The 37th mandala : a novel

by Laidlaw, Marc

  "Fairly well. Good practice, anyway, if I can get some larger audiences."

  Bob shrugged. "I've still got my fingers crossed, but it's hard with the New Age stuff. I can't quite convince the accountants that it's a growth industry. Eventually they'll see the figures for themselves."

  "And how are the Mandalas doing?"

  "What I've seen so far looks promising."

  Derek nodded, but he had come to expect these vague replies. Royalty checks were the real proof, and he was a long way from collecting them for this book.

  "What I really wanted to talk about is these Club Mandala people," he said.

  "Oh, yes. I've seen their posters around town."

  "They're total ripoffs."

  Maltzman squirmed almost imperceptibly. "It does sort of look that way."

  "What troubles me is that they started appearing just before the book came out. I've been trying to figure out how that's possible."

  "I take it you have some ideas."

  "Well, it looks to me like someone leaked them." He raised his eyebrows, waiting for Bob to reach the obvious conclusion.

  "Someone here?"

  "I assume you use temps in your office. Secretaries, receptionists, people who run the photocopiers for instance. People with no particular loyalty to Veritas."

  Bob looked distressed, as if Derek were attacking him personally. "I suppose it's possible. But we also sent out quite a few review copies, don't forget. And does it really matter? The fact is, the mandalas are your designs—I mean, insofar as they belong to anyone. Although I suppose the gal who dictated them could make the same claim. ..."

  "The mandalas authorized me to take possession of them, for dissemination," Derek said rapidly. Bob had asked once, half in jest, to meet "Ms. A," and Derek had responded that she insisted on anonymity. He suspected Bob had seen through this tale, but he was diplomatic in all things.

  "Anyway, you've got the rights to them. If you want to enforce those rights, you don't have to prove how your infringers got ahold of them. But part of the point of the book, I mean, what the mandalas themselves seem to want, is for the widest possible exposure. I know you're not going to make any money out of this club, but on a broader level, it will bring the mandalas to more people and expand that many more minds."

  "There's nothing to stop them from distorting the meaning of the mandalas, though," Derek said. "To use them in a nightclub—it's offensive."

  "So ... insist on involvement. Make sure what they're doing is in line with the truth. Stay on good terms with them, Derek, and who knows—they might help you promote the book."

  Derek sipped his coffee. Obviously Maltzman wasn't going to help him ferret out the spy in Veritas. He had been hoping for evidence to intimidate the Club Mandala people when he confronted them. For the moment he was trying to avoid the expense of involving his lawyer.

  "Speaking of books," Maltzman said with a laugh, "how's the next one going?"

  Derek crossed his legs and watched the crackhead staggering away from the sandbox. "I'm still sketching out some ideas," he said. "I haven't settled on anything in particular."

  "How about that idea you pitched me a few years ago, before you came up with the mandalas?"

  Derek stared at him, feeling blank.

  "You remember, that Castaneda thing? You were going to interview that old shaman, do a book on his life, his philosophy? Study with him for a while and share his teachings? Whatever happened with that?"

  Derek swallowed. "I thought you weren't interested in him."

  "Well, at the time ... you were an unknown to us, and so was this old guy. But I think we could get up the interest now, if you could come up with the right angle. In a sense, him being unknown would be an asset—you could present him any way you want. Just as you did the mandalas. There'd be no preconceptions."

  "I'm afraid that's impossible now," Derek said. "He died before I had a chance to interview him. Anyway, I don't think it would have worked out in the end. He was rather cracked, as it happens."

  Bob looked mildly disappointed. "Oh, well. I thought that might have been a possibility if you were still in touch with him."

  "I'm afraid not."

  He noticed Bob glancing at his watch and was suddenly eager to end the meeting. "Do you have to be somewhere?"

  "I have a meeting in about five minutes, but that's all right."

  "I won't keep you. I just wanted to get your thoughts about these Club Mandala people."

  "It's really up to you, Derek. Obviously I'd never encourage anyone to get involved in a lawsuit."

  "No, I'd rather take care of it quietly myself."

  "I hope you do. Good luck." They shook hands. "Give me a call when you've got your ideas in order. It'd be nice to get something in the pipeline, keep up the momentum."

  "Yes," Derek said. He started to turn away.

  "Oh, one more thing," Bob said, "I almost forgot. I thought I'd bounce the idea off you. What about a deck of mandala cards? You know, a kind of Tarot? Full color, nice stock, for meditation or divination, whatever. You could put together a booklet of interpretations, come up with some layout patterns. It wouldn't be that hard to do it with what we already have. Your artist on the first one, Neil Vasquez? He's working up a full-color computer-generated thing, with three-D modeling, I'm not sure what all."

  "Hm." Derek nodded. It was an intriguing idea—a whole new marketing approach, giving him more reason than ever to make sure that he consolidated his rights to the mandalas and came down hard on the club owners. "Yes, that sounds excellent."

  "If I've got your go-ahead, I'd like to bring it up in the meeting today. Is that all right?"

  "Fine."

  "The only thing is—at the moment, the deck is sort of limited. The regular Tarot has seventy-two cards—that's a lot to play around with. With thirty-seven ... I wonder if that's enough to really give people much to work with."

  "It ought to be."

  "I was only wondering ... you don't think you could come up with more mandalas? If they were, say, to channel more texts—if Ms. A might sketch a few more? That could be enough for another book right there, and it'd give us a nice full deck."

  "More ... more mandalas?" Derek said. "I don't think so, Bob."

  "No? Well, think about it."

  "I don't—there aren't any more of them. There's thirty-seven, it's a fixed number, they're very insistent on that. No more, no less."

  Had he even read the book? Derek wondered. How could he have missed that?

  And then he remembered excising that section from the original notebooks. It had opened into discussions he did not care to reproduce for his New Age audience, ones he had been unable to translate into catchy, optimistic phrases. The original texts were nowhere more baffling than in their discussion of the number 37. So, in fact, he was free to invent more if he wished; he hadn't publicly painted himself into that particular corner.

  "But you never know," he said. "Maybe they were concealing something from us, and when the time is right—if it ever is—they'll come forward with more revelations. I'd be the last one to say I know everything about them."

  "It's no big deal, Derek. If there's only thirty-seven, I'm sure we can work with that." They shook again. "I'll let you know what kind of response I get at the meeting."

  The receptionist called him a taxi. He waited just inside the door, watching the sorry figures in the park, hurrying straight to the cab when it arrived. "Market and Sanchez," he said. "Hecate's Haven."

  Hecate's stood at a crossroads—more accurately, it stood where three roads met, a location Lilith claimed was of particular potency. She had helped select the spot when Norman Argos moved his shop from its original, cramped North Beach location a year before. Market, Sanchez, and 15th crossed like the arms of an asterisk. The spiky orange crest of Corona Heights, also called Indian Rock, dominated the skyline above 15th Street. Indian Rock, too, was an energy vortex, according to Lilith, lending the whole neighborhood an air of mag
ic. And vortex was a good way to describe the traffic jams that arose among the confluence of cars and pedestrians streaming from six different directions.

  Perhaps because of all the power swirling about chaotically, the triangular point of land between Market and 14th had proven too much for most businesses. The building that stood there had changed hands several times since Derek moved to the city, and between each new regime it stood empty, covered with movie and concert posters, its windows fogged with graffiti. The latest doomed establishment had been a Thai restaurant, which had gone to great expense to alter the architecture of the place to suit its menu. The building looked like a pagoda now, with a three-tiered roof of flaking gold, whose corners were tapered and upturned. It was exotic, but no more so than the contents of the establishment it now housed.

  Looking through the front window, Derek could see the usual crowd milling among the tall shelves and cluttered glass cabinets, browsing through books, shuffling Tarot decks, gathering various weird appurtenances. Jars of candles, herbs, and incense rose to the ceiling. It struck him as intensely boring; his first few times in the place had brought an odd thrill, but familiarity had sapped the occult of its mystery. Now he walked behind the scenes, immune to the illusions.

  He went in quietly, hoping that none of the customers would recognize him; but no sooner had he entered than Norman called his name from the back of the shop. Several customers parted to let him through, looking as if they recognized him or his name; but most ignored him, for which he was grateful. The mandalas were only a tiny fraction of Norman's business; here, countless cults competed for primacy and shelf space, some so old they smelled of mummy dust, others invoking the modern myths of quantum physics, cyberspace....

  "I'm looking for Lilith," he said. "I thought she was working today."

  "She's in the back," Norman said.

  "Has she had lunch yet?"

  "Well, she usually runs out for a sandwich."

  "Could I convince you to let me have her for an hour?"

  He could see Norman resisting the idea, but eventually he cocked his head and tried to give in graciously. "I guess I've got enough girls here. Sure. If she wants."

  "Thanks."

  He found Lilith in the tiny kitchen, screwing lids on bottles of holy water. A box of empty bottles sat on the counter, and the tap was still dripping. She jumped when he touched her in the small of the back.

  "Oh, my God," she said when she saw him. "I thought you were Norman."

  "You said you wouldn't do this sort of thing," he said, picking up a damp bottle.

  Lilith looked furious. "Norman isn't qualified to bless a sneeze. I don't want anyone jeopardized by his negligence."

  "You're not a priest."

  "My blessing is better than any Christian minister's."

  "Still... it is fraud."

  "And as soon as I can find another job that suits me, I'll be calling the Better Business Bureau. In the meantime ..." She shrugged and capped the bottle, wiping her hands on her black jeans. "How was your trip?"

  He kissed her on the neck, encircling her with his arms. She smelled of the incense and oils she'd been mixing and measuring all morning. Wormwood, myrrh, and benzoin. "Come to lunch and I'll tell you all about it. I have permission to steal you away for an hour."

  She pushed him away unexpectedly, arching back to give him a worried look. "Derek ..."

  "What?"

  "I do have to talk to you, but not now. I need more than an hour."

  "Is something wrong?"

  "It's too complicated. I'm coming under suspicion."

  "Suspicion? Of what?"

  "People think—they think I'm your woman. Ms. A."

  "They what? That's ridiculous. Who?"

  "I told you, I don't want to—not right now. Can I see you tonight?"

  "Of course. But all you have to do is tell them to fuck off. They shouldn't be bothering you."

  "That's easy for you to say. The fact is, people assume she's out there somewhere, and she must be someone you know. I don't know if you realize it, but there are a number of lost souls around who've become obsessed with these mandalas of yours. They come in every day and hang around asking me questions. At first Norman kicked them out because they hadn't bought anything since the book; but now they've caught on. They buy charcoal or single sticks of incense, so he refuses to bother them. He won't even let me tell them off. They give me the creeps."

  Derek looked over his shoulder, as if he might see some of them coming down the hall.

  "That's right," she said. "I'm surprised there weren't any out there when you came in."

  "You're talking about a bunch of New Age flakes. What are you afraid of?"

  "These aren't.. . they aren't the usual crowd, Derek. You've managed to attract an element I've never met before."

  "Great," he said. "I'll have to use the back door now."

  "It's not funny. I need my privacy."

  "But it's insane. Just tell them to leave you alone."

  "I'm getting too much attention. Yesterday there was an Asian man here, asking about you. Fortunately Norman wasn't around or he might have let on that I knew you. He came in because we had signed copies of The Mandala Rites, then he started asking if you ever came in, where you lived, things like that."

  Derek's flesh began to crawl. "Who the hell was he?"

  "I don't know. I didn't ask. He spoke English very well, but with an accent. I don't know what kind—you know, Pacific Rim. He looked like a businessman, and he wouldn't let on why he was asking about you."

  "I don't get it."

  "Neither do I. But I'm warning you, Derek, I'm going to have to pull out of this situation if it gets any more intense. I don't need this kind of energy in my life right now."

  "Pull out of what situation? The shop?"

  She looked him in the eyes. "No. Us."

  "You can't—you can't do that because of other people, Lilith. You're going to let them rule your life, your relationships? I mean, what do I—is it my fault?"

  "Maybe. You created this whole scene, Derek. It's your livelihood, not mine. I can't let it take me off my path, and mine has nothing to do with your mandalas. Do you understand?"

  He felt as if a cold, blunt metal rod had been thrust straight through him. "Yes," he said. "I understand. Our relationship is based on what you want; it doesn't have a thing to do with me."

  "You know how I feel about you, Derek."

  "No I don't! I don't know a goddamn thing unless you tell me."

  She reared back, unshaken, cool, as if she had expected him to flare up.

  "Even if I told you, Derek, you wouldn't believe me. You don't believe anything. That's your policy. The thing that makes me sad sometimes is it's painfully obvious that deep down you want to believe everything, unquestioningly. You don't even know which questions to ask—that's why you accept all the standard explanations of reality. I think once upon a time you must have been pretty gullible." She laughed after she said this; he had felt his face change, but couldn't be sure what he'd given away. "You were, weren't you? But you've built a wall—more like a fortress—around everything in you that's naive or childlike, everything having to do with trust and faith. And now nothing gets through. Nothing I can imagine, anyway. I've tried to reach you, wherever you're hiding, but it would take more strength than I have. More violence, possibly; and I'm not willing to go that far. Something's going to bring that fortress down someday, and then look out. I hope nobody's standing near you when it falls."

  "You're afraid," he said coldly. "Afraid of a relationship."

  "That's not what you want," she said. "I'm sorry, Derek, but it's not."

  "Do you love me, Lilith?"

  "Love you? I can't even touch you. You push the whole world away."

  "That's a convenient way for you to see it, while you're pushing me away."

  "I have to get back to work."

  She slipped past him, down the hall. He stood there shaking, his face aflame. He
couldn't face the shop again, its fool customers ransacking shelves full of fakery. He made his way out the rear into a small parking lot and strode up 15th Street to the orange crags of Corona Heights. Fog was pouring over the ridge, a gray mass smothering the stones, and soon it smothered him as well. Wrapped in fog, the city hidden from sight below, he could almost believe he was alone in the universe. Almost. Lilith was right.

  12

  Dear Mr. Crowe:

  Sorry to bother you but—weird effects from Rites. Lenore having blackouts/trances—very intense. Hope you can give some advice. Don't know who else to ask about mandalas. Please call collect anytime. (You're not listed.)

  Michael Renzler

  P.S. Had an actual materialization—first ever!

  Michael took one last look at the face of the postcard, which he had picked up in Memphis last summer. It was a picture of Graceland. He hoped Derek Crowe wouldn't think the message itself was a joke. Elvis didn't seem an appropriate flip side to the mandalas, but it was the only postcard he had been able to find, rooting through drawers while Lenore showered. He had filled it out without telling her, not wanting her to know the extent of his concern, not wanting her to panic or be afraid in any way. He had convinced her to call in sick, and done the same himself, resolving to look after her until he was convinced she was stable. He dropped the card at the mall post office, on his way to Sears to grab a DieHard.

  As he drove toward his mother's house with the battery, he felt alternately stupid and scared. Stupid, because Lenore was apparently fine now; her blackouts, or whatever they were, had not recurred, and they probably had nothing to do with the mandalas anyway. He half suspected that Lenore was simply getting drugs from Tucker and lying about it. Scared, because a moment later he would find himself completely convinced that the mandalas were at work and would return before long—certainly before Derek Crowe could come to their aid. He figured it would take the card three days to get to California. That meant three days minimum before Derek Crowe called. He could hold out that long, but he felt so isolated. Maybe ... maybe he should do another rite tonight, try to contact Elias Mooney in the astral or wherever he had gone, and seek the old sage's assistance. If nothing else, it would make him feel like he was doing something.