On the Edge A Novel (11 page)

Jason slouched home apprehensively. He didn’t want to argue all the way to California; on the other hand he resented being terrorized by Haley’s new habit of exhuming incidents from the graveyard of their past, and carrying them off with bitter triumph to the pathology lab of her meetings. She used to show the same amnesiac brio which characterized his own approach to life, but now he felt that there were thousands of labelled jars in which these diseased moments were murkily preserved.

‘We’re on the way out,’ he said to Barny, and Barny whined as if he understood the pity of their situation.

Panita arrived half an hour early. ‘In case you have plane fever,’ she explained.

‘If we had plane fever, we would have asked you to come half an hour early,’ said Jason sarcastically.

Orphaned, single, friendless and unemployed, Panita was an almost discarnate co-dependant, not weighed down by the actuality of a relationship, but perfectly englobed within her self-diagnosed anxiety. She was the concentrated essence of what Jason hated, floating free of the compromises made by ordinary co-dependants with other states of being, and existing in a pure state of passionate psychological handicap.

‘Weird route,’ he commented on the way to the airport.

‘I’m just going the way I know,’ said Panita.

‘Back-seat driver,’ said Haley, sensing trouble.

But Jason couldn’t be stopped, and after the briefest pause he leant forward and asked in a voice of mock concern, ‘Is there anybody you’re co-dependent on at the moment, Panita?’

‘I hope not,’ said Panita.

‘Haley, for instance?’ asked Jason.

‘I think I’d know the signs by now,’ said Panita with grim expertise.

‘What are the signs?’

‘My eating, for a start.’

‘Oh, have you got an eating problem?’ asked Jason with undisguised delight.

‘Not at the moment, my recovery’s very solid.’

‘You had a healthy breakfast, did you?’ said Jason.

‘Oh, give it a rest,’ said Haley.

‘I’m worried about our new friend,’ said Jason. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you girls turned out to have a totally sick relationship.’

‘Calling us “girls” is really patronizing,’ said Haley.

‘Yeah, really patronizing,’ said Panita.

‘What would you like me to call you? Old hags?’

Panita drew over to the side of the road.

‘Get out of the car,’ she said.

‘What?’ said Jason.

‘You heard me,’ said Panita, suddenly empowered. ‘I’m not having any inappropriate behaviour in my car.’

‘Oh, gimme a break.’

‘Get out!’ screamed Panita. ‘I’m sorry, Haley, but I don’t have to take inappropriate behaviour in my own space.’

‘Yeah,’ said Haley, disconcerted, ‘but we’ve got to get to the airport.’

‘He can take the Underground, I’ll take you and the luggage.’

‘Can’t you just apologize?’ said Haley.

‘It’s gone beyond apology,’ said Panita. ‘I’ve been abused.’

‘But isn’t that what you secretly want?’ said Jason. ‘So you have something to talk about at your meetings.’

‘Jason!’ screamed Haley.

‘Get out of my car, or I’ll call the police.’

‘Officer!’ screeched Jason hysterically. ‘This man said I was co-dependent, I’ve been inappropriately abused.’ He clambered out of the car, laughing at his own joke. ‘Right, son!’ he went on in his PC Plod voice, leaning back through the open door. ‘I’m apprehending you and taking you down to the station to listen to some inappropriate tapes.’

‘I’ll drive
you
to the airport if you like,’ said Panita to Haley.

‘Oh, God, I’d better go with him or he may not turn up,’ said Haley.

‘You do think I did the right thing, don’t you?’ said Panita. ‘I really need your support on this.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Haley, ‘but it’s a real pain in the arse.’

‘I don’t want to make judgements,’ said Panita, ‘but I think you two have a really sick relationship.’

‘Well, at least we’re in a relationship,’ said Haley slamming the door. ‘You stupid wanker,’ she said to Jason, ‘you can carry my fucking case.’

‘I’m being abused!’ cried Jason facetiously.

‘You think you’re really clever, don’t you?’ said Haley. ‘You get us stranded in the middle of Hammersmith Broadway and all you can do is make stupid jokes.’

They struggled to the Underground station together, Haley’s indignant voice battling like a furious swimmer against the roar of the traffic.

6

Stan and Karen Klotwitz had made the move to Santa Fe because they wanted the dry climate of the south-west without the geriatric belligerence of a retirement community in Arizona. Neither of them was interested in joining the Grey Panthers and they both loved having young people in their lives. Stan had been in the insurance business in New York and Karen had been ‘just an average American housewife’, as she said with true modesty, but also in the hope that folks would find it hard to believe when they saw what an Awakened Being she’d become. They’d settled in their new home seven years ago and they thanked God every day that they had chosen Santa Fe because they had such an incredibly rich life there, and had made so many incredibly special friends.

Stan said that life began at seventy and that you were only as old as you felt; Karen, who was more mystically inclined, said she was not attached to her ‘earth suit’. Stan wasn’t particularly attached to it either and that was why he and Karen were going on a Tantric sex workshop at a unique resource centre in California.

‘Get some of the old fire back,’ said Stan with a wink, as he barbecued a couple of steaks in the patio area. Somewhere along the line, Stan had got the idea that mental health consisted of talking about his sex life to complete strangers.

‘Spring will return to the mountain,’ said Walking Eagle, who had only met Stan and Karen the night before at the Omega Center. He had led an incredibly unique, ancient, secret ceremony which he claimed the elders of his tribe had said he could share with other nations because the Dark Times were approaching.

Ever since he contracted arthritis, Stan had refused to wear anything but sportswear. Many of his friends also dressed as if they were about to take part in the Olympics, although they often had trouble getting out of a soft armchair. Walking Eagle was decked in silver and turquoise jewellery which set off his thick silver hair and his faded jean shirt in a way that Karen really appreciated. Karen herself was a pastel swirl, as if a watercolour study of candyfloss had been left out in the rain.

Stan and Karen’s home was very unique. All their friends had unique homes as well, but theirs was perhaps especially unique. The ceiling of the living room rose thirty-five feet in a ‘cathedral effect’, and if you included the patio area, there was a sixty-five-foot sweep of open space from the front door to the back wall of the garden. Somewhere further along the line Stan had gotten the idea that hospitality consisted of behaving as if you were trying to sell your house to a prospective buyer. After softening up his guests with some statistics, it was time to move on to his mental health.

‘I’ll be honest with you, Walking Eagle, I’ve been impotent for the last eight years,’ said Stan, flipping a steak expertly with a giant fork.

‘My people have a ceremony to help with that,’ said Walking Eagle gravely, over the sizzling sound made by the scorched meat.

‘They do?’

‘It’s a secret ceremony, but for a friend…’

‘Well, God, that would be a really unique privilege. We’re going to go with this Tantric thing first, but when we get back we’ll get right on to you about that.’

‘You’re such a caring person,’ said Karen, who couldn’t help thinking that Walking Eagle didn’t look as if he had any problems with impotence.

‘How long will you be away?’ said Walking Eagle, taking out his diary.

‘Well, we’re going to sort of a Gestalt thing first to get us mentally prepared,’ said Stan.

‘Mind, body and spirit,’ said Karen, ‘you can’t separate them.’

‘There are ways,’ hinted Walking Eagle.

Ding-dong went the doorbell. Walking Eagle offered to go, seeing how Karen had broken her ankle, and Stan was preoccupied with the steaks.

Karen had broken her ankle in one of the most unique car accidents – she preferred to call it a car destiny – that anybody could possibly imagine.

She had been on the corner of Hacienda and Aztec completely lost in the magic of Deepak Chopra’s
Quantum Healing
tape. Anything with healing in the title captured Karen’s curiosity, and who could resist ‘quantum’, surely one of the most mystically mysterious words in the English language? Wasn’t it Einstein who had said that God wouldn’t play dice with the universe? Even if God had wanted to play dice, Karen suddenly reflected, who would he have played with? She couldn’t bear the thought of anybody being lonely, but it was the uniquely sad thought of God’s utter loneliness which had paralysed Karen’s reflexes as she drifted into the side of a Jeep Cherokee.

Then an even more incredible thing happened. The young man in the Jeep got out and apologized. It turned out that he had been listening to a tape of Scott Peck’s unbelievable
Further Along the Road Less Travelled
(which happened to be one of Karen’s most unique tapes) and he felt responsible for the accident.

And that was the story of how she had met Robert, who was now walking through the exquisite pastel shades of her living room, with his arm in a sling.

‘Karen!’ he greeted her.

‘Robert! My meant-to-be-accident,’ said Karen, shaking her head at the wonder of the universe. ‘I guess you met Walking Eagle.’

‘
Hey waka jo hada
,’ said Robert.

‘Hey what?’ said Stan.

‘
Hey waka jo hada
,’ said Robert. ‘It means “May you walk in beauty” in the language of the Cherokee nation.’

‘
Hey waka jo hada
,’ said Walking Eagle.

‘Isn’t that…’ Words failed Karen. ‘I love the way you two have just – excuse my language – cut through the crap and gotten right to the heart of things. “May you walk in beauty”, oh, that’s, oh.’ She put her hand on her heart and caught her breath. ‘I can’t tell you what that does for me. I feel all tingly in my fingers … Can you write that down for me? You guys are just so amazing … Can you believe that, Stan?’

Stan put his hands on his hips and shook his head as if he’d completed a long run and was too breathless to speak.

Gradually Stan and Karen’s patio area filled up with as many unique people as anyone could reasonably hope to fit in one place at one time.

‘He’s not just some New Age Indian,’ said Stan in a loud whisper, indicating Walking Eagle with his giant fork, ‘he’s the real thing.’

Walking Eagle looked a little nervous, cornered by Robert who seemed to know a disturbing amount about Native American language and mythology.

‘A lot of the nations are worried about having their culture co-opted by white people,’ said Robert. ‘What d’ya think of that?’

‘I think that the white people need our wisdom,’ said Walking Eagle. ‘To walk in beauty means to give from the heart.’

‘That’s true,’ said Robert, ‘but the power mustn’t fall into the wrong hands.’

‘I try not to be political,’ said Walking Eagle. ‘So what kinda business are you in, Robert?’

‘Oh, I’m in the wilderness industry.’

‘Man’s an omnivore, right?’ said Stan, dangling a steak at Walking Eagle. ‘I like to tease the vegetarians. Many of our friends are vegetarian but I’m too old to change.’

‘We must accept the animal’s sacrifice,’ said Walking Eagle, holding out his plate.

‘That’s a nice attitude,’ said Stan.

‘It’s the animal that has to accept his own sacrifice,’ said Robert.

Stan moved over to another part of the patio where Karen was discussing Princess Dux, a local celebrity, with Gary, one of the most spiritual hairdressers in Santa Fe.

‘Whether she’s an ambassador from the court of Lemuria or not,’ Gary was saying, ‘she’s one powerful lady.’

‘I think she’s a phoney,’ said Stan. ‘I don’t believe she’s three hundred years old.’

‘Stan is still learning,’ said Karen, apologizing for her husband’s backwardness. ‘I believe that Princess Dux is here to show us the future of the human body.’

‘Obesity?’ asked Stan.

‘What is it that Chris Griscom says?’ Karen went on, slapping Stan on the forearm for being flippant. ‘Until you can bilocate, until you can levitate, until you can astral travel, don’t talk to me about the limitations of the human body?’

‘I’d be satisfied with a reliable erection,’ said Stan candidly.

Gary looked at him astonished, but Karen persevered.

‘I think that Princess Dux is here to prepare us for the Great Change. Evidently, we’re soon going to be capable of ten thousand simultaneous telepathic communications. I read a book which said that people who weren’t prepared were going to think they were going insane.’

‘I think I’m going insane already,’ said Stan. ‘Sometimes the old insurance broker comes out in me and I think, what kind of rating am I going to give a three-hundred-pound, three-hundred-year-old princess from an underground civilisation that most people think has been extinct for thousands of years?’

Stan still had one or two knots in his otherwise flawless learning curve.

‘I’m married to a conservative,’ Karen wailed affectionately. ‘Wasn’t it William Shakespeare who said that there are more things under heaven and earth than are dreamt of by philosophers?
He
believed in Lemuria.’

‘Is that right?’ said Stan, prepared to bow to a greater authority. ‘My wife’s a great reader,’ he added proudly.

‘With my schedule I haven’t got the time,’ complained Gary.

‘They’re mostly audio books,’ admitted Karen.

Karen’s literary tendencies were plainly displayed for anybody who cared to use the bathroom.

On the wall was a list called ‘A hundred things I’ll try to remember every day’. It ranged from the practical, ‘Drink peppermint tea to cleanse my auric field’, through the ethical, ‘Try to achieve psychic calmness in my sendings and remember that every being, whoever he or she may appear to be, has his or her unique part to play in the great mystery we call life’, and upwards to the metaphysical, ‘Aside from the rarest exceptions, humanity came to our planet from the Moon.’