A Single Eye (32 page)

He grabbed for my shoulders but caught himself just before he touched, as if shocked by his own violence.

“What about the chocolate equipment, Rob? Is that another private deal? How many private deals do you have going here? Private deals, side deals?”

His throat pulled in hard, tendons bulged.

“Who the hell are you to accuse me?” he yelled. “You don't know how things work here!” Getting control of his volume, he said, “Do you think Barry would have come here, just to get out of the city? Are you that naïve? He's a class A chef; he could have gone to Boston, New York, New Orleans. What do you think lured him here? The woods? A chance to meditate? A teacher he barely knew? Hardly. I busted my butt to find that equipment. It cost a fortune. But the monastery has had a great cook. When times were tough, he kept people here, he drew students who wouldn't have tackled the woods. This place would have fallen apart without him.”

“You're quite the patrone, aren't you? You sit in your fine apartment in San Francisco, spend your excess money on the dome for the zendo so Leo can build it. You buy the chocolate equipment so Barry can cook in obscurity. And what about Maureen, what was your great contribution to keep her here digging out a garden year after year? Getting the place in decent enough shape for you to deign to come live here?”

“Nothing! She—” but he was almost choking.

I jabbed. “And, that expensive chocolate equipment, what's going to happen after the Cacao Royale this weekend in San Francisco; what's going to happen when Barry leaves!”

His chiseled face had gone dead white with rage. His fists were jammed together in front of his gut and still he was shaking. I had never seen a man in such controlled fury.

“Someone else—” he squeaked, gave up, and slammed out of the cabin.

Sweat poured down my back. Now I was shaking as hard as Rob. I was desperate to get out of here, to be outside, safe with people. But I made myself stop, bend down, pick up the edge of Maureen's futon where Gabe Luzotta had been looking.

What was under there was a newspaper. I took it.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX

T
he newspaper I'd snatched out from under Maureen's futon was still stuffed up under my sweater when I eased open Leo's door. The closing door sent a chill breeze through the cabin. Leo was shivering when I helped him up. But he managed to sip half a cup of tea; I took that as a very good sign. The clappers hit, announcing the beginning of the afternoon block of sittings. I fluffed Leo's extra zafu and prepared to sit zazen in his cabin and wait for the doctor.

“Go sit in the zendo.” They were the first words Leo had spoken. When I hesitated, he said, “You can hear the doctor from there.”

“How did you—?”

“Know?” He smiled, a weak copy of his grins in the truck two days ago. “Not magic. I heard the truck leave. Barry didn't take it; he would stop in for blessing or luck or because he's afraid to break the ritual. He'll do that before he leaves. So, Darcy, what would necessitate this emergency trip? What else but you deciding I need a doctor?”

“Well, you do. You're not getting better. Look at you, you can't sit up without help. Of course you need a doctor.”

I thought he would be outraged at my ignoring his decision, but he gave what looked like a shrug.

“We'll see.”

Leo was right; it was remarkable how much I could hear from the zendo. Leaves rustled, wind snapped branches against the bath house. Someone slipped out during the second period and I heard the zendo door shut, leather-soled shoes go down the steps, slap on the macadam, and the bathhouse door open. Maureen's newspaper, still under my sweater, crackled so loudly I was sure everyone heard it. Near the end of the third period the kitchen door slammed and the servers' clogs tapped the macadam as they carried the pots to the zendo porch for supper.

But I did not hear the truck, and I couldn't help remembering Amber's jibe:
A cool old truck like that? Justin could be halfway to San Francisco by now
.

I gave up any attempt to just sit and be aware, to do zazen. Desperately, I pulled my attention back to Rob, considered his ambition and Gabe's. Somewhere in that eternity of time between the almost-supper signal of the servers' footsteps and the actual end of that last sitting period ten minutes later, the two men's ambitions contrasted with Leo's statement about the doctor, “We'll see.” What Leo had been saying was that since I had agreed to postpone a decision about his health till Friday, things had changed. They had changed not because of his health but because I had sent for the doctor. Our agreement was history—it didn't exist any more; the doctor's imminent visit was reality. Rob and Gabe were still anchored to the future of their dreams; those dreams blocked out reality.

The bell rang once to end the afternoon sitting periods. Beside me, Amber stretched like a dog waking from a long nap. People swiveled around on their cushions to face the room and positioned their eating bowls—three stacked, and wrapped in a white cotton rectangle twelve by twenty-four inches that would be used as an individual tablecloth in front of their knees.

I bowed and left the Zendo to assemble a tray for Leo and myself. When I got to the kitchen, bowls of gruel and salad were waiting on the tray.
We'll see
. The doctor and the truck, which had filled my thoughts and beckoned my ears all afternoon, were illusion. Reality was Roshi's food: poisoned or not?

Barry was not in the kitchen. I dumped the food. It would be a few minutes before the serving pots were back from the zendo and I could ladle out safe food.

Everyone was either in the zendo eating or hurrying back and forth serving and removing dishes. This was the one time the bathhouse would be empty. Maureen's newspaper article crackled under my sweater. My hand was already inching toward it as I raced across the path.

And almost smacked into Maureen!

I know I flushed red. But she didn't notice, not my face, not me at all. She was moving in that feet-barely-touching-the-ground way, as if her balance was off and she might lurch out of control any moment.

“Are you sick, Maureen?”

She came abreast, recognized me, went dead white, and rushed on ahead of me into the bathhouse without a word. Did she know I'd been in her room? That her newspaper was crinkling under my sweater this very minute? I flushed redder yet with shame. I had been so caught up in dealing with Gabe, in worrying about Leo, that the sense of invasion Maureen would feel once she discovered we had been in her room hadn't occurred to me. I stopped, inhaled, tried to come up with something to say, failed, and walked into the bathhouse after her. The newspaper thundered in the silence.

“Maureen?”

No response.

I waited. Wind crackled the door; the plumbing gurgled. Finally, I peered under the stall doors.

She must have come in one door and kept moving out the other.

Relief mixed with the shame, but it would have been crazy not to read the newspaper article after all this. I pulled out the paper. An arrow in blue ink pointed to the final entry in a column:

City Updates: Ballet Harassment Suit Settled.

           
Ballet-Metropolitan of San Francisco, in a surprise move, settled the sexual harassment suit brought by ten female dancers, presently or formerly with the company. The settlement included the forced resignation of the company's long time director/choreographer, Raul Jeffers.

               
In the casting couch milieu of ballet, to force a director's resignation for a bit of pinch and tickle is unheard of. Smart money assumes that BalMet and former Director Jeffers had a lot more to hide than that.

               
Said soloist and plaintiff Alicia Quinteras, “The ballet was our life. We thought we were interpreting the most exquisite art and Raul was the great creator. He made it a sham. Art for sex's sake.”

I squinted to make out the handwritten note by the arrow:
Your quote, Maureen. Hope you don't mind. Bastard's gone! Yeah! Alicia
.

Quickly, I refolded the paper, as if to shield it from my own prying eyes. Poor Maureen! I could imagine only too well what she had endured. The stunt world was different from ballet in many ways, but not all. We had our casting couches, too. But you don't run through a wall of fire, even wearing Kevlar head to toe, then cringe at a hand on your ass. It pisses you off, makes you worried about your job, but it doesn't crush you at the core the way betrayal of art does. Art for sex's sake; no wonder Maureen walked out and into the safety of this monastery and Leo.

When I pushed open Leo's door five minutes later, the cabin was dark. I lit his oil lamp and the room looked merely dim. But Leo looked like a dead baby bird. Holding my breath, I felt his forehead—clammy, but cold.

“I've brought you some soup. Can you eat?”

He nodded, and I lifted him, tucked the blanket around him, made sure he was steady before I handed him the soup. I did it all, pushing away the dread that would drown me if I let it. I couldn't even let myself think about the doctor.

“What happened?” he asked.

“When?”

“Just now. You look awful.”

“I could say the same for you.”

“I asked first.” He smiled. “Darcy, the jisha's job is to assist the Roshi. Part of that is to keep him informed about what's going on.”

He sounded stronger, as if fortified by his responsibilities.

“I ran into Maureen,” I said, busying myself with settling on a cushion. “She turned pale at the sight of me. Like she did when I ran into her in the office yesterday.”

“Oh.”

It was a small, dead word. I had the feeling he, too, would have gone pale had he had any color left to lose.

“Leo? The opening? What happened to Maureen? Yesterday, when I asked about Aeneas, she mentioned the story about the devil in the cage roasting the neighbor children. What did Aeneas do to her? Attack her? Grope?” I hesitated, barely able to make myself ask. “Did he try to rape her? Was that what she was afraid of? In the picture you were all packed together with nowhere to move, but she looked like she was trying to get away from him.”

“Not him.”

“Not him? Who?” My throat was dry; I could barely get the words out. I didn't want to hear the answer, didn't want to think of her then, right after the ballet betrayal.

Leo was still holding his soup mug. He had barely eaten from it, but he held it out and I put it on the floor between us.

Behind me the embers crackled softly, needing stoking or shoveling out entirely. A draft shot down the empty chimney onto my back. Leo shivered but made no move to pull the blanket up higher. He looked as if he was gathering his strength. Finally, he turned and looked directly at me.

“I'm going to tell you about the opening.”

He hadn't said, I should have told you earlier, or I didn't want you to be burdened with it, or I shouldn't be telling you. I nodded.

“I had screwed up before. I was lucky to be given another chance at any Zen center. This place was my penance. No old students came with me. I walked down that road from the highway alone. I spent the first month alone here in a tent, in the woods, with nothing but the land. And then Rob heard about me; he drove up one weekend. He bought the dome kit; we built the zendo. A few others came, more to get away from their lives than to be present here. But I was grateful for them. And Barry. And Aeneas.”