by Marco Vassi
Eleanor's leaving and his catharsis in the meditation room seemed to balance one another. And as he roared toward Mount Tremper through a landscape that might have appeared in a Japanese watercolor, he was overtaken by the realization that suddenly he was a free man. He felt a youthful liberation and abandon he'd not enjoyed since before he met Eleanor. "I know who I am," he thought, "Why the hell have I been shaving my head and sitting on my ass all this time?"
And when he saw the full equation, the insight was so startling that he jerked the handles of the motorcycle and almost skidded on the slippery asphalt. The marriage, he saw, had eaten not only his independence but his very sense of self. The early years of ecstatic union had absorbed both him and Eleanor into the dream of an eternal "we," and he had lost the clear focus of his own "I." And zen had been what his drowning self had grasped at in order to keep from being permanently submerged, and then itself become a threat to his individuality. But now that he was alone again, there would probably be no further need to wield the sword of Buddhism or submit to its rituals and scriptures.
"Maybe I'll just go back to the city and pick up where I left off," he told himself. He could see himself in New York again, running his store and getting in touch with old friends who would be glad he was letting his hair grow again. There would be the stickiness of a divorce to deal with, but if Eleanor was with another man, the apartment would be his. And there would be women again. Eventually, he might even remarry, this time a woman who wanted children instead of a career.
By the time he turned into Alec's driveway he was hoping that she might even be there, that she'd stopped at the director's house as a way station, and that he could settle things with her on the spot, and get a chance to say his own goodbye and not be left hanging with her note as the final word. But when he shut the engine and heard the echo of the roar that had just ceased reverberating through the silent woods, he became aware of just how irrational his going there was. It was the middle of the night and he'd probably wakened dozens of people with his ride. He got off the bike and found himself swaying, and then realized how tired he was. This was his second night without sleep, his wife had run off with another man, his zen practice had exploded out from under him, and he'd been driving a motorcycle up and down mountains in a blinding rainstorm.
He was wondering whether he shouldn't return home and come back later in the day when Alec's voice came booming out of a window. "If this is anybody's idea of an acting exercise, they'd better be prepared for a punch in the nose. If it's anybody else, watch out for buckshot."
Larry cleared his throat. "It's Larry," he said.
There was a long silence, and Larry heard whispers. And then Alec's voice again. "Hang on, I'll be right out."
A minute passed and Alec opened the front door. He was barefoot, wearing sweat pants and a flannel shirt. His face was still rumpled from sleep but his eyes were alert.
"I'm sorry to wake you," Larry said.
"I'm sure there's a good reason," Alec replied.
"Eleanor's gone."
"Ah," Alec said.
"You don't seem surprised."
"I can't say that I am."
"Is she here?"
Alec raised his eyebrows. "Why should she be here?"
"I don't know. You're her friend. And I heard voices a minute ago."
"That's my lover. You want to meet him?"
A voice called out from the other room. "Is everything O.K.?" it asked. It was a man.
"Fine. Just some domestic trouble," Alec said loudly. "Go back to sleep, I'll take care of it."
"I didn't mean to intrude," Larry said.
"Well, you're here. I guess you'd like to talk. Come in, I'll make some coffee."
"You're sure it's all right?"
"I'm usually up at six anyway. A couple of hours won't make that much difference." Alec stepped back from the doorway and Larry walked in past him. Alec pushed the door shut behind him and led him through the living room and into the kitchen. He switched on the light and they stepped into a large room that was crammed with shelves and cabinets and hanging plants. In the center of the space stood a round oak table with six chairs around it.
"Have a seat," Alec said. Larry sat down and Alec went to the stove and turned on the flame under a tea kettle, and then carried cups and spoons to the table, got a pitcher of cream from the refrigerator and put it next to the sugar bowl. His movements were slow and measured, giving Larry a chance to come down a bit from the intensity of his ride.
"Do you know where she is?" Larry asked.
"I can't do two things at once," Alec replied. "Let me make the coffee and then we'll talk." He went to the counter next to the sink and measured out some coffee into a filter, then waited for the water to boil, and when the kettle was whistling he picked it up, held it for several seconds, and poured it into a Pyrex holder. Then he waited for the entire thing to drip through before bringing the pot to the table. During the whole ritual he stole glances at Larry who was sitting forward, elbows on the table, eyes closed, his head resting in his hands.
"Let's try some of this," Alec said as he poured the coffee into their cups. They each took sugar and cream, and after a sip Alec reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels. "Like a cigarette?" he asked.
Taken off guard, Larry simultaneously reached for a cigarette and said, "No thanks, I don't smoke."
Alec looked at him quizzically as Larry put the cigarette in his mouth. "You're a funny man," he said. "With you even smoking is a riddle."
"Eleanor and I gave it up," Larry said, taking a light from Alec who then lit his own. "Except that I went back and didn't tell her. So I've been smoking on the sly." He took a sip of coffee. "Then I learned that Eleanor's been smoking on the sly too."
"Really?" Alec said. "I never saw her smoke."
"Maybe only her inner role smokes," Larry said.
Alec smiled. "Good," he said. "If you can make a joke you're not as bad off as you look."
"Do you know where she is?"
Alec puffed on his cigarette. "You know," he said, "One of the few bits of wisdom I've acquired in my life is not to get caught between warring husbands and wives."
"There's no war."
Alec raised an eyebrow. "You come riding here at three in the morning looking for your wife and you tell me there's no war? If there was peace you'd be home in bed. With her."
At Alec's last words, Larry winced. Alec saw the reaction and put his hand on Larry's arm. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know you're upset, and I don't mind sitting with you. But I really don't want to get involved."
"Please," Larry said, "It's important."
"Why? If she's run off with someone, what do you want with her?"
"Then you do know about him."
Alec stared down at the table and bit his lower lip. "What I know won't be of much comfort to you right now."
"I'm not looking for comfort. I want to know the truth."
"I thought you were finding that with your zen thing."
"Maybe that's finished too."
"I see," Alec said. He poured himself more coffee and lit a second cigarette.
"Who is he?" Larry asked.
"Someone you don't want to mess with."
"What?"
"Well, he's a powerful man."
"A weight lifter?"
"More like ... let's say a businessman."
"What are you trying to tell me?"
Alec puffed on his cigarette as he had before, using it as a tempo to pace his speech. "Look," he said, "Eleanor is my student and friend. And I feel more than a little responsible for what's happened. You've seen what we do in the workshop. I try to get people to see their lives as theatre, and to play with their scripts, to take chances. Some of that affected Eleanor more than I had counted on, and she took a leap that was scary even to me."
"What kind of businessman?" Larry insisted.
Alec shrugged. "It's not clear. In fact, you might say it's a bit shady."
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"What's Eleanor doing with someone like that?"
"She met him about a year ago. He saw her when she did that off-Broadway thing. Went to the theatre five nights in a row. Sent her flowers each night." Alec squinted through the smoke. "She had an affair with him," he added.
"A year ago!" Larry exclaimed, his stomach tightening. He shook his head. "Christ, I've been blind."
"The affair only lasted a few weeks," Alec went on. "She dropped him. But recently he showed up again."
Larry let out the air he'd been holding in his lungs, the tension in his stomach moving to his chest and shoulders. His eyes were dull and unseeing of anything around him. All his attention was fixed on the image in his mind, Eleanor lying naked in the arms of another man.
"I'm sorry to have to be the one telling you this," Alec continued. "But you asked. And since she is gone, you might as well know the details."
Larry looked up sharply, the hopelessness in his eyes suddenly replaced by a manic gleam. "What does she see in him?"
"It's more a question of what she doesn't see in you any longer. She's complained to me more than once that you'd rather stare at a wall than look at her. This man is older. He's in his fifties. He pays attention to her, he's interested in her career."
"Sure," Larry said, the word saturated with bitterness.
"The man's got money and influence. He can make things happen in the theatre world."
"Is he some kind of gangster? What's his name?"
"I don't want to say any more," Alec said.
"Is he dangerous? Is Eleanor in any danger?"
Alec raised his cup and took a swallow of coffee without taking his eyes off Larry. "He's dangerous," he replied at last. "But Eleanor's not in any danger. From what she tells me, he's in love with her."
"And her? Is she in love with him?"
"Maybe."
"I can't believe that. I want to hear that from her own mouth. I've got to see her."
"I'd put that idea on the shelf for a while, if I were you. He wouldn't take kindly to your showing up."
"She's my wife!"
"And he's got people working for him who take people for rides."
Larry's hand shot out and grabbed Alec's shoulder. "Look," he said, "I don't care about this guy and his goons. I want to see Eleanor."
"For what?"
"To talk to her. If she doesn't want to be with me any more, O.K. But she has to look me in the eye and tell me that it's over and that she's with another man. And the kind of man she's with."
Alec lit another cigarette. "If you really want that. . . .”
"You'll tell me where she is?"
"Maybe they went back to the city. But she could be at his house in Shokan."
"Shokan. That's near the reservoir. That's where she went that morning."
"She didn't come to class every day," Alec added.
"Those remarks you made when I came to the workshop. You were trying to tell me."
"I suppose. Eleanor was furious at me afterwards. But when I'm working I get high on the process, and I go closer to the edge than I would in a conventional situation."
"Where's the house? Do you know?"
"I know."
Larry stared at him, his eyes hard and glittering. Alec did not respond for a long while and then sighed. "If I tell you it's only because I'm pretty sure he's not there now. A few days ago she told me he was going to Miami for a week." He lit a third cigarette. "It's that huge white house halfway up the mountain that you see when you're driving across the road that cuts through the reservoir."
"That's a chateau," Larry said.
"I told you the man is powerful."
Larry stood up.
"You're not going now?"
"If he's not there, it sounds like the perfect time."
"But he might have one of his men there guarding the place." Alec stood up also. "Look, why not go home and get some rest? Then you can drive over tomorrow. If the place is being watched, it won't be so dangerous in the daytime."
"This isn't that kind of trip," Larry said, remembering that there was one unresolved factor in his life. He might have lost his marriage and might never sit on a zen pillow again, but Eleanor was still his koan, and the momentum of that was charging him, making it impossible to stop until he'd seen it through.
"Well, do you have some kind of protection?" Alec asked, and added, sarcastically, "I mean, beside that unholy fervor that's glowing in your eyes."
"I have a gun back at the house. Do you think I should take it?"
"At this point I just want to wash my hands of this whole mess," Alec replied.
Larry took a deep breath, the air whistling past his nostrils. "Thanks Alec," he said.
"For what? I shouldn't even have let you in tonight. That's all I need now is to have your death on my conscience."
"It's my decision," Larry said.
"Then go with God," Alec replied, took two steps forward and put his arms around Larry's back and hugged him tightly. "Be careful," he said.
Larry returned the hug and the two men disengaged. "I'll walk outside with you," Alec said.
They walked out into the darkness. Larry kicked the bike into life, switched on the headlight, waved once, and drove off. Alec stood there watching the taillight twinkle among the trees and listening to the roar of the engine grow dimmer until the woods was silent once more.
11
As he rode back to his house Larry forced himself to keep from thinking about what he was doing, for the moment he thought at all, his brain seethed with images. Now that he had a description of Eleanor's lover, the erotic film that had started up in his imagination over the past few days took on the textures of reality. Knowing that this was not makyo made it too painful to endure. So he clamped a lid on his mind and steered his course automatically.
When he returned, the first hint of dawn was changing the mood of the sky. It had not begun to become light yet, but the darkness had softened. He walked into the house and when he entered the living room he stopped and stood still, the events of the night suddenly seeming grotesquely unreal. But it was not a fantasy. Eleanor was gone, and Alec had not only confirmed his suspicions but revealed that Eleanor's infidelity had begun at least a year ago. The house still held a sense of her presence and Larry looked down at the couch, unable to accept that she had been lying there in his arms just the night before.
"Lying and lying," he said to himself. His jaw tightened and he went into Eleanor's bedroom. A part of him realized how insane his plan was, but that faint spark of reason was barely visible next to the white hot glow of passion that energized his will, fueled by anger, jealousy and hurt, and tempered by a concern for her well-being that was now more a sense of duty than an active feeling. For an instant he pictured himself being gunned down before her eyes and Eleanor collapsing in sorrow and remorse. "Serve her right," he said out loud as he strode to the night table next to her bed.
He yanked the drawer open and froze as he stared down at the empty space. The gun was gone.
It took a long while for the shock to wear off, for the electricity to stop buzzing up and down his spine, and when it did Larry found himself filling with a calm that was of a different dimension than anything he'd every experienced on his zen pillow, a relaxation that went beyond the level of body and mind and into the realm of fate. The last defense had been removed and if he was to meet his destiny with Eleanor he would have to do it unarmed, naked, vulnerable. The twin paths of marriage and meditation had met at this single point where the until-death-do-us-part of the one and the beyond-life-and-death of the other were forcing him to an overwhelming question. He was free, and so had no guide for his actions except his own decisions and spontaneous movements.
Strangely, he remembered an old quiz show in which, each week, successful contestants were asked whether they were content with their winnings or wished to return the following week to risk what they had in order to try to double their prize. Larry realized that he could
drop the whole affair on the spot, pack his things, rent a car, and go back to the city and let Eleanor work out her own problems. But he was also in the grip of a powerful momentum. Six years of marriage and two years of sitting and the thrust of his lifelong search for real identity were meeting at this juncture, and he felt certain that if he did not see it all through he would never fully be at peace with himself.
"Well, let's go for it," he said out loud, turned on his heel, walked purposefully out of the house, mounted his bike, and took off into what might be the first day of the rest of his life, or the last day of his life altogether.
He drove to the reservoir, got a fix on the house from across the water, and then figured out what roads he'd have to take off the main highway to reach the place. It took another half hour before he was at the base of a packed-dirt road that ran almost a mile, all uphill, to the chateau. There he stopped, shut off the engine, and rolled the bike behind some trees. He lit a cigarette and sat down next to the machine to consider his approach.
Eleanor's taking the gun had several possible explanations. She might be afraid for her own safety and brought it along as an ace in the hole. Or she was afraid Larry might follow her and removed it to keep him from having it, either worried that he might be crazed enough to use it on her, or to prevent him from the foolishness of pulling it on a professional armed bodyguard. He had no way of knowing whether there was a guard there, and if so whether Eleanor had warned him that Larry might show up.
Dawn was changing to morning. The sun would not appear for a while, but its light now ruled the sky. Birds were clearing their throats and Larry could see stray cars, their headlights still on, moving on the highway that ran north and south through the valley below. He ground out his cigarette and stood up, realizing that it was pointless to make a plan when he didn't know precisely what he was walking into. It was too late to weigh pros and cons. This was a singular turning point in his life and he had to enter it cleanly, as a man seeking truth and not as a guerilla on a commando raid. He began walking.
He made no noise as he moved. His mind was still, his breath deep. With each step it seemed the day grew brighter and when he was at the beginning of the long curved driveway that led to the large house, the edge of the sun was visible over the mountains, and reflected in the still water of the reservoir. He stood for a few minutes, watching the sunrise and drinking in the beauty of the land. The air was so sharp and pure it made his eyes tingle.