The Boys from Santa Cruz (31 page)

“To you, maybe,” said Pender proudly.

Up the road from the Center, on the other side of the dirt lane, there were four volcanically heated springs housed in ascending order of temperature in dim, echoey, half-timbered fieldstone bathhouses the size of one-car garages. After a mandatory shower and a dip in the lower pool, Skip worked his way up to the hottest spring, where he lay alone, submerged to his chin in steaming 113°F water, listening to the plangent echoes, watching the Tinker Bells of light dancing off the azure-tiled walls, and feeling the tension and soreness of the last forty-eight hours gradually beginning to ooze out of his aching—

Skip awoke with a gasp from a half-conscious dream in which he was being attacked by a vulture, and inhaled a mouthful of sulfury-tasting water. Splashing, floundering, coughing, windmilling his arms like a drowning man, he had just succeeded in struggling to his feet when Dr. Oliver’s statuesque assistant Candace appeared out of nowhere, naked as a jaybird, and began slapping him between the shoulder blades with one hand while guiding him toward the side of the pool with the other. “Just try to breathe normally.”

“I’m okay, really I’m okay,” protested Skip, lowering himself onto the submerged ledge that ran the circumference of the pool and patting the bandage covering the talon marks on his shoulder back into place.

Candace eased down next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of her magnificent young breasts bobbing on the dimly sparkling, silvery gray surface of the water. “I don’t want
to interfere in your process,” she said in her soft, imaginary-gum-chewing California accent, “and no offense intended, but you seem to be wired rilly tight for some reason.”

“No, I’m fine. Just a little PTSD flashback, is all.” Posttraumatic stress disorder. “I can handle it.”

“Oh.” Candace nodded knowingly—the Oliver Institute had held a sliding-scale retreat for troubled veterans a year earlier. “Were you in Vietnam? Is that where you hurt your leg? If you don’t mind my asking.”

I’d—I’d rather not talk about the war, if that’s all right with you,
Skip wanted to say, haltingly and humbly. Instead he told her the unglamorous truth, then quickly changed the subject. “About this thing tonight,” he said. “You know, I’m not really all that clear on exactly what’s supposed to happen.”

She smiled and touched his forearm lightly. “Lucky you,” she said. “You get to be surprised.”

For his preliminary recon, Asmador changes into a light-colored, green-and-tan camo jumpsuit. Loping silently up the path through the woods, he refuses to be distracted by the way the forest keeps bursting into flames on either side of the path, the fresh young spring leaves dancing with pale green fire, the shafts of sunlight burning like golden pillars.

Eventually the path widens out into a one-lane dirt road with a two-story, wood-and-glass building on the left and a steaming, open-air pool farther ahead on the right. Coming directly toward him down that road is a golf cart with a striped canopy. A cart being driven by—and here an eidetic image of a blown-up fragment of text from the Book flashes through Asmador’s mind as he
ducks into the bushes by the side of the path—
a huge fat guy wearing a loud sport coat and one of those stupid little checked hats with feathers in the brim.

Fat guy, loud jacket, checked hat—the realization scarcely has time to register before the driver pulls the cart off the road and hurries into the two-story building with the slanting roof.

Asmador can scarcely believe his luck. All three of his surviving enemies—Dr. O, Epstein, Pender—gathered in one place for his convenience. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, he tells himself—surely all hell must have been brought to bear to bring this about. And why? For the same reason he and the husband-and-wife team of bow hunters had converged on that lonely rest stop last night: to ensure that his mission will be carried out.

Asmador’s first inclination is to wait for Pender to emerge again, then put an arrow through him. But crouching in the bushes with his laminated bow drawn and a carbon-shafted arrow nocked, Asmador has time to mull over the probable consequences. Sure, he could kill Pender easily enough from here (unless he misses his shot: there is always that possibility). But that would put the other two on alert, and soon the place would be crawling with cops. Maybe he’d get a second shot from cover at either Epstein or Dr. O during the confusion, maybe he wouldn’t; maybe he’d have time to make it back to the Cherokee, maybe he wouldn’t.

But the powers below haven’t gone to all the trouble of arranging this miraculous confluence in order to have him pick off one victim at the cost of losing the other two, Asmador decides. No, it would be better to—

A scratching, scurrying sound breaks Asmador’s train of thought. He wheels, draws back the bowstring, aims downward at a forty-degree angle, and releases the arrow in one smooth, continuous motion. It sizzles through the shimmering, green-and-gold-dappled air and with a solid
thwack!
pins something furry, a large chipmunk or a small squirrel, to the base of a tree with mossy gray bark a good ten or fifteen yards away.

Or maybe missing
isn’t
always a possibility, Asmador tells himself as he approaches the still twitching critter. By the time he reaches it, the light has drained from its eyes. The little body looks like an empty sack of fur—the arrow, rated for a much larger mammal, has done an astounding amount of damage.

“Ouch,” Asmador squeaks aloud, as if speaking for the tiny creature—for him, that’s about as close to empathy as it gets.

After dropping off Skip, Pender continued on to the Center and parked the cart where he’d found it. He hopped down and buttoned his sport coat to cover his shoulder holster before entering.

The dining hall was cool and dim; the paneled walls and varnished trestle tables gave off a buttery, honey-brown glow. “Anybody home?” called Pender.

“Back here in the kitchen.”

The crew-cut, bathrobe-clad man Pender had passed in the doorway earlier was standing with his back to the room, washing a bunch of dusky red grapes in the big industrial sink. “Hi. Where’s Dr. Oliver?”

“In his cabin. Why?”

“I, uh, I just wanted to ask him a few questions about tonight’s ceremony.”

Leaving the grapes in a colander to drain, Steve dried his hands on a dish towel, then turned and extended his hand to Pender. “You’re Ed, right?”

“Right as rain.”

They shook hands. Stahl, who stood a sturdy-looking five-ten, with a weathered complexion that accentuated the arctic blue of his eyes, had a firm grip, but his hand was lost in Pender’s
huge paw. “I’m Steve. I can answer any questions you may have.”

“Okay, sure,” said Pender. “How about a quick summary of what’s going to go down tonight?”

“We’re going to meet upstairs at five o’clock. O’s going to introduce you to everybody, then lead a breathing exercise. After that, we’ll hike up into the hills, to a clearing known as the Omphalos, where O will lead everybody in a Bodhisattva vow. Then comes the, uh, sacrament, then everybody chants for a while, then we head up to the bluff to watch the sunset. Then more chanting and meditation, and around ten o’clock we come back here and usually everybody dances or meditates or whatever until dawn.”

Pender had not missed the quick sideways flicker of Stahl’s eyes or the hesitation that preceded the word
sacrament.
“Tell me more about this sacrament,” he prompted. “What exactly does it involve?”

“A single grape, a crouton, and a drink of springwater,” said Stahl, without making eye contact.

Is he that bad a liar,
Pender wondered,
or is he trying to give me a heads-up here?
“I see. And of those three items, which one is spiked?”

Stahl’s frosty eyes narrowed and his thin lips tightened. Then he sighed an unmistakable I-guess-you-got-me sigh. “Everybody else knows about it, so I guess there’s no reason you shouldn’t. But just to cover my ass, let’s make it a hypothetical, okay?”

“That’ll work.”

“Okay, let’s say there was a group of people doing a ceremony that involved taking a substance that might not be technically legal but in the proper setting, under the proper guidance, would help them reach a higher state of consciousness—you know, kind of open the doors of perception, as Huxley put it. Are you with me so far?”

Pender nodded—he could always ask Skip who this Huxley was, if it turned out to be important.

“Excellent. Now let’s say maybe one person was nervous about the substance-taking part of it, or just didn’t feel like he or she was ready for that. Still with me?”

“Still with you.”

“Okay, do you know what I’d advise that person?”

“I’m all ears.”

“I’d say, Don’t eat the crouton. Got it? Do not…eat…the crouton.”

“Loud and clear,” said Pender. “I appreciate the heads-up.”

“Glad to help,” said Stahl, who waited until Pender was gone before turning back to the wet grapes, which he now began to dry with a clean dish towel, one at a time, as carefully and painstakingly as if they were precious gems, or little baby eyeballs.

Around five o’clock, Steve Stahl wrestled a six-foot-long didgeridoo out the screen door of the Center, took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and blew a series of long, deep-toned, peritoneum-tingling
hawaughhh
s that resounded the length and breadth of Braxton Hot Springs. Then he rejoined Skip, Pender, Dr. Oliver, and Candace, who were watching from the glass-enclosed second story as the trainees converged on the building, strolling down the dirt road or climbing the lightly wooded slope leading up from the campground in the woods behind the Center. They were all dressed in comfortable-looking cotton meditation outfits similar to those worn by Oliver and his aides, and carried coats and sweaters over their arms.

Laughing and chattering, the trainees climbed the open-treaded spiral staircase to the second floor, where sage and sandalwood incense burned in bowls and a small boom box played a CD of ethereal Steve Reich space music. Fat, round meditation pillows known as zafus were already arranged in a circle; the atmosphere was intense, charged with nervous energy as the trainees took their places.

“Namasté,” said Dr. Oliver, seating himself cross-legged on a white zafu with an incense bowl and a small silver bell in front of it. His meditation pajamas were white, Steve and Candace wore royal blue, and the ten trainees were dressed in pale orange.

“Namasté,” the others echoed, lightly pressing their palms and fingers together in a prayerful mudra.

“It’s so good to see your shining faces. Let’s take a few calming breaths, taking in peace through the nostrils, letting out ego through the mouth. Eyes shut? Here we go…”

Pender had seated himself next to Oliver. Skip was sitting directly across the circle, his good leg folded and his withered leg outstretched, with the toe of his built-up shoe pointing straight up. He opened his eyes after a few seconds, caught Pender looking back at him, and winked.

After the breathing exercise, Oliver introduced the newcomers to the group, then asked the trainees to introduce themselves. First up was Beryl, an elderly, bird-boned woman, her face as wrinkled as a dried apple. Juana was a buxom Argentinean in her mid-forties, with a round brown face and a toasty smile. Then came Michael, a pale, thirtyish commodities trader, and next to him was a man named Jonah, wearing dark-rimmed glasses he was constantly adjusting.

In addition to the four single trainees, there were three couples. George Speaks, a Native American college professor with a broad Eskimo-looking face and a long black braid, was seated next to his wife, Layla, who had sleepy eyes and a soft Southern accent. Elaine and Marty, both lawyers, had pronounced New York accents.
Tom and Mitch were a fit and handsome gay couple in their mid-thirties.

When they’d finished, Oliver thanked the group. “
Good
job, everyone,” he said, sounding a little like a kindergarten teacher. “And now, unless anybody has any last-minute questions or concerns…?” His eyes traveled clockwise around the circle. “Yes, Beryl?”

“I’m not sure I can do this, Dr. O,” she said, wringing her bony hands nervously. “I—I thought I could, but I’m…well, I’m scared. That’s the plain truth of it: I’m scared.”

“Okay, I get that,” Oliver responded mildly. “And the first thing I need you to understand is that nobody here is going to force you to do anything you’re not ready to do. But may I ask you a question?”

“Please.”

“Which ‘I’ is it that’s scared?” Air quotes around the pronoun. “Is it the ‘I’ that thinks it’s still a helpless infant, dependent on others for its very survival? Or is it the ‘I’ who’s a full-grown, capable, adult human being who for over seventy years has succeeded in handling anything and everything the universe has seen fit to throw at her with such admirable grace and courage?”

The answer came in the form of a shy, pleased schoolgirlish smile.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” said Oliver, beaming. “Now who’s ready to let go and let God?”

A chorus of assent: “Me!” “Yay!” “I am!” “Ya-hoo!”

“Al-
hum
-dilly-la!” Oliver clapped his hands together sharply, then rose, picked up his zafu, crossed the circle, helped Beryl to her feet, and offered her his arm. Together they started down the spiral staircase, with the others following. Skip and Pender trailed behind.

“Locked and loaded?” whispered Pender.

“Locked and loaded,” said Skip.

“And what don’t we do?”

“We don’t eat the crouton.”

Asmador awakes from his short, marijuana-assisted nap in the back of the Cherokee. The razzle-dazzle of late afternoon sunlight glinting off the cars makes the little parking lot look as though it were ablaze with brightly colored stars.

Driving up from the county road earlier that day, Asmador had noticed that the line of telephone poles by the side of the winding driveway ended at the parking lot. The highest aerial wire, a power line with ceramic insulators, descended the last pole and burrowed itself into the earth; the lower wire led to a rusty, gray-painted metal box mounted on the pole beneath a sign instructing those in need to call for assistance.