by Sam Lansky
“Namah shivaya. Namah shivaya. Namah shivaya. Namah shivaya namah om.” Jacob was singing this now, at a faster pace, and the sound of it made Sam bounce inside his body, the muscles in his thighs and legs shaking, and the memories seemed to move more quickly, too, cycling through his mind’s eye in double time. Can we not? he asked, but there was no answer—only memory.
These memories. Rapid-fire. Crispy rice and spicy tuna at Nobu. They wasted money at the slot machines. They fucked for hours. They went to Cirque du Soleil and let the erotic charge build, Noah’s leg sturdy, pressing up against Sam’s. Sam wanted him all the time.
And then they were walking along the Strip, neon lights flashing, jets of water in fountains erupting from a pool opposite one another like an elaborate pas de deux, and Sam was walking ahead—why was this moment important? Sam couldn’t remember, but he dropped back into it anyway—as they approached a set of revolving doors that led into the next casino. One compartment was closing as the door turned and Sam was waiting for the next to open, but suddenly he felt a force on his shoulders as Noah shoved him into the door. Sam stumbled into the container, narrowly missing the glass barrier. Noah followed him into the next one, smiling naughtily. Sam’s heart was pounding. He turned to face Noah as he came through the door.
“What the fuck was that?” Sam said. He saw Noah’s expression turn. Noah had been trying to be playful, but it had caught Sam off guard. “Don’t do that.”
“I was just kidding around,” Noah said, abashed.
This little interaction—it was so telling. Noah, a little more fun and impulsive, and Sam, forever with his guard up, never able to just let something slide, never able to just relax.
And then it was the next morning and they had to leave, but they stayed in bed too late, Noah’s arms and legs wrapped around Sam like interlocking pieces. Sam was tall enough that it was hard to find someone who made him feel small but Noah—long, lean Noah, with his whiskey eyes—he always could. Sam didn’t want to put on clothes, didn’t want to go to the airport, didn’t want to return to the world. Even as they were checking out of the hotel, Sam could feel the way things were starting to unravel, somehow—some tension, some misalignment that he couldn’t yet name.
Traffic was bad on the way to the airport, the wide streets of the Strip giving way to a desert highway, horns blaring, plumes of dust everywhere. They were going to miss their flight. Noah was a bad traveler, Sam realized; he looked as if he might cry, and Sam couldn’t believe that this tree of a man could be reduced to rubble so quickly, and he wanted to comfort him but he didn’t know how. At security, Noah’s line moved more quickly, and suddenly he was passing through the metal detector and walking into the terminal while Sam was still untying his shoes to stuff in a bin, and Sam called, “Wait!” but Noah didn’t turn back.
When he finally caught up with Noah at the gate, Sam was furious and humiliated.
“What?” Noah said.
“You left me,” Sam said.
“What are you on about?” Noah said, and there was something confused and unsympathetic in his voice. “I’m right here.”
They didn’t speak on the flight. The tension grew almost unbearable. About halfway through, Sam reached across the aisle for Noah’s hand and gripped it, and Noah looked at him, confused. He didn’t know what he had done wrong, and Sam didn’t know how to explain.
What Sam wanted to say was, Please don’t leave me. He wanted to say, Yes, I’m angry right now, for reasons that are too deep to explain, but just promise me that you won’t leave me, that you won’t let anything come between us, that you won’t let me go. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything.
Sam turned over on his side again. He heard a rustling, like the flapping of wings. The room was full of smoke. Controlling, demanding, irritable, he thought. That’s how you always become, the closer someone gets to you. That’s who you really are.
Back home, Sam didn’t hear from Noah for the rest of the day. That evening they spoke on the phone. Something in his voice was different.
“I just don’t know if I’m in the right place to be in a relationship right now,” Noah said tightly. “I have too much going on to be responsible for someone else’s needs. I’m not up for that again.”
“You’re not responsible for my needs,” Sam said, sputtering. He was downstairs by the entrance to his garage, smoking. He inhaled deeply. “Where is this coming from?”
“I just think we might need to slow down,” Noah said. “It’s too much too soon.”
“Noah.”
“I do think you’re really great—I just need to take care of myself,” Noah said. “I’m sorry.”
It was so pat. So boilerplate. And it was right then that Sam began to feel not quite right. His face was flushed and his vision blurred slightly.
“Okay,” Sam said. “Let’s just—let’s sit on this for a minute, okay? I’m not feeling super great.” He took a long drag of his cigarette, suddenly not wanting it anymore.
“That’s all right,” Noah said. “We can talk later.”
It came on so fast. That was what Sam would remember later, with some incredulity. It was not a daylong decline, creeping fatigue, constriction in the back of his throat, tenderness in his sinuses. It was more like a collision. He was fine and then he was not. And in the new and frightening not-fineness of himself, he walked back up the stairs to his apartment, feeling the heaviness in his limbs, wondering if this was psychosomatic—it probably was, he thought—and he collapsed onto the couch, pulling a blanket up around his shoulders and resting his head on a shapeless throw pillow.
It was hot in his apartment, or maybe his body was hot—he held a hand to his forehead and wasn’t sure if it was his hand or his face that was hot—and he stood and turned on the air conditioner, although it was late December, and then he threw open the windows, letting the cold air rush in. Feeling the cold on his face, he laughed slightly, remembering when he had moved to Los Angeles just over a year earlier and he had packed like he was going to the Caribbean, lots of shorts and tropical colors. It had startled him to feel the chill of the winter.
Soon it was cold in his living room but still Sam felt the heat burning inside him, and the fever took him like a kidnapping. Like he was being cooked alive in his body. He took sharp breaths like he had been holding his breath underwater and had just come up to the surface for air. It was so cold and so hot and he bit the inside of his mouth so hard he could taste blood.
He awakened at some point and looked around the apartment. It was the middle of the night but the lights were still on and he felt dried out but his face was damp with sweat. He rocked back and forth. It did not feel like a sickness—it felt like a possession. This will pass soon, he thought. It must.
Maybe it was morning when the fever broke and Sam drove the three blocks to the pharmacy to buy cold medicine. He made tea and stumbled senselessly around his apartment, looking at himself from different angles in different mirrors, trying to find something deserving of love in his reflection. He ordered green juices and algae shots and turmeric and ginger and sucked it all down, one after another, until he could feel it burning his throat and churning in his stomach, all those sharp strange acids comingling. He vomited and felt better for a few minutes, and then the fever rose again like a curtain—“Showtime!” he sang out to his empty living room, collapsing again onto the couch, burying his sweat-slick face in the cushions.
Noah called to apologize.
“It’s fine,” Sam said, feeling the way speech made his vocal cords vibrate, feeling the delirious numbness in his head, having everything and nothing to say.
“I overreacted,” Noah said.
“I’m really sick,” Sam said. It was all there was.
Why this story? What does this have to do with anything? Sam flashed back into his body, returning to ceremony, and he was furious about having to
watch this tape again—this thing he had no interest in remembering. Having to live through it once was enough. Please don’t make me do this, he pleaded with the spirit, but of course there was no one there—it was just him and his memories, and he had no choice but to contend with all this once more, and so he settled back in and let the tape keep playing, surrendering to it and the logic of what he was being shown, as maddening as it was.
Noah had come over, to bring him medicine—on New Year’s Eve, Sam remembered. He could feel himself, lying on the couch, looking up at Noah, whose face was so concerned, and Sam was arguing with him, feebly and unconvincingly—about what? There was a party at the home of some film executive and Sam had said some weeks earlier that he would go, and it felt critically important that he follow through on that invitation, even though he was, of course, much too sick to do anything, and Noah was saying, “You can’t go,” and Sam was saying, “But I have to, even if it’s just for a few minutes,” and Noah was saying, “Tell them you’re sick,” and Sam was saying, “What if then he thinks I’m a colossal flake,” and Noah was taking Sam’s temperature and it was 101 degrees, then 102, and Sam was stumbling to his feet, pulling on real clothes for the first time in so many days, and for some reason the act of tying the laces of his shoes made him cry out in pain, and he panted and heaved, and Noah said, “This is so fucking crazy,” and Sam said between gritted teeth, “I have to, Noah—I have to,” and then they were in the car, Noah driving, and they wound up into Beverly Hills and approached the motorized gate to a private community and Sam lurched out of the car, pressing the name of the producer on the keypad, and there was a long dull ringing—nobody was answering—and so he called the executive on the phone and it rang and rang and then the answering machine picked up, and he stood there in the cold winter night, feeling so wobbly, like his body was all cartilage, like the whole machine was breaking, and he realized that nobody was coming. And it felt like a sign, and so he stumbled back into the car and put his head on Noah’s shoulder and they just turned around and drove home.
Happy New Year, he murmured to himself, or to Noah, or maybe to both of them. Happy New Year, baby, and he was singing it alone in his apartment, laughing to himself. God, you’re sick, and he really was.
He took cold baths. He took hot baths. He prayed to God that it would be over.
The day after New Year’s, Sam made an appointment with his primary care doctor. The doctor took Sam’s temperature, looked down his throat and felt his glands. “It’s the flu,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Sam said. He was dumbfounded. It couldn’t be the flu. He had never felt anything like this before.
“Yup,” the doctor said. “Bad flu going around. Really bad.”
The flu. It sounded so innocuous, so no-big-deal. The doctor prescribed something that he said would shorten the duration of it.
Zinc lozenges. Orange juice. Sam couldn’t eat. He drifted in and out of reality. After another three days, Sam went back to the doctor. “Still flu,” the doctor said.
“It can’t be,” Sam said. “I can’t keep going like this. I feel like I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying,” he said. “It’s the flu.”
And so Sam went home. And he lay on the couch, waiting for whatever this was to be over. Waiting for what felt like it had to be death. He drifted in and out of consciousness. And then he woke up with a gasp. He felt like his lungs were filling up. He croaked.
There wasn’t enough air in the room. He blinked into consciousness, then back into darkness.
He gasped again. He rose to his feet. He became aware that it was raining. He put on a coat.
Down the street he staggered, flicking rainwater from his hair. There was an urgent care clinic a few blocks away. He would go there. They would tell him what to do.
He stumbled through the door. The receptionist looked at him oddly. He collapsed into a seat.
“Flu!” he announced. She nodded. “Flu,” he said again.
“We’ll get you seen shortly,” she said. Sam wheezed in reply, moving his mouth, but no sound came out.
“Samuel?” a nurse called, and Sam rose to his feet, but he wasn’t sure if that was his name or not.
Past reception, in an exam room, a doctor took X-rays of his chest. “This isn’t the flu,” she said briskly. “This is pneumonia. Your lungs are full of fluid. You need to be in the hospital.”
Sam gasped and nodded.
“You should go to the emergency room.”
Sam worked his mouth but he couldn’t speak.
“Is there someone who can take you?”
Sam nodded. And then shook his head no. And then he began to cry.
Stop, Sam thought. Please stop. He couldn’t be in this memory for one more second. Stop stop stop you have to stop. But the memory kept going, kept pushing forward—the doctor’s hand on his arm, the stabbing of a needle, the flush in his face, the weakness rippling through him. He didn’t want it.
Why are you showing me this? he shouted at her. But there was nothing there—obviously. There was nothing there because God was not real, and spirits were not real, and magic was not real, and he knew that now. He was sure now. Show me something I don’t already know. Show me something, anything, but this.
* * *
“Are you still experiencing effects?” Jacob asked.
Sam opened his eyes, jolting back into consciousness. He looked around the room. “No,” he said.
“No,” Buck said.
“Let’s close the ceremony then,” Jacob said. He bowed his head for a long moment of silence.
Sam was the one to break it. “Jacob,” he said.
“Yes, Sam,” Jacob said.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Sure,” he said.
“I know I asked you this already but is this, like, one of those things where it only works if we believe in it?” Sam could hear his voice, trembling with rage. He hadn’t realized how angry he was until he had started to speak. “Like, are we going to get to the end of the weekend and nothing happens and it’s, like, ‘Well, you didn’t have an experience because you didn’t trust the process enough’ or whatever?”
“I take it you did not experience strong effects tonight,” Jacob said.
“Nope,” Sam said. “I didn’t experience anything. And I didn’t really experience anything last night, either. Which has me wondering—what the fuck are we doing here?”
“To answer your question, no, your experience is not contingent upon your belief in the effectiveness of the work,” Jacob said crisply. “But to be honest with you, I think with this attitude, you’re really selling yourself short here.”
“Jacob, I have been nothing but open,” Sam said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I prepped religiously. I showed up willing to accept whatever this was going to be. But I’ve spent two nights lying here bored crawling through the catacombs of my mind in the same mundane, torturous way I do every fucking day, and I gotta tell you, it isn’t bringing me one iota of relief. Nothing cosmic is happening here. This is not a spiritual experience. I don’t even know what this is.”
Buck rested his hand on Sam’s arm as if to say, Calm down. “Actually, I do know what this is,” Sam said. “It’s a colossal fucking waste of time.”
“Jacob,” Buck said politely. “Is it possible that there’s something...wrong with this medicine? Like, it’s not strong enough?”
Jacob laughed. “No,” he said. “This is extremely powerful medicine.”
“Then why isn’t anything happening?” Sam said.
“Well, it can take many ceremonies to experience the full effects of the spirit,” Jacob said. “Ten or fifteen, even.”
“Ten or fifteen?” Buck said incredulously, sitting up.
“Or more,” Jacob said. “Listen, you have no idea what’s happening out there in the ot
her dimension, man. It may not feel like there’s a lot going on but you just have to trust me on this.”
“What difference does it make what’s happening in that dimension if I can’t feel it in this one?” Sam said.
“You don’t get to have this experience on your terms,” Jacob said.
“Fine,” Sam said. “But I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m extremely sexually frustrated. I’m, like, weirdly congested? And I am experiencing nothing in the way of healing. So I kind of just want to, like, go home, jerk off, get Shake Shack, take a Benadryl and sleep in my own bed.” Sam stood up. “I’m gonna get some air.”
Outside in the yard, Sam lit a cigarette, which immediately sent him into a coughing fit. He hacked and sputtered, feeling sorry for himself. Momentarily, he heard the door slide open and Buck joined him. Buck reached for the cigarette and took a drag.
“You all right?” he asked.
“We are getting scammed, Buck,” Sam said. “We are getting straight up taken for a ride. By some white guy who did some spiritual tourism and came back hawking other cultures’ traditions for profit! And we bought it! It would be funny if it wasn’t so embarrassing.”
“Is that really what you think?”
Sam turned to look him square in the eyes. “Ten years of therapy in a single weekend? Like, what the fuck are we doing summoning spirits? I’m a sane, educated person. With a job. And a life. I don’t need to be lying on the floor for six hours while some grifter tells me he’s cleansing my energy. How dumb are we?”
Buck shook his head. “There’s one more night,” he said. “Let’s not give up on this just yet.”
Sam felt tears welling up in his eyes, as his anger gave way to hurt. “I just don’t want to feel this way anymore,” he said. “I thought things were going to be different. I thought he was going to fix it.”
“Fix what?” Buck said. He rubbed his eyes. “Look at you. You’re fine.”
Sam stared at Buck. He didn’t know how to put it into words, to explain what it felt like, what the thing was inside him that felt so bad. Or maybe it wasn’t a thing at all but rather an absence where the thing should be—a gnarled, ugly deficiency.