS.
Tearing it open, I see it’s an Official Summons. There’s a swirl of letters and numbers and line items. I feel seasick. The IRS claims some entity named “Sandra Loh” owes $5,000 in back taxes from 2015. The IRS is going to disallow an extra $25,000 in business expenses—$25,000, is that what I claimed? They’re adding a hefty penalty, multiplied by 597 days or weeks—
Bottom line: The IRS wants $34,000.
I have ten days to respond.
The knees buckle. I grasp the counter. Feel for my phone. Dial my Bears. Three rings, then there are the telltale tritones: one-two-three! “This number has been disconnected.”
No. I type an emergency e-mail. A second. A third. PLEASE RESPOND IMMEDIATELY!!! Nothing.
In disbelief, I drive to my tax accountants’ Glendale Spanish palace. Something’s amiss. There’s the flutter of plastic tarping. Distant whine of a sander. The windows are open. Workmen are hammering. I peer in. Through the front window, where Jacques’s desk used to be, there is only dusty flooring, walls, and not a ceiling lamp but a light socket with a wire twisting out of it like on CSI.
I HAVE TO CALL Charlie’s accountant, the former child actor. “Hamm, Carruthers and Associates.”
Wow—they pick up before the second ring!
I’ve been prisoner in a CPA gulag for so many years, I’m startled to get an actual person on the phone, first try. My spirits lift a little.
Harold Hamm gets on the phone. He has a hearty, booming voice—think Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
I explain my frightening situation and he exclaims, “No problem! It’s likely just a formality. Routine. You come in and I’ll walk you through it.”
“SEE?” CHARLIE SAYS. “You’re going to be fine. Harold is great. Can I get you something while I’m up?”
Charlie is being extra nice to me, because I had forgotten that I had promised him that around this time, we would house five Hindu monks for five days.
Let’s back up.
Once a year, Charlie’s Hindu Indian mother “Amma,” whose photograph he chants to, makes a trip to Los Angeles to see her L.A. devotees. She travels with a road crew: they do all the physical labor of setting up tents, prepping ritual objects (flowers, fruit, ghee), and running a traveling bookstore.
Charlie has gradually moved from straight devotee into volunteer producer for the organization. Because typically the crew has to stay at hotels in neighboring cities, whereas our house is just five minutes away from the venue, our hosting them would be a huge spiritual boon.
“They’ll sleep in the attic,” Charlie says, “and you know the schedule they keep. They work fourteen hours a day. They’ll never be in. They eat nothing but chia seeds. Talk about low maintenance.”
It’s true: it would be hard to imagine more serene and lovely men. Picture sensitive-eyed, quiet-voiced Caucasian gentlemen ranging from thirty-two to seventy-two in gauzy white pajamas. Beards are long, hair is buzzed, wildly frizzy, or wound up in lyrical man buns/topknots. They’re the opposite of “bros.”
“Besides,” Charlie assures me, “they’ll bring good tax karma.”
HAROLD HAMM IS A large, rangy man in his seventies with a bald dome and massive cheekbones. By looks, he could have played a TV cowboy.
By some miracle, my 2015 tax return was still in the bank box under the stairwell where I left it. I slide it over to him. I fear he will open it and burst into laughter.
He glances over it, nods, and declares, “Everything looks good.”
“Really?” I cry out in—frankly—disbelief.
“Listen,” he says, “I could go with you to the audit, but in my experience we’ll be better off if you go in alone.”
“Oh, really?” I’m disappointed.
“Oh no, hone
y, if I go in,” he gestures to himself, eyebrows up, “it’ll be a pissing match with the IRS agent. Dog-eat-dog. But you, missy, with all your theater experience?” His voice drops to a silken purr. “You’re our secret weapon.”
I feel the same twinge I felt when being designated a gifted child, in first grade. He gets up from his desk and paces, thoughtful.
“An audit is a performance. If the IRS senses fear, they play on it. So when the agent talks to you, listen. Nod. Breathe. Don’t react. Don’t blink too much. Don’t rush in with extra information. You take your receipts and page through them de-li-be-ra-tely. Like so.”
Harold is clearly savoring his role as Method Acting tax audit auteur.
“Imagine you’re coming in with your props, and your motions with these props are your ‘business.’ ”
He starts making notes on yellow Post-its and sticking them all over my return. “So. Create different envelopes, for each different category, that you then label. Very simple. Meals, Travel, Gas. . . .”
“Meals, Travel, Gas,” I repeat, like a mantra.
“You’re getting it. You’ve got it!”
His voice is calming. Like some new Scientology trainee, I am feeling hypnotized into wild accounting optimism. This on-the-spectrum work is my métier; I’m going to win this; I’m going to kill this; I will get a 100 percent/A+ in tax auditry.
“To this you add any bills you have, receipts, records, a date book—”
“I’m so grateful you agreed to see me!” I burst out. “Because as I said—”
He waggles his finger: “In L.A., it’s very common for CPAs to flee without a trace. They just don’t want to do it anymore. They want to go to a beach somewhere.”
CHARLIE CASUALLY TELLS ME that Amma’s organization has sent some guidelines on how to properly house a Hindu crew, what Vedic practices, and Vastu, should be followed.
“Say what?”
“It’s totally simple,” he assures me. Men and women are supposed to sleep on separate floors and have separate bathrooms. Easy. The monks will be up in the attic on air mattresses. As my girls are spending the week with their dad, the second floor hall bathroom will be female-free. Phew.
Although we’ll rarely see them, it’s noted that the monks all follow a strict Ayurvedic diet.
“I can make curries!” Charlie exclaims, thrilled at the idea of a complicated new food project. “Slow-cooker curries!”
“But look here,” I tap the list, “aside from no meat, ‘meditation food’ also means no dairy, onions, mushrooms, garlic—”
“No garlic?” He frowns. He can barely make cinnamon toast without garlic.
“Anything that grows in the ground is supposed to be unclean. Instead of butter, you must use ghee—”
“I would use it anyway—”
“Even tofu can be ‘estrogenic.’ Oh! You know what food is perfect?”
“What?”
“The—what is it?—Asian mung bean.”
I find myself becoming oddly charmed by this project—intrigued by the challenge. Though they haven’t asked, just in case they need a bite in the morning, I create a breakfast attic “prep” station. So the boys can be blissfully separate from unclean female me and my coffee. It’s a white IKEA shelf of Whole Foods ancient grains, flaxseeds, trail mix, fruit. In the mini-fridge is rice milk, almond milk, and coconut milk. On impulse I’ve bought mini packets of raisins because it seemed they had some kind of Vedic symbol on them, as opposed to being stamped with the lowly Sun-Maid Raisins girl.
All is set.
What could go wrong?
“NAMASTE! NAMASTE!” Julien, Peter, Scott, and Shakti put their hands together and bow. They carry in their duffle bags from three large white cargo vans temporarily parked in our driveway. They are all here except Tavasha, the head monk, an intense thirtysomething man with waist-length hair. He is traveling tonight to Ojai with Amma for a special moon celebration, though his bag is being brought in.
Charlie shyly offers them some Ayurvedic Asian mung bean curry, which he went to fair lengths to make. However, as predicted, no one can stay to eat, as they need to prep a meditation site for the early-morning (6 a.m.?) session.
And off they go.
“Well, that was easy,” I say.
Charlie looks a little disappointed, but we eat some of the Asian mung bean curry. It tastes slightly like mucus, although not in a bad way. We’re in bed by ten.
Mid-dream, I hear a burst of what sounds like a sea of monks chanting—“manga, manga, manga”—over a very lo-fi radio.
I look at the clock. It’s 3:00 a.m.
“Charlie,” I whisper.
“What?” he rolls over.
“Manga, manga, manga—” Twenty seconds later, it stops.
“What was that?” I whisper.
“I don’t know.”
Silence again. I drift off.
And then it starts again—“manga, manga, manga” . . . I roll over to look at the clock. 3:15.
Then again, it stops.
“I think it’s some kind of cell phone alarm,” Charlie says, in wonder.
In Tavasha’s bag, we realize. Tavasha, who is in Ojai. He notoriously never picks up his phone. Now we know why—it’s not always on his corporeal self.
“It’s probably for 3 a.m. meditation,” Charlie says. “Amma says that’s the perfect time.”
“3 a.m.? When do they sleep?”
“Who needs sleep? I find it relaxing, don’t you?” Charlie says, hugging me, although he may in fact be gently squeezing me into submission, like a boa constrictor.
So this continues. Lulled by the Ayurvedic Asian mung bean stew, I eventually drop off into my own meditation. In my case, it’s a dream where I’m pulling some kind of rickshaw through India, with Judi Dench on my back in full beekeeper regalia eating Sun-Maid Raisins.
In the morning, as my daughters’ bathroom shower vigorously thrums (monks shower for a long time—perhaps it’s their only allowed physical pleasure in the day?), I pad downstairs to get coffee.
In the middle of the living room, I’m startled to see Julien, standing on his head, doing his morning yoga.
In the kitchen, Scott is tending to some smelly tea he’s brewing. Peter is preparing a small flotilla of avocado toasts. The avocados are his, but the toast is our regular Oroweat bread from the basket. Hm.
Apparently Shakti consumes nothing. “As a breatharian, I live on air. I don’t need food,” he is saying, his calm smile framed by gray Jesus hair. A native of Portland, Shakti could be 65 or 35—if the 35-year-old had not slept for decades and long had his face encased in hot wax. “I get my energy from sunlight, man. It’s Prana.”
Charlie sees me and spins around.
“Good morning! Here’s your coffee!” he sings out, like a cat caught with a bird. Or in this case, a cat caught in his own new personal set of white floaty man pajamas.
Scott turns to me and bows, offering me a pear.
“It is prasad, blessed by Amma, for your generosity. Namaste.”
“Oh,” I say, flattered.
And within the hour, thankfully, crunch of gravel, the three vans roll out.
With a sigh, I sit at the dining room table. I spread out my notes from my can-do meeting with Harold Hamm.
I look at my notes, and the return, and the Post-its, and realize . . . something is not clicking.
Without my inspiring mentor, my guru, my very own Tony Robbins of accounting, I don’t actually truly understand the envelope system. The problem is, there isn’t just one set of categories. There are two and three sets, from various sections of the return. If you mapped them out they would make intersecting Venn diagrams. So one receipt might actually want to live in three, or three and a half, different envelopes, possibly of different sizes. And geometries. Am I making sense to you?
I get up to fetch my records. I discover, due to the “Luz-cleaning-out-the-hallway-shelves” project, that the shelves where I’ve kept my personal records are
. . . empty.
I start to hyperventilate.
“Calm down,” I tell myself, as though I were that lady in Gaslight. “You can print out your United VISA miles statement for the whole year. In categories!”
After frantically typing in three sets of passwords I cannot remember (high school mascot: “Victor Viking”?), I am in! 2015! There it is! Bam! The printer starts printing. It stops. Why? The tiny Wi-Fi icon appears to be straining.
In slow motion, I scan the room and notice many open laptops around me, next to small piles of trail mix and nuts and other squirrel-type items.
The monks.
I make a muffled screaming sound.
Mr. White Floaty Pajamas—Professor Moonbeam—floats by, conspicuously sipping some smelly tea.
“Can I help you?” Charlie asks.
“Yes!” I exclaim. “Please!”
“What can I do?”
I throw my hands up.
“If I could describe what to do, I would. That is the problem. I can’t even get my mind around this thing’s gestalt.” My voice is skreeking. “It’s like this, this thing! With envelopes! And Post-its!!”
“Relax,” Charlie intones, illumined from within by pure sunlit Prana. “It’s an audit. No big deal.”
“A $34,000 tax bill is no big deal?”
“They’re just trying to scare you,” he says, waving his white-sleeved arm like a butterfly. “These IRS guys are losers. They’ve got nothing better to do.”
“How are they ‘losers’?” I wonder. “They actually work for a living.” Unlike many men currently sleeping in this building, I think, but do not say.
“They’ll be amazed if you even show up,” Charlie scoffs. “That’s what Bradford says. You shove a box of receipts at them and say, ‘It’s your problem!’ ”
Oh my God.
Here are the various stages of Help I Would Appreciate from My Partner:
One: You will say, “There, there, I’ll handle it,” hand me an icy cocktail, and concierge it all for me.
Two: You will murmur, “There, there, you can do it, you’re hella’ smart,” while handing me freshly sharpened pencils and Post-its. As well as a cocktail.
The Madwoman and the Roomba Page 14