It had gotten ominously quiet. I half rose from my chair.
“Uncle Ten?” Maude was standing in front of the sofa, staring at me. “I’m hungry.”
“Uncle Ten! I need to show you sumping!” Lola called from the bedroom.
“Just a minute, Lola!”
“I’m hungry,” Maude said again. “Aunt Julie always makes us a-vo-ca-do on toast.” She pronounced the word proudly, as if it were recently learned.
“Uncle Ten, it’s really, really important!”
“I’ll be right there, Lola!”
“Uncle Ten?” Maude’s eyes darkened with doubt. “Do you know how to make a-vo-ca-do on toast?”
I opened my mouth to answer.
“Bang,” I heard. “You’re dead.”
Adrenaline karate-kicked my heart into my throat.
The body is always the first to know.
Lola was in the living room, her chubby 4-year-old hand wrapped around 11 ounces of deadly weapon. She was pointing the Smith & Wesson at her sister, maybe two feet away.
An AirLite works best at close range, like a fist. It can kill three men in five seconds.
My lungs shut down.
I was so exhausted the other night. I must not have spun the combination lock on the safe.
I couldn’t remember removing the bullets.
“Lola,” I said, my voice forced into false calm. “Listen to Uncle Ten. I want you to stop walking. Stop. Walking. Right. Now.”
Lola froze, her eyes uncertain.
“Good. Now put the gun on the floor, okay? Just lay it right on the floor, just like this.”
I illustrated.
“Am I in trouble?” Her lower lip trembled.
“No, sweetheart. You’re not in any trouble. Just put the gun down, okay?”
She did as I said. I was at her side in three strides. I picked up the revolver, wheeling away from both children. I thumbed the release and snapped the cylinder open. The fact that it was empty of bullets did little to slow my heartbeat or stem the hot rise of shame.
“It wasn’t a rule! You didn’t say no looking in the closet!” Lola threw both arms in the air before collapsing onto the floor.
“Lola, I’m not mad at you. I promise.”
She was spread-eagled and wailing, like a widow on a funeral pyre. I jammed the revolver deep in my back pocket and knelt next to Lola. I laid my hand on her back.
“Lola, it’s okay. I’m not mad at you.”
She lifted up her head, her nose and eyes streaming.
“I just need to be sad for a little while, Uncle Ten,” she sobbed. “I need Lola time, right Maude?”
Maude nodded, stolid and unperturbed. She had her own agenda.
“Uncle Ten,” Maude said. “I’m still . . .”
“You’re hungry. Got it,” I said. “Just . . . just hang on, girls, okay? I’ll be right back.”
I ran into the bedroom. The black plastic AirLite case lay on the closet floor, its lid raised. The open door of the gun safe was an invitation to disaster. I pressed the Smith & Wesson back in its foam cutout nest, snapped it shut, stored the case inside the safe, and double-spun the dial on the lock. I checked the safe door. Checked it again.
My palms were slick with sweat. Make that my whole body. My heart was chattering like a machine gun. I was up to my neck in tissues.
I placed my hands on my bent knees and forced myself to count off 10 deep breaths.
In the living room Lola had stopped crying. It was risky, but I had to make sure they both understood.
“Girls, I need you to make me a promise, okay? A really really important one.”
They nodded, their faces solemn.
“Promise me if you ever find a gun, here, or anywhere else, you won’t touch it. Not even if you think it’s a toy. Can you promise me that?”
“We promise, Uncle Ten,” Lola said.
“We promise,” Maude chimed in. “Can we have lunch now?”
“Okay, good. Two treats each for Tank, and two avocados on toast for my two favorite girls.”
I am always amazed at the emotional resilience of children, especially children who haven’t been taught to repress their feelings. It seems so counterintuitive, to just sit quietly by and allow them to experience their pain. But pain allowed is pain that passes. Just as unacknowledged or forbidden suffering has no place to go but underground. There, like a buried spore, it can only intensify and grow. I ought to know.
I fished out a bag of cat bribes from the cupboard under the sink and let Maude and Lola pluck out their treats. Tank magically manifested from whatever realm he’d been inhabiting. The girls held out their palms.
What if the gun had been loaded? What if Lola had pulled . . . ?
Bill chose that moment to call.
“Bill?” My voice was high and tight. I needed to change gears, and quickly. Fake it ’til you make it, Jean likes to say. Works with jobs. Works with feelings. She may be a waitress at Langer’s, but for me she’s the downtown deli version of a Tibetan oracle. I cleared my throat and tried again, forcing heartiness.
“Bill! Hello!”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
The trouble is, I’ve never been very good at the “faking it” part.
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” I said. “I almost messed up. Really messed up.”
“Almost only counts in horseshoes.”
“Not this time.”
“Whatever. So listen, Martha and I just got out of our session with the shrink. The lab called while I was in there. More news on the body snatching. Nothing earth shattering, but news is news. Whoever was donating his or her precious bodily fluids liked to smoke hash and weed, big-time. All the blood had a THC reading that was off the charts. You know, Cheech-and-Chong level.”
“Who?”
“Cheech and Chong. Jesus.” He sighed. “Never mind. Also, according to S&M, no matches from NamUs, NMPDD, or that missing-kids clearinghouse, though it’s early days.” The LAPD had instant access to numerous web directories, the biggest guns being the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, aka NamUs, a detailed data site compiled by the Department of Justice, and the FBI’s National Missing Person DNA Database, NMPDD. We lowly private investigators had the same access—it just took longer.
“The blood type helped eliminate most contenders,” Bill added.
“So what’s next?”
“Nothing, that’s what. Zilch. You’re off the hook. We’re kicking this over to Gangs and Narcotics. Like you said, it’s probably just vandalism. Some wannabe gangbanger with a sick sense of humor.”
Gangs and Narcotics would probably shelve this as well, as long as it stayed this side of a homicide. I twinged with resistance. I hate unsolved mysteries.
“What about your heebie-jeebies?”
“Yeah, well, we still don’t even know if there’s been a crime. GND promised to take another look. The tag’s the key. Four hundred and fifty gangs out there. Who’s to say this isn’t number four hundred and fifty-one? Not to worry. Either way, your tax dollars will be put to work. Not that you pay taxes. Gotta earn money to pay taxes, last I heard.”
I could barely keep up. The therapy session must have been pretty stimulating—Bill was acting like he’d been mainlining pure caffeine.
“How about the girls,” he added. “They behaving?”
I glanced into the kitchen.
Maude must have reopened the bag of cat treats. Her thumb and forefinger held a small brown nugget of mystery meat. Her hand rose slowly to her mouth.
Technically, she wasn’t breaking any rules.
“You have no idea,” I said.
CHAPTER 20
I merged onto the 134 East. The heavy clot of traffic immediately thinned. I had allowed plenty of time, as the 101 almost never flowed openly anymore. No major freeway in Los Angeles did. The public thoroughfares had been designed for thousands of commuters, not millions.
To quote Lobsang, too much
cars and too much fools.
The girls were buckled into their car seats behind me. They sipped from straws jutting from little waxy containers of apple juice. They’d had to instruct me on how to use the pointed end of the straw to pierce the tiny foil circle on the top of the box. That was after they showed me where to find the actual straws, bivouacked against one waxed wall. Babysitting the twins was always instructive as well as humbling.
Behind me, a throaty roar announced a motorcycle, coming up fast on my right. I’d noticed a crazy-looking bike splitting traffic earlier, and I half hoped this was the same one. I really wanted a closer look. I was in the fast lane, and I moved left a little more, in case he wanted to pass.
The growl grew louder, and a low-slung bike pulled alongside us. Lightweight but powerful, it was a beautiful thing. Orange and black, built like a modern work of art. Gold-anodized track rods operated a hub-centered steering apparatus. The handlebars were set wide apart on a swing-arm instead of the usual fork.
The rider gripped them lightly. He stayed parallel to us, reining the bike in, and it seemed to almost buck. A black leather glove saluted, as if the rider were doffing his cap. But in this case the cap was a gleaming black helmet, its lowered visor tinted smoky gray.
“Look, girls. See that motorcycle? That’s called a Vyrus. You don’t see one of those every day.” I was intrigued. I’d researched the Vyrus after noticing a pure black one fly past me in Malibu. Only two people in Los Angeles owned them, both famous, neither of them this guy. I could tell by the color.
“Pretty,” Lola said.
The Vyrus hovered an instant longer and then zoomed away like a supercharged hummingbird. A long black rope of hair spilled from the rider’s helmet in a tarry rivulet. Another moment, and he was gone.
The thrill subsided. I was still in a Subaru with two four-year-olds in car seats, sipping from boxes of apple juice.
Ganden Gyatso, my former temple, was just off Figueroa Street in the area east of Eagle Rock known as Highland Park. I noted the exits: Pass Avenue, Forest Lawn, San Fernando Road. The sharp familiarity of the route cracked the casing of my subconscious.
I was on my way to Ganden Gyatso again. After 15 years.
The temple was only a few years old when I first arrived, built at the behest of a wealthy Pasadena developer, Roderick Paul. He’d finally abandoned his rusted chassis at the age of 94 and slipped into the sacred mindstream with the hope of flowing into a newer, sleeker model of mortal coil. To that end, he’d willed three contiguous lots of undeveloped land—prime Highland Park real estate overlooking the San Rafael Hills—to the Dorje Yidam Monastery of Dharamshala, India, as well as earmarking 1.8 million tax-free dollars to construct a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles.
His kids went ballistic.
Mr. Paul had heard the 14th Dalai Lama speak during His Holiness’s first visit to Los Angeles. The young lama with a shaved pate and wearing a red robe talked about a middle way, about a path to freedom from suffering and the inevitability of disease and death. And Roderick Paul had listened and learned, following up with several visits to Dharamshala, where he was a guest at Dorje Yidam.
As his final will and testament showed, Paul especially took the notion of neutralizing karma to heart. Apparently he felt guilty about some of his actions, though shrinking the estate for his progeny was not one of them.
The courts ruled that his bequest to Dorje Yidam, while unusual, was fully legal. My father, as abbot, sent his trusted friend Serje Rinpoche Neysrung to oversee the design and construction of Ganden Gyatso, or “Joyful Stream,” in 1992. Two years later Rinpoche consecrated the gleaming new temple. We held our own blessings ritual in our prayer hall in Dharamshala.
Rinpoche returned to India, but he stayed connected to Ganden Gyatso. And it was at his urging that a novice lama by the name of Tenzing Norbu, 18 years old and full of a restless rebellion, was sent to Los Angeles five years later to be a part of the center’s youth-outreach program.
“Uncle Ten?”
“Yes, Maude.”
“I’m ready to see Momma now.”
“Almost there, Maude. Look for a sign that starts with the letter F.”
Like a foster child, I was placed with Dr. Leonard and his wife Adina, early Gelugpa converts. I helped conduct weekly discussions on lamrim, the stages of the path, and taught meditation classes in both Tibetan and English.
Let’s just say that for me, it was not a good match. I never fully embraced the monastic life in Dharamshala, and I certainly didn’t embrace it in Los Angeles.
Having a youth program at all was an overly optimistic plan. Highland Park was gang central back then, and we weren’t exactly swarming with eager young seekers. They were much too busy waging turf wars and killing one another in nearby Glassell Park. This stronghold of the deadly Avenues gang made youth outreach risky, if not lethal.
I did manage to befriend a few members of the patrolling police force. I found their approach to improving the lives of others much more to my taste. Plus, they got to carry guns. Legally, I mean.
The moment I completed my GRE, I applied and was accepted into the Los Angeles Police Academy. I swapped my robe and Buddhist vows for a cadet uniform and the promise to protect and serve.
“I think I . . .” Maude started.
“F! I see it!” Lola said.
“No fair, I saw it first!” Maude said.
“Well, I saw it last, so you both win,” I said.
I almost missed the ramp. Highland Park exits could be treacherous. The Subaru took the turn a little hot, and the girls squealed with delight.
I steered past Mexican bodegas, Vietnamese diners, and organic cafés. One final, steep left dead-ended onto Arroyo Ridge, a long curve that eventually looped back down to Figueroa.
Fifteen years was a long time.
I consciously loosened my grip on the steering wheel, finger by finger.
“Uncle Ten?” Lola was looking out the window, but her mind, like mine, was already inside the temple.
“Yes, Lola?”
“Is Homer friends with them?”
“Friends with . . . ?”
“The goats. Is Homer friends with them?”
“I’m sorry. What goats are we talking about?”
“The goats! The ones that are having the party!”
I was mystified. “Maybe you can ask your father about the goats,” I said.
The lot was almost full, one or two luxury sedans furtively stashed amid the horde of guilt-free hybrids and electrical cars. The eight-seat Ford passenger van loomed over all like a white whale, also a guzzler, but a necessary one.
I parked next to Martha and Bill’s Mazda.
The temple shimmered in the setting sun, luminous and vibrant. Faded but still-colorful flags hung overhead. The multicolored wooden awning was as brightly striped as a beach towel, and California poppies crowded the planters, the paper-thin petals of scarlet and orange incandescent, like tiny flames.
“It’s so fancy,” Lola said. “Like a Fancy Nancy house.”
A pair of scowling stone lions guarded the front walkway. Behind them, red wooden frames housed barrel-shaped prayer wheels, 10 to a side.
Maude liberated her fingers.
“Anyway, Lola, they’re not goats.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “They’re llamas. In red pajamas. Right, Uncle Ten?”
CHAPTER 21
The polished oak double doors cracked open and Martha’s head poked through.
“Martha! Over here!” I called.
She stepped outside, smiling. The girls took off.
I stayed put. I desperately needed a few moments to myself. I followed the footpath to an enclosed patio and cactus garden at the back of the temple. Lotus-shaped succulents, their pointed petals tipped with purple, hunkered between spiky yuccas on either side of the dirt path.
Out back, more prayer flags hung in the still evening air, limp cloth necklaces strung between posts. I set my palm against a rough boulder. Th
e surface was jagged, like my nerves. Three more randomly studded the landscape, as if dropped by mistake.
Just past the paving stones that marked the sitting area, the small marble fountain was bone dry. Its bottom was black with baked sludge, residue from the heat wave. A pair of carved doves, gray with marbled veins, perched on their arid centerpiece of stone flowers. They seemed as mournful as my memory had painted them, one gazing across the yard, the other tucking her head beneath her wing. Their throats must be parched. The ground beneath my feet was desiccated and hard as brick.
I did not want to be here.
I retraced my steps. I hadn’t seen a soul since the girls ran to their mother.
I passed between the stone lions. My skin shrank: the prayer wheels were spinning on either side of me, as if brushed by invisible hands.
I entered the temple swiftly.
An oblong table was pushed against one corridor wall, covered with offerings in parallel lines. Flickering candles floating in metal bowls of ghee. Paired sticks of incense emerging like antennae from dried yellow rice. Single pieces of fruit, an apple, a peach, or a nectarine. Floating blooms, gardenias and pink spiky chrysanthemums.
A familiar framed sign hung on the wall by the door. I could have recited the listed items with my eyes closed.
Temple Etiquette:
Please remove shoes before entering the temple.
Please do not place prayer books or Dharma images on the floor.
Please do not step over Dharma books or images.
Please do not point the bottom of your feet toward the teachers or altar.
But then, a new one:
Please turn off all cell phones.
At Dorje Yidam, the rules of Buddhist etiquette had numbered in the hundreds and were far less rational, but I bristled nonetheless.
I slipped out of my canvas slip-ons—they were called boat shoes, but I’d purchased them for the ease factor. Neither they, nor I, had ever been near a boat.
My black socks were scattered with tiny skulls, a conscious, if puny rebellion.
I added the shoes to a pile of footwear, between 50 and 60 pairs in total.
I muted my cell phone instead of turning it off, a second act of resistance, and moved to the doorway at the back of the prayer hall. The man in me appreciated the opportunity to revisit the past. The boy in me wanted to grab my boat shoes and sail away forever.
The Fifth Rule of Ten Page 10