Thank you, Dr. Moon. In any case, though Mom was far from renouncing her perverse new lifestyle, for the most part Moss and I didn’t have to have our noses rubbed in her cougar scat—with one notable exception…
It was Jasmine’s night off, and she and I were at her place for an extended tutorial on algebraic word problems involving distance, speed, and time. These problems are notorious for trying the patience of even the most adept and persistent students, and Jasmine’s emotional reserves were wearing thin.
“A passenger train leaves the depot an hour after a freight train left the same depot. The freight train is traveling ten miles slower than the passenger train. Find the rate of each train, if the passenger train catches the freight train in five hours,” she read from her textbook, her tone growing more incredulous with each word. She threw down her pencil in frustration.
“Good first move.”
Jasmine looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “No need to be sarcastic.”
“I’m not being sarcastic. Are you familiar with the saying, ‘First do no harm’?”
“Isn’t that the motto of…plumbers?”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Doctors, actually.”
Jasmine laughed at herself, a good sign. “Blue collar girl. I knew I’d heard it somewhere.”
“Good idea for plumbers, too. And mathematicians. Until you put pencil to paper, you haven’t done any harm. Read it again,” I said. “Slower, and read it silently. Focus on seeing the movie in your mind.”
I waited a few moments while she followed my directions. Her breathing calmed and she looked at me.
“Tell me, in one word, what the story is about,” I said.
“Trains.”
“How many trains are there?”
“Two.”
“What are they doing?”
“Moving.”
“Are they traveling in the same direction, or in opposite directions?”
“The same direction, I guess. The second train leaves an hour after the first, but it catches up in five hours.”
“Do they run into each other?”
“No, that’s a different movie,” she laughed.
“So, which train is going faster, the first train or the second train?”
“The second train,” she said. “It leaves later and catches up.”
“What do they ask you to figure out?”
“The rate of each train.”
“Rate. What does that mean?”
“The speed. How fast they’re going.” I looked at her, and she made the connection. “Which is distance divided by time.” I watched her eyes as the wheels began to turn and her face lit up. “Or d equals rt. The d is the same…”
“What about time?”
“One takes five hours, the other takes six…I think I can do this!”
She picked up the pencil as my phone rang. I pulled it out and checked the screen. “It’s my mom.”
“Oh,” said Jasmine, putting a finger to her lips.
“Hi, Mom,” I said into the phone. “Hello?”
I heard Mom’s voice distinctly, but she wasn’t talking to me. “I think this one would be better on you.”
“Yeah, if I was a foot taller,” said a voice which I recognized as Betty’s.
Jasmine looked at me quizzically. “Musta butt dialed,” I said. “Sounds like she’s with her friend, Betty.”
“Put it on speaker.”
“They’re just shopping…”
“Trust me.”
I turned up the volume, hit speaker, and laid the phone down. Betty’s voice exploded from the tiny speaker. “I’m working on a new screen name. What do you think of I’ll_ do_you_my_way?”
“Too Frank Sinatra,” laughed Mom.
“I_deserve_a_dick_today?” said Betty. Jasmine gasped and covered her mouth.
“Too McDonald’s,” said Mom.
“Queen_of_cleavage?”
“True, but… wasn’t there a TV show?”
“Booty_on_duty?”
“Kinda ghetto.”
“TitsRUs?”
“Perfect! You should be in advertising.”
“Well, when you have a product you love,” said Betty. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall—who’s the cougariest of all?”
“You are,” said Mom.
“No, you are,” said Betty. The two burst into gales of girlish laughter. Jasmine gave me a look of amazed amusement. “Hey, are you still seeing Fred?”
“Nah,” said Mom. “Been there, done him.”
More giggles. “How’d you like his skinhead?”
“No big deal,” said Mom. “I shave downtown, he shaves uptown.”
“I went out with a guy who was totally shaved,” said Betty. “Not a follicle on his body.”
“How was that?”
“I thought something was wrong with him. I asked if he was getting chemo.”
Mom burst into laughter. “What did he say?”
“We were looking at menus,” said Betty. “He said he was getting tacos.” The two women screamed with laughter. “He was more of a schlub than a cub,” Betty choked out. “Or maybe even a chub! He looked like a big, giant tube of liverwurst!”
“Stop, Betty! I’m gonna have nightmares!”
I disconnected the call, shaking my head.
“When I say ‘trust me,’ you probably shouldn’t,” said Jasmine after a moment. I laughed, but I had to fight not to tear up. “Which one was your mom?”
“You know the one who was picking the new screen name?” I said.
“Yeah…” said Jasmine, her eyes getting big.
“That was Betty. The other one was my mom.”
“I think Betty was worse,” said Jasmine philosophically.
I shrugged helplessly. “Mom’s already got a screen name that gets plenty of action. She calls herself ‘Cougarlicious.’”
“You’re kidding.” I shook my head. Jasmine seemed to be having trouble incorporating such radical information into her world view. “And Cougarlicious was married to your dad?”
“She is Mom, hear her roar,” I said tiredly.
“I don’t think this is what the feminists had in mind,” said Jasmine.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just know she wasn’t always like this.”
“Maybe she’s got a parasite in her brain. Would that make you feel better?”
“Maybe, somewhat. Meanwhile, what would definitely make me feel better is to see you solve this problem.”
Jasmine gave me a long look and picked up the pencil. I watched silently while she worked the problem. She made an initial mistake, but I held my tongue, and after a moment’s thought, she caught it. Setting up the equation is the hard part. After she got that right, she did the arithmetic and came up with the solution.
She looked at me proudly. “Fifty miles an hour for the freight train, sixty miles an hour for the passenger train.”
“You got it.”
“I almost messed it up. Why didn’t you say something?”
I shrugged. “I thought you could do it. And you did.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Yeah, a little.”
Jasmine looked at me. “Maybe there’s something else I could do…”
And just like that, Jasmine put her lips on mine. It felt surprisingly comfortable; my body parts seemed to have instincts I hadn’t imagined, and I didn’t feel as nervous as I always thought I would. I ran my hands through her thick hair and inhaled a scent incredibly fresh and exotic.
“I don’t know if you should trust me, but I should trust you,” she said. “Should we stop?”
“I think a little more would be okay…”
“Maybe just to second base,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.
Wow. I’d never even gotten off the bench…
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Wheel of Time
I stood in a cavernous room that reverberated with a low frequency guttural rumble that made my whol
e body vibrate. I felt this sound, more than heard it. It came from a dozen Buddhist monks, some of whom chanted, while others played horns so ridiculously long that the flared bells rested on the floor while the monks blew into mouthpieces, their cheeks puffed out like Tibetan Louis Armstrongs. All were draped in flowing robes of yellow and crimson, wearing foot-high headdresses that looked like giant lemony Mohawks.
The extravagant visual was like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. I closed my eyes and let the sound wash over me. My pulse and breathing slowed, and I swayed on my feet. Then a high-pitched chime rang out: finger cymbals, punctuating the droning dirge.
I opened my eyes and flinched away violently, reacting to the shocking sight of a multitude of wild animals poised to attack the performers—a grizzly bear, several wolves, a herd of buffalo! And then Seymour Smith’s large hand was on my shoulder. “Steady now,” he murmured, and with a rush I returned to my place in time and space.
Mr. Smith and I, along with hundreds of others, stood in the Hall of North American Mammals in the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. We were there to witness the creation of a sacred sand mandala by the monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India.
I had been confused when Mr. Smith had called to invite me the week before; it had taken me a minute to wrap my head around an outing with him that didn’t include Mom. She’d made other plans, though, and Mr. Smith thought it was an event that would interest me, combining spiritual, philosophical, and artistic pursuits. It felt awkward to accept, but it seemed even clumsier to beg-off out of shyness. I hemmed-and-hawed, gripping the phone nervously, unsure of what to do.
“No pressure, old man,” said Mr. Smith. “It is a bit of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, though. Kalachakra Wheel of Time, and all that. Monks have been making it since about 600 BC.”
“And they haven’t finished it?”
He laughed. “No, that would be quite an undertaking, wouldn’t it? I mean to say they’ve been making versions of this particular mandala going back that far. They’re going to complete the entire work of art over the course of several days at the museum. Naturally we won’t stay for all of that, though. What do you think?”
“Let’s go for it,” I suddenly decided.
“Let’s go for it, indeed.”
So here we were. It felt weird to hang out with Mr. Smith without Mom, though it’s not like I’d ever been out with the two of them together. And now that Mom’s time was completely taken up with her juvenile admirers, Mr. Smith’s visits were much less frequent, and I realized I missed him. There was something reassuring about the older man. When I was with him it felt like I was in a private club, and without ever explaining, he taught me what the club’s rules were, and how to conduct myself.
When the performance concluded, the monks began to lay out the mandala on the marble floor of the hall. They used compasses, chalk, and string to carefully sketch the outline. I watched through Mr. Smith’s video camera, zooming to observe the details as if I were looking over a monk’s shoulder. But I wound up just staring at their faces, fascinated by their calm yet cheerful expressions as they collaborated wordlessly on the design. I’ve noticed most people don’t look happy when they’re working. They usually look bored or mildly annoyed, but not these guys.
After several minutes of watching, Mr. Smith cleared his throat. “Well, Moon, I’m getting a bit peckish. How about a bite?”
“Sounds great,” I agreed.
“The monks’ll be at this a good bit. Let’s have lunch, then come back to see them start the sand painting.”
A lot of people seemed to be having the same thought, because the crowd was quickly dissolving. Mr. Smith and I walked across the park and crossed the street to a Mexican restaurant.
He inhaled deeply as we entered, remarking, “Love that smell. Tortilla chips and a trace of mildew. Reminds me of Mexico.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Oh, yes. Marvelous place. Delightful people, beaches, guacamole, margaritas—what’s not to like?”
“Uh…poverty?”
“Well, yes,” he agreed. “However, I grew up in India. If I hadn’t learned to appreciate life’s beauty amid squalor I would have been very depressed, indeed.”
“I thought you were English.”
He nodded. “But you know, the British played a large role in India, even after independence in ’47. My father was a businessman, so we were primarily in India until I was eleven. Then we moved to the States. Oddly, I haven’t really spent much time in England.”
I felt like I was asking too many questions, but Mr. Smith didn’t seem to mind. There was more I wanted to know, so I continued my interrogation. “Still, you have the accent,” I said.
“Guilty as charged,” he admitted. “Might’ve actually emphasized it. Seems to add about twenty points to my perceived IQ in the US. When I go abroad, people consider me a lot less intelligent.”
We ordered and they brought our drinks. Mr. Smith raised his beer and toasted. “To art,” he said. He clinked glasses with my Coke, and we each took a long drink.
I had a sudden thought. “You’re not an artist, are you?” I asked.
“No,” he said, chuckling. “I’m a realtor. At least I can appreciate beauty, even if I can’t create it.”
“Is that why you go out with my mom?” I asked. “Because she’s pretty?”
“Well, it doesn’t hurt,” he said. “However, she has many other good qualities as well.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that she…uh…she—”
“Shh.”
“—goes out with…uh—”
“Shh,” he said more sharply, gesturing with his beer. I stopped. “A gentleman is discrete, Moon.” Then he thought, and added, “I have no romantic illusions regarding your mother. We really are ‘just friends.’”
I felt suddenly glum. “I’m glad about that for your sake,” I said, and shoved several tortilla chips in my mouth.
Mr. Smith looked at me thoughtfully. “You know, she’s just going through a phase. In the long run, she’ll snap out of it.”
“In the long run we’re all dead,” I said.
“Touché!” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. “Do you know who said that?”
“A friend of mine.”
“Not originally. The line belongs to John Maynard Keynes, a great economist. This is apropos,” he said, grinning.
Mr. Smith was dressed in tie and jacket, as usual. I watched in fascination as he quickly shucked off his jacket and began to unknot his tie.
“Uh, Mr. Smith…”
“Don’t worry, the trousers stay on.”
Tie off, he unbuttoned his dress shirt half way, and pulled it apart to show me his chest. I could hardly believe what I saw. “You’ve got a tattoo!”
“Well, I thought I ought. Everyone seems to be doing it.”
“Not like that,” I said, looking more closely.
“It’s from The New Yorker. Can you make it out?”
It was a cartoon that showed two old bald guys with glasses sitting in armchairs smoking cigars. One of them had his mouth open, talking, and the other guy listened with a frown. I read the caption aloud. “Between us, Flaster, there are two things I never did understand—arbitrage and dames.”
“Arbitrage?” I asked.
“Economics term. Taking advantage of market inefficiencies to turn a profit.” I looked at him blankly, and he gestured apologetically to his chest. “As it says, I don’t understand it either. Nor the other topic under discussion—women in general, and your mother in particular.”
“You’re going to have to live with that tattoo for the rest of your life,” I pointed out, realizing I sounded like an annoying parent.
“That’s not quite as long in my case as it would be in yours,” he laughed, buttoning up his shirt.
I was still having trouble wrapping my head around it. “You liked that so much you put it on your chest?”
“It was either that or my tom
bstone,” he said with a wink.
When we returned to the museum after lunch, the monks had made a lot of progress. The outline was finished, and eight monks were seated cross-legged on cushions, bent low over their work.
I took a close-up look through the video camera and had a sudden irreverent thought. “It looks like a giant paint-by-number design!”
“Yes, it does a bit. But they’re not painting,” he said.
“What are they doing?” I focused on a particular monk. He was holding a long, tapering cone in one hand, and his other stroked it with a metal rod. I zoomed in tighter, and saw a fine stream of red particles exit the tip of the instrument, depositing in a series of tiny mounds as he expertly moved his hands. “What keeps the sand in place?” I asked.
“Gravity.”
I looked at Mr. Smith. “That’s it? No glue?” He shook his head. “That’s not very permanent,” I pointed out.
“Exactly. Two teams of monks will work sixteen hours a day for eight days to create a magnificent work of art. Then they will dismantle it.”
I was appalled. “That doesn’t make any sense. What if Leonardo da Vinci had destroyed the Mona Lisa as soon as he finished it?”
“Another way of thinking, isn’t it? Puts the focus on the act of creation itself. And the transiency of this world. Like George Harrison said, ‘All things must pass.’ It’s just that these boys really put their money where their mouth is,” said Mr. Smith.
“Are you a Buddhist?” I asked.
“Can’t say that I am. However, I hear you’ve done a stint with them.”
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