A Single Eye (27 page)

I pulled on my shoes, but still didn't leave the tiny porch. Had Rob heard of the postcards Aeneas sent his family? Had Leo? Was it possible Aeneas was coming back?

I stayed put another minute, then walked around the side of the zendo to move my shoes to the shoe rack in front. Inside, the zendo students were walking in kinhin, but on the porch three tall dark-parkaed men and two shorter young women formed a half circle around Rob. Despite their height he towered above them like the tallest steeple in a Russian Orthodox cathedral. As Rob spoke—whispered—he glanced at each of the five and lastly at the zendo door, perhaps to remind them the bell was about to ring for the next sitting. They all nodded but were clearly reluctant to leave this new inner circle. A man in a dark green slicker, the guy I remembered from the first night, who had rushed desperately back to his cabin as if he'd forgotten the single thing he couldn't survive without, eased closer to Rob.

“You're set on preserving the monastery, aren't you? Leaving the road like it is, right? Keeping out hoards of casual students? Keeping this as a traditional teaching monastery, not making it soft, right?”

Rob nodded agreement.

Shen-hsui . . . But we were Zen students here, not killers. What was I thinking?

And yet, someone had poisoned Leo.

Shen-hsui.

More than ever I was relieved that the doctor would be here soon, and Leo would be safe, and everything would be all right. Otherwise, I would have agonized about Leo, worried about Amber poking at Rob, colluding with Gabe, about everyone discovering she was Aeneas's sister. There was no way I could protect her.

Moving past Rob's group on the porch I headed to Leo's cabin. He was asleep. I stoked the fire and was back in the zendo when the bell rang.

But the instant the service that ended the mid-morning sittings was over, I was out of the zendo, ear to the wind. It was ten to noon now, ten minutes to my arbitrary time of arrival! Four servers were carrying huge pots onto the porch, preparing to take them inside and begin the formally choreographed meal—
oriyoki
. There was no chance of hearing the truck over their clatter. I slipped into shoes and hurried down the steps toward the kitchen for Roshi's lunch.

I was almost to the kitchen when Barry burst out the door, robes flying, apron untied and sailing out to one side. The man was clearly in a panic and he was looking for me.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

“T
he truck's gone!” Barry hissed, grabbing both my arms. He loomed over me, the wind whipping his black monk's robe and snapping the strings of his untied apron against my arms.

“It'll be back soon.”

“No one told me!”

He was shaking me.

“Barry! It'll be back any time now.”

“Who took it?”

“Justin.”

“Justin?” he said blankly. He'd been so caught up in his cacao beans, it was no wonder he didn't know people's names. “This Justin, does he know anything about trucks?”

Then I realized the cause of his panic.

“Barry, the truck will be back in plenty of time for you to get your chocolate to San Francisco. Justin's a car guy. When he first drove up here he owned a vehicle older than this truck. The next year he had a Jaguar. Relax.”

Relax!
Has that advice ever worked? Certainly it was useless now, to a man with his oeuvre in chocolate to deliver.

“Do you want me to tell you when it gets here?”

“Nah,” he said, backpedaling from his frenzy and offering me a smile of apology. With his shaved head, big round body and flapping robes, he reminded me of Pu-tai, the Laughing Buddha good luck charm sold in bazaars, the figure on the window of the Big Buddha Bakery. “I can hear the truck from the kitchen,” he added.

“Good,” I said. “I'll wait there with you.” And, pulling myself together to make use of this opportunity, I added, “You can tell me about the Big Buddha Bakery.”

I hurried into the kitchen after Barry. The servers were still running in and out of the sesshin half of the kitchen, hauling big silvery serving pots by handles held with potholders. The food had to leave the kitchen steaming if there was any chance of it being near-warm by the time the servers carted it across the paths to the zendo, served it to all twenty students two at a time, and those students chanted the meal verses prior to taking their first bites. Thus had congealed oatmeal and cold rice become staples of the Zen diet. Now the servers were returning the empty rice pots and readying the kettles of boiling water to take to the zendo and pour into students' bowls for cleaning.

I glanced out the tiny window under the staircase, hoping in vain for a first glimpse of the truck. The window was so shaded by brambles and bushes I hadn't realized it was there before.

I moved into the arena of chocolate. The chocolate scent here was not what you'd find in a chocolate shop, even a fine establishment. It was a dryer, duskier aroma, and not quite mouth-watering. Barry stood over the conche, which resembled a giant washing machine. He had apparently finished loading the chocolate and was now hoisting a bag of vanilla beans.

“Barry,” I said as he started to pour, “what happened at the Big Buddha Bakery?”

“Shh!” he muttered, his focus never leaving the bag. “Conching can take three days. I've got just one. Less than one, and I've still got to add the rest of these beans, and the lecithin and the sugar.”

“White sugar?”

“White, yes. But large grain. There's less ash and moisture content that way and the taste is more natural.”

He emptied both bags, the vanilla beans and the sugar, but he might have been distributing the contents bean by bean and crystal by crystal, and I had the ludicrous feeling that had I asked he could have accounted for the position of each bean and crystal when it joined the paste at the bottom of the conche. By the time he put down the last bag, the servers were gone and the green-aproned dishwashers were clanking big spoons against pots, shifting excess food to containers, drying utensils and serving bowls, and only one was scrubbing away at the bottom of the huge rice pot. Brillo pad scraped on metal as if scratching off the thin layer of civility between Barry and me.

Barry looked up from the conche.

“The Big Buddha Bakery?” I prompted.

He sighed. “I've been at this nonstop since Monday. I need to sit down. Come on upstairs.”

He walked to the far corner of the kitchen and started up the staircase by the window. Half-hidden behind piled cardboard boxes, it was a narrow necessity, clearly a later add-in. There was room for only one person to climb, and no railing. I followed him to an attic room that covered the entire kitchen. The walls sloped in on both sides, leaving a narrow passage for anyone, but one that had to be a balance test for a man his size. At the far end—over the zendo kitchen sink where the dishwashing crew was still sweating—was a bed, not like the futons Roshi and I had but an actual, extra-long bed with box springs and mattress, and two extra-thick pillows and a French blue quilted bedspread. The head of the bed touched one wall, the foot the other. The floorboards were polished; the eaves held built-in bookcases, a desk with a laptop computer, and a boom box. And, I realized with a start, there was a lamp. A lamp in this monastery that had no electricity or phone!

“Wow!”

“Yeah, Rob's a generous guy.”

“Rob remodeled this loft for you? How come?”

“He had the money. I think he felt wealth was unbefitting a Zen student who plans to be the abbot some day. So he spent it on the monastery. He paid for the flush system in the bathhouse and the generator for the kitchen.”

“And the big stuffed chairs in the common room, too?”

“Oh, yeah.” He gave a grudging nod, similar to the one Maureen had given in the office yesterday. Again it struck me that it's not only more blessed to give than to receive, but a whole lot more satisfying. But condescending beneficence can buy a load of resentment.

Barry motioned me to sit on the bed beside him, but the sloping walls would have forced us shoulder to shoulder. I chose an old black canvas chair by the stairs.

“Barry, about the Big Buddha Bakery—?”

He shook his head. “I really hoped never to hear about it again.”

“Did you work there?”

He tapped his fingers on one knee, his head hanging, gaze down.

This was worse than I'd thought. “Okay, you did work there. Cooking, right?”

He stared down, shoulders tightening.

Much worse. “Oh, jeez, you didn't just work there, did you, you
were
the baker.”

He stood abruptly, as if shot up by nerves, and began walking toward me, slowly, stiffly, as if fighting for control. His hands were clasped over his stomach; his feet dragged with each step. The floorboards under his feet were worn down from pacing. When he moved past me, his hips were level with my shoulders and I knew one swat of one of those solid arms could send me slamming headfirst down the stairs. At the far wall he turned and started back. Before I could order “Sit,” he pulled the desk chair in front of me and sat.

“The food at the bakery—”

“—was fine,” he snapped.

“But?”

He took a deep breath and squeezed both hands into fists. He looked at me, his face quivering. Then he cried.

I was up with my arms around his shoulders before I realized it. He was the Barry of Monday, the big kid so excited about his criollo beans arriving. He bent his head down to his knees and wiped his eyes on his robe.

“I didn't do anything at the bakery, but I was their confection chef and I disgraced them. I left, but even that didn't help. No one wants to buy food from a place that hired a poisoner.”

“But you said—”

“It wasn't there. It was at the Cacao Royale, like the one I'm going to this weekend. It's
the
chocolate contest here; only comes every seven years. I was so excited about being accepted there, so nervous. I never intended to endanger anyone. Everyone knew that. I was so ambitious. I just had to win. I couldn't see anything but winning. And then, all of a sudden in the ‘without' competition there's this guy from Virginia making a vanilla tart that was the buzz of the whole place. There's no excuse for what I did. I didn't intend to harm him, not physically, just professionally. But that's no excuse.”

I nodded, waiting.

“Vanilla is a subtle taste. When he turned his back on his pan, I squirted in a dropper full of peanut oil. I distracted him just long enough for it to settle beneath the surface. I thought all it would do would be to adulterate the taste, but . . .”

“Someone was allergic?” I was sorry as soon as I'd said it. And when Barry nodded, I watched him closely to make sure there was no surprise in his reaction, that I hadn't given him an easy out. “What happened?”

“One of the judges; anaphylactic shock; paramedics. He was okay the next day. I don't know if he would have sued me, or the guy from Virginia would have, but before that came up, I realized what I had done, what I had become. I gave the Virginian all my recipes—he's won a few contests with some of them since then. I don't pretend I'm glad for him, but it's what I deserve.”

“But no police or—”

“No. Know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because Roshi stood up for me. The chocolate world is a small community. The police don't patrol confection competitions. Someone would have had to press charges. The newspapers were bad enough. But when Roshi trusted me enough to make me his cook up here, even they backed off.” He leaned back, sighed deeply and then focused on me anew. “You know, Darcy, I thought you were my friend. But this is a hell of a time to hit me with questions about this. I haven't slept in days, I'm just going to make it to San Francisco. And you broadside me like this.”

He looked so drained, so confused and so very disappointed . . . in me. There was no reason
not
to tell him, not with the doctor almost here.

“Barry, I had to ask. Someone poisoned Leo. He's okay,” I added immediately. The sudden horror on Barry's face lessened, but only momentarily.