And so was the person whose hand had tossed it. They’d walked right up Warren Street. Perhaps they’d been in Jo’s. She didn’t know Karl, or anything about that scene. She wouldn’t recognize him.
Ray looked up and down the street as he crossed—looking for Karl—and had a bad moment as he entered the restaurant, thinking he might really be there, at Ray’s table, waiting. What have you got there, Ray? A computer? What did I tell you about electricity? Just what are you writing?
Yet the moment he opened the laptop the words poured out.
Karl’s notion of physical work being the door to the spiritual he soon extended to everything we did. According to him, provided you followed his Way, ordinary actions, from speaking, walking, and eating to going to the bathroom and making love had the potential to become imbued with the miraculous.
He called it the Secret Path, a way hidden right below the surface of ordinary life. It had an elaborate philosophy and cosmology, most of which escapes me. That’s because he delegated its explication to his subordinates, none of whom held my attention when they spoke at meetings. One part of the philosophy Karl loved to talk about was the magic of the number three. He had his own odd interpretation of the Holy Trinity. He went on about three stages of man, three this and three that. I’m surprised he didn’t mention the three members of the band Cream.
Aside from that, he was clear that intellectual theory wasn’t the meat of this Secret Path. That could only be accessed by the keys he gave us—the esoteric exercises. No one had written them down. Even if they had they’d have no power, for, as Karl explained, they were only effective when imparted by oral transmission.
Where had he gotten them? From his teacher, back in England. Who in turn had gotten them from his teacher in a lineage that stretched back through all the great prophets of the major religions: Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, all members of this secret society. An idea that should have made Susan the religion scholar skeptical, but she bought it. We all did.
I bought the part about oral transmission, because of his voice. No matter where he was—in The Meeting Hall, Dining Hall, even out back, the wind howling—Karl knew how to modulate his speech so that it was always just at the edge of audibility. I was always craning forward to get the words. Eventually, it gave me a chronic stiff neck. And it wasn’t just my neck craning forward toward that soft sound. It was all of my being, wanting to get it, get what he had.
According to Karl, his exercises would not only transform us, but over time transform the space we practiced in—The House. As we practiced in it, it was supposedly becoming saturated with some ineffable substance. Karl said, “If a stranger—say, some local farmer—came in here, he wouldn’t know what it was, but he’d feel it, wonder why it felt different.” And so this dilapidated mansion was becoming The House, a temple teeming with power. It didn’t look so ugly to me anymore, and it wasn’t just because of our renovation. Sometimes I thought I could sense the very stones vibrating with energy.
It was an easy sell for the old acidheads among us. We’d tripped and witnessed some skuzzy apartment turn into a miraculous palace, its filthy windows turned to eyes on the cosmos, a dirty sink a sacred fountain.
Karl spoke the names of the parts of his house with an odd cadence, and we imitated him. The Kitchen became the place where we prepared the holy substances that nurtured life, The Dining Hall where we took in those substances. He commanded us to perform Cooking and Eating as sacred acts in which we availed ourselves of the secrets of a universe in which, as he explained, “Everything eats or is eaten. And which are you?”
Karl christened the whole building The House, with an intonation that implied that every other dwelling on the planet was mean as a mud hut. That only within these walls could life be really lived.
Karl said, “Your body is your temple.” While the inner exercises were the meat of our practice, they occurred in a physical body. By the same token, all of our work happened in The House. Essential to sanctifying our bodies and The House was a compulsive attention to detail. This extended to our grooming and dress, and to how we moved and spoke—always controlled and measured, just like Karl.
Like shoes and cushions, place settings at meals were laid out in meticulous order. We lifted forks slowly, just so, and replaced them each time at the exact spot on the table. Chewing was even and rhythmic. As if that didn’t make eating uncomfortable enough, every meal was taken in strict silence. Pity the poor fool who dinged a utensil against a glass. A flick of Karl’s eyes and they were mortified for hours.
Through the long mornings of drudgery, I’d count the hours, then minutes until lunch. Yet soon as I was there, I lost my appetite. I wasn’t alone. Everyone picked at their food, because that’s what Karl did. The little I could choke down sat unhappily in my stomach throughout interminable afternoons.
Karl said, “Careless gestures, sloppy work betray chaos in here.” He tapped his forehead. “That is unbecoming. But what is worse”—he clutched his chest—“is a black heart. A heart poisoned by negativity. Stop all negative emotions. Cut them off.” He sliced his hand down with such violence that the room collectively gasped. “Like you would the dead limb of a tree. And don’t let them grow again.”
It seemed like simple advice at the time. But what was a negative emotion? Anger? Sorrow? Certainly boredom. Which was what I mostly felt as I slaved away, yearning for those brief moments with Karl, consumed with envy for that inner circle. Envy was surely negative. So was my overwhelming guilt at being unable to “cut off” these feelings. But then Karl never said it would be easy.
I wonder if Karl’s command to stop negative emotions had something to do with the peculiar thing that happened to our faces. We learned to keep them utterly impassive, as if by erasing all expression of feelings we could stop feelings themselves.
Karl never expressly told us to do that with our faces. We just learned by imitating him. What he did say was to relax the muscles of the face, which is, I suppose, the same thing. Except, as so often, it became a conundrum. He frequently ridiculed members for their slack faces. What was it? Relax or not? A reasonable question, but no one would dare ask Karl.
Susan and I and the other members of my band did not get to live in The House. That was reserved for the inner circle, who lived upstairs. Susan and I rented a ramshackle farmhouse a few miles away. We worked menial jobs during the day—I was a gas station attendant. But most nights and all weekend we spent at The House.
Jo came to his table. “I was going to ask you if you wanted more coffee, but you don’t look like you need it.”
It was incredible, but he didn’t.
“I think you’re having fun.”
Fun? Not exactly. But he knew this moment from the long practice of music and art. Projects often began bone-dry. Then came a hint of dampness, followed by this trickle. Which would soon turn into a flood. He felt like a kid at the top of the roller coaster just as it tips to head down. Filled with excitement and terror. As he rode, the story was getting steeper. And darker.
Was he ready for the Bassman part? He could try the beginning. As with Susan and Liz, there’d been a before. A better time for his friend.
Bass players were the bane of the Nightcrawlers in our early days. We’d just lost our last one to accounting school when Bassman came to audition. He was still Tommy Coogan then. He trudged into our practice room with his axe slung over his shoulder, mumbled something, and gave me a feeble handshake. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. There was no way this guy was going to rock. Bodine rolled his eyes at me. Another waste of time.
But soon as Tommy plugged into an amp, he instantly transformed our sound. He proceeded to lay down a bottom that was as fat and solid as the foundation of Notre Dame Cathedral. After a couple of songs, Frank got up and wrapped his arm around Tommy. “Now we have a band.”
We didn’t care that Bassman was a little weird as long as h
e played like that. When he came to live in the band house, he rarely left his room. I’d visit him from time to time. There was no rug, nothing hanging on the walls. Just a single bed and stacks of books. He favored stuff from darker branches of the spiritual tree: Alistair Crowley, Arnold Ehret, and Carlos Castaneda. In the safety of his room, he finally spoke. He didn’t do small talk but dove right into the big questions—the meaning of life, death, the universe. He might be weird, but I recognized another searcher.
I made some offhand comment about acid and he gave me a terrified look. Had he done it and freaked out? Or was he afraid to because he might? I wasn’t asking.
Ray winced. He wasn’t ready to relive the next part about Bassman. He closed the computer, stood, and got his coat on, preparing for a walk down Warren Street. It was raining, and he didn’t have a case for the laptop. He brought it up to the counter and asked Jo if she’d stash it.
She scowled at it. “Sure, unless I put it out with the trash. At least you aren’t using it to snoop on Liz any more. Are you?”
“No.”
Ray walked to the river and turned around. There was enough rain pouring down that he didn’t need to see more water. Most people were sensible and inside. On the way back, he reached Bodine’s cross street. He could pay him a visit, but Bodine had work to do. His friend suggested Susan might still be with Karl. It made no sense. But Ray had also never known what happened to her after the group, and before Phil the roach man.
His jeans were soaked by the time he approached Jo’s. He went home, put on dry pants, and called Lorraine from the gallery.
He said, “Hey, sorry about yesterday, questioning your silence.”
“Not a problem. You’re doing a tough thing.”
“When was the last time you saw Susan?”
“Oh. I was going to suggest you call her but didn’t want to stir up old trouble.”
“I understand.” He paused. The wind tossed a handful of rain at the window. “She’s dead.”
“No! When?”
“Just last year. Car crash. It…burned up.”
She groaned. “How are you taking it?”
“It doesn’t make me feel great.”
“You ever want to talk about that…”
“You’ll be the first I call.”
She sighed. “Susan came to see me a couple of years after we left the group.”
“Oh.”
“She’d just left herself.”
Relief flooded him.
“She said she was done with all that spiritual stuff. She seemed sad about it, and it made me sad, because it was such a large part of who she was. And she seemed kind of washed out, diminished. A lot of us had some rough years after the group. I’m sure she recovered.”
“You don’t think she might have gone back?”
“No. She was done.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Sorry, again.”
“We’ll talk soon.” He hung up.
Susan giving up her quest made him sad too. Like a part of him was missing. Because her quest had been so tied to his. What about his? Whatever happened to Ray of Orange Sunshine?
Susan hadn’t ever recovered from the group. Why else had she settled for Phil?
He headed back to Jo’s. He snaked the laptop from behind the counter and sat at his table. He stared at the screen. It was important that he get this next part right. He needed to honor the memory of his friend. He still had doubts—that if he’d just done this, said that it would have turned out differently. Which was reasonable. But he was so wrapped up in the past that he had the crazy feeling that if he didn’t write it, it hadn’t happened.
Finally his fingers moved and the words tumbled out.
After a couple of years with Karl, I was so numbed by the constant overwork and lack of sleep that I wasn’t feeling much of anything. But I was still essentially sane.
But Bassman… What I know now is that, without the grounding of his music, he’d been steadily coming unraveled. Bodine and I had chafed when Karl forbade us to play. But playing his bass was essential to Bassman’s existence. It was all he had.
It was a bitter morning in early March. Bassman and I were scraping paint off the columns on the front porch when Karl snuck up.
He gestured wordlessly: come. We followed him into The House and down two flights of steps into the basement. The ceiling was almost twenty feet high. We entered the modest semicircular foyer. Karl led us into a great chamber that stretched the length and breadth of The House, aside from the foyer and its twin room on the opposite side.
Karl said, “You are going to lay the floor of the Meeting Hall.” He swept his hand across the expanse of fresh concrete. He led us out back and pointed to the ten thousand bricks Bodine and I had gathered and cleaned.
“Neither of you eats or sleeps until it is done.”
My first thought was, impossible. I felt the weight of those tons of bricks in my arms and felt myself sinking right into the earth. But then I got it. This was one of Karl’s tests. Which could be an opportunity to prove myself to my teacher. If I passed, it might be my ticket to the upstairs, to the Inner Circle. A flicker of excitement. It only lasted a moment.
What if I failed?
I’d laid a few bricks repairing the front porch. Whatever knowledge I had would have to do.
Bassman and I got to work. As usual, I soon forgot about the inner exercises. Instead I obsessively figured and counted: how many bricks, how long it would take. It was going to be a long day and night and part of another day before we were finished.
I remembered the story of Milarepa, whose teacher Marpa had commanded him to move a mountain of stones. When he was finally done and went for his reward, Marpa told him to move them back. I’d always laughed at that part of the story. Not now. When we were done, was Karl going to demand that we tear the floor up and lay it again?
Within a half hour of commencing the ordeal, I was shivering. My fingers stiffened and fumbled with the mortar. Bassman started coughing. With no talking allowed, he gestured like his throat was sore.
There were no fireplaces down there. The basement was far enough below ground that it had assumed the temperature of the earth and was above freezing. But the air was still cold and damp and peculiarly musty. It had me breathing shallowly. But at least I wasn’t getting sick, like Bassman.
The light from the only window—a casement high in the foyer—did nothing to penetrate the great room. So we worked by candlelight. After half a day without rest, I entered a state of punch-drunk exhaustion. The candles were a constant danger. One drop of wax on that virgin floor and Karl would be sure to find it. He’d nail me with that dead eye: You ruined it. It was just like Karl to consider a simple floor to be the Foundation of the Group or some such.
Once the mortar started setting you couldn’t just tear out a single brick. You’d have to re-lay a whole section of floor.
Bassman’s cough degenerated into an ominous liquid bark, and the bouts became longer. He’d sit on the cold concrete, rocking, holding his chest. I wanted desperately to help him. All I could think was to crouch down and put an arm around him, but he feebly shoved me away.
We finally finished, with about a hundred bricks left. My fingers were frozen, belly cramped from hunger, lips cracked and bleeding from thirst. We’d had a single bottle of water and drained it hours ago. I’d been leaning over so long I doubted I’d ever stand straight again.
But we’d done it! I smiled to myself, thinking of that prize. I was headed for the stairs when Karl arrived. How could he know we’d finished? He didn’t look at either of us, just gave the floor a cursory glance.
“You can eat now.” He left. There’d been no invitation to the inner circle. No nothing. I felt like he’d slapped me in the face with a two-by-four. The next moment, I was seized with a terrible hunger. Bassm
an had suppressed his cough while Karl was there. Now he was bent over in an epic fit. But I couldn’t wait to eat. I caught his eye and nodded upstairs—I’ll see you in the Dining Hall.
He gave me a look that didn’t register until later. My body had suffered in that basement, and I was sorely disappointed. But I was still me. Over that day and night and day, Bassman had lost part of himself, and I’d seen it in his face. He was missing the glue that held his fragile parts together.
I returned to The House a few days later, still feeling like I’d had the crap beat out of me, filled with resentment. My friend Crystal came up, smiling, carrying a sitting cushion she’d lovingly embroidered with silk thread. “Karl says you can place it up front for him.” She looked at me like this was some rare honor.
I carried it downstairs. My hands curled into fists—our beautiful brick floor was practically invisible under an impeccable rows of cushions. And the reward for the ordeal of laying it was holding Karl’s cushion for a minute.
At the end of the day, Ray was up on the couch, feeling that special buzz that only comes from a couple of beers on top of a righteous day’s work, when Lou called. Ray frowned. Why did he have to ring now, disturb this time?
Lou said, “You’re my last call of the day.” Agent’s hours, ten to six. “I’ve been going over the new stuff you sent me. It’s coming along. Some nice atmospheric touches—creepy house. But I’m hoping that’s what we in the business call foreshadowing.”
“Foreshadowing what?”
“Something juicy. Because what you’ve got so far is a little…quiet.”
“Quiet?”
“We’re looking for eyeballs here. To get eyeballs, we need dirt. Sex. Drugs. Come on, this happened in the seventies, right? Would it be too much to hope for a murder or two?”
Eyeballs. “Murder?”
“Just joking. But you have some good stuff, right?”
Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series) Page 14