TWELVE
DOC MADE A COUPLE OF PHONE CALLS AND TOOK THE BACK
route up by way of Burbank and Santa Paula, reaching the Ojai turn-off just before lunchtime. There were plenty of signs to point the way to the Chryskylodon Institute. The high-rent laughing academy was located close enough to Krotona Hill to cash in on the mystiques of better-known spiritual facilities like the Inner School and the AMORC. The main house, a red tile and white stucco Mission Revival mansion, was surrounded by a hundred acres of orchards and pasture and syca
more woods. At the front gate, Doc was met by longhaired attendants in flowing robes under which they were packing Smiths in shoulder rigs.
“
Larry Sportello, I have an appointment?
”
“
If you wouldn
’
t mind, brother.
”
“
Sure, grope ahead, I ain
’
t packing, hell I ain
’
t even holding.
”
The
procedure was to park in a lot by the gate and wait for an Institute shuttle
bus to run you up to the main house. The gate had a sign over it which read
straight is hip.
Doc had got himself up today in an Edwardian jacket and bell-bottoms in not quite matching and no longer fashionable shades of brown, narrowly trimmed late-movie mustache, hair Brylcreemed into a high pompadour with long sideburns, all meant to suggest a sleazy and vaguely anxious go-between who couldn
’
t him
self begin to afford
the fees this place would be asking. From the looks he was getting, the put-together seemed to be working.
“
We were just about to go have lunch,
”
the associate director Dr. Threeply making with the fake-sympathetic wrinkled forehead.
“
Why
don
’
t you join us? Afterward we can show you around the facility.
”
Dr. Threeply was a shifty specimen with that quality now and then observed in aluminum-siding and screen-door salesmen of once having been through something—a marriage, a criminal proceeding— traumatic enough to have torqued him permanently out of tolerance, so that now he had to beg potential clients to ignore this unspecified character handicap.
Waiting on tables at lunch in the Administrative Lounge were
inmates who seemed to be working in lieu of paying the full fee.
“
Thank you, Kimberly. Hands steady as a rock today, it seems.
”
“
So happy you noticed, Dr. Threeply. More soup?
”
Doc, with a forkful of some unfamiliar vegetable loaf halfway to his
mouth, reflected that if these folks out here were mental cases, then what about farther back in the kitchen, well out of the public gaze? Like doing
the cooking, for example?
“
Try some of this chenin blanc, Mr. Sportello, right from our own vineyard.
”
Doc had learned from his dad Leo, and later cruising supermarket shelves, that
“
blanc
”
meant
“
white,
”
and that California whites
tended to be, well, at least whiter than the queasy shade of yellow he was
looking at. He squinted at the label and noticed an ingredient list several
lines long, with the note, in parentheses,
“
Continued on back of bottle,
”
but whenever he tried, as casually as he could, to have a look at the label
on the back, he noticed he was getting these stares, and sometimes people even reached and turned the label away so he couldn
’
t read it.
“
You
’
ve
...
been here with us before?
”
said one of the staff shrinks.
“
I
know I
’
ve seen your face.
”
“
First time I
’
ve been down here, normally I never get much south of South City.
”
“
And
ab
-normally?
”
Dr. Threeply chuckled.
“
What?
”
“
I only meant that with any number of qualified facilities in the Bay Area, why bother coming all the way down here to us?
”
The others at
the table leaned forward as if keenly interested in Doc
’
s answer.
Time to pull out some of the stuff he
’
d run through with Sortilege.
“
I believe,
”
said Doc earnestly,
“
that just as chakras can be identified on
the human body, so does the body of Earth have these special places,
concentrations of spiritual energy, grace if you will, and that Ojai, for the
presence of Mr. J. Krishnamurti alone, certainly qualifies as one of the
more blessed of planetary chakras, which regrettably cannot be said for
San Francisco or
it’s
immediate vicinity.
”
After a small patch of silence, somebody said,
“
You mean ... Walnut Creek
...
isn
’
t
a chakra?
”
which drew nodding and chuckling from colleagues.
“
Some religious thing,
”
supposed Dr. Threeply, maybe trying to
restore an air of professionalism at the table, though what profession was
unclear.
After lunch Doc was bustled around on a tour which included dormitories, a staff lounge with a dozen TV sets and a full-service bar, the
sensory-deprivation tanks, the Olympic-size pool, and the rock-climbing
wall.
“
What
’
s in here?
”
Doc trying to seem no more than casually curious.
“
A brand-new wing for housing our Noncompliant Cases Unit,
”
announced Dr. Threeply,
“
not quite operational yet, but soon to be the
Institute
’
s pride and joy. You may certainly have a look inside if you wish,
though there
’
s nothing much to see.
”
He swung open one of the doors, and just inside the vestibule Doc caught a glimpse of the same publicity photo he
’
d seen at the Wolfmann home, of Sloane in a skip loader
delivering an oversize check. As closely as he could, he scanned the pho
tograph again and noticed now that none of the other faces in it seemed to be Mickey
’
s. Mickey was nowhere in sight, but Doc was visited by
the creepy feeling that somewhere close by, in some weird indeterminate
space whose residents weren
’
t sure where they were, inside or out of the
frame, might indeed be some version of Mickey, not quite in the same
way that the lady with the big check was a version of Sloane, but altered
and—he shivered—maybe mentally or even physically compromised. Past this vestibule here, he could make out a long corridor lined with
identical knobless doors receding into metallic shadow. Before the main
door swung shut again, Doc just had time to notice a chunk of marble
with a bronze plaque that read,
MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE SELFLESS
GENEROSITY OF A DEVOTED FRIEND OF
CHRYSKYLODON.
If Sloane was endowing loony bins with Mickey
’
s money, why not take some credit? Why be anonymous?
“
Nice,
”
said Doc.
“
Come, we
’
ll have a look outside.
”
As they moved out into the grounds, Doc could see, through the haze, eucalyptus trees, colonnaded walkways, neoclassic temples faced in white marble, fountains fed by hot springs. Everything looked like
painted glass mattes in old Technicolor movies. Well-to-do nutcases and
their attendants drifted now and then in the distance. As Aunt Reet had
suggested, there was a lot of capital improvement in progress. Landscap
ing crews tossed through the air and neatly caught long curved stacks of clay flowerpots. Framers played hard-core acid rock n
’
roll out of truck
radios and hammered along with the beat. Paving crews shoveled black
top, and rollers rolled it smooth.
There were tennis courts and swimming pools and outdoor volleyball. The Zen Garden, according to Dr. Threeply, had been transported
from Kyoto, reassembled here exactly in place, each grain of white sand,
each textured rock. A ceremonial bell stood nearby, and next to it Doc noticed a strange shadowy gazebo, like a steel engraving in some old and likely forbidden book, out of which he thought he heard sounds of chanting.
“
Advanced therapy group,
”
said Threeply. He led Doc to a
concealed spiral stairway, and they descended into a sort of grotto, damp
and dimly lit. The temperature dropped twenty degrees. From down the damp corridors, the sound of chanting got louder. Threeply led Doc into a soundproofed space behind one-way mirrors, and
among underground
shadows green as aquarium slime Doc immediately recognized one of a
dozen kneeling figures in robes as Coy Harlingen.
Now, what the fuck?
As it turned out, this was not the only familiar face around here. Loung
ing by the observation window was an orderly who had apparently brought
the inmates here and was waiting to take them back. He was passing the
time with the age-old diversion of rolling up his necktie, holding it for a minute under his chin, and then lifting his chin and letting the tie unroll
again. Hours of fun. Doc didn
’
t notice the tie itself until he
’
d been watch
ing this for a while, and then he either thought, Holy shit! or actually hol
lered it out loud, he wasn
’
t sure right away which, because what this gorilla
happened to be wearing was one of Mickey Wolfmann
’
s own custom-made
specials—in fact the
exact tie
Doc had failed to find in Mickey
’
s closet, the one with Shasta hand-painted on it, in a pose submissive enough to break
an ex-old man
’
s heart, that
’
s if he was in the mood. Doc was just able to
return to the present tense in time to hear Dr. Threeply wrapping up some
commentary and asking if there were any questions.
Several, in fact.
Doc wanted at least to mention to the gorilla by the window something like,
“
Hey, that
’
s my ex-old lady you
’
re fondling there,
”
but how wise was that? The world had just been disassembled, anybody here
could be working any hustle you could think of, and it was long past
time to be, as Shaggy would say, like, gettin out of here, Scoob.
Loaded down with application kits and Institute literature, Doc
climbed onto the shuttle back to the main gate. At the creepy gazebo stop, one passenger got on, who turned out to be Coy Harlingen in a
hooded robe, making dummy-up gestures, which included,
“
Get off
when I do.
”
They got off by the dodge-ball court. Some kind of Regional
All-Institution Playoffs were in progress, with a lot of matching T-shirts
and screaming, not all of it playoff-related, and nobody paid much atten
tion to Coy and Doc.
“
Here, put this on.
”
One of the hooded robes people wore around here, which Doc doubted came from a religious-supply house—more
like some clearance sale of no-longer-stylish beachwear. He slid into it.
“
Wow... makes a man feel like ... Lawrence of Arabia!
”
“
As long as we walk slow and stoned, nobody
’
s gonna bother us.
”
“
Here, maybe this
’
ll help.
”
Producing and lighting a pinner of gold Colombian. They passed it back and forth, and after a while Coy said,
“
So you got to see Hope.
”
“
For a minute. She
’
s okay. And looks like she
’
s been stayin clean too.
”
It wasn
’
t easy to see what exactly was going on with Coy behind his
shades, but his voice dropped to a whisper.
“
You talked to her?
”
“
I put my head in the front door, pretended to be one of these maga
zine hustlers. Caught just a glimpse of that li
’
l Amethyst, too, and from what I could see, they
’
re both doing fine. And I almost sold Hope a sub
scription to
Psychology Today
”
“
Well.
”
Coy shaking his head slowly, as if listening to a solo.
“
You
don
’
t know how worried I
’
ve been.
”
Maybe more than he meant to say.
“
She kicked, are you sure? Is she on a program, or how
’
s she doing it?
”
“
She
’
s back teaching, is all she said. Public health, drug awareness,
something like that.
”
“
And you
’
re not gonna tell me where.
”