by Susan Dunlap
‘Thanks.’
‘Sure,’ I said, and then felt bad about using a word that would only make our colloquialisms more confusing. But, from the look of her, that was the last thing on her mind.
I didn’t actually know anything about her, but I’d heard she was a pole dancer in one of the strip clubs on Broadway, a block away. She, of course, didn’t speak of it. She appeared for morning zazen two or three times a week, sat dead still in meditation, mouthed sounds in the service as we chanted words she couldn’t know and left immediately after the final bell. This morning, as always, a baggy blue sweatshirt hung below her hips over sweatpants of the same color. She had wiped off any make-up and the long hair that probably waved like a flag in the wind as she danced was knotted at the nape of her neck. Her whole presentation screamed not really a pole dancer. If she could have melted into the wall, she would have. I wondered what the zendo meant to her, but I couldn’t ask.
Ten minutes left now. Hoping for word of Leo, I checked my phone. Of course, there were no voice messages. If anyone from the hospital had called in the middle of the night it would only have been with bad, bad news.
Then, on the path to the least likely, I checked my texts. Six. All from John.
1. Not safe where U are. Come home. Call cab. I’ll pay.
2. Drove by. No light. U sleeping?
3. If not, come home. Call. I’ll come for U.
4. Be alert. Someone knew where Leo would be. Suspect everyone.
5. Including ur friends. U know how U R about friends.
6. Especially ur friends.
I laughed to myself. John insisted that I could never believe ill of my friends or my family – himself excluded. I always argued, but John was right. And as I watched the sangha members arrive, I certainly did not see them as dangers.
I walked back inside, through the short hallway and pushed open the door to the zendo proper, the meditation room. There is an intimacy about stepping into the room when memories of dark hang like mist and the delicate smell of yesterday’s incense clings to the rough surface of the brick walls. The walls of myself are momentarily more porous. Lighting the oil lamps and the candle and seeing the shadows of the altar flowers flicker on the wall pulls me into the silence. I bowed to my seat – this time the one next to the altar – and to the room and sat on my zafu. When everyone was settled I rang the bell, sending out a small, sweet, clear sound, reverberating ever more softly till there was no sound left in the silence.
If we have six people in the zendo, counting Leo and me, in the morning we’re doing well. This morning we were doing great. Nine, and that was without Leo. He’d say his absence was stirring up business.
Slowly the dark lifted and the shaded forms sitting cross-legged on black cushions hardened into distinctness. Four of the people I knew. Five strangers. Police? Reporters? Coincidence? Or was one of them the assailant? A gray-haired woman sat dead still. A blonde was doing her best. And a wiry woman with a puff of brown wiry curls alternated between stillness and jerking. One of the two new men shifted his legs, settled in and shifted again in ever more rapid progression. An older man took the stoic route, but he looked miserable.
Halfway through the sitting period the hallway door opened. A body leaned in and hesitated. Snell! I could read his orders in his widened eyes, in those thick shoulders that hunched hopefully back toward the hallway. Go get her. Watch what she does. Bring her back in. I thought for an instant that he’d trot right in, plant himself in front of me and start spewing orders. But I was wrong. Way wrong.
He eyed the zafus with an expression of horror, as if lowering himself onto one of those small round cushions would be akin to balancing on one foot. Then he spotted the folding chairs we keep along the wall and sat on one of them. I thought he’d squirm and he did. Folding chairs are folding chairs, after all. But he didn’t scratch, shift his jacket, look around or do any extraneous thing. He sat as still as he could, and rose tremendously in my opinion.
Without moving her head, Lila took him in, figured he was a cop, I was sure, and continued to sit.
At the end of the period, when I rang the bell, I’d almost forgotten about Snell. As the seven others stood, straightened their knees and their zabutans and re-puffed their cushions, I said, ‘This service is dedicated to the well-being of Garson-roshi who—’
Gasps came from both sides of the zendo. The roshi in need of healing? Snell’s eyes shot back and forth, noting, I was sure, who was surprised and, more to the point, who was not. The reactions were from the regulars. The two new men seemed dazed. The gray-haired woman just looked puzzled. But Lila let out a gasp.
Snell eyed me and coughed. Loud. He put his finger across his lips.
‘—is in the hospital.’
Every morning after zazen we chant the Heart Sutra, the heart of the very long sutra that puts into words that which cannot be described in words. In a well-being ceremony we do the same thing, add a dharani – short section of a sutra – and dedicate the merit of the chanting to the sick person. Is there merit in chanting? I don’t know. Does the effect of the chanting float beyond the walls of this room, beyond influencing what we do on the other side of the zendo doors? I don’t know. But today, when our voices – Snell’s included – raggedly chanted the Heart Sutra: Form is no different from emptiness, emptiness no different from form, that comfort was enough.
Then Snell said to the group, ‘I’m Officer Snell. I need a moment of your time before you leave.’
And I added, ‘Please leave the zendo before you speak to the officer.’
Seven faces showed displeasure. It was already 7:50 a.m. Tempus fugit in the work world. And in the world of the laid back, no one wants to talk to a cop before breakfast. People hurried to the hall to ask Snell for a pass.
I waited till they left, trimmed the candle, sifted the ash and straightened the altar for the evening sitting. I aligned the zabutans.
Lila was standing in a corner, full into it, and so unobtrusive I almost overlooked her. It was more than her dark hair and dark garb that camouflaged her – there was something about her carriage, the forward curve of her shoulders and her drooped head, as if she had been trained or had learned to melt into shadows. Like a child in a world where beauty was a curse.
But she couldn’t stay in here. I opened the door, motioned her out and said to Snell, ‘Lila is one of our regular members, but English is difficult for her.’ So basically: lay off her.
Then I watched as she bowed to him the way she would to the Buddha and offered, the way she would when presenting the Buddha flowers or incense, a shy just-for-him smile.
She wasn’t going to need my help with him!
I shut the door and pressed my ear against the crack.
SIX
Here’s what I learned, ear to door: Snell had dismissed the first of the two male strangers and was interviewing the second, ‘Mr Something-like-Golf Cart,’ who was complaining loud enough for me to stand up straight and not near the door. ‘You let him go. He’s a stringer. He’s already peddling his story to every outlet in town, including my editor. While I’m standing around here telling you, again, that I’ve never been in this place before, I don’t know these people. I’m here because I get up before dawn to check the police beat. I caught a break on this Buddhist priest attack deal. So I could break this story, that, now, he’s going to break if I don’t get out of here.’
Snell’s voice barely carried, his words not at all. What came through loud and strong was his tempo. Slow lane. Like the driver who’s been beeped at just lifting his foot off the gas. I could almost see Snell grinning in the rearview mirror.
‘No! Nothing! Officer! What do you expect me to have seen? I was sitting on the floor, with my nose three inches from the wall and my knees so jammed I was lucky the cartilage didn’t go shooting across the room.’
So he was the squirmer I’d noted in the zendo – short and thin, hips so tight his knees were nearly in his armpits. I’d thought of
quietly suggesting a higher cushion to ease those knees. Too late now. Chances of seeing Mr Golf Cart-or-whatever again here were equal to meeting the Buddha on the road.
It annoyed me, though, how quickly Leo had become a commodity. To Golf Cart, to Snell, to the stringer racing out for his big break. As if Leo, my teacher, my friend, had desiccated into a few key strokes.
It was 8:00 a.m. Surely there should be some word on Leo. Had he passed a restful night? Was he markedly improving, not seeing double, his headache almost gone, not nauseous? Minimally, the guard was still by his bed and he was safe? I stepped out into the hall then slipped into the kitchen and checked my phone. Zip. Not even a finger-wagging text from John, much less a forwarded update. Maybe my brother was finally sleeping. But Leo … As soon as Snell cleared out of here I’d make tracks for the hospital. The sheriff was guarding him, right? He’d be fine, right?
Snell was verbally hanging onto Tully Lennox, a thirty-ish morning zazen regular for the last couple months. Tully was pulling his jacket tighter around his beanpole body and listing toward the door. In a minute he’d be stretching fabric trying to pull free.
‘… So you were in that interview room with him right before the attack.’
‘Not right before.’
‘Within the hour, correct, Mr Lennox?’
‘Honestly, I didn’t see anyone, Officer. Like I said—’ Tully was anxious. He was frustrated. He looked like his tightly curled blond hair was about to uncork off his head.
‘You walked to the corner. Who’d you see there?’
‘No one. I was looking for my car.’
‘Are you certain, Mr Lennox? Think carefully.’
Tully was uneasy at the best of times and now he looked like he was envisioning solitary confinement. I wanted to save him but I knew better, so I slipped by into the courtyard. The zazen regulars who had gasped at the news of Leo were waiting, hoping I would answer questions for which I had no answers.
With its high gray stone wall, potted plants and low stone fence, the courtyard looks like Italy. On mornings like this it feels like Norway. Renzo had set up a table of Renzo’s Caffe coffee and pastries. I looked around for him, our big friendly bear of a neighbor. Normally he’d be here, greeting morning sitters like this was his place. The stiff, slightly bitter aroma of his very serious coffee would mix with the whiffs of almond paste or pistachio, orange, lemon or perhaps cherry in the pastry of the day. It did now, but somehow, without him here to offer it, the courtyard seemed all the colder. Even non-coffee drinkers were holding cups for warmth. In a few hours the fog might roll back over the Pacific and the sun sparkle like someone had thrown the switch. Or ambivalent February could switch back to winter rain.
‘I can’t believe it,’ a blonde woman, Caroline, was saying as Tully hurried over, his face blinking between frazzle and relief, and grabbed a pastry, knocked over a coffee cup and caught everyone in the swirl of removing the innocent stain from the stones. A woman I hadn’t seen before this morning’s sitting – the wiry puff of hair woman – grabbed a napkin, bent from the waist and started mopping. The squirmer stood behind her, now suddenly still, watching us all. Observing, stuffing Renzo’s pastries in his mouth and managing to demand of Tully, ‘What’d he want? The cop?’
Tully pushed himself up. ‘Wanted to know what happened yesterday when I had dokusan. I go, “Nothing.” But he’s not having that, you know? He asks again, like he’s trying to make fire with a flint – you know, like if he keeps striking I’ll flame him out something.’
‘So nothing?’ Caroline prompted.
‘No. I wasn’t looking. I had … things … on my mind. Really, there could have been a platypus lying against the wall and I wouldn’t have noticed. I gotta … go.’ He looked at me. ‘Can I see Leo? Call him?’
‘I’ll let you know.’
Behind Tully, the squirmer pulled a pad out of a pocket of his dark tweed jacket and moved up next to the mopper. She edged away.
I said, ‘I’m going to go back to the hospital.’
‘Will you let us know—’
‘Of course. Give me your numbers.’
They say people expose themselves in times of stress. Maybe. Maybe not. But here they all gave their snapshots. Caroline – ever organized – pulled out a pad, wrote, tore off the sheet and passed it to Tully. He pulled at his long, prominent chin. He had intermittent aspirations of a beard. He’d let his stubble grow, sometimes for a few days, sometimes a couple of weeks before annoyance, frustration or a girlfriend’s ultimatums perhaps brought him to blade. The beard came and went, but the chin rubbing remained. He gave his chin a last pull before accepting the pen and paper and excavating his memory for the number. The squirmer grabbed and pressed so hard the pen ripped the paper. And the gray-haired woman held the pad and said to me, ‘This is my first time here. I heard Garson-roshi speak in Berkeley. Is this OK? I don’t want to—’
‘It’s fine, really,’ I said.
The mopper was just about bouncing. She’d almost grabbed the paper twice. I didn’t know her either but she wasn’t asking permission. ‘You’re Darcy?’ She handed me the paper as if it was a missive between the two of us and glanced behind her as if to be sure no one was near.
‘Yes.’
‘Aurelia Abernathy. Aurelia Anne. My brothers are Adam and Alexander. You know, like we’re a cute collection. It’s a whole A-full household. Too much information?’ She laughed. ‘Sorry. I know this is a bad, bad time. I mean, I know Leo. What I mean is I knew him before, you know? I didn’t know about this, the attack though. I’m stunned. Leo, wow, he’s the last person, right? Sorry.’
I nodded. This was one woman with whom I wasn’t going to have to worry about what to say. In a subdued post-meditation group she was like the dandelion in the lawn that Dad would aim the mower over and find it had popped up behind him. She was an odd combination of thin and muscular, of direct and edgy. Her hair was curlier than mine, but brown and short, the kind of hair you don’t even have to run your fingers through, like ground cover on the head. She shifted from foot to foot as if all that sitting so still in the zendo had sucked out all her ballast and now she was bobbing on the water. I said, ‘You know Leo from …?’
‘Japan.’
‘Really?’ Despite Leo and I living across the hall from each other, my being his assistant, him being my teacher, he kept the gate to his past closed. Partly out of respect and partly from fear of offending, hurting and stepping onto too soft ground, I stayed on the outside. That’s not to say I wasn’t curious. Au contraire. ‘In the monastery?’ Safe guess, that.
‘Yes. He was much more serious – established, if that’s the term. I wasn’t there long.’
‘Just passing through?’
‘You could say that.’
‘School trip?’ She looked young and haggard at the same time, like she’d just finished high-school exams and done all-nighters for the lot of them. But even if she’d been in high school when she and Leo were in Japan, how many years ago could that have been? Looks can be deceiving. Billions of dollars support that! Even factoring in face goo, grin-and-grimace exercises and just good luck, she couldn’t have been much over thirty now.
‘Sort of. But listen, this is the wrong time. Since I’ve got you, you know … I just got here. You’re a stuntwoman, right?’
‘Stunt double, yes.’
‘Do you think I can break in?’
‘What?’ What!
‘Oh, sorry, this was so stupid of me. Of course, you’ve got too much on your mind right now. Forget I asked. I’ll catch you later, when things are calmer. When Leo’s back. When do you think that’ll be? I mean, I know hospitals toss you out as soon as you can remember your name. My sister-in-law had a baby and was home the next day.’
I offered an all-inclusive, ‘Thanks.’ Then thought to add, ‘Where can I reach you, Aurelia?’ I’d be giving Leo a blow-by-blow account of this scene and he might want to know. Though, if he was wise, he wouldn’t.
The Great Way is not difficult,
it only excludes picking and choosing.
Aurelia wrote down her cell number and fluttered off, sucking all the energy out of the courtyard with her and leaving it icier than before. If the fog was going to lift today, it was giving no warning. Tully was gone, Caroline on her way out and the strangers nowhere in sight now. I trudged down the half block to Renzo’s and the promise of another espresso and comfort.
When I’d first seen Renzo in a rumpled jacket, squirming on a zafu in the dawn zendo, I’d assumed he was a plump, gray-curled derelict who’d found a quiet place to get warm. It hadn’t occurred to me that the pastry baker who kept an eye on the block from his tiny cafe on the corner would be checking out his new neighbors’ operation. Even less would I have imagined that he would fold our morning zazen into his daily schedule, unlock the zendo if neither of us was there and have espresso waiting afterward. He was so regular that I could have sworn I smelled that coffee brewing half a block away every morning when I rang the final bell.
Renzo had grown up in this part of the city. He was not only a native San Franciscan, as I myself was, but a much-esteemed fourth generation. And all four of his generations had lived their lives within half a mile of this spot. He was on first-name terms with all established shopkeepers, restaurateurs, the managers of the strip clubs that had lined Broadway long enough to be considered for city landmark status. If you’d lived here more than a couple years, Renzo knew you. He kept contact with his friends from high school, from his days at San Francisco State. He had relatives in every part of the city, every municipal agency, in city hall and on both sides of the law. There was nothing Renzo couldn’t find out. In Zen there is a saying: Not knowing is the most perfect. For Renzo, not knowing was an insult. This was his city and he gathered its facts and whispers with a collector’s passion.