Authors: K.T. Hastings
Jake looked at Suzi with wonderment in his eyes. She was laughing so hard that she had to hold her stomach to try to catch her breath.
“Why do you do that to him?” Jake asked.
Suzi stopped laughing long enough to answer, little sounds of mirth still escaping as she talked.
“Because I can! He's so much fun to tease! It always ends like this. He's always mumbling to himself. 'Suzi this, Suzi that'. It makes up for the times when he teases me about getting excited about little things. Also, when he gives me little names that he thinks are cute. He calls me a Muppet! A MUPPET! Can you believe that one?”
Actually, Jake believed that he had heard that one. Suzi had been playing with her oriental chicken salad at lunch the other day and Bruce had said, “Let's go, Muppet. We need to get back on the road.”
At the time, Jake hadn't thought much of it, but now that he recalled the incident, he remembered that Suzi had gone back to moving her salad around her plate with renewed determination, seemingly looking... to... get... each... bite... just... right.
Jake leaned in conspiratorially. He wanted to find out one more thing before Bruce rejoined them in the lobby. He whispered to Suzi.
“Are you a Dodger fan?”
Suzi leaned back so she was speaking directly into Jake's ear. The last thing she needed right now was for Bruce to become privy to her secret.
“I'm a Giants fan.”
Jake laughed. “Are you ever going to tell the father of your child out there? It will make him feel better about things.”
Suzi only looked more delighted. “I'll let him stew on it for a day. I'll tell him tonight if he doesn't call me Muppet again.”
Jake shook his head. Suzi and Bruce picked on each other more than they would have if they were brother and sister. Yet Jake also knew that each of them would put on a swimsuit made of chicken and fight an alligator before they would let harm come to the other. They were quite a pair.
***
Brandee was enjoying the extra time lounging in bed. She was able to take her time getting up, showering, and getting dressed. She found that she kind of liked having the room to herself, and not having to share the bathroom with Jake when she was trying to get ready to leave.
Two hours after the Nissan had entered Interstate 80, California bound, Brandee fired up the Sprinter and headed west too, with Janelle perched in the shotgun seat. The two girls made small talk for a bit before falling silent for a while.
Finally, as Brandee guided the Dodge down Veteran's Memorial Highway, Janelle broke the silence. “I want to ask you a question, Brandee," she started, “But I'm not sure how to start.”
Brandee patted her passenger's left knee. “Just start anywhere. You can ask me whatever you want.”
Janelle thought for a second or two, and decided to start with a preamble to her main topic.
“I want to get to know you. I mean really get to know you. Even better than I already do. You've been so great to me, and I'm more grateful than you know. But...”
Her voice trailed off. Brandee laughed and said, “Well you're welcome. That's not what's on your mind, though. Spit it out Jannie. I won't bite.”
Janelle took a deep breath and dove into the deep end. “What do you think about that crap that Jake was talking about last night? All of that Jesus loves me, this I know shit?”
Brandee's first instinct was to make a light-hearted joke, but she took a look at Janelle's earnest face and decided to go a different route. The younger girl had opened up a serious topic and deserved to be taken seriously. Brandee checked her mirrors and passed a slower moving vehicle before she answered Janelle.
“I guess I don't think about it all that much. It's Jake's thing. It works for him, I guess. Why? Don't you believe in God?”
Janelle slipped out of her seat belt so that she could turn and look at Brandee more directly. She hadn't realized until this moment how important it was to her for the singer to understand and know her as a person.
“I guess I should start by telling you what I do believe in. I'm what people call a mystic. I believe in something like God, but it isn't. It's not about God like Jesus' dad and all of that, I mean. I believe in a Creator Force. I believe that something happened that started everything, but after that, it lost touch with us. We're born to try to find the lost part of the Creator Force.
“The Hindus talk about the Upanishad. He was some guy who said that we need to find The Supreme Good and be in a kind of super-unity with it. Buddha says that we get there by understanding suffering and trying to relieve suffering where we find it. I believe that too. That's the best thing about believing in mysticism. You can take from all of the religions or none of them. It doesn't matter.”
Brandee was fascinated by her young passenger, and was becoming more fascinated as she listened to Janelle talk. Brandee's own upbringing had involved being a drive-by on the religious holidays. She had always been too busy trying to climb the ladder to give matters of religion much thought. Now, Janelle had come into her life, and she was learning that Janelle had some serious depth. A little raw, which was to be expected from a twenty year-old, but depth nevertheless.
You would never know the depth, though, unless you take the time to really get to know her
, Brandee thought to herself. Brandee intended to do just that.
“Wait though!” Brandee interjected. “You said that Jake's beliefs were crap. Isn't there something about being a Christian that you can take into your belief system too?”
Janelle snorted. “Yeah, but people have ruined Jesus. Jesus was a great teacher, just like Buddha and Confucius and Plato and those guys. People take what Jesus said about feeding the hungry and stuff and fuck it all up. They turn around and say later that if you are poor, then God must not like you as much as he likes the rich people. I think Jesus would shit a brick if he was here.”
You're probably right about that
, Brandee thought, but she didn't interrupt Janelle, who had warmed to her topic.
“I've done a lot of studying about what the great teachers have had to say about money. Many of them, most of them I think, teach that money is something that should be given away so that there aren't so many poor people. I've never really had any to give away, but I probably would if I had any.
“A lot of them believe that we can become enlightened from our dreams too. I write my dreams down every morning so I don't forget them. I have a book written by a famous Kabbalah lady that helps me to interpret them.
“What have you learned from your dreams?” Brandee asked. She had always been interested in dream interpretation herself. She sometimes thought that she could see the future in her dreams.
Janelle answered, “Not much usually. Sometimes my dreams tell me that I'm going to go somewhere or do something, but it's usually hazy to me. That's why I have my book about dreams.”
Brandee pressed Janelle a little more about her belief system. This was the most interesting day on the road that she had experienced yet. Not only was she not tired, she felt energized by the conversation. Janelle was only too glad to tell her idol about her thoughts and beliefs.
“I've read a lot about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh too. He was a real important guru that came to the United States and lived in Oregon for a while, until the government hassled him so much that he had to leave. Anyway, he had a lot to say about how humans get tied up in their minds about unimportant things. He says that we should just live how we live and love who we love. He says that we create our own problems with crime and war by setting up artificial walls between ourselves and others.”
At this point, Janelle abruptly stopped. Brandee looked at her quizzically and said, “Why did you stop? This is great stuff. I'm learning a lot.”
Janelle gulped a little and continued. Her aunt used to say, “In for a penny, in for a pound.” Janelle knew now what that meant.
“Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh taught me my beliefs about sex, too. He teaches that true enlightenment can most easily be found through meditation and sex with someone that you really respect and admire. He says that making love with the window open so you can feel the breeze will get you in touch with nature and with The Supreme One. That's the way that we overcome the bullshit that most of life really is about. We overcome it through love, sex, and getting in touch with our real selves.”
Brandee nodded. She realized that Janelle had put more thought into what she believed than most people Brandee had known in her life. It made some sense to Brandee, too. She suddenly wondered whether she hadn't been wasting herself in her drive and ambition. She would always want to be a famous singer, more than anything else. She wondered, though, as she guided the Sprinter toward Reno, whether there wasn't more to life than what she had found thus far. Janelle had also struck a responsive chord when she had mentioned meditation. She wanted to find out what that was all about.
“Tell me more about how you've learned to meditate.”
Janelle answered, “I go into a place where I can feel the wind and see the moonlight. I light a candle if the moon isn't out. It's not the same, but it's okay. Anyway, after that I put on some Native American music and I let the ancient rhythms carry me to a better place. I try to find peace in the light and the music as I settle my thoughts. Sometimes I hum along with the music, but usually I don't.
“That sounds very peaceful and wonderful Janelle, but aren't you forgetting something? Isn't someone that you respect and admire there with you?”
Janelle closed her eyes, suddenly lost in what could be, but probably never would be. She took a moment before answering.
“Not usually.”
She opened her eyes and looked at Brandee. “I don't want you to think badly about me, Brandee. I would hate it so much if you did. You asked me to talk about all of this, though. The truth is, I've never admired or respected anybody except sometimes my folks. I've never been in love. Sometimes I haven't even liked the people that I've fucked.”
Brandee nodded. “You just ball for balling’s sake? Because it feels good and he's there?” She had done some of that herself when she was living with her friend Charlene just before Jake had come into her life. She could relate to what Janelle was saying.
Janelle shrugged her shoulders. “I guess, and because they wanted to, or because they had done something for me or because I was drunk or high, or they were and what the hell, why not?”
Brandee patted Janelle's shoulder. Her heart went out to the girl. She seemed so young on the one hand, and yet so tired and worn out on the other hand. The singer suddenly remembered that her mother used to talk about how some people were “old souls”, and wondered if Janelle was one of those. She wondered what Janelle thought about that, but set the topic aside for later. First Brandee wanted to know more about the nuts and bolts of meditation.
“What happens next when you are in the wind and the moonlight?”
Janelle tried to put meditation as she experienced it into words, but was only partly successful. “Sometimes not much. Then I usually fall asleep. Other times I feel peaceful and like I can hear... I don't know... hear the earth. Does that sound like a crock?”
Brandee shook her head and smiled at Janelle. “That sounds wonderful. Is it wonderful?”
Janelle smiled back at the golden-haired singer. She noticed that the early afternoon desert sun had reddened Brandee's cheekbones a little under the sunglasses that she used when she drove. She could also see just the slightest dusting of freckles across Brandee's nose. Janelle had never noticed that Brandee had freckles before. She thought that they were almost unbearably sexy, but forced herself to get back to the conversation at hand.
“It's pretty cool," she answered. “The Hebrew people believe in being one with the universe. The Kabbalah lady that I told you about had a poem in her dream book that talked about that. Do you want to hear it?”
“I would love to,” Brandee responded.
Janelle closed her eyes and recited from memory. It was the only poem that she had ever memorized because it was the only poem that had ever spoken to her in her search for something beyond herself.
“The Creator possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.