I wanted to kick him hard as I could, see him splat into the wall. I surveyed the room till I got myself under control. It resembled mine and Amber's, except that the clutter here was all one person's. The place was a nest of colors, cushions, books, and CDs, a place to squirrel oneself away. No guests, no lovers, it said, just me safe on my thick red Persian cushions, under my green and purple comforter, protected from everything. It was the other side of Maureen's emaciated body and inadequate garb.
The one rigorously clear spot was her dresser top, a pale polished oak on which stood a startlingly graceful jade statue of Kuan-yin, the female icon of compassion. A hint of sandalwood hung in the air. I would have expected a ballet barre, or at least a photo of a principal dancer, perhaps herself, in beaded bodice, back arched till her extended leg touched her thrown-back head. But there was no memento, nothing to draw her back to the bittersweet comfort of memories. It was the room of a gardener, not a ballerina.
Seeing this room made Maureen's life more understandable to me. And Gabe's invasion even more offensive. He was shifting foot to foot, as if ready to spar. Automatically he grinned.
“You were here that weekend of the opening,” I said. “What happened?”
“I told you beforeâ”
“I know. The dignitaries arrived. Just before the ceremony the Buddha disappeared. Aeneas ran through the grounds dressed in Leo's robes and waving a bottle. The Buddha reappeared. And then everyone left.”
“Right,” he snapped. “So what's your question, Assistant?”
“What makes you think Aeneas ever left here? Orâwait, do you? That's the story you're after, isn't it?”
He had been holding a long saffron scarf. It dropped from his hand and he bent to gather it up.
I grabbed his shoulders. “The truth! Now!”
He turned his hands palms up, left the scarf in a yellow heap, and popped up, his smug grin back in place.
“This is just a byline to you, isn't it, Gabe? An expose! Have you been planning it the whole time since the opening? Coming back here every year or two âfor sesshin' so you can poke under Maureen's futon? Do you take notes every time you have dokusan with Roshi, in case you can get a juicy quote? One more clue to whether Aeneas is buried under the bathhouse?”
“He's not.”
“What? Sheesh, Gabe, you're serious? You checked that out?”
“Well, yeah, of course. It's obvious. But there were too many outside workmen involved. You couldn't hide anything under there.”
I just stood shaking my head.
“Look, Assistant, this is a big story. Why shouldn't it be exposed?”
“Why shouldn't
what
be exposed? Death? Murder?”
He shrugged again but this time even that motion looked forced, protective, and I had the sense I hadn't gotten to his secret.
“What, dammit?” I was almost shouting.
“Hey, hold your voice down! I don't know if Aeneas is dead or in Seattle. Or Atlanta. Or Kobe. That's not my story.”
“Tell me another one!”
“No, honestly. I'm not saying I wouldn't jump on it. You bet I would, but I don't have anything. I can only go at it from the other end. That's why it's taken me so long.”
“The other end?”
“The asshole's hypocrisy!”
“Leo?”
“No, not Roshi. The
Asshole!
Rob.” He leaned back against Maureen's dresser, resting his buttocks an inch from the Kuan-yin. “Lookit, who shelled out for everything here? Our boy Rob. Money for the dome kit, plus what it cost to haul it nine miles along a road so terrible that cars get stuck. Money to build the bathhouse. That's not chump change out here in the middle of the woods. Just the technology for flush toilets here is big bucks! And the generator for the bathhouse and the kitchen. The chairs and rugs are small stuff. But altogether he's spent a couple hundred thou on this place. And that's what I know he spent. I don't know about incidentals.”
“Exposes are supposed to expose secrets people
don't
already know. Everybody knows about Rob's giftsâ”
He put a hand on my shoulder and sighed, as he would dealing with a simpleton. “Expose
start
from what everyone knows. It's what you do after that that makes the story.”
“Like?”
“Like Rob came here one weekendâone!âbefore he shelled out for the dome. Dome's don't cost a fortune, but by the time he had it carted here it must have run him close to a hundred grand. He'd met Roshi once. He was a lawyer making three times that per year, but a third of your income ain't peanuts.”
I must have looked insufficiently impressed. He pushed on.
“He was a lawyer, in San Francisco. He knew the lawyers for the Zen establishment there. He checked with them, not about Leo but about the title to the land.”
“Because he cared only about the land,” I tried.
“I'm not at the point of drawing conclusions. I don't limit myself. But if I was I'd be screaming
Yeah
. And . . .
and
. . . then he bought the chocolate equipment. All of it. He got it used, because it's almost antique. But it was not cheap.” Softly, smugly, Gabe added, “And then there's the property our boy bought.”
“Property?”
He sat down on Maureen's futon and patted the spot beside him. I understood the symbolism, but it didn't matter.
“See, that's the really interesting thing. Rob bought twenty acres on either side of the monastery. His land loops around to the road on both sides. The two plots almost meet in the back. So he's got the monastery surrounded.”
“The property is in his name, not the monastery's?”
Gabe nodded emphatically.
“Why would he do that?”
“Well, now, that's the big question, isn't it? Why do you think, Assistant?” But Gabe was on a roll. “The Asshole's got his followers, guys who would love to turn this place into a strict, traditional training monastery, up at two
A.M.
for sesshin, seating by order of seniority. No heat in the cabins. No paving the road, so the monastery stays isolated.”
“No women priests?”
“He probably couldn't get away with that, but he wouldn't relax any rules for people with kids.”
Maureen's futon was folded in thirds, creating a low, narrow, lumpy bench against the wall. On it Gabe and I were sitting side by side, knees bent in front of us. I shifted to the edge and turned to face him.
“Would they toss Leo aside?”
“Not everyone in the Zen community here. But Rob's supporters? In a flash. They're a crouching minority, ready to spring.”
But they hadn't sprung yet, not in six years.
“Not until Leo gives them reason, right?”
He nodded.
“Or he leaves.” In a traditional monastery Rob would have worked his way up. But even traditional monasteries read the tale of the Sixth Patriarch. “What if Leo says he's bringing in, say, a priest from San Francisco. Would Rob's people support Leo or Rob?”
Gabe guffawed, big, hearty bellows, much louder than my outburst he'd so righteously shushed just minutes earlier.
“What?” I demanded.
“Well, Assistant, it's damned hard to be the guy hoisting the flag of traditionalism and organize against the roshi's chosen successor. It'd be like the Queen of England coming out against primogeniture.”
Another time I might have laughed, had I not seen where that predicament led. Trying to keep my voice light, I said, “Suppose Leo died? I mean, does he own the monastery land?”
“The monastery is an offshoot of the greater Zen Buddhist community in this area. They gave the land into Leo's care. They're not up here checking on the number of toilets, but if he tried to give the land to the circus there would be a battle.”
Gabe hadn't seen the logical outcome of Rob's predicament because he didn't know Leo had been poisoned. If Leo died, control would bounce back to the Zen bigwigs. They'd be forced to take charge. But if Leo was merely sick, there'd be no event to force them to spend a lot of time dealing with matters in this outpost in the woods. If Leo was too sick to attend meetings or make plans, Rob could “speak for him.” Then Rob would have free rein to influence the unsure, consolidate his power, cast doubt on Leo's judgment, and there would come a point when it would be very hard for Leo to oust him. It all depended on Leo being too sick to interfereâtoo sick, but not dead.
For Rob, that wasn't a great plan or a flawless one, but the best he could do on the spur of the moment. Because, I realized, he hadn't needed a plan at all until he was sitting in the truck with Leo driving and me peering through the back window. Until then there had been no threat, not until Leo dismissed him as jisha. I had seen his face lined in anger, seen him wagging his finger at Leo, leaping from the still-moving truck and striding furiously across the quad. The first time he'd spoken to me, his replacement, he'd tried to arrange secret meetings for me to tell him about Leo's plans.
Surely Leo never dreamed Rob would poison him. But, here in the woods, Rob didn't have many options. Had Leo set up this sesshin for Rob? Did he think Rob had killed Aeneas? The Sixth Patriarchâ
Suddenly cloth covered my face. Gabe's jacket. His face was against mine. He was kissing me, hard, like an assault. I pushed at him but my arms were out of position. I tried to speak, but his mouth was covering mine. I could barely breathe.
I almost didn't hear the door open. But I did hear the footfalls on the bare floor and out of the corner of my eye saw the boots beside us.
Rob was dressed in low slip-on boots, loose brown wide-wale corduroys, and a thick sweatshirt that smelled of incense from the zendo, but he might have been garbed in purple vestments, holding the papal miter, and eyeing two clerics fornicating in Vatican Square.
The three of us made a tableau, Rob glaring down the length of his long body, Gabe and me huddled like part of the decorative base. We were silent; not even our breath broke the void. Outside feet trudged by, rubber clumping onto macadam; something banged, perhaps the ladder against the zendo roof, and for an instant I actually thought I heard the truck engine, but I knew I was fooling myself.
Then the tableau broke, Gabe sprang back, grabbed my shoulders, planted a loud kiss on my lips, leapt up, and, before Rob could speak, gave him an even louder mouth-to-mouth. Despite everything, I had to mentally applaud Gabe. The man never lost his verve. Rob was still wiping his wrist across his mouth as Gabe whipped out the door.
Leaving me to deal with Rob.
My inclination was to leap up. Instead I shifted slowly, and eased myself up, wishing I could have leaned casually against the dresser as Gabe had, but was unwilling to disregard Maureen's altar there. Instead, I rested an arm against the wall and looked straight ahead at Rob's chest and decided to make the most of this chance to fact-check this story of Gabe's. For Gabe, of paste diamond schlimazel notoriety, meticulous research was essential, so he'd be easy to double-check.
“Rob, what's your total cash investment in this place?”
His shoulders shot up protectively in a way that made him seem smaller rather than taller. When he finally demanded, “What?” he all but confirmed Gabe's accusations.
“Did you assume your purchases were a secret, Rob?”
“Hardly,” he snapped. “Maureen probably told you about the bathhouse before you had a chance to wash your hands.”
His shoulders had dropped and without shifting anything else he seemed to have shifted himself back into control. He had, of course, been a trial lawyer trained to handle unpleasant surprise.
“She didn't tell me about the zendo. You paid for that when you'd only met Leo one time. You tossed nearly a hundred thousand dollars into the woods with a stranger who'd already screwed up big-time! That's a real pig in a poke, isn't it? You might as well have invested in Nigerian Internet scams.”
“Hardly! The council said . . .”
“Of course, the council,” I said, knowing zip about any council. “The great Zen council guaranteed your investment.”
He didn't move, didn't react. I took that for a yes, a big-time neon flashing red yes. Had Leo known about that arrangement? What choice would he have had anyway? But the surrounding land, in Rob's name onlyâ
“What the hell are you doing in here?” Rob demanded, as if the previous interchange hadn't existed.
“I came to see Maureen,” I said, kicking myself for musing when I should have been on attack.
“She's blond and shorter than Gabe,” he said sarcastically.
“Well, I found Gabe interesting.”
“I could see.”
I was still looking straight ahead, at his neck, rather than giving him the advantage of his height. I waited until he inhaled, and demanded, “What about the other twenty acres, the land that encircles this place? Did you work that out with the council, too? Or is that your private deal?”