Stay Interesting

by Jonathan Goldsmith

  Then the bedroom door slowly opened.

  In the sliver of light from the cracked door, I could see that Grace had changed into her nightgown. She stood in the doorway. Without saying a word, she walked to the bed and slipped in beside me. I could feel her bare feet against mine. Her skin was warm and soon I could feel all of her against me. I kissed her on the forehead. I pulled her closer and held her tight for a long time, just embracing her lovingly.

  That night, Grace told me the truth. There had never been a car accident. It was her cover story. She had been cut up with a knife at the hands of an old boyfriend. His name was Reno. He was a hit man, a contract murderer, a detail she learned only after she met him. She never told me why he took a knife to her cheek. Maybe it’s just as well. Months after the attack, she was terrified. Reno was to go to trial soon for some of the many charges against him. Prosecutors were looking for witnesses. She would be subpoenaed. Reno could chase her down, even in Bodie. She worried that she might never escape him.

  I positioned her head on my shoulder in the bed, stroking her hair softly, slowly easing her to sleep. I closed my eyes, listening to the howl of the old windows rattling in the snowstorm, thinking about the ghosts in the houses down Main Street, the moans of old miners, thinking about Reno. What kind of name was Reno? It was like the name of an old miner who had come to this brothel a hundred years ago, looking for gold. Who cuts up a girl like Grace with a knife? And what in the hell was I doing here? Was all this really happening? The drama felt more like it belonged in the gold-rush days of Bodie. Was Reno really a reincarnated ghost of an old thug in this town? Was Grace the same, maybe the spirit of an old brothel girl, a vestige of another time and place whom I now had wrapped up in my arms? If they were ghosts why could I see them? Had I become a ghost too, in returning to Bodie? Or were my mind and the bourbon playing a devious trick on me at this altitude and in the bedroom of the old cathouse?

  I reached out to touch her again. Was she real? She turned to me and I could feel her warmth and breathing against my chest. I caressed her face and placed a kiss on her damaged cheek. As I did, a tear crawled its way to me. I still remember its taste.

  • • •

  Waking up, I hadn’t expected to find her beside me. Surely Grace was an invention of my mind, the result of too much drink and the ghost town winds. But she was there, huddled under the flannel sheets. I slipped out of the bed, went downstairs, and looked for Rogers. His ranger truck was gone. I looked outside. The sun was out and the snow was dazzling.

  “Want to see the library?” Grace asked, inching down the stairs in bare feet.

  “Sure.”

  “We can use the snowshoes,” she said, and after getting ready we laced up the pairs she and her father kept by the door. I grabbed my camera from my pack and followed her out the front door into the sunny fields and snow.

  I had trouble keeping up with Grace. She was different today, light and wound up with energy. She knew every building, every backstory. We went into the schoolhouse, the courthouse, then finally the Bodie Library, her favorite place. We looked around, flipping through the pages and maps that the miners had left behind.

  Scanning the old books and local histories, I saw a familiar collection of works by one of my favorite authors. It was a large volume of William Shakespeare’s plays, bound and printed in another era. I ran my finger along the weathered spine. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was my favorite. I had performed scenes from it in class as a young actor.

  Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

  And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

  Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste—

  Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.

  I was delighted to stumble on such a treasure. In this dead library, such gold was a waste.

  “Could I keep this?” I said, forgetting all about the Curse of Bodie and the history of bad things that had befallen those who removed objects from the ghost town.

  “Sure,” she said, and led us back out into the snow, now familiar to me. We kept moving down the main street where the old Chinatown must have been, and down past the site of the old racetrack, perhaps impossible to imagine in the dunes of snow that covered the town. We kept on going in our snowshoes, leaving tracks to the outskirts of the town. I reached into my jacket pocket for my camera to take a picture of the old town. From here, we could see Bodie as it was in the late 1870s, as the miners flooded into this boomtown of sin and fast money. I removed one of my snowshoes and held it up, angling the camera lens through the webbing and leather straps. Adjusting the exposure, I snapped a few images, never wanting to forget this moment and specialness I came to feel for Grace.

  We all had dinner again, eating around the wood stove like a family. Soon the bourbon was gone and so was Rogers, retiring to his quarters. The snow had stopped, and through the windows of the brothel the town and valley were cast in a soft, surreal haze.

  “How would you like to snowshoe through the town under a full moon?” Grace asked.

  “Let’s go.” And we were off again into the old town, watching our reflections in the windows of old saloons and brothels, so delighted to enjoy the isolation of the abandoned town, not a soul to distract us from each other.

  I’ll always remember the last night we spent together in Bodie, holding her as she slept, knowing it would be the last time I would see her. Relationships that bloom under special conditions like those are never perennial. When you try to put them back together, the pieces never fit the second time around. At a different location, the feelings falter and disappear. In the morning, I kissed her on the forehead and disappeared down the stairs.

  Sitting near the stove in the old brothel, Rogers was waiting for me with a steaming cup of coffee. It was time to go. There was nothing more to say. He walked me to my truck in silence and waited until I climbed up into the driver’s seat.

  “See you next year?” he said.

  “I’ll get the bourbon,” I said. But we both knew it might not happen. I felt like I had been in Bodie forever. Maybe I had.

  • • •

  In my library, on a far corner of a shelf, next to a few old fishing books my father gave me and several works of poetry written by friends, I still have the collection of Shakespeare’s works that I took with me from Bodie, bound up like an old volume of the Talmud. I can’t say that strange things happened or misfortune befell me after I left the town with my stolen book. But I carry a certain sweet pain of the wonderful closeness I shared with a stranger and the sorrow of never seeing her again. I was cursed by Bodie, indeed.

  Not All Good Guys Are Good

  I’ve always been fascinated by the applications of folk medicine in the modern world, and I have had the good fortune to befriend a number of shamans, who not only have taught me their own versions of witchcraft but have opened me up to understanding powers and wisdom at the core of natural healing. It is not the body. It is the mind.

  I heard tales of healing from my grandfather Alexander, who lived with the Navajo during the Great Depression and learned their methods of healing. In college, I read Man’s Unconquerable Mind, in which author Gilbert Highet talks about how we use only a small percentage of our mental powers. He illustrated under hypnosis the incredible feats we can accomplish. Years later, I studied hypnosis myself and learned how much one can expand the potential of mental possibility. I was mesmerized by the feats of the believers, the swamis, the monks, and the holy men who were capable of lowering their body temperature, heart and respiration rates and enduring extremes of cold with no adverse effects.

  My father also taught me about the powers of the mind. He once told me a story about a guy who had a terrible fear of snakes. He was bitten by a snake one day, and he was convinced that he was going to die. And he did. Later, they found out the bite was from a garter snake. Just a common snake—wasn’t even venomous. But
the guy died anyway. Scared himself to death.

  And then, of course, there was One-Eyed Betty, with her voodoo. It didn’t work for me. But it must have for her, because she kept doing it long after I left home.

  I met Dr. Benji in Manila, on my first trip to the Philippines. I was shooting a film called Green Eyes. One minute we were in the jungle, so primitive it was as if we’d stepped back in time. The next moment, we’d be at a strip mall, surrounded by hypermodern billboards. Many of them advertised the mysterious practice of psychic surgery. We saw it advertised between television shows too.

  Apparently, these Filipino “doctors” had the magic power to open up the body cavity and excise diseased tissue with only their minds. They were mentalists, performing these heavy-duty operations with smoldering herb-infused cotton and energetic incantations from the Bible. It was a phenomenon, and airplane loads of tourists were flying into Manila from around the world to see these famous psychic surgeons, one of which was Dr. Benji.

  I was staying at the Conrad Manila, which was located in the southern part of the city, right across the street from Barrio Fiesta. I needed only a few minutes, perhaps less, to fall in love with the raw chaos and primal charms of Manila. The sounds of the city were unlike anything you could hear in an American city, a place that felt alive and vibrant and tuned in. In the morning, I woke to the lyrical sounds of the muezzin chanting through a tinny loudspeaker and watched the Filipinos doing their daily tai chi in the park, practicing that balletic exercise of focus, routine, and rhythm.

  The noise was constant. The cacophony of traffic and confusion was a symphony of cheap car horns, zipping motor scooters, and the engines of jeepneys, the American jeeps that had been left on the island after World War II and had become works of art. The Filipinos painted them over in colors of bright orange, hot pink, and parrot green. I felt so at ease, devouring the lumpia, which is a Filipino egg roll, and the crispy pata, or fatty pork fried up with flour. The food was magnificent, the beer was cold, and the women were everywhere and flirtatious, coy, charming, demure, and just adoring of men.

  The filming was nonstop. We shot every day in the jungle at a place where they were building the set at Pangasinan falls for Apocalypse Now, as well as at different locations throughout the city. One night, we were doing an all-night shoot in Manila proper. The location was the American embassy, and the producers had gone around the city to wrangle up Caucasians so we could have enough extras in the scene to duplicate an accurate formal affair.

  I had a leading part. Before we started shooting, I met the extra who was to play my girlfriend. Her name was Nancy Price. She was from Las Vegas, an attractive blonde, and we filmed and shot throughout the night as boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe the artificial intimacy led to real feelings, or perhaps the romance of foreigners living in an exotic place like Manila made it easy to enjoy a quick rapport.

  I was curious about how Nancy wound up in Manila.

  “I’m studying reflexology,” she told me. “My father is a reflexologist in LA. And I’m actually here studying with one of the leading psychic surgeons.”

  That was all I had to hear. I now had a connection into psychic surgery, and I started to pepper Nancy with questions. How did it all work?

  “Oh, it’s very real,” she said, explaining that there were no knives. Just the power of prayer and concentration.

  I had no reason to doubt her. Nancy was intelligent and articulate. She was here as a practicing professional. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to be healed too. I’d had stomach problems since my arrivals in the Phillipines and asked her if I could witness one of the surgeries.

  “Let me see what I can do,” she said.

  We shot all night. The next day I was supposed to visit Tokyo after getting a few hours of sleep. But as I got into bed, the phone rang. It was Nancy.

  “Dr. Benji is coming to my compound,” she said. “Would you like to come and witness?”

  I got out of bed, anxious to see firsthand the much-touted doctor. I hopped in a taxi and headed for the compound. At the time, Manila was under a state of martial law, and armed guards with submachine guns and less-than-friendly stares were everywhere. It was a chaotic time in the Philippines.

  When the taxi arrived, I got my first look at Nancy’s compound, which resembled a military fort. Standing post outside was a guard—armed, of course. Nearby were sandbags piled on top of one another, and other guards walked the perimeter clutching automatic weapons.

  I was expected. One of the guards escorted me inside. It was a two-story compound, chickens and all. The climate was scorchingly hot and nothing was insulated; most people couldn’t afford air conditioners. The hum of overhead fans was everywhere. The place was upscale jungle: bamboo, reeds, palm fronds, batik, some carved wood objects. As Nancy walked me upstairs to her room, I noticed that she looked even better than she had the long night before.

  “Would you like some tea?” she said.

  “Yes, I would. Thanks very much.”

  She sent her houseboy to fetch it—it seemed like all but the poor had their own houseboys. They were available for very little money. Many were excellent cooks and nannies as well. Male or female, there was no difference, and sometimes it was hard to tell which was which.

  Her man poured the hot tea. I held the delicate porcelain cup and started to sip: it was aromatic and delicious, with a taste I couldn’t quite identify.

  “Dr. Benji should be here in a few hours,” she said. “When he arrives, I’ll ask him if you can witness the surgery.”

  “Great,” I said. “Thanks so much for this, Nancy. Really.”

  I was drowsy. Nancy was looking better and better.

  “Would you like a treatment?” she asked. Sounded just fine to me.

  “Sure,” I said, and began to remove my clothes down to my underwear. There was no table, so I lay facedown on the only bed in the room: hers. She straddled me, and I could feel the softness of her breasts graze my head. I enjoyed her considerable skill. I told her I would like to return the favor. I always felt an obligation to give back. Her magic continued, as did my fantasies, but I was starting to fall asleep. What a wonderful way to remember Manila, which I was leaving in a few days. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was going to score.

  But then the compound was overcome with commotion. I could hear the scampering of feet in the hallways, and loud chattering broke my reverie. The honored guest had arrived.

  “Dr. Benji’s here! Dr. Benji’s here!” she said. And she stopped the treatment. So much for my luck.

  The door of the room swung open. A small Filipino man in a short-sleeved barong entered the room. He was very slender, with thick glasses. This was the famous Dr. Benji.

  I got up from the bed and greeted him. In my underwear.

  Nancy told him that I was an American here visiting to make a film and that I was very interested in psychic surgery and the power to heal others.

  “He would like to witness,” she said.

  “Okay, okay,” Dr. Benji said. “You witness.”

  “How did you get this gift?” I asked him.

  “When the Japanese occupied my country, we fled to the hills,” he said. Without access to medical care, Dr. Benji and others used their abilities to cure diseases and sicknesses.

  “Some of us were imbued with this power to heal,” he said. “It’s a blessing. I’ve been able to help many people.”

  I followed them into a larger adjoining room. It was filled with bamboo and pictures of fish. The only piece of furniture was a bed.

  The first patient had a serious problem. He was a young Filipino man who had come from the provinces with his parents and had developed a cyst on his neck. The young man lay down on the bed, sweating profusely. He was in pain. He was shaking. His parents were very upset as well.

  From the bed, the young man looked up at me.

&
nbsp; “I have cancer,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I fix,” Dr. Benji answered.

  “How are you going to fix?” I asked. I looked at the cyst. It was a large, ugly growth that had formed on this poor man’s neck.

  “I remove,” he said simply.

  He then looked over at Nancy and sent her to the bathroom. I looked around at the poor parents, who had come here with their sick son. If cancerous, the cyst was potentially fatal. Without complete removal in a proper operating theater, the prognosis was bad.

  Then I heard the prayers. It was Nancy. She had come back from the bathroom, chanting passages from a Bible—who knows which one—and holding a smoldering ball of cotton, a little plastic blue bowl, and a blue washcloth. She passed the objects and flaming cotton ball to Dr. Benji, who started wailing to the heavens in Tagalog.

  Dr. Benji approached the young man, who was clearly in awe of the whole scene, the smoldering cotton, and the wailing sounds of prayer. Dr. Benji put his hands over the young man and proceeded to perform his “miracles.”

  “Ah, you have cancer,” he said. “I take out. No problem. We fix good.”

  Dr. Benji turned the young man over on his stomach, and I angled myself to get into a good position to watch his hands and witness the operation. And as I watched his manipulations, all of a sudden, I was looking into what I perceived to be the spine of a human being. Dr. Benji made an opening in what I thought was the body of this young man. I couldn’t believe it.

  What the hell did Nancy put in that tea? I thought. I was careful not to take my eyes off Dr. Benji, who reached into what appeared to be the body cavity and made some spastic, manipulative movements. As he did this, the cotton ball smoldered. He kept on chanting mumbo jumbo from the Bible. And then he pulled out what looked like a piece of liver with some entrails and a little blood on it. He then dropped it into the little plastic blue bowl that Nancy had brought up. Dr. Benji took the smoldering cotton and rubbed it over what appeared to be an opening in the young man’s body while Nancy took the little bowl with the excised tissue and disappeared into the bathroom.