The 37th mandala : a novel

by Laidlaw, Marc

  She couldn't answer. Her eyes were streaming, and her head felt as if it were shooting straight up through the roof of the house. Tucker scooped up the wine bottle by its neck and passed it to her. She knew she shouldn't; she even hesitated for a minute. Dope was one thing, but alcohol was another entirely, and she'd made a deal with Michael. No drinking. Pot, okay. But no alcohol.

  But it wasn't the first time she'd broken her little rule up here with Tucker, and what the fuck, she was coughing her lungs out. She needed something wet. It didn't really take her long to make the decision; she put the bottle to her mouth and swallowed. One swig was all she needed. It was all she'd ever needed.

  A tight little ball in her stomach uncoiled as soon as she drank; it eased her coughing jag instantly, but then she felt embarrassed because her bowels turned to water and she already knew the condition of Tucker's toilet. No way would she use it; but she couldn't go back downstairs. Not yet. She sat very still, holding the bong and the bottle. After a few seconds, she took another swallow. The tension eased. Her guts stopped cramping. She laid back her head and shut her eyes.

  She could hear Tucker moving around; he switched the music off and slapped a tape into his VCR.

  "So where's Michael? Did you tell me?"

  "Fucking Michael," she said dreamily, peering out between her lashes. "He's doing his stuff again."

  "Goddamn, that guy's a regular devil worshipper."

  "It's not devil worship, Tucker. He doesn't believe in that shit. I'm not sure myself exactly what it is, but it's not the devil."

  "I don't care. All the heavy metal bands, they're into that Satan shit. It's cool with me."

  "It's fucking lame," Lenore pronounced. She felt the jug in her lap, cool and comforting, a nice round heaviness.

  "You like that stuff?" he said. "Pretty good, huh?"

  "Mmm-hm."

  "I'll give you some, okay? Same deal as last time?"

  "Mm-hm, sure."

  "I got a Baggie all ready to sell, but you can have it if you're sure. ..."

  She was sleepy, drifting. Thoughts were coming to her, thoughts like feelings, drifting up inside her till they burst at the surface of her mind.

  "You want a beer?"

  At that moment, they both heard a bell ringing downstairs, sharp and pure, penetrating the walls of the house. As the tone faded slowly into inaudibility, she was sure she heard Michael chanting in a deep voice.

  Tucker laughed. "There he goes! Let me get you that beer, baby."

  She tried to say no, she had the bottle, but the words didn't exactly come out in a hurry, and by then Tucker was putting a cold can against her cheek.

  "Shoot, honey, you must be feeling pretty good."

  Realizing that she was grinning, she opened her eyes. "Oh, yeah." Laughing.

  "You go right ahead and pop that. I'll load you up another hit."

  Lenore was laughing hard, and Tucker had the music turned way up again and he was laughing too, and the video was going but there wasn't any sound from that. Then she knocked over the beer in her lap and reached down to pick it up again, but she wasn't in the big old chair at all anymore, she was sitting on the couch, and there were a bunch of cans scattered around that hadn't been there before, so many she wasn't sure which one she'd been drinking from. The bottle was there; she remembered it like an old friend, wistfully, since it was empty now; and she felt like she was surfacing for a big gulp of air, but then ... and then ... she looked up and Tucker was standing by the VCR, stepping back from the TV looking over at her with his goofy ugly grin missing a couple teeth and she could see on the screen why he hadn't bothered with the sound, since there would have been nothing to hear but moaning. He'd slipped in one of his porno tapes. She found her can and swallowed but it was empty, but that didn't matter because Tucker had read her mind and was pulling the top off another. And then ... and then ...

  And then his arm was around her, and she thought she'd been vomiting because her throat burned and her mouth was sour, but she couldn't remember it. She opened her eyes and moaned, and sure enough Tucker had his arm thrown across her chest and he was son of helping her, but really more urging her to lie back down. When she realized what was happening she started to fight him, she threw herself forward, but Tucker got rougher then and grabbed her shoulders and shoved her back down on his bed. They were in his room, and what bothered her most was that it all looked sort of familiar, as if she had seen it before in exactly this way but never remembered till now, and would probably forget it all over again—which scared her more than anything that was actually happening yet.

  "Tucker!" she said. "Get off!"

  He pulled back, looking hurt, as if surprised that she would really object. "Hey, girl. ..."

  She tried to crawl backward. "What are you doing?"

  "What do you think? You said same deal as last time. You want the weed or not?"

  "The weed?" She stood up, swayed, stumbled but caught herself on the doorframe.

  "Well, there's the rent too, but I wasn't gonna get into that yet."

  "What, were you gonna come down later and try'n collect?"

  "Lenore ..."He shook his head, coming back off the bed. "Shit. Don't do this."

  "I gotta go." She turned out into the hall, or thought she had. The edge of the doorframe slammed into her face. She stood there with her eyes closed, holding very still but spinning anyway. Just then, from downstairs, she heard the bell again. Michael was finishing up. He could probably hear them up here; he might assume it was Scarlet and Tucker; he was good at wishful thinking. She had to get away—somewhere she could straighten out.

  Tucker was right on her, putting a finger to his lips. "Shush, you hear him down there?"

  "I hear him. We're both fucking idiots."

  "Well, baby, takes two to you-know."

  She swerved away, free now. Hoping her clothes were all on, since she didn't want to have to come back for anything later, she made her way to the kitchen, then out the door into the cold. Her coat.

  "Hey, girl, don't forget this." Tucker had it; he was right behind her, looking stone sober. "Now don't be mad at me. You're a pretty little thing, I'm only doing what comes natural. Besides, I thought we had an agreement."

  She snatched the coat from him.

  "I'll hold onto that Baggie for a while," he called. "In case you change your mind. But I can't wait too much longer for the rent. You tell your old devil-man I said so, okay?"

  She hardly knew she was going down the steps; her kitchen was empty but she flew on past it. Somehow she got off the driveway and into the bushes, where she had to fight her way through tangles to the Cutlass. The Cutlass was unlocked. She got in and started the engine, put the heater on high, and sat there shaking as if with cold, though really she just felt numb. Same deal as last time, he'd said. What last time? Why couldn't she remember? What had she done last time? What the fuck was wrong with her mind? She closed her eyes and felt herself spinning as if the car were out of control on a patch of black ice. She put her head down, gripped the steering wheel, and held on tight.

  3

  The Sisterhood of Incarnate Light had paid Derek's flat speaking fee up front, before the program. Only now that the show was over, his lecture delivered, did he discover they wanted to cheat him out of his part of the take. That wasn't quite how the Sisters put it, but Derek knew their scam, time-honored no matter how New Age.

  "Your talk was certainly valuable, Mr. Crowe," one was telling him now, trying to lubricate his goodwill with her buttery Southern tones while another Sister went to enlist the aid of a superior, "but we're a nonprofit organization. We're all volunteers here."

  Derek, while seething, was unwilling to waste his rage on an underling. "You might have volunteered to bake cookies and tear tickets," he said, "but I'm the one who filled this hall tonight, on the strength of my research and hard work, and I did not volunteer."

  Fill was an exaggeration, but one he did not linger over. The only reason the hall h
ad come even close to capacity was because the Sisters had wisely rented a smallish auditorium, something suited to the showing of a midnight movie. Even so, he had no doubt the Sisters had never drawn such a crowd.

  "I appreciate that but—"

  "You took ten dollars a head and I expect my cut."

  "But that was a donation—it goes toward development of the Incarnation Institute." She shook her head and changed her tack, as if shame would work better than a bid for sympathy. "None of our other speakers asked any kind of fee."

  Derek had to laugh. "You mean Dr. Spondle doesn't charge through the nose for his endless discourses on Atlantean astrology?"

  The Sister looked slighted. "Everett Spondle is a very popular speaker here. His wife is one of our founders."

  "You work it out." Derek turned away.

  Two old women stood nearby, smiling in his direction and waiting to be noticed. He practiced a form of tunnel vision while wondering how to turn their irritating presence to his advantage. They'd been chatting about him for several minutes, just within his hearing: "Should I?—no, you go first—oh no, I'm too shy—he looks just like his pictures—oh, he doesn't look at all like I imagined—you can almost see the mysteries in his eyes."

  Such women, all alike, were a redundant human type replicated endlessly across the continent, right down to their pride in how unique they were.

  My fans, he thought.

  He normally despised such creatures, but tonight they provided a welcome opportunity to demonstrate why the Sisters had attracted any crowd at all. They had come not to gather Atlantean wool but to glean the wisdom of Derek Crowe, occultist and author, direct from the source.

  Both women carried books under their arms—books he'd once cringed at the sight of, despite being their author. He was used to them now. They were his stock-in-trade, the secret of his success—such as it was.

  "Would you ladies like an autograph?" he said, snubbing the whining Sister. She went off, presumably to help find the superior who had yet to materialize.

  "If you would, Mr. Crowe/' said one, leaning forward as if to offer her wattles for inspection. She held a stack of his books. He reached for the sculpted silver fountain pen he kept in his shirt pocket—a gift from Lilith, with a small crystal ball mounted in a taloned claw at one end.

  The other said, in rather harsh mountain tones, "We loved your talk, Mr. Crowe, it was so penetrating? Lately I do feel the—the ones you spoke of—or I think I do ... the mandalas? I believe they're watching over us, you know, like guardian angels?"

  Every stammered phrase was open-ended, hesitant. He didn't think this was entirely the product of the local inflection, which twisted up the last word to make even the plainest statement sound like a question. No doubt this sad woman was used to meeting ridicule or contempt when bringing up these subjects. But Derek smiled sublimely, her instant confidant.

  "I understand you perfectly," he said. "It's not easy to be open to such perceptions, is it? It can be a tremendous burden on the chosen one, the sensitive soul. But we must accept these gifts and put them to work for the spiritual improvement, and not the impoverishment, of humanity."

  The second lady turned to the first. "Isn't that marvelous? I find such beautiful messages in your books, Mr. Crowe. So many of the mystics these days are concerned with darkness and evil and casting out everything they don't understand?" She reached out and lightly tapped him on the wrist. "But I think you must be blessed. You're a channel for the higher things."

  "I'm not even that," he said with all humility. "I am merely their secretary." He pretended to jot on the air with his pen. "I take notes."

  The women's eyes widened. "Now, that Miz A? The one who channeled the messages? Has she spoken any more? Do the mandalas ever get back in touch?"

  Derek put a finger to his lip. "Some things shouldn't be spoken of. I hesitate to upset a delicate balance ..."

  "Oh, I'm so sorry!"

  "... but yes, they do continue to speak through her occasionally, and they have hinted there may be more revelations in the future. More teachings."

  "Another book, you mean? Oh, how wonderful!"

  "Well, I hope so. Their visits have meant a great deal to me. More than I can ever put across in words. Thank you so much." He finished signing off the last of her copies and cleared his throat to interrupt her before she could start in again. He turned his full attention, and an apologetic smile, to the meeker woman.

  "Now, to whom should I inscribe these?"

  "Oh, goodness, to Opal," she said. "Thank you very much."

  "That's a lovely name. Very charming."

  He scrawled "For Opal" across one of her books, a dog-eared copy of Your Psychognostic Powers! That exclamation mark still made him wince whenever he saw it. As he closed the book, his reflection swam up through the coils of a silver-foil spiral embossed on the fluorescent orange cover. It was his first book, and he could never regard it without a tiny prick of shame, no matter how callused and scabbed.

  "I can't help noticing that you have all but my latest," he said.

  She turned away, one hand to her mouth, blushing like a schoolgirl. "I'm so embarrassed. I've been meaning to buy a copy, it's just—"

  "Never fear, it's on sale near the door. I'll give you a special dedication."

  She looked even more embarrassed now. At forty-five dollars for the deluxe edition—all he had carried—he couldn't blame her. Neither could he resist rubbing her nose in her foolishness.

  Taking her by the elbow, he helped her across the room to a table staffed by one of the volunteer Sisters. Her friend tagged along with nothing to say. Copies of the deluxe, collector's first edition of The Mandala Rites, in its red cloth binding, were stacked in a small pile; all but a few had sold, he was happy to see. Acquired at cost from Phantom Press, which had arranged with his regular publisher to produce the special limited edition, the books turned a good profit.

  He opened one of the remaining copies to the title page and started to write across the top, "Dearest Opal:"

  "Oh, no, I really couldn't ask you—"

  "You enjoyed my talk, didn't you?"

  "Well, I—"

  "The mandalas will open your life to powers beyond your imagining. My other books simply lead up to this. They opened me to the mandalas—brought me to their attention, so to speak. This is the text I was chosen to bring to public consciousness. I'm sure you won't be disappointed."

  She watched him with an expression of total despair as he finished signing his name below the frontispiece, an ornate red and black symbol that looked like a hood ornament from Hell. The book was full of these designs, intertwined arrow and dagger shapes enclosed in rings, somehow familiar but never quite the shapes one expected from studying traditional mandalas. Some were more reminiscent of Basque symbols or the vevers of Voudoun ritual than of Asian figures—but such familiarity was an illusion. They were wholly unique. That was a big selling point. It was also his chief weapon against the Club Mandala sleazebags, who had ripped off his designs for their nightclub without the slightest authorization and persisted in blithely inviting him to openings, as if he would be delighted to see his creations strobing on the walls for all the world to see.

  Angry at the thought of the money he was about to waste on attorneys, he snapped the volume shut and set it in the woman's tissue-soft palms. For a moment he trapped her hands between his own, holding them clasped around the book.

  "I hope you enjoy it," he said. "This lovely Sister will be happy to take your check."

  "Oh!" Her eyes lit up with relief as she found her escape. "You take checks! I'm so glad."

  But he was already spinning away, certain he heard urgent whispering behind him; and yes, here she came, the Valkyrie who spearheaded the Sisterhood of Incarnate Light. An enormous pale woman with long colorless hair and beet-bright cheeks, watery blue eyes, and no lipstick, she came rubbing pudgy hands together—pudgy but powerful. She could easily break his neck in the crook of her elbow.
Well, it wouldn't come to that. She was smiling, still off balance, quite confident of correcting this little problem—and at his expense.

  "Mr. Crowe? I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to introduce myself earlier. I'm Cerridwen Dunsinane." She was out of breath from hurrying to fight this threat to her nonprofits. Not a trace of the local accent. No doubt a sworn enemy of the local Baptists.

  He bowed slightly at the waist, harking back to a time of courtly manners. Such gestures always seemed to please these social anachronisms, who, while remaining champions for Equal Rights, had retreated from the complexities of the modern world into an idealized fantasy of "medieval" times, from which the Black Death and other discomforts of that age had been conveniently purged. Her real name was probably something like Carrie Dunn.

  "Ms. Dunsinane," he said. "A pleasure."

  "Why don't we find a quieter place?" She nodded toward a door near the entrance to the meeting hall, and he followed her into a small room where the Sisters shed their street clothes and locked up their purses when they put on the lavender robes of their order. Cerridwen was perspiring heavily, a light mist of sweat on her lips. He found himself wanting to wipe it away like steam from a shaving mirror. Before she could summon the breath to speak, he cut off what was clearly going to be another bid for charity.

  "I gather there's been a misunderstanding," he said.

  "I know, I—"

  "Not on my part, though. It was clear in my letter of acceptance, when I agreed to do this lecture, that I take a flat fee plus a percentage of the audience."

  All this she had heard from her minions. She nodded vigorously, determined to point out some flaw in his judgment. "I know when we got your letter—and I didn't handle that myself, I have to admit, that was Sister Storm and she came down with the flu tonight—we thought it was clear that we would pay your basic fee and you would waive the percentage. This is a benefit, after all, and once we've paid for the hall, there's little enough left as it is. I know ten dollars a head may seem like a lot..."

  "I'm only asking a fragment of that."