I spotted Arlene, arms wrapped around her knees, near the middle of the room. Her skin and lips were pale, her eyelashes almost invisible. She was scrubbed clean of make-up, and she seemed younger and more vulnerable without it. The left sleeve of her silk blouse was torn, and I realized other people had tears in their clothing—here, a jacket, there, a shirtsleeve. I was touched by this visible symbol of the emotional fissure a sudden death can cause. Arlene glanced over at me, confused by my presence, I thought. I bowed slightly. She looked away.
Low wooden stools were scattered throughout. Ahh, these must be their special mourning seats. I walked over to the little stool closest to Arlene and sat.
I heard a hiss, a collective intake of breath indicating I had done something wrong, and I scrambled to my feet. I’d committed some sort of faux pas, not at all my intention. I stood awkwardly, until Rabbi Fishbein took pity on me. He got up and led me to the empty sofa. I perched on the edge, self-consciously looming over the others in the room.
“Why are you here, detective?” Rabbi Fishbein’s voice was quiet, and not unkind. “We are sitting shivah. This is a sacred time.”
“I understand,” I said. I included Arlene in my next words. “I’ve come to pay my respects. I won’t stay long.”
She offered me a wan smile. “My husband’s soul is at peace now,” she said.
I nodded, and relaxed my posture, settling into the sofa. I closed my eyes: Om mani padme hum. May you have serenity and happiness in the afterlife and in all your future lives.
I rested in the silence. My breath slowed, and spaciousness flowered in my heart, as the men in the room started to chant, a beautiful, haunting melody in a language that sounded both ancient and wise. I dropped deeper into a state of stillness. The universal practice of honoring the dead was expressed in a tongue absolutely foreign to me, but it was perfectly understood.
As the prayer faded, I opened my eyes. My throat tightened, not with sadness, but alarm. A young woman, startlingly beautiful, toned and strong, was sitting on a low stool across the room, staring at me. Her eyes blazed with hate. Harper, seven months later, and all grown up. My face registered shocked recognition; she quickly covered her own with her hands and began to wail. Comforting adults surrounded her.
I turned to Rabbi Fishbein, who was again pushing to his feet, this time to tend to Harper.
“I’ll get her a glass of water,” I murmured.
I hurried through the foyer and dining room, skirting the long wooden dining table, where a handful of women were busy unwrapping platters of fruit and cheese and setting them next to noodle casseroles, mounds of chopped liver, and bowls of egg salad. I pushed through a swinging wooden door into a pristine kitchen, which was smaller than I’d imagined, but a jewel. From the antique tile to the honeyed wood, everything looked exquisitely original—vintage and yet brand new.
I couldn’t help myself. I scanned the stone counters for any signs of knives, and soon located a slotted wooden block of them, by the gleaming Viking stove. I crossed over to investigate. Wüsthofs. Yes. But every slot was occupied by its designated knife, including the 8-inch chef’s knife. All cutlery present and accounted for.
A woman backed her way through a second swinging door, on the far side of the kitchen, balancing a pungent platter of carved meat.
“Smells delicious,” I lied.
“Brisket,” she said, and continued to the dining room.
I plucked a small plastic party glass from a stacked tower on the counter, filled it with water, and retraced my steps to the room of mourners. I offered the water to Harper. She gulped it down.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice low. But when she raised her eyes to meet mine, a wild, panicked look distorted her lovely features, gone almost before it arrived. I took the glass.
Rabbi Fishbein appeared at my shoulder.
“Will you be joining us for seudat havra’ah? It is our meal of healing.”
“Thank you, but no,” I said. “I must be going.”
He touched my arm. “I wish you well,” he said. “Shalom.”
“Shalom,” I repeated. Again, the language was universal. Peace, my brother.
I sat in my Toyota, loosening my tie. Thinking. Maybe Harper just didn’t want me to expose her sordid past, now that she was “doing so well in her new school.” She certainly looked better—her skin and body glowed with health, and she had added needed pounds, mostly of muscle. She was stronger now. And she was capable of hate—I had just been on the receiving end of it. I circled her name in my notebook. She remained an unanswered question for now. Then I plucked one of the spare evidence bags from my glove compartment, leftovers from my homicide cop days. Inside it, I carefully placed the plastic party glass I had conveniently forgotten to throw away.
I still had two hours to fill before I received my underground instructions to Mike’s techno-rave, in this, my longest of days. What to do in the meantime? When in doubt, I ask my body. I ran my attention over my insides like a wand. The impromptu meditation had soothed the jangled tiredness and settled my heart, which was great. But a hollow space remained. Hunger. I was hungry. Hungry for food, no doubt, but also something else. Companionship.
Should I call Heather? I’d experienced two serious romantic debacles in as many years, with a string of short missteps before that. Much as I wanted to lay the blame elsewhere, both Charlotte and Julie were now in committed relationships with other men. The overlapping factor in their failure, maybe in all the failures? Me. Let’s face it: I was afraid to engage again, to risk my heart in yet another entanglement, leading to yet another round of blame and betrayal. It was always the same. It never ended well.
Always. Never. There they were, like gongs, warning me that I was stuck again in limited thinking. Breaking my second rule. Jean’s words echoed: Put down the flashlight, pick up the mirror. I replayed the thousands of squabbles and upsets, the arguments, the miscommunications I had both invited and inflicted over the past decade. Watched as “she never” and “I always” moments piled up, forming a barricade around me, a prison of my own making. Better to be safe than hurt. Better to be right than happy. Ten’s working mottos.
But what if they were based on misinformation? The Buddha says to question everything. “Everything” includes mottos.
I was struck with a realization so powerful that it stopped my breath. What if I haven’t had thousands of fights? What if I’ve been having the same fight, thousands of times?
What if my mother’s betrayal and my father’s scorn made up the foundational underpinning for every romantic relationship I’ve ever entered? What if I was breaking my second rule over and over and over again? Don’t do it, Ten. Don’t allow yourself to be imprisoned by past betrayals, disguised as your protectors.
I let my breath out slowly, as something shifted, deep inside. I had work to do—that much was certain. But maybe, just maybe, Heather could be a starting place to do that work. How would I ever know, if I didn’t have the courage to try?
I fished out her business card and typed her name and number into my contact list.
I touched her number on the screen.
She picked up on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Heather,” I said. “This is Ten.”
“Hey.”
I heard traffic humming in the background. “Sounds like you’re on the road.”
“Yup. Heading home after a very long press conference and debriefing.”
“Where’s home?’
“Santa Monica.”
I liked the sound of that. In Los Angeles, where the looming specter of gridlock hovers over just about every conversation, geography can play a big role in a budding romance. Santa Monica was just down the road from Topanga, an easy commute. I was glad she didn’t live in some buzz-killing location like Simi Valley.
“So you’re on the ten?”
“That’s me. Talking to Ten on the ten,” she said.
I smiled. “How about t
alking to Ten in person? Would you like to get together for dinner? I’m in Beverly Hills, and I’ve got hours before my next appointment.”
Heather took her time answering. “You know what? I’m a little beat, and I’m not crazy about most restaurants out here to begin with. All that hipster strutting exhausts me. Would it be okay if we met down at the beach? It’s a gorgeous evening.”
I made some quick calculations. Even if Mike’s gig was as far away as Thousand Oaks, I’d be able to have a picnic at the beach and make it to him by 11 P.M. I guess insanely late gigs did have their value.
“Let’s meet at the parking lot across from Patrick’s Roadhouse, by Entrada Drive. I’ll pick up some food. Anything you don’t eat?”
“I don’t eat anything that has eyes,” she said. “Except potatoes.”
I laughed. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
I bought two large Greek salads and a side of hummus from the Urth Café, my go-to restaurant for eyeless foods. I parked next to Heather’s little Honda. She was sitting inside, headphones on, bopping her head to something on her iPad. I tapped on her window. She climbed out, and we gave each other a friendly SoCal half hug. She grabbed a blanket from her trunk, and we carried our matching eco-friendly bags down to the beach.
I unpacked our little picnic. Heather handed over a chilled bottle of wine and a corkscrew. Puligny-Montrachet. Nice. I worked the cork out of the bottle while she spread her blanket and set down the food.
“Oops,” she said. “No glasses.”
“No problem,” I said. I handed her the bottle, and she took a sip. She handed it back to me, and I did the same. The wine was crisp and dry; its flinty edge woke up my taste buds.
“To health and happiness,” I said.
“And everything else good,” she answered. Heather popped a kalamata olive into her mouth with long, slender fingers. Up close, they looked stronger than I’d remembered.
“Do you play an instrument?”
Her eyes widened. “Classical guitar. Ever since I started med school,” she said. “How did you know?”
“Your fingers. They’re the fingers of a musician.”
She studied them. “I started taking lessons to relax, you know, as a kind of stress-release. But one day I hit a chord—it was a big, open G chord—and it sounded so amazing, I must have strummed it a hundred times. Now I’m hooked. If I could, I’d play every day.”
“Do you have a favorite guitarist?”
“Andrés Segovia,” Heather sighed. “He’s the gold standard. I dream of sounding like him some day.” For once, instead of blurting out something trite like, “I’m sure you will,” I just smiled. I also refrained from discussing work, hers or mine. I just wasn’t in the mood. Neither, it seemed, was she. We ate in companionable silence, Heather matching me bite for bite, opting out of the usual flurry of first-date chitchat. What a relief. After we finished eating, I stood up and stretched.
“Walk?” I held out my hand.
“Sounds good.” I pulled her upright. We kicked off our shoes, stowed them in our bags, and strolled barefoot in the cool sand, serenaded by the crash and pull of the waves.
We stopped to watch the dark green water, the curls of foam almost phosphorescent. “Can I ask you something?” Heather asked. “Something personal?”
Here we go, I thought. “Sure,” I said, and braced for romantic commitment questions. But Heather had a different kind of commitment on her mind.
“Bill tells me you’re Tibetan. That you trained to be a monk.”
“Half Tibetan. And almost-monk.”
“But you’re a practicing Buddhist, right?”
“Yes. Well, kind of. Yes.”
“How does that work? I mean, how do you do what you do and stay true to what you believe?”
Chitchat suddenly wasn’t looking so bad. I dug my toes in the sand, a tiny postponement.
“I don’t, at least not all the time. I just do the best I can.”
“And how does that feel, inside I mean? To be committed to nonviolence, and working in a profession that concentrates on the opposite?”
I let the question settle, and soon, the answer floated up.
“Lonely,” I said. “It feels lonely.”
She nodded. “I sensed that.”
My iPhone pinged. Good timing. “Sorry, I have to check this,” I said. I opened the e-mail from ilovechaotica.com and quickly found the location details. I was heading downtown next, way downtown.
“You have to get going,” Heather said. I nodded. “To be continued?” she said.
“To be continued.”
As we strolled back, Heather slipped her hand into mine.
“Two Ten-sightings in one day,” she said. “This is nice.”
A jogger ran past us in the dark, and I flashed on the morning before, when I was the jogger and my crazy brain had concocted a very different Heather scenario.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.”
We reached our cars. We faced each other. The awkward time was at hand.
“Thank you,” she said. “I like being with you.” She delivered a soft kiss to my cheek.
“Me, too,” I said. My pulse raced. “And, and if I were a cool California dude, I’d know what the next step should be.”
She cocked her head. “But?” she said.
“But I’m not. I’m a Tibetan transplant who hasn’t quite mastered the whole ‘cool’ thing.”
“Well thank God for small favors.”
We shared a smile. I touched her cheek.
“Heather . . . “ My voice trailed off.
“We’ll get there,” she said, still smiling. “These things take time,” and climbed in her car.
The e-mail instructions to the event on 11th and Main had been terse. Doors open at 10 P.M.; park on the street; no cameras allowed; Don’t Loiter!, followed by a list of set times and performers. My eyes widened. The last set started at five A.M. What was wrong with these people?
I hit traffic on the Harbor Freeway and got off on Sixth. I took Main south, one way all the way, past a doggy day care that I wouldn’t put my worst enemy’s mutt in, past the Topshape Training Center, which looked anything but. As I neared the location, I skirted around a patrol car askew in the street, red and blue lights flashing. Two cops had a young banger cuffed, pressed against a warehouse wall. His baggy shorts reached almost to his ankles, and his body radiated defiance. Don’t loiter, indeed.
Finally I reached a squat concrete bunker of a building, ominously deserted. But then I noticed the small row of windows across the top: They flickered and flashed red and blue lights. Unless a cop car was inside, I’d found my event.
I was very glad I had come in the Toyota. My Mustang would have been stripped down to its bare chassis in minutes around here. I parked on a side street around the corner, grabbed my laptop, and walked into a small courtyard, where a cluster of smokers were talking and laughing.
“I pop-locked and broke it down!” one of them brayed. “Ridic!” another yelled, and they all bumped fists. I was entering Mike Koenigs–land, one more situation where I didn’t know the customs, and I didn’t speak the language.
A young woman with a slender ring through her right nostril and a red bindi marking her forehead guarded the door. I’ll bet she had no idea she and her bindi were telling the world she was married. I showed her the e-ticket on my phone, and she waved me inside.
The sound-assault was instant, and shocking: the loud, deep drone of a bass line, overlaid with multiple streams of electronic sound, reverberating between the exposed brick walls. About 20 couples writhed and swayed to the music, most of them reading their smart phone screens at the same time.
Another young woman—multiple piercings, a thatch of neon pink hair—was tending a well-stocked bar illuminated by a little pink lamp. I wasn’t expecting liquor—a vat full of powdered horse tranquilizer seemed more likely. A swarthy young man in a baseball cap crouched on the floor to the left, working a sound board.
A single blinking spotlight roamed the room, bathing the swaying bodies in blue, green, red, and back to blue again, as a mechanical, sirenlike wail looped around the rhythmic pounding.
I located the nexus of sound. And found Mike, or “dj mk,” as the e-mail referred to him, headphones askew, traversing a long table of blinking orange lights and electronic equipment: laptops, turntables, iPods, iPhones, mouses, soundboards. Hunched over, his fingers flew over various keys and buttons, a tall skinny maestro. I caught his eye. He smiled, held up five fingers, tapped his watch, and returned to his rocket-ship dashboard. Five minutes was good. I can tolerate anything for five minutes. I leaned against one wall and closed my eyes. The blanket of sound began to separate into different tonal threads, some human, some not. Layers within layers, streams within streams, repetitive, meditative. A deep underlying chord of male voices began to vibrate, overtaking the other sounds. Oooowahhhh, the glottal texture amplified, vibrating with my insides like a tuning fork, and just like that, I was transported to Dorje Yidam. Twelve years old and experiencing for the first time the reverberating chants of a trio of Tibetan throat singers. Now, as then, the base notes throbbed, resonated, and probed directly into my chest. For a moment, suspended between two realities of time and place, I slipped into boundlessness, where neither one existed.
A dancer jostled my arm, and I startled back into the brick-lined warehouse. Mike transferred his headphones to another DJ, a shorter, stockier version of Mike, the transition seamless. The pulsing sound continued uninterrupted.
Mike grabbed a bottle of water and joined me.
“Wow,” I yelled. “I get why you like this music! It’s tantric! I may have just experienced techno-induced samadhi!”
Mike grinned and leaned close to my ear. “You sure you’re not riding some k-love down the rabbit hole, boss?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, “and for that, I am grateful.”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me to the outside courtyard. A sweet-faced, pretty girl with a shiny cap of chestnut hair and bright, blue-green eyes stepped to Mike’s side. A pair of red sparkly devil’s horns nested in her hair. She wore a miniscule black dress over red tights and red and black plaid high tops. The tip of her head barely reached the middle of Mike’s chest, not counting the horns. Bending slightly, he encircled her with one arm. “This is my girl, Tricia. Tricia, this is Ten.” I stuck out my hand. She darted under it to give me a hug.
The Second Rule of Ten Page 13