by Susan Dunlap
“Like?”
“Like Rob came here one weekend—one!—before he shelled out for the dome. Dome’s don’t cost a fortune, but by the time he had it carted here it must have run him close to a hundred grand. He’d met Roshi once. He was a lawyer making three times that per year, but a third of your income ain’t peanuts.”
I must have looked insufficiently impressed. He pushed on.
“He was a lawyer, in San Francisco. He knew the lawyers for the Zen establishment there. He checked with them, not about Leo but about the title to the land.”
“Because he cared only about the land,” I tried.
“I’m not at the point of drawing conclusions. I don’t limit myself. But if I was I’d be screaming Yeah. And . . . and . . . then he bought the chocolate equipment. All of it. He got it used, because it’s almost antique. But it was not cheap.” Softly, smugly, Gabe added, “And then there’s the property our boy bought.”
“Property?”
He sat down on Maureen’s futon and patted the spot beside him. I understood the symbolism, but it didn’t matter.
“See, that’s the really interesting thing. Rob bought twenty acres on either side of the monastery. His land loops around to the road on both sides. The two plots almost meet in the back. So he’s got the monastery surrounded.”
“The property is in his name, not the monastery’s?”
Gabe nodded emphatically.
“Why would he do that?”
“Well, now, that’s the big question, isn’t it? Why do you think, Assistant?” But Gabe was on a roll. “The Asshole’s got his followers, guys who would love to turn this place into a strict, traditional training monastery, up at two A.M. for sesshin, seating by order of seniority. No heat in the cabins. No paving the road, so the monastery stays isolated.”
“No women priests?”
“He probably couldn’t get away with that, but he wouldn’t relax any rules for people with kids.”
Maureen’s futon was folded in thirds, creating a low, narrow, lumpy bench against the wall. On it Gabe and I were sitting side by side, knees bent in front of us. I shifted to the edge and turned to face him.
“Would they toss Leo aside?”
“Not everyone in the Zen community here. But Rob’s supporters? In a flash. They’re a crouching minority, ready to spring.”
But they hadn’t sprung yet, not in six years.
“Not until Leo gives them reason, right?”
He nodded.
“Or he leaves.” In a traditional monastery Rob would have worked his way up. But even traditional monasteries read the tale of the Sixth Patriarch. “What if Leo says he’s bringing in, say, a priest from San Francisco. Would Rob’s people support Leo or Rob?”
Gabe guffawed, big, hearty bellows, much louder than my outburst he’d so righteously shushed just minutes earlier.
“What?” I demanded.
“Well, Assistant, it’s damned hard to be the guy hoisting the flag of traditionalism and organize against the roshi’s chosen successor. It’d be like the Queen of England coming out against primogeniture.”
Another time I might have laughed, had I not seen where that predicament led. Trying to keep my voice light, I said, “Suppose Leo died? I mean, does he own the monastery land?”
“The monastery is an offshoot of the greater Zen Buddhist community in this area. They gave the land into Leo’s care. They’re not up here checking on the number of toilets, but if he tried to give the land to the circus there would be a battle.”
Gabe hadn’t seen the logical outcome of Rob’s predicament because he didn’t know Leo had been poisoned. If Leo died, control would bounce back to the Zen bigwigs. They’d be forced to take charge. But if Leo was merely sick, there’d be no event to force them to spend a lot of time dealing with matters in this outpost in the woods. If Leo was too sick to attend meetings or make plans, Rob could “speak for him.” Then Rob would have free rein to influence the unsure, consolidate his power, cast doubt on Leo’s judgment, and there would come a point when it would be very hard for Leo to oust him. It all depended on Leo being too sick to interfere—too sick, but not dead.
For Rob, that wasn’t a great plan or a flawless one, but the best he could do on the spur of the moment. Because, I realized, he hadn’t needed a plan at all until he was sitting in the truck with Leo driving and me peering through the back window. Until then there had been no threat, not until Leo dismissed him as jisha. I had seen his face lined in anger, seen him wagging his finger at Leo, leaping from the still-moving truck and striding furiously across the quad. The first time he’d spoken to me, his replacement, he’d tried to arrange secret meetings for me to tell him about Leo’s plans.
Surely Leo never dreamed Rob would poison him. But, here in the woods, Rob didn’t have many options. Had Leo set up this sesshin for Rob? Did he think Rob had killed Aeneas? The Sixth Patriarch—
Suddenly cloth covered my face. Gabe’s jacket. His face was against mine. He was kissing me, hard, like an assault. I pushed at him but my arms were out of position. I tried to speak, but his mouth was covering mine. I could barely breathe.
I almost didn’t hear the door open. But I did hear the footfalls on the bare floor and out of the corner of my eye saw the boots beside us.
Rob was dressed in low slip-on boots, loose brown wide-wale corduroys, and a thick sweatshirt that smelled of incense from the zendo, but he might have been garbed in purple vestments, holding the papal miter, and eyeing two clerics fornicating in Vatican Square.
The three of us made a tableau, Rob glaring down the length of his long body, Gabe and me huddled like part of the decorative base. We were silent; not even our breath broke the void. Outside feet trudged by, rubber clumping onto macadam; something banged, perhaps the ladder against the zendo roof, and for an instant I actually thought I heard the truck engine, but I knew I was fooling myself.
Then the tableau broke, Gabe sprang back, grabbed my shoulders, planted a loud kiss on my lips, leapt up, and, before Rob could speak, gave him an even louder mouth-to-mouth. Despite everything, I had to mentally applaud Gabe. The man never lost his verve. Rob was still wiping his wrist across his mouth as Gabe whipped out the door.
Leaving me to deal with Rob.
My inclination was to leap up. Instead I shifted slowly, and eased myself up, wishing I could have leaned casually against the dresser as Gabe had, but was unwilling to disregard Maureen’s altar there. Instead, I rested an arm against the wall and looked straight ahead at Rob’s chest and decided to make the most of this chance to fact-check this story of Gabe’s. For Gabe, of paste diamond schlimazel notoriety, meticulous research was essential, so he’d be easy to double-check.
“Rob, what’s your total cash investment in this place?”
His shoulders shot up protectively in a way that made him seem smaller rather than taller. When he finally demanded, “What?” he all but confirmed Gabe’s accusations.
“Did you assume your purchases were a secret, Rob?”
“Hardly,” he snapped. “Maureen probably told you about the bathhouse before you had a chance to wash your hands.”
His shoulders had dropped and without shifting anything else he seemed to have shifted himself back into control. He had, of course, been a trial lawyer trained to handle unpleasant surprise.
“She didn’t tell me about the zendo. You paid for that when you’d only met Leo one time. You tossed nearly a hundred thousand dollars into the woods with a stranger who’d already screwed up big-time! That’s a real pig in a poke, isn’t it? You might as well have invested in Nigerian Internet scams.”
“Hardly! The council said . . .”
“Of course, the council,” I said, knowing zip about any council. “The great Zen council guaranteed your investment.”
He didn’t move, didn’t react. I took that for a yes, a big-time neon flashing red yes. Had Leo known about that arrangement? What choice would he have had anyway? But the surroundin
g land, in Rob’s name only—
“What the hell are you doing in here?” Rob demanded, as if the previous interchange hadn’t existed.
“I came to see Maureen,” I said, kicking myself for musing when I should have been on attack.
“She’s blond and shorter than Gabe,” he said sarcastically.
“Well, I found Gabe interesting.”
“I could see.”
I was still looking straight ahead, at his neck, rather than giving him the advantage of his height. I waited until he inhaled, and demanded, “What about the other twenty acres, the land that encircles this place? Did you work that out with the council, too? Or is that your private deal?”
He grabbed for my shoulders but caught himself just before he touched, as if shocked by his own violence.
“What about the chocolate equipment, Rob? Is that another private deal? How many private deals do you have going here? Private deals, side deals?”
His throat pulled in hard, tendons bulged.
“Who the hell are you to accuse me?” he yelled. “You don’t know how things work here!” Getting control of his volume, he said, “Do you think Barry would have come here, just to get out of the city? Are you that naïve? He’s a class A chef; he could have gone to Boston, New York, New Orleans. What do you think lured him here? The woods? A chance to meditate? A teacher he barely knew? Hardly. I busted my butt to find that equipment. It cost a fortune. But the monastery has had a great cook. When times were tough, he kept people here, he drew students who wouldn’t have tackled the woods. This place would have fallen apart without him.”
“You’re quite the patrone, aren’t you? You sit in your fine apartment in San Francisco, spend your excess money on the dome for the zendo so Leo can build it. You buy the chocolate equipment so Barry can cook in obscurity. And what about Maureen, what was your great contribution to keep her here digging out a garden year after year? Getting the place in decent enough shape for you to deign to come live here?”
“Nothing! She—” but he was almost choking.
I jabbed. “And, that expensive chocolate equipment, what’s going to happen after the Cacao Royale this weekend in San Francisco; what’s going to happen when Barry leaves!”
His chiseled face had gone dead white with rage. His fists were jammed together in front of his gut and still he was shaking. I had never seen a man in such controlled fury.
“Someone else—” he squeaked, gave up, and slammed out of the cabin.
Sweat poured down my back. Now I was shaking as hard as Rob. I was desperate to get out of here, to be outside, safe with people. But I made myself stop, bend down, pick up the edge of Maureen’s futon where Gabe Luzotta had been looking.
What was under there was a newspaper. I took it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The newspaper I’d snatched out from under Maureen’s futon was still stuffed up under my sweater when I eased open Leo’s door. The closing door sent a chill breeze through the cabin. Leo was shivering when I helped him up. But he managed to sip half a cup of tea; I took that as a very good sign. The clappers hit, announcing the beginning of the afternoon block of sittings. I fluffed Leo’s extra zafu and prepared to sit zazen in his cabin and wait for the doctor.
“Go sit in the zendo.” They were the first words Leo had spoken. When I hesitated, he said, “You can hear the doctor from there.”
“How did you—?”
“Know?” He smiled, a weak copy of his grins in the truck two days ago. “Not magic. I heard the truck leave. Barry didn’t take it; he would stop in for blessing or luck or because he’s afraid to break the ritual. He’ll do that before he leaves. So, Darcy, what would necessitate this emergency trip? What else but you deciding I need a doctor?”
“Well, you do. You’re not getting better. Look at you, you can’t sit up without help. Of course you need a doctor.”
I thought he would be outraged at my ignoring his decision, but he gave what looked like a shrug.
“We’ll see.”
Leo was right; it was remarkable how much I could hear from the zendo. Leaves rustled, wind snapped branches against the bath house. Someone slipped out during the second period and I heard the zendo door shut, leather-soled shoes go down the steps, slap on the macadam, and the bathhouse door open. Maureen’s newspaper, still under my sweater, crackled so loudly I was sure everyone heard it. Near the end of the third period the kitchen door slammed and the servers’ clogs tapped the macadam as they carried the pots to the zendo porch for supper.
But I did not hear the truck, and I couldn’t help remembering Amber’s jibe: A cool old truck like that? Justin could be halfway to San Francisco by now.
I gave up any attempt to just sit and be aware, to do zazen. Desperately, I pulled my attention back to Rob, considered his ambition and Gabe’s. Somewhere in that eternity of time between the almost-supper signal of the servers’ footsteps and the actual end of that last sitting period ten minutes later, the two men’s ambitions contrasted with Leo’s statement about the doctor, “We’ll see.” What Leo had been saying was that since I had agreed to postpone a decision about his health till Friday, things had changed. They had changed not because of his health but because I had sent for the doctor. Our agreement was history—it didn’t exist any more; the doctor’s imminent visit was reality. Rob and Gabe were still anchored to the future of their dreams; those dreams blocked out reality.
The bell rang once to end the afternoon sitting periods. Beside me, Amber stretched like a dog waking from a long nap. People swiveled around on their cushions to face the room and positioned their eating bowls—three stacked, and wrapped in a white cotton rectangle twelve by twenty-four inches that would be used as an individual tablecloth in front of their knees.
I bowed and left the Zendo to assemble a tray for Leo and myself. When I got to the kitchen, bowls of gruel and salad were waiting on the tray. We’ll see. The doctor and the truck, which had filled my thoughts and beckoned my ears all afternoon, were illusion. Reality was Roshi’s food: poisoned or not?
Barry was not in the kitchen. I dumped the food. It would be a few minutes before the serving pots were back from the zendo and I could ladle out safe food.
Everyone was either in the zendo eating or hurrying back and forth serving and removing dishes. This was the one time the bathhouse would be empty. Maureen’s newspaper article crackled under my sweater. My hand was already inching toward it as I raced across the path.
And almost smacked into Maureen!
I know I flushed red. But she didn’t notice, not my face, not me at all. She was moving in that feet-barely-touching-the-ground way, as if her balance was off and she might lurch out of control any moment.
“Are you sick, Maureen?”
She came abreast, recognized me, went dead white, and rushed on ahead of me into the bathhouse without a word. Did she know I’d been in her room? That her newspaper was crinkling under my sweater this very minute? I flushed redder yet with shame. I had been so caught up in dealing with Gabe, in worrying about Leo, that the sense of invasion Maureen would feel once she discovered we had been in her room hadn’t occurred to me. I stopped, inhaled, tried to come up with something to say, failed, and walked into the bathhouse after her. The newspaper thundered in the silence.
“Maureen?”
No response.
I waited. Wind crackled the door; the plumbing gurgled. Finally, I peered under the stall doors.
She must have come in one door and kept moving out the other.
Relief mixed with the shame, but it would have been crazy not to read the newspaper article after all this. I pulled out the paper. An arrow in blue ink pointed to the final entry in a column:
City Updates: Ballet Harassment Suit Settled.
Ballet-Metropolitan of San Francisco, in a surprise move, settled the sexual harassment suit brought by ten female dancers, presently or formerly with the company. The settlement included the forced resignation of the company�
�s long time director/choreographer, Raul Jeffers.
In the casting couch milieu of ballet, to force a director’s resignation for a bit of pinch and tickle is unheard of. Smart money assumes that BalMet and former Director Jeffers had a lot more to hide than that.
Said soloist and plaintiff Alicia Quinteras, “The ballet was our life. We thought we were interpreting the most exquisite art and Raul was the great creator. He made it a sham. Art for sex’s sake.”
I squinted to make out the handwritten note by the arrow: Your quote, Maureen. Hope you don’t mind. Bastard’s gone! Yeah! Alicia.
Quickly, I refolded the paper, as if to shield it from my own prying eyes. Poor Maureen! I could imagine only too well what she had endured. The stunt world was different from ballet in many ways, but not all. We had our casting couches, too. But you don’t run through a wall of fire, even wearing Kevlar head to toe, then cringe at a hand on your ass. It pisses you off, makes you worried about your job, but it doesn’t crush you at the core the way betrayal of art does. Art for sex’s sake; no wonder Maureen walked out and into the safety of this monastery and Leo.
When I pushed open Leo’s door five minutes later, the cabin was dark. I lit his oil lamp and the room looked merely dim. But Leo looked like a dead baby bird. Holding my breath, I felt his forehead—clammy, but cold.
“I’ve brought you some soup. Can you eat?”
He nodded, and I lifted him, tucked the blanket around him, made sure he was steady before I handed him the soup. I did it all, pushing away the dread that would drown me if I let it. I couldn’t even let myself think about the doctor.
“What happened?” he asked.
“When?”
“Just now. You look awful.”
“I could say the same for you.”
“I asked first.” He smiled. “Darcy, the jisha’s job is to assist the Roshi. Part of that is to keep him informed about what’s going on.”
He sounded stronger, as if fortified by his responsibilities.