A Single Eye (4 page)

The chill afternoon fog was gusting in, already blocking the sun. The back of the Greyhound bus was growing smaller. In moments, even that was gone. Woods loomed to the left of me, woods to the right of me, woods in front and in back of me. The briny air hinted that the ocean was beyond the line of cypresses across the blacktop, but I had no idea how far. I couldn't believe I'd gotten myself into a situation where I was standing on Route One, “the coast road,” as the bus passengers had called the
main
road here, and it was a deserted two-laner. And this was the safe spot. From here I was heading into the woods, to a monastery where a student had disappeared. I was going there to tell a roshi I didn't know not to do what he was dead set on doing.

I was crazy.

A rattling sounded in the distance. Another bus? I'd take it. Even if it was headed the wrong way, I'd leap aboard and the blacktop and the monastery and the woods would be a nothing but a bad memory. I grabbed my bag and turned just as not a bus but an old Ford pickup rattled to a stop beside me.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

I
'd been in vehicles far worse than this decrepit Ford pickup when I was doing car chase gags—cars with every door held by breakaway wire and seats set to eject, trucks on timers to ignite—but in those stunts I'd prepared for the dangers. Anything could be inside this old wreck. Doing gags, I never panicked; now I could barely beat back the fear. The trees or the stranger? I made myself stand still, and waited to see who sat behind the wheel.

The passenger door crackled open and I smelled the interior of the truck before I actually saw it—the stench of mud and wet wool, and—oddly—chocolate. Then I saw who was leaning toward me—a funny-looking old guy in a dark wool sailor's cap, gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans. “You're headed for the zendo, I assume?” he asked me, in a husky voice that matched the rich, chocolate smell. When I nodded yes, he grinned the way strangers had when I was a copper-haired child. And there was something about the old guy's grin that made me grin back at him, albeit tentatively.

“Yeah. To the zendo.”

“Well,” he said, “it's nine miles. If you slog on foot, you'll get there in a few hours, depending on your hiking skills. If you ride with me, it'll be forty minutes.”

There was no way I was going to make it nine miles into those woods by myself. Given a choice between a guy who could be a serial killer and the woods, I'd take my chance with the guy. On location shoots, I'd fended off way bigger than he, with way bigger egos. “Thanks,” I said, and climbed up into the cab—into the outer reaches of sesshin. The door clanked shut on New York, on my family in San Francisco, even on Duffy. Now reality was sesshin, the roshi here, and that student who had disappeared. With luck, this old guy in the cap would chat away, the news would be good, and the monastery would be on a hill so I could use my cell phone to call Yamana-roshi.

The engine groaned, shrieked, and gurgled all at once as the truck turned onto the dirt road. The cab was wide, the seat a bench upholstered in duct tape. In the bed, things rattled and thudded, and since the driver hadn't offered me the option of stowing my luggage there, I had wedged my Rollaboard in the foot well and plunked the duffel on top like an already-sprung air bag. That left me with my back to the door and my legs dangling over the luggage, playing footsie with the gear stick. Still, I was safe behind a windshield. One of the tricks I've learned when riding past the woods is to focus only on the glass, blur my vision, and pretend I'm in the shower.

As the truck jolted eastward I leaned back and had a good look at the driver. He seemed to be bald under his wool cap, and his worn gray sweatshirt hung loose. He was probably a short man anyway, but it's always hard to tell when a guy's sitting down. In this big truck he looked like a doll—thin, angular, except for his calloused hands. But when he turned toward me, the whole doll image shifted ridiculously. Every one of his features was too big: his eyes were a light hazel—almost yellow—his brows brown and bushy, his cheekbones so high they seemed in danger of spiking those yellowy eyes, and his lips full and wide as if stretched from years of laughter. I liked that. The doll he reminded me of now was Mr. Potato Head. A narrow Idaho with all those big features.

The truck hit something, maybe a rock, and jolted to the side. The Rollaboard rattled.

He shot a friendly glance at it. “What've you got in there? You planning to dress for dinner at
sesshin
?”

Dinner at sesshin—retreat—is gruel, eaten in silence as you sit cross-legged on your cushion in the meditation hall. What would my airplane seatmates think of
that
? “That's probably the sea cucumber lotion—for knee pain.”

“You've got a lot of clanking there. How much knee pain are you planning on?”

I always packed enough salves and liniments to coat the bodies of every stunt double on the set. I'd been in the checkout line at the Rexall before I reminded myself I wasn't in charge on this trip. “Just a precaution. But I figured you couldn't buy it out here, so I got a few extra bottles in case anyone else needed them.”

He said something but the truck lurched and I didn't catch his words.

I braced my knees against my duffel.

“Don't worry. The ruts are so deep you'd need a crane to make it over the edge. I'm Leo, by the way.” He stuck a hand in my direction, eyeing me appraisingly, smiling again at my copper waves of hair.

I shook his hand quickly. “Darcy Lott.”

“You're from New York, right?” His attention was back on the road now. “You're the one who left on two days' notice. How'd you pull that off?”

“Magic.”

“So that's what you've got in that suitcase, rabbits.”

“And a top hat to wear to dinner in the zendo. Actually, I cleared my calendar so—”

“Calendar? You a therapist?”

I laughed. “Not hardly. Wrong side of the couch.” His head was cocked for the rest of my self-description. Everything about Leo screamed “trustworthy.” I did trust him—as much as I did anyone. But not enough to chance revealing my profession and my fear. I fell back on the generic, “I organize.”

“What is it you organize?”

“Anything.”

He grinned at me. “Anything, huh? Okay, then strut your stuff. Organize my truck.”

I'd doubled an actress playing professional organizer in a chick flick a few years back; I could fake it now. I glanced at the dashboard, a memoir-in-disposables of his last month or two. “Too easy. You find me a luggage rack for the back and let me throw out probably most of what you've got in the glove compartment, and get a container for your collection of plastic forks up here on the dash, and that'll get us halfway there.”

“They're sentimental forks. From drive-throughs all the way to Canada.”

I picked up a brown number with two surviving tines. “Please! Do you think you're the first guy who tried to rationalize his clutter? I suppose these six dead tubes of poison oak cream are sentimental, too.”

He let out a guffaw.

“A professional's motto is: The client's taste is always good. Despite the distressing aesthetics, we can create a very fine display case for these fine forks. We'll affix it on top of the dashboard so you can enjoy your collection every time you drive. And the best part is if you get hungry on the road—”

“Yeah, and build me in one of those picnic baskets with plates for eight to go with them.”

Now I was into my role whole hog. In my mind this ancient cab, this receptacle for the extraneous unpart-withable of Leo's life, had already become a rolling office, with a bench seat. “We'll add a little fridge so you can keep your chocolate cold, and a hanging drawer for the rest of the stuff behind the seat—”

“There's no chocolate—Oh, the cacao beans. They're not behind the seat; they're in the bed.
Criollo
beans, the finest cacao in the world, I'm told.”

“Really? Do we get cocoa at night here?”

“In your dreams, girl. The
tenzo
—the cook—makes gourmet chocolate for sale. That's what pays for our gruel.”

This was not unusual, I knew. Many monasteries, whether Buddhist or Catholic, have to bring in money from guest fees or the sale of some suitable commodity. There's a Trappist monastery in Kentucky that sells wonderful fruitcake and bourbon chocolate fudge. A moment passed in cocoa dreams, then he reached over and nudged my arm. “Occasionally,
occasionally
, you might get a cup of cocoa. It'll be worth the wait.”

I smiled. This easy bantering was what I liked in a man, no matter his age. The wipers cleared half-inch stripes, leaving most of the windshield an Impressionist haze that veiled the trees. This rain was going to make it a lot easier for me to live here; maybe I would go the entire fortnight without ever having to see a tree clearly. Feeling oddly content in the cluttered cab of the old truck, with the funny old guy driving, I leaned against the seat back and tried to get a handle on him.

“Are you going to the retreat, too?”

“I am.”

“You go a lot?”

He smiled, as if at some small, private amusement, but then merely nodded.

“You probably live around here, right? For a while now?”

Again, he only nodded. I'd always heard that backwoods types are leery of revealing too much about themselves to strangers, but his reticence didn't seem unfriendly, so I pressed on.

“A long while,” I heard him murmur.

“Then you're just the man I want to talk to—”

“Lucky for you.” He glanced pointedly around the cab.

“Right.” I laughed. “So, tell me, what's the monastery like? And the roshi?”

Leo's hands tightened on the steering wheel, his small amused smile faded, and suddenly he seemed to be watching for every rock and dip on the road.

“The monastery?” he said with sudden formality. “The property is forty acres surrounded by forest. This road loops around the edge. The nine-mile portion; it makes a good transition to the monastery. There should be twenty-six people at sesshin, four residents, and the rest will be people like you who've flown in from all over. The schedule is standard for American Soto Zen centers. We start at five
A.M.
, sit forty-minute periods separated by ten minutes walking meditation, three periods before breakfast. That's breakfast in the zendo—”

“But no formal dress?”

He eyed me again. For a moment I thought he was annoyed, or just confused, but then he shifted his glance to my suitcase that did
not
hold the evening gown, and grinned. “Then there are three more sitting periods, lunch, break, work period, three sitting periods, dinner, break, sit, sit, sit, snooze, if you haven't been doing that on and off all day. The sesshin director, Rob, has been around for years. There's no one better. He's the Buddha of detail, so competent he doubles as
jisha
.”

“
Jisha?
The roshi's assistant?”

He nodded, barely skipping a beat. “The cook—even his gruel is great! We grow some of our own vegetables, and there's the little chocolate business to bring in money. What else? Hmm. You sleep in a cabin or a dorm. Bare bones. Have
dokusan
—interview—with the roshi—”

“Garson-roshi. Tell me about him.”

The catch in my voice surprised me. It jolted me back to the reason I had come to this sesshin, to study with this teacher.
He is like you. Keeps hidden from himself. He will see what you do not want him to see. It is a great chance for you
. If Garson-roshi was going to see into me, I damned well needed a heads-up on who he was. As for the guy who disappeared, I knew better than to ask directly. Students are protective of their teachers. Leo wouldn't tell a woman he'd met half an hour ago about what could well be his teacher's lowest moment. More likely, he'd clam up altogether.

I hedged, “Garson was here in the beginning, right?”

The steering wheel was big and thick. Leo tapped his fingers slowly, as if taking careful aim with his nails. Even amidst the clatter of the truck and its contents, the sharp clicks were unnerving. He let his gaze rest on me a shade too long. “We don't have much time to talk. I want to hear about
you
, Darcy.”