Angry Buddhist (9781609458867)

by Greenland, Seth

  “I used to be a singer.”

  “Really? What’s your name?”

  “Kendra Kerry. I sang all over the west coast with a seventies revival band. Maybe you saw me somewhere.”

  The woman studies her for a moment. “No, no, somewhere else. Well, I’ve got to get going. Thanks for giving me your opinion. Us girls have to stick together, right?”

  “Definitely,” Kendra says.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to introduce myself,” the woman says. “I’m Mary Swain and I’m running for Congress. I’d love to have your vote.”

  Oh, no, no, no. The hat, the large sunglasses, the whole incognito posture. If Kendra had been less distracted she would have noticed. And now Mary Swain has made this ridiculous request. Mary Swain had to have seen her somewhere with Randall. Did she create so little of an impression? “Sure,” Kendra says, in that instant when thinking would ordinarily take place.

  “It was great meeting you, Kendra,” Mary Swain says. As she walks away, her taut, well-exercised form in recession is a ringing coda to the impression of perfection she leaves in her wake.

  Kendra feels like she’s been smacked in the face. The sensation is not sharp, but dull and resonant. She sees Mary Swain and her husband at the cash register now. Mary Swain has to know who she is. Has she been playing with her? Had she come over simply to enact some kind of sadistic spider and fly routine? Surely, whether or not she had seen Kendra sing at the Kern County State Fair is immaterial. The woman has to know she was talking to Randall Duke’s wife. Surely, she has to have at least recognized her from pictures taken with Randall. There are some on the Randall Duke website, aren’t there? She’ll have to check later. She knows there haven’t been any pictures of her in the newspapers lately, not that anyone reads them anyway, but still. Mary Swain had to have recognized Kendra somehow. Had to have. How utterly and resonantly humiliating! That she could present herself to Kendra as just a civilian shopper is appalling. Who does this plucked and toned shot of estro-power think she is? Kendra considers herself a force with which to be reckoned. For someone like Mary Swain to feel no compunction about standing in the middle of an outlet store and toying with her in this cat-with-a-clueless-mouse manner is unconscionable.

  When she retreats to the dressing room, Kendra is distracted from these malign thoughts by her phone. The caller ID: Palm Springs Academy, the school her daughter Brittany attends. The female voice on the other end asks if this is Mrs. Duke. When Kendra answers in the affirmative, the caller identifies herself as Mrs. Halstead, the head of the Upper School, and informs her that her daughter Brittany has been caught sending nude pictures of herself over the Internet to a boyfriend which has resulted in a two day suspension effective immediately and would you mind terribly picking her up right now?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The bullet kicks up a shower of dirt six inches from a surprised rattlesnake. Hard Marvin holds his police issue Glock 9 away from his body, braces his right wrist with his left hand. He wishes he had hit the snake. Doesn’t want to be out here in the Mojave on his day off, guns and a sun that can break you, killing rattlers. But Nadine Never wants to learn how to shoot, the girl a live wire, a rocket powered fun bundle with needs in central nervous system stimulation significantly above those of a normal person. Hard’s dog, a Rottweiler named Bane watches calmly as his master squeezes off another round, bullets ricocheting off rocks, boom echoing off the distant hills, but the snake has already slithered under a boulder. Bane takes this opportunity to lie down. Hard glances at Nadine but she doesn’t seem to mind that he hasn’t killed the snake. That’s a good thing about these young ones, Hard reflects. They aren’t as demanding.

  “Shit,” he says, squinting behind his aviator sunglasses. In his experience, women like to see deadly snakes get their brains blown out by big strong guys. He figures it must tap in to some genetic need they have to be protected. Hard doesn’t claim to know a lot about women, but it would have been better if he’d killed the damn snake. “All right. You try.”

  He slides behind Nadine, savors her slim blondeness. About half a foot shorter than Hard, she wears jeans and a sleeveless white belly shirt that shows off a flat stomach sliced by an inch of thin gold chain dangling from her navel. Her toned shoulders and arms are dusted with freckles. Her hair falls a few inches below her neck, bangs swept to the side, and a pair of inexpensive beaded turquoise earrings ceases their gentle swing as she stills herself to aim. She extends her arm away from her body and Hard eases the Glock into her right hand. Then he places his hand softly on hers and subtly grinds his pelvis into her denim-sheathed bottom. This is the best part of teaching a girl to shoot, he reflects: spoon position warrior version. He feels himself getting an erection.

  “It’s gonna kick, so be ready.”

  “Aren’t we gonna wait for a snake?”

  He doesn’t want her to kill a snake now. It won’t be good if she kills one and he doesn’t. Never mind he’s tired of her already, regretting promises made. “Could take all day,” he says.

  Hard has been at his police job nineteen years, coming up on a pension. Been working since he left the Marine Corps, the highlight of his hitch the Grenada invasion of 1983. Hard would have preferred to say he’d seen action in WW II or Korea or Vietnam but if it was Grenada then what the hell, at least he’d seen combat. Married a tae kwon do teacher when he got his discharge, smart businesswoman, owns her own dojo, Mojave Martial Arts. Two boys in the Army, both stationed overseas.

  One night last year Hard was draining a can of Buck Rhino energy drink at the AM/PM on Twentynine Palms Highway when he saw a girl emerging from the snack aisle holding a bag of salted sunflower seeds. Before he could say anything, she asked if he was Hard Marvin. The best introduction he could have hoped for. A beautiful woman had made him for Hard Marvin and she was smiling when she said it. He’d been confronted by enough citizens in public places and it wasn’t always pleasant, so he was already ahead in the encounter. He told her that yes it most certainly was the Police Chief of Desert Hot Springs in the flesh right next to the snack aisle and asked what he could do for her. Nadine said she could think of a few things and Hard started wondering if cameras from some television show were trained on the two of them. He asked if she was from around here and she told him no. Hard was a lot older, but a few graying chest hairs did nothing to diminish his confidence. They conversed for a while and she said she worked at Fake ‘N’ Bake, a local tanning salon. He should come by some time.

  “Aren’t I tan enough?”

  “I could spray you a few shades darker, make you look more mysterious,” she said, and told him she worked the evening shift three nights a week. Hard took the hint and stopped in two nights later, bought her a drink in a bar one town over and glanced at her drivers license when the bartender carded her. Twenty-two years old? That had caught him by surprise. She seemed older, tougher than twenty-two. He listened to the hopes, the dreams; registered the general emotional weather report: partly cloudy. Hard told her he was married—standard operating procedure—but apparently she didn’t mind since they were having sex in the desert later than evening on a camp blanket Hard kept in the bed of his Dodge Ram truck.

  “You’re the kind of girl I could leave my wife for,” he lied, as she laid her head on his muscular shoulder. Two weeks later he was telling her the same thing only then he thought he might be serious.

  That first night under the stars was when she asked him to teach her to shoot. And she took the Taser off his belt, ran her finger over it, said, “I want to learn how to use this, too.” Like she’s planning to be a one-woman SWAT team. Hard said forget about the Taser, but I’ll teach you how to use a gun.

  Hard and Nadine would meet at the Sandy Hills Motel where the owner has some potential issues with los illegals he employs as maids. The Police Department looks the other way, something the owner appreciates. So the lovers burn the sheets gratis for a few hours once, maybe twice a week. Hard brings a bottle o
f tequila.

  In the hotel room the first time: Nadine lying on the bed in a thong that Hard pulls off with his teeth. Inhaling her scent he takes a knife out the pocket of the pants he’s thrown over a chair. With the knife he cuts a lemon. Takes a lemon quarter and squeezes it on her left breast, watches the cool juice running over her areola. Her nipple hardens. With his other hand he grabs a box of salt and leaves a snowy trail across her other breast. He pushes her knees up. She giggles as he pours the tequila on to her belly a little at a time, and he watches as it sluices downward over her pelvic bone. Hard tried that one time with his wife and she nearly punched him, made him get out of bed and wash the tequila-moist sheets. But Nadine! She arches her back as Hard sucks the liquor out, the sharp taste of the tequila mixing with the pungent flavor of Nadine, licks the salt off her right breast, the lemon juice off her left, and as they move their hips, roll and thrust, his perfervid mind reels with the usual delusions: let’s get married, go to Mexico, sunny dreams. Kind of thing anyone paying attention knows will end in tears. But no one’s ever paying attention. Besides, Hard doesn’t really want to go to Mexico. He’s got other things on his mind since he’s spent time with Mary Swain, gorgeous, compelling, no, that doesn’t do her justice—inspirational Mary Swain. He’s getting ambitious. Not the kind of thing he feels the need to discuss with his girlfriend. Hard is still lost in his exhilarating thoughts, drunk on possibility and the boundless future when BAAANNNGGG the gun discharges next to his ear. He sees Bane’s four paws lift off the desert floor.

  “Goddamn, Nadine!” The blast ricochets off the rock formations, Hard’s ears ringing. “You nearly shot Bane!”

  “I thought I saw something move over there.” She had pivoted ninety degrees to the right and squeezed one off, catching Hard by surprise. This girl, he thinks, is dangerous. Not dangerous sexy, either. She looks at him with a lopsided grin. “This is fun.”

  “Anything happens to that dog . . . ”

  “You love him more than me?”

  “You’re damn right I do. I love that dog more than any human.” Trying to keep the stress out of his voice, Hard looks over at Bane, standing in a semi-crouch and shaking. “Point is, you can’t be shooting every which way.”

  “I swear something moved.”

  “Didn’t nothing move. Now aim where I told you.”

  Nadine swings the Glock back around and fires again. Hard can’t tell if she even aimed the weapon. It was turning him on, though. Now Hard is having second thoughts about breaking up with her. He would at least wait until after the election.

  Nadine pulls out her cell phone. Hands him the weapon and throws an arm around his shoulder. “Now point that thing and me, but don’t pull the trigger, okay?”

  Hard thinks she’s crazy, but everyone’s got quirks. Still, a picture? “Nadine, I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I’m a damn police chief. And I’m married, remember?”

  “I know, I know, but I won’t show it to your wife, I swear.”

  “Nadine, sweet thing . . . ”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Sure I trust you. It’s not you I’m worried about. What if someone else gets their hands on a picture like that?”

  “Okay. You want to know the truth?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “It kind of gets me going. I might like it on those cold nights you’re not there.” She smiles at him, blue eyes wide.

  “Sorry, darlin. Can’t do it.”

  Nadine puts the safety on and places the barrel against her own cheek and laughs.

  “Fraidy cat.”

  Hard is unable to fathom why the girl likes a gun tickling her cheekbone, but wonders why all women can’t be like this. In Hardville, they would. Guns and tits and Hard’s checking his sanity at the door. He would have liked to take the picture but he’s not crazy. What’s to stop her sending it to his wife? Would Mary Swain ever let him point a gun at her? While he was fucking her? That was another thing he had tried with his wife. She wouldn’t talk to him for a week. He has to control these kinds of thoughts—they aren’t going to lead to peace on Earth. But it sends a tingle from his lumbar region to his loins.

  Nadine holds the cell phone at arm’s length, points it at herself and snaps the picture.

  “If you were in the picture, it could have been our wedding announcement.”

  Hard hopes she’s joking but doesn’t say anything. When they’re walking back to his truck, Bane trailing behind them, Nadine says, “You ever kill anyone when you were in the service?”

  “No, but I’ve killed guys.” Hard gives her a little smile to show her how unaffected he is in the aftermath of dealing out the ultimate punishment.

  “As a cop?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “This time I was working with the INS south of here, we got a roadblock set up, we’re looking for illegals, right? So we stop this truck, Mexican plates, and it’s hauling tomatoes north. Well, you always got to wonder about a Mexican truck, no matter what’s in it. So the boys and I, we stick a couple of pitchforks in the tomatoes and we hear this scream, well.” He hesitates here. Hard has told this story countless times and he is in performance mode, each pause and breath perfected. Nadine is enthralled. “Then all of a sudden three Mexicans fly out of the tomatoes in three different directions and we start chasing them. I catch my guy, and he’s a little guy, but he’s strong so when I try to get the cuffs on he coldcocks me. I was trying to be a good cop, do it by the book but that’s when I kind of lost it and when I caught up I put him in a choke hold and that’s all she wrote.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Didn’t mean to.” When Hard sees the look on Nadine’s face, not condemnatory exactly, but not accepting either—hasn’t she just asked to hear the story?—he adjusts his swagger level down a notch. “Little hombre gave me no choice.”

  “Did anything happen to you?”

  “What do you mean? Did I get punished?” Nadine nods, looking at Hard with new eyes now, the man an actual killer. “There was a hearing. They always have one of those when someone gets killed but, no, nothing happened. Got promoted a year later.”

  “You think there’s retribution?”

  “What, like from God?”

  “Do you?”

  “Death gets everyone in the end,” Hard says, feeling very much the Philosopher King despite not having killed a snake. He figures the tale of the dead Mexican will shore up his macho bona fides with Nadine. He’s thinking about having sex with her right now when she says: “I really wish you took that picture with me.”

  There goes the mood. Hard doesn’t reply. A roadrunner zips past them fifty feet away. Hard briefly thinks about shooting at it, but he’s already failed to hit the snake and doesn’t want to compromise the newly minted respect he believes he just earned from Nadine by missing.

  “Hard?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t say anything when I said ‘wedding announcement’.”

  He doesn’t say anything the second time either.

  “Hey, Hard,” she says. “Smile.” He turns around and she snaps his annoyed expression.

  “Dammit, Nadine.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  When Hard doesn’t respond, Nadine trots a couple of steps in front of him, yanks her jeans down to the tops of her taut thighs, bends over and moons him. The manga kitten tattoo on her tight ass never fails to make him smile. She looks over her shoulder at Hard, her saucy expression shot through with a barely discernible vein of gravity. Hard marches past, slaps her on the butt and tells her he needs to get going. If he bothered to look he would have seen her bright young features sag toward the dry desert floor.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jimmy Duke is rolling south on Highway 111 through Palm Springs in the blue pickup truck. One hand on the wheel, his elbow resting on the open window, he ponders how fate co
uld have served him a sibling like Dale. It was one of the subjects Jimmy talked about in the anger management sessions. What he was doing in anger management: a gang member wanted for murder cut him with a switchblade and when the criminal was finally subdued Jimmy broke his jaw. And his nose. Only two punches. He thought that showed a certain degree of self-control but it was the second time he had engaged in violent retribution when a lowlife he was trying to arrest had failed to obey orders and Hard Marvin insisted he get professional help.

  The group therapy experience was something Jimmy failed to embrace so the leader suggested that Jimmy might benefit from the study of Buddhist meditation techniques. Intrigued, he had signed up for an on-line class being taught by Bodhi Colletti, a woman in Tacoma, Washington. He has spent the last four Sunday mornings sitting with his laptop at the kitchen table listening to Bodhi talk about the dharma. Jimmy aggravated the other students by repeatedly interrupting and asking what, exactly, was the dharma. Although she had given him a long and complicated answer as far as he could tell it boiled down to what Buddhists call the Four Noble Truths.

  1. Life is suffering.

  2. There is a cause for that suffering.

  3. There is an end to it.

  4. There is a means to that end.

  Instructing her on-line novitiates, Bodhi Colletti talked about how to process the negative thoughts that inevitably arise in the course of sitting on the meditation cushion and remain in the mind’s eye like bad weather. She talked about watching a thought rise, resisting the temptation to label it good or bad, then placing the thought in a pink bubble and watching it float away. She pointed out that the pink bubble, while not originating in Buddhist texts, was something her students often found helpful.

  At first Jimmy thought the whole thing ridiculous, particularly the part about the pink bubble. How did people come up with this shit? But when he actually tried to do it he was astonished by the efficacy of the technique. The next time a thought about his ex-wife Darleen arose—he was remembering the time at the end of their marriage when she drunkenly told him about an affair with her colleague at the hotel restaurant where she worked as a hostess—he conjured the pink bubble. Fol­lowing Bodhi Colletti’s instructions, Jimmy imagined his ex-wife Darleen encased in it. Then the pink bubble began to float away. Jimmy resisted the urge to imagine dousing the pink bubble with gasoline and lighting it on fire. That first time, however, he did manage to wish Darleen well as she soared skyward and disappeared into the clouds. The method worked a little better the next time a thought about his former spouse occurred to him, and still better the time after that. He knows he can never tell anyone about this technique—You put your ex-wife in a pink bubble and wish her well? Anyone would laugh—but he does not argue with the way it eases his vexation.