Unquiet Dreams (8 page)

"You're jake with me," I told him without prompting, because it seemed like a good idea to be cool with the Buddha, not like reverential like you would be to a god, but you know you owe respect to the enlightened one.

He looked at me and smiled seraphically. "You are blessed," he said, a hand of benediction raised, several silver bands wrapping his fingers as they curved like bananas before me. "Life is a dream."

"Yeah, well for some it's more of a nightmare, you know what I mean?" I said by way of making conversation. "I can't complain much, though I often do."

The Buddha looked at me. "What do you do?"

I shrugged. "Thump the skins with a couple different outfits. Doesn't pay much, but I don't need much for hearth and home, as they say."

"You have a higher calling," the Buddha said wisely.

Everything the enlightened one said sounded kind of wise, but this seemed particularly so. I was determined to believe that I was getting the real deal from him. After all playing gut bucket rhythms with a bunch of low rent wannabes wasn't really paying off in more than a inconsequential way if you get my drift.

"What might that be?" I queried as we sailed over Waterloo Bridge.

He pointed straight at my forehead, touching the bit between my eyebrows, what I later learned was the location of the mystical third eye and said something that sounded like, "No, these-aw-tone."

Perhaps it was Buddha-speak for something particular. I didn't get a chance to ask because the enlightened one hopped it and left the bus at the end of the bridge. Maybe it was some kind of lingo, but I needed a dictionary to know. I jumped off the bus at Aldwych because I knew there was this witchy book shop in the vicinity and people there would likely know what the Buddha had said and what it meant.

I was just about to give up the search when I finally spotted it. The window was full of crazy tomes with mystic symbols and diagrams. I leaned on the iron railing and took a quick butchers inside. It seemed to be mostly deserted, just one choice bit of calico who appeared to be working there. Not my sort of scene, but I had an itch to know about the enlightened one's wacky message.

"What you got on the Buddha?" I asked walking in, smooth as melted butter. The chick at the desk looked up and I was surprised to see that despite her bins she was a real treat. A hank of auburn hair twisted on top of her head in some kind of knot and a blue silk shirt open just enough to give a guy ideas.

"The Buddha?" she repeated, frowning as if I had said something amiss. "His life? His teachings?" She was already walking over to a shelf and reaching for a colorful spine. "This might be a good one to start with."

The tome thrust into my palms had a little circular picture of the Buddha's face which of course looked a lot different than the Buddha I had met on the 59 bus, but I figure that statues of a man are always going to look a lot different than the man himself. And I knew enough to realise that the Buddha had lived many times over and over. It was what made him the enlightened one after all.

I'm not much of a scholar though and the words were quickly jumping about on the page like they were hearing a crazy rhythm, refusing to make much of any kind of sense. "You got something easier?" I asked the chick, who was still dogging me not in a bad sense, but like she figured I might need some additional help.

She smiled—a warm gesture, one I wanted to last longer—and reached for another book, thinner than the first, with another Buddha statue on the front and a name that looked like a hi-hat sounds. It said The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching. That looked more promising.

"Why don't you sit down and flip through it and see if it's more helpful," the red-haired gal purred as a mismatched couple rang in through the shop door. I parked myself in the chair and gave a pass through the covers. The first part of the book was about turning a wheel and the way the Buddha came to enlightenment. It was a hard row to hoe, but I tried to stick with it and break it down, but in a short while I had to admit it was not going gangbusters.

"How're you getting on?" the pretty chickola asked once she had dealt with the little man and the big woman, who seemed quite excited about some Hindu book they had located with her help. They wiggled out the door practically jumping into each other's clothes.

"I'm not latching on to the Buddha's groove," I had to admit. "I don't know that I need his whole message, you know? I'm just trying to make sense of what he said to me. Interpret, you know—alter it to my key, as they say."

Miss Serious looked through her lenses. "What did the Buddha say to you?"

I closed the book and set it on the shelf beside me, which I knew was the wrong place, but I wasn't thinking at the time. "He said I had a higher calling," I told her.

"Don't we all," she agreed, nodding sagely as a Buddha herself.

"He said another thing I didn't really understand."

"What was that?"

"Know this auto," I said, then frowned myself. "Well, maybe it wasn't quite like that."

"Maybe not." She pursed her lips, which didn't make them look half bad. I wondered what she might look like wailing in the dark of a club and shimmying to some of my wild rhythms. "Are you sure it was in English?"

I considered the wisdom of her words. "Now that you mention it, he might have been speaking in a foreign tongue." He had not spoken with an accent, but there was something about the bloke that seemed a bit foreign. Maybe it was the way he carried himself with a kind of stiff back, like he wasn't too willing to bend. Why would the Buddha have to bend? "How am I going to know what he said?"

She appeared to be thinking this over. Which is to say that her eyes got a far away look and she took off her glasses and tapped the arm of them against her teeth. It made a small tap-tap sound. Without the glasses on I could see just how green her eyes were, which was very green indeed. That fact seemed unusual enough itself. I could smell spring grass in the colour of her eyes.

"I think you need a reading," she said at last.

I was thinking maybe I needed a nice long session on the floor of this establishment with her riding on top of me, but I was willing to give the reading a try. You never know what it might lead to, a little rumpy-bumpy would be all right by me. "What kind of reading?"

She was lost in thought another minute, but finally said, "Tarot."

Well, at least it was something I knew. I mean, you couldn't hang out in the club scene for too long without running into a least a couple chicks who claimed to be able to read your fortune in their pretty little pack of cards. It was copasetic. I never minded. Whatever they thought worked was fine by me as long as it worked out in the end for me, which is to say getting more than a little advice.

When she pulled out the deck I nearly changed my mind. It wasn't bad exactly, but there was something a bit eerie about the pictures. "Are those all right?" I couldn't help asking.

She nodded. "They were painted by Lady Frieda Harris. She was inspired by divine forces. You have to trust in her vision." There was no one in the store. She went to the door and locked it. "I don't think anyone's coming now. We might as well go downstairs."

Yemman! I followed her down the stairs to the lower level and there was a table with a fringed cloth on it and a couple of chairs, so my initial hopes were dashed but there were other rooms curtained off and plenty of leeway, so I figured I would chill and bide my time. She might be lonely tonight you know. My chances were solid.

She asked my name and then she told me hers was Lenore, which seemed a fussy kind of name for a queen on the scene, but it sounded like a melody to me. "First, you need to relax," Lenore said as she shuffled the cards in slow motion. The flapping echo of the cards didn't seem likely to instill a calm mind, but I tried to look like I was hanging loose and not thinking about making a move.

"Concentrate your attention on your third eye," Lenore continued, her voice modulating into a kind of trance-like rhythm. It was both soothing and sexy.

"Third eye, what's that?" I asked, squelching the desire to make a crude joke.

She reached across the table and tapped me between the eyebrows. "Damn, that's just what the Buddha did!" It was freaky for sure. "There something I don't know?"

"The third eye is the seat of mystic wisdom, where resides your ability to see beyond this world." She smiled again and tapped the deck. "Cut."

I did as she said, cutting the deck a bit more than halfway down. I was beginning to get a spooked kind of feeling about all this. What with the Buddha and the third eye and this chick that was pleasing to the other two, I began to wonder if I hadn't fallen into a scene that was too much for little old me. But the possibilities of the night beyond convinced me to stick around and see.

She flipped up a card and frowned. "Seven of swords. Futile, vacillating. There's a suggestion that you might not be working hard enough to achieve the success that's waiting for you."

I shrugged. "I'm a laid back kind of guy."

Lenore pulled the next card and her brow wrinkled around her third eye. "Five of swords."

"More pointy things, eh? Not good is it."

She shook her head. "Failure and defeat mostly. An intellect that is not up to the task."

"You mean to say I'm not going win on Mastermind. I can live with that."

A third card and a third bunch of swords. Six this time. Lenore seemed to breathe a sigh of relief . "This is more promising," she said, nodding ever so slightly. "Here's the way to overcome those negative influences. Hard work and hard thought."

"Well, that doesn't sound like me at all," I said frowning myself at the card that wanted to make my life unpleasant. It was full of lines and pointy things, and looked uncomfortable. "I got drive enough when it comes to playing but I don't think I'm going to be putting on a bowler hat and carrying a briefcase any time soon."

Lenore ignored me and went to the fourth card, one that had a strange lady in a weird chair with some kind of wild horny hat like one of those antelopes or wildebeests in a nature show. She even had a kind of goat in front of her and a big stick with a rock on top of it. "Who's she?"

"Queen of Disks." Lenore tapped her lower lip. "This is the answer."

"I need to find a horny woman?" I laughed. How much better could my luck be?

Lenore looked at me with a look that sucked all the har-hars away. "It's not necessarily a specific woman, so much as the idea she represents. Power and regrowth, a rich fecundity."

"What's that?" It sounded kind of dirty.

She pushed her glasses up with one finger, which made her look far less attractive. "Fecundity? Able to make things grow, full of life."

Horny sounded a lot better. "So I have to find her?"

"Not necessarily a person. More an idea. You need to seek that kind of richness in your life, nurture your ideas, let them grow."

"Sounds like a lot of work. Sounds like what my dad always said: get your nose to the grindstone, my son, keep a steady job, you'll find success."

"And has he?"

"Dunno. He ran off when I was twelve."

"Sorry."

We stared at the card for a moment in silence. "I suppose then I better look for this woman," I finally said to fill the abyss. I unfolded and pressed my most winning smile. "Maybe I don't have to look very far." I tried to make my voice warm and sexy. I laid my hand on hers, the one that still held the card.

She didn't exactly twitch away, but I could feel her recoil from my touch. "I don't think so." And here I thought we'd been getting along so well. Chalk another one up to experience, I thought, which is how I always dismiss failure. I figure it's better than stewing in the regrets of those less than successful forays. Many though they be, I am not dissuaded. You can't get any fruit if you don't shake the tree.

"Well, thanks for the reading, Lenore," I said gathering my limbs to go. That's when she told me I owed her ten pounds. It seemed like a bit of a blag, but I gave her a Dickens and slouched off with a bit of a cloud on my shoulder. It was time to head over to Soho anyway, I reminded myself, time to get a little groove on and things would be all right again in no time.

Besides, I still had the Buddha's advice. It had to come out in some useful way, surely. As I fought my way through the tourists in Leicester Square, my good mood returned by degrees. So it didn't work with the tarot card reader. So what? There was bound to be some fabulous ladies in the club tonight, grooving to the racket we laid down. There always were women who couldn't resist the insatiable beat of the drum, whose hips swayed with the rhythm, whose hearts shared the tripping tap of the sticks. I would get one of them. There was a full moon tonight and it was always a good thing to have that moonlight shine on me. I looked better in its sparkle than I did in the harsh light of day.

Maybe that's what the disk really was—nothing but the light of the lucky moon.

Or something even better—I saw Sarannah as I stepped up to the club entrance. She was a sight, all raven haired beauty and dark eyes. A queen of the night and no mistake. No nonsense in those eyes, but a good bit of fun. "Where have you been all my life?" I asked her as I walked up the steps, slinging my arm around her warm waist.

"I've been right here waiting for you," she laughed, ready as usual to brush me off the moment someone better came along. I had always thought her out of my league, but the Buddha's words inspired me. I took in her promising plumpness and thought I ought to make a play.

"I've been told that I have a higher purpose in life," I said with all due gravity. "I think it might just involve you. What do you say, Sarannah? Shall we run off to Barcelona and start a new life?"

She laughed and it was a wonderful sound, full of music and a warm chocolaty smoothness. "What are you talking about, crazy man?"

"I'm telling you, I met the Buddha today," I said, running my thumb up the softness of her arm, feeling the little hairs tickle against my skin. "He said I have a higher purpose. I'm going to make big changes, Sarannah, just you wait and see."