The Answer to Everything (19 page)

The following morning, Amy handed me an Institute cheque to cover the cost of my modPod egg chair. She said it made sense for the Institute to contribute, since Seekers would undoubtedly want to experience MAMA once she was done. She called it a legitimate “supply.”

I took the cheque, wondering why, if she was so desperate to accumulate cash “for Phil’s sake,” this was suddenly a priority. But I didn’t say anything. I just folded it into my wallet.

Later, I left the compound to try to clear my head. I went downtown and wandered through Kensington Market (you know you’re living with weirdos when the denizens of that district seem normal by comparison). I bought a few Christmas gifts for Amy, then hit the AGO to check out the Frida and Diego exhibit. It was great. And just great to be out, looking at art. Back in the day, everyone thought Rivera was the thing. He got far more attention than his unibrowed gal-pal. But Frida was clearly the superior artist. It was so obvious now. I lingered long, then grabbed some takeout from Asian Legend and cabbed up to Hawton Boulevard to chow down and hang in the old digs. I figured I’d have lunch and then maybe a nap or a wank.

Consider my surprise when I entered the living room and discovered a spanking-new sectional sofa, groovy shag rug and sixty-inch wall-mounted HDTV. Amy’s thirty-two incher had been relegated to her bedroom. In her closet: a bunch of duds I’d never seen before, including a half-dozen cashmere cardigans in a rainbow of pastel shades, a buttery leather jacket and a row of designer shoes, most of them still bearing their ludicrously high price tags.

Who knew she had even been coming here?

Had she used her salary to purchase these items? Possibly. She was certainly paying herself enough. Or were those five pair of Fiorentini and Baker boots also Institute “supplies”?

Could I even ask her that question? Certainly not without inciting another mammoth fight. And probably not at all, not anymore, since I had already deposited my twenty-three-hundred-dollar modPod egg chair cheque.

Hmm.

I reclined on the chaise lounge portion of the sofa (so comfy), switched on the giant TV (such wonderful brightness and contrast) and tucked into my Asian Legend (damned delicious). But in truth, I was feeling distracted. Dyspeptic. I couldn’t stop thinking about sewer-grate man and oxygen girl, and wondering if my Adam was on his way to becoming a fallen angel.

If I knew then what I know now about John’s background, I might not have been so offended by his suspicious mind. But since he never opened up to me, I had no idea why he was always so mistrustful and accusatory. I couldn’t understand why he kept pointing the finger at what he imagined to be my bad and dodgy behaviour.

It seemed very unfair.

There I was, working my ass off, basically running the Institute on my own so that John was free to be the artist I believed him to be. I was trying to help emotionally and physically fragile Seekers find solace and inspiration with Eldrich, and doing my best to help Phil get his home and health back, but all I got from John was distrust, skepticism and repeated unwarranted attacks on my character.

It was more than unfair. It was hurtful.

John seemed determined to push me away, when all I ever wanted was to connect and get close.

ATTENTION SEEKERS

Due to overwhelming demand, Eldrich will no longer be holding open Blends™ in the pool. If you would like to join in, please use the sheet below to sign up for tomorrow’s Blend™, which will take place at 9 a.m. sharp. Please note: this will be a silent Blend™ and Eldrich cannot answer any direct questions. If you wish to commune verbally with Eldrich, please see me to book a session. (Note: We are already booking well into the New Year.) Thank you for your understanding, cooperation and trueness.

Peace and warm puppies,
Steve

Human Jenga on the family-room floor. Olive-oil Twister in the kitchen. Twice daily “Blends,” i.e., synchronized group gropes in the swimming pool … Touch was the new Talk at the Institute.

I saw it everywhere around the compound, Seekers glued to each other in small or large clusters, coiled on couches, bobbing in the hot tub, mouthing one another, rubbing.

Did I partake? No, I did not. Even though there were at least half a dozen objectively appetizing females gamboling about Phil’s pretty much all the time and especially on weekends, I had nearly zero inclination to handle them. When the ubiquitous canoodling and so-called “therapeutic touch” sessions naturally (inevitably) morphed into Institute-sanctioned fuck fests, I still kept mine in my pants. Why? Because these people were crackers. Banana-fruity-flavours. Seriously, sadly, irreparably damaged goods. Likely crawling with STDs to boot. I had no intention of swapping fluids with them.

Besides, I had Amy, my loving and devoted partner.

I am not a prude. Unlike some. If consenting adult Seekers wanted to engage in therapeutic touch or remedial sexual activities, whether in pairs or larger groups, I wasn’t going to judge them. In fact, I found the physical/nonverbal conduct a lot easier to live with than all the Alternaverse weirdness that had been going on through the summer and fall.

Touch is medicinal. People need it. We really do require contact. This is not my opinion. This is a fact. Think of Harlow and his famous experiment with rhesus monkeys. I learned about it in first-year psych. What happened was infant monkeys were taken from their mothers a couple of hours after birth. They were given two surrogate mothers instead. The first was a wire mother, cold and unyielding, which provided what was then considered all-important: food. The second was a terrycloth mother, soft and comfortable, which gave no food at all. Guess which one the babies gravitated to and spent almost all of their time with? The cloth mothers. Touch was even more important than nursing/sustenance. Touch
was
sustenance.

Touch became a major part of Eldrich’s philosophy of spiritual connection and healing. Seekers were benefiting from
it. I saw it with my own eyes. People were happier. Calmer. More hopeful and content. A lot of bad energy was being smoothed away. It worked, so it lasted, unlike the Alternaverse madness, which had largely faded into the background.

So you tell me, was it so horribly wrong to respond when someone reached out and asked me to participate in a Blend? Am I a wicked, evil person who needs to be endlessly disparaged because I decided to try what everyone else seemed to be learning and gaining from? Should I be condemned and punished because I shared an innocent and affectionate embrace on one occasion with someone I felt an immediate kinship with?

I don’t think so. But that’s just me.

I heard them long before I saw them.

It was Christmas Eve. And far too many creatures were stirring at Elderbrook. You’d think that Seekers would have left to be with family that night. Wrong. It seems we
were
family.

There was abundant cooking, feasting, drinking and merry-making (Heather was baking up a storm in the kitchen) but nothing official. No meetings scheduled. And only a coterie of core faithful allowed on-site. Except for one. A special guest. Dr. Peter Scheibling—a strapping young ethnobotanist from Albuquerque. Raine had recruited him in his efforts to begin holding regular ayahuasca ceremonies at Phil’s place. Peter wanted to check out the joint, get the lay of the land and see if it was worth the risk bringing the drugs (he called it “medicine”) into Canada and administering them. Scheibling had visited Peru and Brazil many times and had studied extensively with various shamans. He claimed to know what he was doing, how to concoct and serve the brew, what kind of diet to follow in preparation, what drug interactions to look out for. He told us he used to belong to a church in Santa Cruz that used ayahuasca in its services. According to him, there were ayahuasca ceremonies being held regularly all over North America. You
just had to know where to find them. He said he’d heard about a Toronto doctor who was quietly experimenting with ayahuasca as a cure for drug addiction, and that he would try to track her down to see if he could tap into her supply. He seemed friendly, bright and knowledgeable, but for a scientist, awfully airy-fairy. He had long blond hair that rippled down to his waist, a studded eyebrow and two strangely pierced ears—the stretched-out kind with gaping holes in the lobes that you could poke your finger through. And although he arrived in normal clothing, he immediately went to the guest room and changed into a kind of Moroccan dress for men (it looked like pyjamas) with a pair of Uggs and an earflap hat. Somehow, he carried it off, still looked masculine. He smelled strongly of cinnamon oil.

People were drawn to him. Maybe because Raine presented him as if he were some illustrious dignitary who had deigned to grace us with a visit. Phil thought he was hunky (
Oh my God, it’s Fabio!
) and got all giggly around him. Eldrich and Steve were clearly enamoured, listening raptly to his Amazonian adventure anecdotes, hanging on his every word as if he himself were a shaman. Young Coco, who seemed to know him fairly well, was inordinately playful and flirty, plucking his hat from his head and trying it on, offering to braid his hair, fingering his leather bracelet (all of this driving Eldrich quietly mad, which was fun to observe).

After dinner, Peter held court before the fireplace in the formal living room. I stuck around for a while, but when Peter, Eldrich and Steve went off to do “research” (i.e., mushrooms) and Phil went to bed, I headed back to my bubble. I was one of the chosen few invited to participate, but I wasn’t in the
mood. Amy was at her parents’ place for the evening, so I had a chance to get some work done before she got home. And I was on an interesting part. The audio. I had completed the major casting and most of the detail finishes on MAMA. Now I just had to add the door on the womb and the giant eyeballs, which my friend Jocelyn was making out of glass (remaking, actually; I wasn’t happy with the first pair). It was a ton of fun mixing and fiddling with the sounds I’d recorded and downloaded. Catelyn had graciously provided the sweet murmurings of MAMA. She wasn’t a big girl, but she had a lovely low voice. Very mellifluous. I just needed to blend the right amount of reverbed heartbeat and womb
whoosh
, and then figure out optimal repetition interludes. So that’s what I was playing with until about 11:30 or so, when I decided to brave the cold and go nab some of the treats Heather and Staci had been baking all evening.

The house was strangely peaceful, the kitchen empty and lovely—illuminated only by stove light, the throaty
whir
of the dishwasher churning, the aroma of lemon loaf and butter tarts cooling on the counter. It was cozy and Christmasy, and it made me feel oddly happy. But where was everyone?

I poked my head into the den and saw Tyson and Wayne playing a silent, brooding game of chess in front of the fire. In the basement theatre, a handful of Seekers were watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
—Alexa, Mindy, Anne-Marie and her son, Moina and Perry, holding hands, weeping. No sign of the mushroom trio, though. They must have holed up in one of the bedrooms. I opted not to seek them out, grabbed some baked goods and, feeling strangely elated, headed back to my
bubble. As I was sprinting across the lawn I heard something—something besides the icy grass crunching under my sneakers. A familiar sound. A familiar Amy sound.

It was coming from the pool.

As I moved toward it, the sound grew more intense and then disappeared.

The pool lights were off, and all I could see was a thick mass of steam rising from the balmy water. It looked sinister, like a great boiling witches’ brew in some hellish cauldron. It was only when I was right at the pool’s edge that I spotted them. She was clinging to him in the shallow end. Her arms around his neck, her legs wrapped tightly around his hips. They weren’t moving.

I wish I had said something snappy, but a tsunami of epinephrine was sloshing over my brain, short-circuiting the synapses.
“What the fuck!”

“Oh!” said Amy, releasing, pushing away.

Since then, so many rejoinders, but at the time … nada.

“Johnny!” said Raine, with a big stupid smile on his face. “Come on in, the water’s fine!” He stood and opened his personally-trained arms wide, gesturing for me to join them.

I winged a butter tart at his head. It hit hard and exploded off his left temple.

“Hey!” screamed Amy.

I fired another one that thudded against his chest.

“Not cool!” shouted Raine. But I didn’t respond, I was out of there.

Soon after, they showed up at the bubble, all earnest and mature and soft-spoken, determined to talk me down, trying
to tell me that they were just practising the Institute’s touch therapy, and that what had happened between them in the pool was nothing more than an innocent and godly interaction, and how could I be so possessive and ridiculous and angry?

I was pretty composed by then (after smoking a j and swallowing a massive quantity of whiskey); the river wasn’t calm, but it had frozen over. I listened quietly with a mild-mannered smile on my face. I sipped the prosecco they had brought along. I nodded and nodded in apparent understanding.

“Look, man,” said Raine, slapping my knee. “I know you and Amy are together! Everyone knows that. And I have a lady friend back in New York!”