The Marriage Plot (45 page)
Heidi took a step back from the counter. “I’ve got to do some stuff in the back,” she said. “So if you want anything.”
For some reason Leonard bowed. “Go to it,” he said. “I don’t mean to keep you from your labors. It’s been nice meeting you, Heidi-Ho. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
She didn’t seem to want to say. “Yes.”
“He’s a lucky guy. He should be in here right now, keeping you company.”
“My dad’ll be here in a minute.”
“I’m sorry I won’t be able to meet him,” Leonard said, pressing against the counter. “I could tell him to stop ruining your weekends. Before I go, though, I think I’ll buy some taffy.”
Again he perused the racks. When he bent forward, his hat fell off and he caught it. Perfect reflexes. Like Fred Astaire. He could flip it in the air, end over end, right onto his head if he wanted to.
“Saltwater taffy is always pastel,” he commented. “Why is that?”
This time Heidi didn’t respond at all.
“You know what I think it is, Heidi? I think pastels are the palette of the seashore. I’ll take these pastel green ones, which are the color of dune grass, and I’ll take some pink ones, which are like the sun setting on the water. And I’ll take these white ones, which are like sea foam, and these yellow ones, which are like the sun on the sand.”
He brought all four bags to the counter, then decided to take a few other flavors. Buttercream. Chocolate. Strawberry. Seven bags in all.
“You want all these?” Heidi said, incredulous.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a lot.”
“I like a lot a lot,” Leonard said.
She rang up his purchase. Leonard reached into his pocket and took out his cash.
“Keep the change,” Leonard said. “But I need a bag to carry all this in.”
“I don’t have a bag big enough for all this. Unless you want a trash bag.”
“A trash bag is perfect,” Leonard said.
Heidi disappeared into the back of the shop. She came out with a dark green twenty-five-gallon heavy-duty trash bag and began putting the bags of taffy in it. She had to bend forward to do so.
Leonard stared at her little tits in the tight sweater. He knew exactly what to do. He waited until she lifted the trash bag over the counter. Then, taking it from her, he said, “You know what? Since your dad’s not here?” And holding her wrists, he leaned forward and kissed her. Not long. Not deeply. Just a peck on her lips, surprising her totally. Her eyes grew wide.
“Merry Christmas, Heidi,” he said, “Merry Christmas,” and he whirled out the door into the street.
He was grinning madly now. Slinging the trash bag over his back like a sailor, he strode down the street. His erection hadn’t subsided. He was trying to remember what his dose had been that morning and wondering if he might need a touch more.
The logic of his brilliant move rested on one premise: that manic depression, far from being a liability, was an advantage. It was a selected trait. If it wasn’t selected for, then the “disorder” would have disappeared long ago, bred out of the population like anything else that didn’t increase the odds of survival. The advantage was obvious. The advantage was the energy, the creativity, the feeling of genius, almost, that Leonard felt right now. There was no telling how many great historical figures had been manic-depressives, how many scientific and artistic breakthroughs had occurred to people during manic episodes.
He picked up speed, hurrying home. Came out of the town and passed the lake again, the dunes.
Madeleine was on the couch, her beautiful face stuck into the GRE booklet, when he came in.
Leonard tossed the trash bag on the floor. Without a word he lifted Madeleine off the couch and carried her into the bedroom, laying her on the bed.
He undid his belt and took off his pants and stood before her, grinning.
Without the usual preliminaries, he pulled off Madeleine’s tights and underwear and plunged into her as far as he could go. His cock felt wondrously hard. He was giving Madeleine what Phyllida could never give her, and thereby exercising his advantage. He felt the most exquisite sensations at the end of his dick. Nearly weeping with the pleasure of it, he cried out, “I love you, I love you,” and he meant what he said.
Afterward, they lay curled up, catching their breath.
Madeleine said slyly, happily, “I guess you
are
better.”
At which Leonard sat up. His head wasn’t crowded with thoughts. There was only one. Rolling off the bed onto his knees, Leonard took Madeleine’s hands in his much bigger hands. He’d just figured out the solution to all his problems, romantic, financial, and strategic. One brilliant move deserved another.
“Marry me,” he said.
M
itchell had never so much as changed a baby’s diaper before. He’d never nursed a sick person, or seen anyone die, and now here he was, surrounded by a mass of dying people, and it was his job to help them die at peace, knowing they were loved.
For the past three weeks, Mitchell had been volunteering at the Home for Dying Destitutes. He’d been going five days a week, from nine in the morning until a little after one, and doing whatever needed doing. This included giving the men medicine, feeding them, administering head massages, sitting on their beds and providing company, looking into their faces and holding their hands. It wasn’t something you had to learn how to do, and yet, in his twenty-two years on the planet, Mitchell had done few of these things before and some of them not at all.
He’d been traveling for four months, visiting three different continents and nine different countries, but Calcutta felt like the first real place he’d been. This had partly to do with the fact that he was alone. He missed having Larry around. Before Mitchell left Athens, when they’d made their plans to reunite in the spring, the discussion had skirted around the reason Larry was staying on in Greece. That Larry was now sleeping with men wasn’t a big deal in the larger scheme of things. But it cast a complicating light on their friendship—and especially the drunken night in Venice—and made them both feel awkward.
If Mitchell had been able to return Larry’s affection, his life might have been a lot different right now. As it was, the whole thing was beginning to look fairly comical and Shakespearean: Larry loved Mitchell, who loved Madeleine, who loved Leonard Bankhead. Being alone, in the poorest city on earth, where he didn’t know anyone, pay phones were non existent, and mail service slow, didn’t end this romantic farce, but it got Mitchell offstage.
The other reason Calcutta felt real was that he was here for a purpose. Until now he’d been merely sightseeing. The best he could say about his travels so far was that they described the route of a pilgrimage that had led him to his present location.
He’d spent his first week in the city exploring. He’d attended mass at an Anglican church with a gaping hole in the roof and a congregation of six octogenarians. At a Communist playhouse, he’d sat through a three-hour production of
Mother Courage
in Bengali. He’d walked up and down Chowringhee Road, past astrologers reading faded Tarot cards and barbers cutting hair while squatting at the curb. A street vendor had summoned Mitchell over to look at his wares: a pair of prescription eyeglasses and a used toothbrush. The uninstalled sewer pipe in the road was big enough for a family to camp inside. At the Bank of India, the businessman in front of Mitchell in line was wearing a solar-powered wristwatch. The policemen directing traffic were as expressive as Toscanini. The cows were skinny and wore eye makeup, like fashion models. Everything Mitchell saw, tasted, or smelled was different from what he was used to.
From the minute his plane touched down at Calcutta International Airport at two a.m., Mitchell had found India to be the perfect place to disappear. The trip into the city had proceeded through near-total darkness. Through the curtained rear window of the Ambassador cab, Mitchell discerned stands of eucalyptus trees lining the lightless highway. The apartment buildings, when they reached them, were hulking and dark. The only light came from bonfires burning in the middle of intersections.
The taxi had taken him to the Salvation Army Guest House, on Sudder Street, and it was there that he’d been staying ever since. His roommates were a thirty-seven-year-old German named Rüdiger and a Floridian named Mike, an ex–appliance salesman. The three of them shared a small guest lodge across from the crowded main building. The neighborhood around Sudder Street constituted the city’s minimal tourist district. Across the street stood a palmy hotel that catered to old India hands, mainly Brits. A few blocks away, up Jawaharlal Nehru Road, was the Oberoi Grand with its turbaned doormen. The restaurant on the corner, catering to backpacker tastes, served banana pancakes and hamburgers made from water buffalo. Mike claimed you could get bhang lassi on the next street over.
Most people didn’t come to India to volunteer for a Catholic order of nuns. Most people came to visit ashrams, smoke ganja, and live on next to nothing. At breakfast one morning, Mitchell had walked into the dining room to find Mike sharing a table with a Californian in his sixties, dressed all in red.
“Anybody sitting here?” Mitchell asked, pointing to an empty chair.
The Californian, whose name was Herb, lifted his eyes to Mitchell’s. Herb considered himself a spiritual person. The way he held your gaze let this be known. “Our table is your table,” he said.
Mike was munching a piece of toast. After Mitchell sat down, Mike swallowed and said to Herb, “So go on.”
Herb sipped his tea. He was balding, with a shaggy gray beard. Around his neck hung a locket bearing a photograph of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
“There’s an amazing energy in Poona,” Herb said. “It’s something you can feel when you’re there.”
“I’ve heard about the energy,” Mike said, winking at Mitchell. “I’d like to maybe visit. Where is Poona, exactly?”
“Southeast of Bombay,” Herb said.
Originally the Rajneeshees—who referred to themselves as “devotees”—had worn saffron clothing. But recently the Bhagwan had decided that there was too much saffron in circulation. So he’d put out the order for his disciples to start wearing red.
“What do you guys do out there?” Mike pursued. “I hear you guys have orgies.”
There was toleration in Herb’s mild smile. “Let me try to put it in terms you’ll understand,” he said. “It’s not acts in themselves that are good or evil. It’s the intention of the acts. For a lot of people, it’s best to keep things simple. Sex is bad. Sex is a no-no. But for other people, who have, let’s say, attained a higher level of enlightenment, the categories of good and evil pass away.”
“So are you saying you have orgies out there?” Mike persisted.
Herb looked at Mitchell. “Our friend here has a one-track mind.”
“O.K.,” Mike said. “What about levitating? I hear people levitate.”
Herb gathered his gray beard in both hands. Finally he allowed, “People levitate.”
Throughout this discussion Mitchell busied himself with buttering toast and dropping cubes of raw sugar into his teacup. It was important to scarf down as much toast as possible before the waiters stopped serving.
“If I went to Poona would they let me in?” Mike asked.
“No,” Herb said.
“If I wore all red would they?”
“To stay at the ashram you’d have to be a sincere devotee. The Bhagwan would see that you’re not sincere, no matter what you’re wearing.”
“I’m interested, though,” Mike said. “I’m just kidding about the sex. The whole philosophy and everything, it’s interesting.”
“You’re full of shit, Mike,” Herb said. “I know bullshit when I see it.”
“Do you?” Mitchell suddenly said.
The challenge in this was clear, but Herb retained his equanimity, sipping tea. He glanced at Mitchell’s cross. “How’s your friend Mother Teresa?” he asked.
“She’s fine.”
“I read somewhere that she was just in Chile. Apparently, she’s good friends with Pinochet.”
“She travels a lot to raise money,” Mitchell said.
“Man,” Mike lamented, “I’m starting to feel sorry for myself. You’ve got the Bhagwan, Herbie. Mitchell’s got Mother Teresa. Who do I have? Nobody.”
Like the dining room itself, the toast was trying to be British, and failing. The bread slices were the right shape. They
looked
like bread. But instead of being toasted they’d been grilled over a charcoal fire and tasted of ash. Even the unburnt slices had a funny, unbreadlike taste.
People were still coming in to breakfast, filing up from the dormitories on the first floor. A group of sunburned Kiwis entered, each carrying a jar of Vegemite, followed by two women with kohl-rimmed eyes and toe rings.
“You know why I came here?” Mike was saying. “I came because I lost my job. The economy’s in the toilet, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll go to India. You can’t beat the exchange rate.”
He began to recite a comprehensive list of all the places he’d stayed and things he’d bought for next to nothing. Railway tickets, plates of vegetable curry, huts on the beach at Goa, massages in Bangkok.
“I was in Chiang Mai with the hill tribes—you ever visit the hill tribes? They’re wild. We had this guide who took us into the jungle. We were staying in this hut and one of the guys from the tribe, the medicine man or whatever, he comes over with some opium. It was like five bucks! For a chunk this big. Man, did we ever get stoned.” He turned to Mitchell. “Have you ever had opium?”
“Once,” Mitchell said.
At this Herb’s eyes widened. “That surprises me,” he said. “That really does. I would have thought Christianity would frown on that kind of thing.”
“It depends on the intention of the opium smoker,” Mitchell said.
Herb narrowed his eyes. “Somebody’s feeling a little hostile this morning,” he said.
“No,” said Mitchell.
“Yes. Somebody is.”
If Mitchell was ever going to become a good Christian, he would have to stop disliking people so intensely. But it was maybe asking too much to begin with Herb.