Motherless Brooklyn

So I sat and waited and wondered exactly what I was there for, though it was tough to keep my back straight as those I saw around me. I glanced at Kimmery. Her eyes were already peacefully shut. In twenty-four hours-it was only slightly more than that since Gilbert and I had parked at the curb outside the day before-my confusion at the Zendo’s significance had doubled and redoubled, become veiled in successive layers. The conversation I’d heard on the wire, those sneering insinuations, now seemed impossible to fix to this place. Kimmery’s voice, ingenuous, unconspiring, was all I heard now. That, of course, against a background of my own interior babble. As I sat beside Kimmery, sheltered inside her tic-canceling field, I felt all the more keenly the uneasy, half-stoppered force of my own language-generator, my Multi-Mind, that tangle of responses and mimickings, of interruptions of interruptions.

I gazed at her again. She was sitting sincerely, not wondering about me. So I shut my eyes and, taking my own little crack at enlightenment, tried to unify my mind and get a fix on my Buddha nature.

The first thing I heard was Minna’s voice: I dare you to shut up for a whole twenty minutes sometime, you free human freakshow.

I pushed it away, thought One Mind instead.

One Mind.

Tell me one, Freakshow. One I don’t already know.

I vant to go to Tibet.

One Mind. I focused on my breathing.

Come home, Irving.

One Mind. Sick Mind. Dirty Mind. Bailey Mind.

One Mind.

Oreo Man.

When I opened my eyes again, I’d adjusted to the gloom. At the front of the room was a large bronze gong, and the cushions nearest the gong were empty as if readied for celebrity sitters, perhaps the important monks. The rows of heads had developed features, though mostly I was looking at ears and napes, the neckline of haircuts. The crowd was a mix of sexes, the women mostly skinny, with earrings and hairstyles that cost something, the men on average more lardish and scruffy, their haircuts overdue. I spotted Wallace’s ponytail and bald spot and furniture-stiff posture up near the front. And a row ahead of me, closer to the entrance, sat Pinched and Indistinct, my would-be abductors. At last I understood: They were men of peace. Was there a severe shortage of human beings on the Upper East Side, so the same small cast of doormen was required to pose in costume, here as goons, there as seekers after serenity? At least they’d shed their blue suits, made a greater commitment to this new identity. Garbed in black robes, their postures were admirably erect, presumably earned by extensive training, years of sacrifice. They hadn’t been working all that time on their strong-arm patter, that was for sure.

So much for my breathing. I managed to check my voice, though. Pinched and Indistinct both had their eyes shut, and I’d arrived last, so I had the drop on them. They weren’t exactly my idea of big trouble anyway. But I was reminded that the stolen cell phone and borrowed beeper in my jacket might shatter this ancient Eastern silence at any moment. Moving quietly as possible, I drew them out and turned off the cell phone’s ringer, set Minna’s beeper to “vibrate.” As I slipped them back into my jacket’s inner pocket an open hand slapped the back of my head and neck, hard.

Stung, I whipped around. But my attacker was already past me, marching solemnly between the mats to the front of the room, the first in a file of six bald Japanese men, all draped in robes revealing glimpses of sagging brown skin and threads of white underarm hair. Important monks. The lead monk had swerved out of his way to deliver the blow. I’d been reprimanded or perhaps offered a jolt of enlightenment-did I now know the sound of one hand clapping? Eitheray, I felt the heat of blood rushing to my ears and scalp.

Kimmery hadn’t noticed, just placidly Zenned right through the whole sequence. Maybe she was further along on her spiritual path than she realized.

The six moved to the front and took the unoccupied mats near the gong. And a seventh entered the room, a little behind the others, also robed, also with a polished bald skull. But he wasn’t small and Japanese and his body hair wasn’t white and it wasn’t limited to his underarms. He had silky black plumes of back and shoulder hair, rising from all sides to circle his neck with a fringe. It wasn’t a look the designer of the robe had likely had in mind. He moved to the front of the room and took the last of the VIP spots before I could see his face, but I thought of Kimmery’s description and decided this must be the American teacher, founder of the Zendo, the Roshi.