The Answer to Everything (17 page)

Ayahuasca gave him eyes to see. The spirit medicine saved his life.

Raine promised to take us to an ayahuasca ceremony. Or, if Phil was too weak to travel to the jungles of South America, to bring the ceremony to us.

It got really busy, really fast. There was a growing demand for Eldrich and anything to do with Eldrich. On top of that, we had all the rabid Xavier Raine Maddox fans, who thought they might get close to him at 81 Elderbrook. Seekers, geeks and celebrity hounds were descending on Phil’s place, and not just at scheduled meeting times. It was tough for Phil, who was still very weak and convalescing. John and I had to move up there full time to act as gatekeepers and try to keep things under control.

Seekers who couldn’t get to Toronto were emailing and posting on the website, and sending in donations. John had revamped the site with the help of Wayne, who aside from being a UFO freak turned out to be a wizard at coding. They set up a PayPal account and changed the splash page so it would show the donations to the building fund growing incrementally. We didn’t reveal how much money was being raised, just how close we were getting to achieving our goal, which was secretly, and absurdly—at least I thought so at first—two million dollars. For each ten thousand raised, another virtual brick was added to a cute little animated building in the corner of the page. The first ten bricks came surprisingly fast. Then Phil
donated seventy-five thousand and Raine kicked in twenty-five thousand—ten more bricks. And then Raine started tweeting to his followers, exhorting them to donate “a dollar for each beautiful year they had been granted on earth.” Soon we had seventy-six bricks, which was pretty shocking if you think about it. And that was just the donations. We were also selling merchandise. Our Seekers Perry and Moina volunteered to film and edit the meetings for us, which they intercut with footage of Eldrich speaking on different topics or answering interview questions. We burned those on DVDs and sold them for twelve dollars each, or nine dollars for a download. We sold eight-by-ten glossy photographs of Eldrich for five bucks a pop. Audio podcasts were ninety-nine cents. To be honest, we were making a ton of money. I mean, the Institute was.

Elderbrook was pretty full at that point. Phil was back in the master bedroom. Eldrich and Mushroom Steve shared the one next to Phil’s. Catelyn and her daughter, Staci, were in the third. The fourth was supposed to be kept empty, reserved for Raine’s visits, but Heather crashed in there a lot. Drew had moved into the pool house with Mindy and Alexa, who had taken him under their wings. Tyson was in the basement. And John and I were on his air mattress in the tennis bubble. Since Drew was living on-site anyway and super-eager to help out, we hired him as an assistant. He made trips to Costco or Walmart so that we always had provisions—food, bottled water, paper products, bathroom items, cleaning supplies, etc. He was also responsible for making weekly runs to our apartments to water the plants and pick up mail. We gave Tyson a stipend to act as bouncer and scare off star-struck interlopers
who were just trying to get to Raine, and he also kept the basement auditorium clean and organized. Heather was given a modest salary to prepare refreshments for the meetings, a task she seemed to enjoy and performed well. Between that and babysitting Catelyn’s daughter on weekdays, Heather was really starting to improve. You could tell she was taking better care of herself—the greasy, unkempt hair started to look washed and combed, and then sometimes even styled. Little bits of colour began to appear in her all-black-all-the-time attire. It was good for Staci too. Prior to Heather, she’d basically been stuck in front of a TV all day with her chain-smoking granny while Catelyn was out looking for work or on a bender. Now Heather was playing with her the entire time, showing her how to do all kinds of things: cook, bake, read, knit—Heather was making herself and Staci matching green sweaters with wool from Anne-Marie’s yarn shop. It was lovely to witness. They were like two inert elements that when mixed together made light.

You could see how things might have progressed in a relatively normal and successful fashion. We would have eventually raised sufficient funds to relocate to a permanent headquarters. Eldrich’s teachings would have continued to spread, attracting more people to meetings (which now had an admission price: a twenty-dollar donation). In a perfect world, we could have been giving ourselves good salaries and helping people at the same time. But the world isn’t perfect. Far from it.

I don’t know if it was the drugs or the adulation or a combination of the two, but Eldrich started to change. He got stranger. Much stranger than his normal strange, which was
pretty strange to begin with. He became obsessed with what he called the power of the “Alternaverse”—which was this new reality that we were supposed to embrace by doing things in a contrary or opposite fashion to the way in which they’re normally done. It was a kind of a “free yourself by doing the unexpected” manifesto. Shout when you’re supposed to be silent. Laugh at inappropriate moments. Get on a subway and sit right beside the only person on the car. Skip down the grocery-store aisle. Sing in elevators. That sort of thing. Eldrich said that God has a well-developed sense of humour, and that God is bored with our human habits and we need to be more amusing. He said we had to shake things up, to jolt ourselves out of our mind-and-soul-numbing routines.

This, of course, led to a lot of unpredictable and bizarre behaviour from both Eldrich and Seekers who were eager to demonstrate their acceptance and devotion. At times it was like living in some kind of loopy Monty Python sketch. You’d go into the kitchen and say good morning to someone, and they’d bark at you and do a somersault. Or you’d pour yourself a glass of juice and someone would grab it and dump it over their own head. Seriously.

You’d find people sleeping under the beds or on top of the piano. And all of Phil’s stuff got moved around. Eldrich had Drew, Tyson and Wayne move everything into nonsensical arrangements—furnishings all pushed up in the middle of a room, lamps Krazy Glued to the ceilings. Expensive Persian rugs nailed to the walls. A madhouse.

And then, in addition to the whole Alternaverse thing, Eldrich became fixated on the number nine. Nine was this
holy number and suddenly everything had to be done nine times or divided into nine pieces or have some relationship to nine. I didn’t believe in the nine thing at all, but adherence to the concept was annoyingly contagious. I’d find myself stirring my coffee or twirling my spaghetti nine times, or jogging extra minutes on the treadmill so the digits would add up to nine. It was irritating.

Also irritating—and worrisome—was Eldrich’s plan to start a magic mushroom farm in Phil’s basement. Psilocybin is a Schedule III banned substance. I know because I took the time to Google it. I learned that if some disgruntled Seeker decided to rat us out, we’d be looking at a ten-year max prison sentence for “production.” I warned Eldrich about it, but he didn’t listen. And Phil wouldn’t listen either. He trusted Eldrich, who insisted that mushrooms were part of the Institute’s holy sacrament, and that if push came to shove, religious freedom would prevail over misguided, archaic drug laws. Yeah right. Tell it to the judges who had to enforce mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences. Did it matter that Mushroom Steve was inept and never managed to grow anything useful (his “crop” kept coming up mouldy and toxic)? No, it didn’t. Because Steve never bothered to get rid of his equipment when he gave up his grow op. Did I ask him to carefully dispose of everything? Yes, of course. Did he tell me that he had done it? Oh yes, he assured me that he had. But what knuckle-nuts had actually done was stash three dozen Mason jars full of psilocybin spores behind Phil’s furnace, which is where the police easily found them on the night of the raid. So fuck you very much, Steve, you idiot. As if my life wasn’t difficult enough right now.

Anyway, back to Eldrich. It was around that time—Alternaverse, nine obsession, mushroom farm—that the touch therapy and the nonverbal thing started up, and soon after that all the sexual stuff.

Nine is Magic. The root of many mysteries. Our guiding numeral.

81 Elderbrook Avenue.
8 + 1 = 9
. Phil’s age when we met: 54.
5
+
4 = 9
. Raine’s age when we met: 45.
4 + 5 = 9
.

If I’m going to be entirely honest, it was one of the best summers of my life. Weird as hell, but fucking fun. I’ll never have another like it. So oddball. So vivid. A typical day: I awake in a giant white bubble with an orange-haired beauty. We fuck. Or we don’t. Then off she trots to manage the Institute, while I drift back to sleep or lounge long. Maybe a little radio or a hit off a spliff before I amble through gardens lovely and fragrant to the big house for coffee.

Along the way, I encounter several congregants practising what I assume to be Eldrich’s prescribed “Alternaverse” behaviours, i.e., free yourself/get closer to God by acting like a deranged lunatic. I overtake sixty-something Moina, crab-walking backwards across the lawn—her breasts hanging over her sides like eggs sliding off a plate. I pass a Speedo-sporting teen, tenderly caressing the barbecue, murmuring to it in Sinhalese, and out of the corner of my eye I spy Mindy, urinating in a flower bed while singing “Return to Pooh Corner” in a British-y accent.

Just another morning at 81 Elderbrook.

Dodging crazies in the kitchen, I make myself a cappuccino or a creamy, sweet latte, which I enjoy on the deck, usually
with some fresh fruit or Greek yogurt crowned with Heather’s superb homemade granola (it has toasted sesame seeds and candied ginger). I hold the
Globe and Mail
high to keep Seekers at bay until I’m ready for contact (always post-caffeine).

After brekkie, I check in with the boss lady. I find Amy and minions processing and packaging up website sale items, preparing for Drew’s daily drive to the post office. Oddly, the factory-like efficiency of this endeavour perturbs me more than any Alternaverse freakiness—all those eight-by-ten glossies of Eldrich, looking dreamy and wise, spread out across the floor, ready to be slipped into envelopes and mailed to maniacs across North America. I sign anything that needs to be signed, and maybe monitor some site stats (inevitably surprising; we grow stupidly rich) before skedaddling. Then a quick howdy to Eldrich, who’s composing his daily tweet, or leading the flock through some quiet yoga or tai chi, or, if Phil’s awake (unlikely at this point, since he sleeps sixteen hours a night while his body repairs), a drumming circle or an interpretive dance, or one of his Alternaverse exercises, like playing Satie on Phil’s baby grand with his nose. I wave bye-bye and head for a jog through the ‘hood or a ride through Wilket Creek Park. Phil, of course, has a fine collection of bicycles, most of which have been custom designed and are therefore too small for me. But there’s one, a Jerónimo Slütter Ti XCross, all titanium and amber leather, that must have belonged to his hubby and is just big enough. Comfortable and stylin’. After a hot, sweaty, endorphin-inducing workout, I strip down and plunge into the cool of the pool. Bliss. Then I sun-dry like a lizard on a rock, or merely towel off, before striding to the big house for lunch.

My mid-afternoon repast usually consists of a variety of cold salads, a sandwich and a bar of chocolate. After which I return to my bubble with the familiar, delicious throb that is the desire to work. I throw the iPod on shuffle and make MAMA for as long as I like, generally unmolested, unless Amy tries to persuade me to attend a meeting, or Eldrich tries to drag me along on one of his ruminating rambles through the Wilket woods. Then, when I’m fatigued or no longer feeling it, I go in search of my patron.

I make it a point every day to have a tête-a-tête with Phil. It’s important that he knows who his real friends are. And frankly, I enjoy it. I mix myself a cocktail and blend him a daily healthful smoothie made with apple chunks, an entire Meyer lemon, blueberries, red grapefruit, probiotic yogurt, turmeric, flaxseed and pomegranate juice. Then we sit and sip our respective beverages in the garden or, if he’s too tired to move around, in his bed. Sometimes we watch
Storage Wars
. We just adore
Storage Wars
. I love Barry, and Phil loves Jarrod and Brandi.

After our confab, I go and answer site correspondence on my shiny new iPad (thanks, Institute), a tiresome task, but Amy insists that I pull at least a percentage of my weight. She eventually finds me and we discuss our respective days (at 81 Elderbrook, there’s always something amusing to share) and debate our dining options—i.e., should we chow down with the clan or hightail it to a restaurant near or far. At that time of the day, there’s usually some communal barbecue action going on—Mushroom Steve is a surprisingly good cook—and it’s easy to saunter over and pluck a burger, sausage or cob of
corn off the grill, which is what we do almost every evening. There’s really no reason to leave. After dinner and some conversing with the congregants, we go over any business matters that need to be tended to on the morrow—payroll, supplies, accounts receivable, etc. Not that I understand or give a rat’s nut sack about any of it, I just want my gal-pal to think I’m keeping tabs on the till. When that’s done, we kick back and watch some TV or a flick in the basement theatre, or go for a swim or a hot tub, or retire to the bubble to smoke pot and fool around or just read and surf the Net.

Pretty fucking sweet. Talk about an Alternaverse.

If only it could have lasted …

Of course, the living wasn’t
all
easy all summer. If Raine happened to descend, which was more and more often as the season wound down, Amy instantly became satellite, faithfully orbiting the dwarf star. She’d claim she was merely tending to a “high-profile donor” (and I was being “possessive and weird” if I questioned her about it), but her attentions seemed to extend beyond playing the good host. A good host, for example, doesn’t have to suddenly go for pedicures or purchase an eyelash curler and spend an extra half-hour getting ready every morning. A good host can smile and nod politely, and doesn’t need to bray like a coked-up donkey every time a high-profile donor makes a heroic but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at a witticism. No. It was obvious to me that Amy was in a bit of a Maddox tizzy. And she wasn’t the only one. Eldrich, who I had pegged as asexual, or possibly gay and closeted, sprang fully, sexually to life as soon as Raine showed up with his daughter, Coco, in tow. Lovely Coco, with her soft blond curls, snub
nose and wide blue eyes. Curvy Coco with her titties up high and her Bubblicious behind. Fourteen-year-old Coco with her adorable shaved pussy—I know because of the scanty crocheted bikini she favoured. The girl gave every straight man at Elderbrook a relentless hard-on (I’ll probably be jerking off to her twenty years from now), but most of them knew not to mess with our star-congregant’s wittle baby-doll.