The Answer to Everything (16 page)

“Yeah,” I said as we waited in the vestibule for the taxi, “I hope the little guy pulls through. Does it say anything about survival rates?”

Amy had Googled “septicemia” on her iPhone and was reading keenly. “Hang on …” She flicked the screen with her finger to get more info. “Oh my God …” she said. “Oh God. This is not good … Poor Phil!”

That’s what her mouth said:
Poor Phil!
But her eyes seemed to say:
Lucky me!

I knew Phil would get better. I never doubted it. God told me in a vision that was vivid and clear. I was given a dream of Phil, laughing in a forest—a lush, tropical forest. He was eating papaya, swallowing juicy mouthfuls of bright orange fruit and spitting out the black seeds. Orange in. Black out. Health in. Disease out. He was shirtless—lean and muscled now, with criss-crossing scars where the doctors had stitched him up, where he had healed. The sun was shining in golden shafts through the canopy of trees as Phil devoured lusty bites of papaya. Orange in. Black out. And all the time laughing and laughing. I knew he would be well.

Phil’s infection happened for a reason.

I was summoned to New York for a reason.

And that reason was Xavier Raine Maddox.

Xavier Raine Maddox
@RaineMaddox

I’m not the captain of the universe’s most advanced spacecraft, but I play one on TV.

Xavier Raine Maddox

@RaineMaddox

Great to be tweeting again! Thanks for all your support and good wishes. It truly means the world!

19 Dec

Xavier Raine Maddox

@RaineMaddox

The sun is shining & I get to see it! Feeling tired but happy & met the most phenomenal human this morning. #EveryDayIsAGift

20 Dec

Xavier Raine Maddox

@RaineMaddox

“Our wounds are where the light gets in.” Wise words from my new Canadian friend. More here: #FF @answerinstitute

23 Dec

Xavier Raine Maddox

@RaineMaddox

“It’s the injured oyster that produces the pearl.” Eldrich = Genius. #FF @answerinstitute

23 Dec

And then came Raine. Xavier Raine Maddox, who at the time didn’t mean much to me but seemed to mean a lot to the sci-fi geeks who watched his show:
Deep Sky
. He had done a detective series—one of those police procedural franchises—a few years before that, and I remember thinking he was hunky whenever I surfed by, but I never watched an episode. And I never thought of him as a giant celebrity. I mean, I would have recognized him as a TV actor if you showed me his picture, but until he got involved in the Institute, I couldn’t have told you his name. Imagine our surprise when we suddenly got thousands of followers on Twitter when he #FF-ed us after connecting with Eldrich in the hospital.

Sorry, let me back up here. What happened was, a couple weeks after his operation (after everyone assumed he was on the mend), Phil came down with a serious infection. Sepsis. Full on. Eldrich flew to New York to be by his side. It was pretty touch and go for a few days there. The docs had to devise some crazy cocktail of antibiotics to save his life. But it kicked in eventually, thank goodness, and Phil (who lost twenty-two pounds in the ordeal) slowly came around. That’s when Eldrich met Xavier Raine Maddox—in the halls of the
hospital. He was there having surgery to remove some precancerous cysts from his pancreas and, over the course of a few days, forged a friendship with Eldrich. I guess Eldrich talked him through a pretty intense time. When I first met Raine, he told me that Eldrich had been sent to him by fate to help him turn his life around so he could start to “live brightly.”

Eldrich stayed in New York over the holidays and was a guest at Raine’s home a few times. It made me laugh to picture grubby, flannel-shirted Eldrich hanging out in Xavier Raine Maddox’s swanky Manhattan brownstone. He was even invited there for Christmas dinner, but Eldrich chose to stay at the hospital with Phil. Raine sent a catered Christmas feast to the room and the nurses’ station. Phil sat up that night and even tried a sip of eggnog, and apparently it was a very festive evening and kind of the turning point in his recovery. Pretty cool.

In mid-January, Phil and Eldrich finally returned home. And a few days later, Raine came to visit and attended several meetings, much to the delight of the congregants, who were understandably jazzed to have the rakish captain of
Deep Sky
in their midst—Drew was especially wound-up, following Raine around like an excited schoolgirl, blushing whenever he spoke to him.

So, as it turned out, all of John’s angst and anger over me incorporating the Institute was for nothing. In fact, John was grateful I had taken the initiative, since we were about to start generating significant revenues—thanks to Raine’s involvement/endorsement—and it was vital to have the business in place to deal with that efficiently.

Of course, that’s when John really put the pressure on me
to quit school. He wanted to be in the bubble, working on his sculpture, but he also wanted to take advantage of the opportunity that was presenting itself, i.e., he wanted to capitalize on the exponentially escalating popularity of the Answer Institute. Or wanted me to. Since Phil wasn’t entirely sold on having his home perpetually overrun with Seekers—that’s the word Eldrich and John seemed to settle on for congregants—it was decided that we would start a building fund with the aim of purchasing a headquarters for the Institute. To that end, John concocted various merchandising schemes: podcasts, DVDs, special seminars, photographs of Eldrich, etc., and he begged me to leave school to help him get everything going. He was very persistent and persuasive. He pleaded, sweet-talked and bribed—he said if I left immediately, I could name my starting salary and give myself a retroactive Christmas bonus. When that didn’t work, he took a different tack, basically trying to guilt me into it. He was unbelievably unrelenting, and in the end I caved and withdrew from my course. Not because of the salary and bonus. Not at all. I didn’t give a shit about the money, even though I was substantially out of pocket after withdrawing from a course I had already paid for. No, I felt a responsibility to the Institute and to Seekers. John made me feel that it would be a betrayal to head back to school and dump the whole thing in his lap.

I guess it was a combination of feeling accountable and also feeling that something genuinely worthy was happening at 81 Elderbrook. Phil was beginning to heal and feeling happy; Heather, who had been basically catatonic, was starting to show signs of life again—she had totally bonded with
Catelyn’s daughter, Staci, and was taking care of her while Catelyn was out looking for work or attending her CAMH meetings; Raine was visiting regularly and attracting some pretty interesting people to the cause; Eldrich had started to write his tracts … There was just an upbeat vibe all around—a feeling of community. An effervescence. It was kind of exhilarating to be a part of it. And because I had been there since the beginning, I didn’t feel entirely comfortable abandoning it to pursue my own selfish interests/career. John made me feel like a traitor for even contemplating it, so I decided to sacrifice for the greater good.

Would I have left school to work full time at the Institute if John hadn’t pushed and guilted me into it? No. Definitely not. I would have finished out my year and then maybe taken a hiatus. But John Aarons could be a very persuasive and extremely convincing person, believe me.

Phil survived, and Amy’s dreams of no-money-down mansion ownership were dashed. But she was pleased with the souvenir he brought home with him from NYC. A bauble called Xavier Raine Maddox. Never heard of him? Yeah, me neither until he arrived at 81 Elderbrook and the legions started drooling. Dude had been the star of some crud TV show called
Deep Sky
, some Joss Whedon-y sci-fi thing that made the fan boys erect for a few years. I had never seen it. And neither had Amy, but apparently any C-list celeb—even a short, balding, thick-thighed forty-six-year-old—was enough to send her into a jean-moistening tizzy. As soon as Raine came on the scene (and yes, Raine was his real name, actually bestowed at birth, which should give you an indication of his flaky upbringing), she decided to devote all of her being to the Institute. Her chief aim was to bask in Xavier Raine Maddox’s celebrity glow (no matter how faint). Her secondary mission was to monetize his connection to the max. Our little psych major started to sound and behave a lot like an MBA. And I admit, buddy boy did attract a bevy of Seekers to our doorstep—so many that we had to consider relocating, which did require a certain amount of planning and administration. Being stupidly rich affords you
loads of leeway, but even Phil had to think about his neighbours, who might start to wonder why hundreds would show up to his abode at the same time every Saturday and Sunday, clogging the previously pristine curbs with automobiles dusty, dented and not manufactured in Germany.

I have to guffaw, though, every time I hear Amy’s claim that I coerced her into leaving school to run the Institute. What rubbish. A total fiction. I’d never seen anyone embrace an enterprise with such zeal. She was a regular Ron Popeil—dreaming up products to hawk through the website. What’s more, I invite all interested parties to please go to York University and ask to eyeball the marks Amy scored on her first semester term papers and exams. All sad Cs and dismal Ds. She was failing the year. She knew it. Her profs knew it. And anyone who cares to check the records will know it.

Amy throwing herself headfirst into the Institute had nothing to do with my powers of persuasion and everything to do with academic deficiency and a lust for luminaries and lucre.

Steve was sent. Then Raine. He brought followers, of course, many Seekers, but he was not just God’s magnet or amplifier. No. He himself was a messenger who carried first-hand knowledge of a spirit plant, a sacred botanical from the jungles of Peru. Not a mushroom. A vine. It was this godly vine,
Banisteriopsis caapi
, brewed by shamans into a blessed beverage, ayahuasca, that told Raine there would be cancer coming. Worms swirled around the place where the disease would sprout and grow. Fluorescent-green worms with multiple heads and mouths. The worms told him there would be disease. When he left Peru, he knew he had to act. He told his doctor about the worms, but his doctor didn’t believe him. He said that Raine was the healthiest patient in his practice. Raine pushed. The doctor ordered blood tests and urine tests. The blood tests and urine tests came back normal. Raine pushed again, but the doctor sent him away. Luckily, Raine trusted his God-/plant-given vision and not the opinion of one well-intentioned but limited man. He went to a clinic and paid for a CT scan. And the scan revealed the Truth. Raine had precancerous tumours on his pancreas—tumours that would have devoured his life force had he not acted.