“I know him,” Marco said. “Paul was a terrible martial arts student. But he carries energy from our work together at the dojo.”
“He’s also my brother,” Sam said.
“Paul’s your brother?” I said, my surprise evident in my tone. “Why didn’t you say so?”
She shrugged. “It didn’t seem important.”
I didn’t want to forget my original question. I stared at Marco. “You haven’t told me how you know about the spark with Paul. Did you pluck that out of my head? If you did, I’d appreciate it if you stayed out of there.”
Marco smiled amiably but didn’t reply.
I sighed. “Fine. What was the next thing in the energy progression?” I asked.
“Meeting Louise, of course—I mean, Sam,” Marco said. “Her heart is very well developed. Then you spent time with Jason Patariki,” Marco said. “Cultural icons are invested with very powerful energy, even if they haven’t learned to administer it maturely. So each experience has been more intense and transformative—building on the ones that came before. When you were exposed to Bhante and the ancient cave, that combination really amped things up. Then you met me. The work we did on the island took you much further. But it couldn’t have happened without what came before.”
“Who’s Meher Baba?” I asked. “And assuming the progression is supposed to keep getting more intense, does that mean he’s above you in the chi food chain?”
“He was a lesser-known Indian saint who supposedly said, ‘Don’t worry. Be happy.’ Maybe you’ve heard the song based on that, which is ironic since he maintained a vow of silence and never spoke. But as you may have gathered from my earlier mention of the word ‘tomb,’ he’s no longer in his body.”
“Whose is he in?” I joked.
Marco looked at me closely. “That’s a very good question, but let’s not get into that now.”
“Didn’t Baba do some kind of special energy work in his tomb?” Sam said.
“Yes.” He nodded as well, as though to emphasize his agreement.
“What’s the point of that?” I asked.
“So people who visited the tomb later could receive help even after he was gone,” Marco answered. “It’s one of the most powerful places on the planet.”
“So I need to hang out there and let it change me more? Why?”
“I told you. We have a mission, and you need to get up to speed to perform your role.”
“Which is?” My frustration lurked just below my reasonable tone of voice.
Marco smiled again and didn’t answer.
I felt like smacking him. “Will that be the end of it—the last one?” I asked.
“Probably not. We’ll see.”
I was quiet for some time while Sam and Marco discussed mutual friends.
In the past hour, I’d been handed quite a few answers to the various mysteries I’d encountered. Much as the questions had shown up in too rapid a succession for me to process, now I was experiencing the same thing with the answers.
Perhaps I wouldn’t even be Sid by the time Marco was through with me. Was it psychological suicide to agree to have your sense of self obliterated? How would it affect my future with Sam? If Marco was the end result of a similar process…well, it was hard to picture him dating.
I didn’t realize I’d turned so far inward until Sam nudged me with her elbow.
“Hey, no kung fu at the table,” I said as I returned to the moment.
“Here’s the plan,” Marco told me. “We’re swapping cars. Sam will return our rental after she drives to the US consulate in Auckland to figure out how to get home. We’ll meet her in Santa Cruz when we’re back in the States. I’ll contact Bhante by phone to give him back his car at the airport since we need to become affiliated with him, and it looks as though his people didn’t follow us.”
“What if the police stop us?” I asked.
“We won’t be the right people for the type of car they’re looking for since we switched vehicles,” Marco said. “And the man who phoned them can attest that we were the ones who were attacked. I doubt there’s a dragnet out for us. If necessary, we’ll improvise.”
“How do you have Bhante’s phone number?” I asked.
“A friend of a friend.” He smiled, anticipating my irritation that yet again he was withholding information.
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“No.” His noes were absolute. It was clear he couldn’t be talked into anything.
When Marco excused himself to use the restroom, I reached for Sam and held on tight. “I could just stay with you,” I said.
“If it weren’t Marco, I might not let go of you. But Marco is Marco. I’ve learned not to second-guess him.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I thought about being out of touch with her, and my gut felt empty. “I wish they hadn’t taken our cell phones,” I said.
“Oh, I bought another one this morning in Paihia. Let me see what the number is.”
She told me, and I memorized it. “I’ll call you when I get one—or if I can borrow one,” I told her.
She kissed me, and we held the kiss until Marco returned. I have no idea how long that was. The energy flowing between us was almost as intoxicating as the bliss I’d felt back on Marco’s Island. It was different, though—more wild.
“Time to go,” Marco said.
When we broke off our kiss, the sudden return to the world was challenging. Then we transferred our stuff from one car to the other, and Sam drove off after another powerful hug.
Marco called Bhante from the driver’s seat of the Audi, using the speaker on his cell phone so I could hear too.
“Namaste,” he said as we heard Bhante pick up.
“Namaste,” Bhante replied. “Who is this, please?”
“Jackson,” Marco said, garbling the pronunciation of the name. He pulled out of the restaurant’s entrance onto the highway.
There was a pause. “Ah. The fabled Mr. Jackson. What can I do for you?”
“Sid is with me, and he’d like to reunite with you and your organization.”
“Then why isn’t he the one on the phone?” Bhante asked. “How do I know he’s really alive?”
“I’m here,” I said. “You’re on the speaker.”
“Hello, Sid. I’m very gratified you’re intact. And I’m so sorry for any danger my actions have spawned.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said.
“There are some details to work out,” Marco said, accelerating to match the light traffic.
“Are you demanding a ransom?”
“No, no,” I said. “You’ve got this all wrong. He’s helping me.”
“For one thing,” Marco continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “we need to go to India first to continue Sid’s spiritual education.”
“Very well. But as you may know, there is a certain urgency in this matter. The world needs…well, you either already know or you don’t need to.”
“I understand,” Marco said. “The other thing is we have your car at this point. Can we return it to you at the Auckland airport?”
“Samavati gave you my car?”
“Yes.”
“Is she all right? May I speak to her as well?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “But she’s not here.” Again, I felt an emptiness inside as I said this.
“I don’t have time to explain,” Marco said. “We have a flight to catch. Have someone at the information booth at the international terminal at five thirty, and I’ll give him your keys. That should give you enough lead time.”
“Very well. Perhaps we’ll have a chance for a more in-depth conversation another time,” Bhante said.
“Yes,” Marco replied and hung up.
He started the car, and we zoomed away down the secondary road. “Fire up the GPS,” he said. “I have no idea where I’m going.”
Chapter Eleven
Once we got on track, Marco requested silence again, so I watched the countrysi
de pass by through the tinted window. I found that, for the most part, I could simply watch and not ruminate about anything.
Sheep littered the very green, gently rolling hills of the central part of the North Island. As we wended our way south toward Auckland, the open spaces between houses began to shrink, and the traffic picked up. More and more businesses and stores lined the highway as it expanded to four lanes and then to six for the final stretch. People drove fairly sensibly, but by the time we reached the airport parking lot, some of the civility had disappeared. Marco had to duel a pickup truck for our spot, and two other cars honked their horns at one another for no discernible reason.
“Where are we meeting Chris?” I asked after we’d parked and grabbed our bags out of the trunk. Lucy leapt out of the car but seemed disappointed to find herself in a parking lot.
“He’ll clear customs in about twenty minutes. Then our flight leaves two hours later,” Marco said. “Why don’t you greet him and tell him whatever you think will help orient him. I have some business here I need to attend to on my own.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll find you when it’s time to meet,” Marco said. He attached a leash to Lucy’s collar, and the two of them walked away from the terminal. She was in a hurry—probably to pee.
Like everything else I’d encountered in New Zealand, even the largest city’s international airport was on a modest scale, with only ten gates. There wasn’t the usual level of anxiety in the building, either. The most common phrase I heard around me was “no worries,” and I sensed that people meant it. My impression was the culture was markedly less neurotic and paranoid than the States. I wanted to bring a few of my most recalcitrant clients over for psychological rehab.
Chris and his enormous black backpack were the first ones to get through customs. He jogged the last few steps to where I stood and bear-hugged me. I was extremely happy to see him, and I hugged him at least as hard.
“So you’re okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Better than ever.” I smiled to back up my words.
He stepped back and looked me over. “You do look better,” he said. “Did you get a haircut?”
“No.”
“Lose weight?”
“No.”
“Read a good self-help book?”
“No.”
“Did you run off to Bumfuck without telling anyone and join a cult where the guru knows how to make dogs do weird shit?” Chris glared at me, but it might’ve only been for dramatic effect.
“Pretty much. If you change the ‘run off’ to ‘get kidnapped by a sports hero,’ and the ‘join a cult’ to ‘agree to be a fake Buddha.’ Turning Karma into a spelling champ is the least of Marco’s abilities, by the way.”
“One of the letters was kind of misshapen,” Chris reported. “I’m signing Karma up for remedial English Composition at the community college.”
I smiled at him. “Thanks for coming. I know this is strange and alarming.”
“You think?”
“Do you have my passport?” I asked.
“Your passport? Was I supposed to bring that?” He fumbled in his front pocket with a look of confusion on his broad face.
I glared at him, and he whipped it out of his back pocket and handed it over.
“Where is this Marco character, anyway?” Chris asked.
“I have no idea, but he’ll be back.”
“Would it be fair to say he dances to a different drummer?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “And then some.”
“I’m hungry. Do they have pizza here, Mr. Buddha?”
“Probably. Let’s go see. I’ll fill you in while you eat. And you don’t have to call me Mr. Buddha. Sir or Master are fine.” I remembered what Marco had said. “Actually, let’s go with B-2,” I said. “For Buddha 2.0.”
“Yeah, right. You’re a fucking Buddha now. And like all the spiritual greats, you’re named after a software upgrade, and your nickname is a vitamin? Whatever happened to good old Sanskrit? I love all those Ks and vowels and shit.”
“I’m a modern guy,” I said. “In the movie of my life, I’d be played by a former cute-as-a-button child actor—a white guy, of course—who is computer savvy and saves the world by hacking into something or other.”
“Gee, that’s so original. You should write a screenplay, Sid.” He shook his head and grimaced.
Chris was the only black person I saw at the airport, and his Hawaiian shirt was by far the most hideous attire. This one sported big brown cows and even larger pink pigs scattered across a bright yellow background. They looked as though they’d been caught up in Dorothy’s Kansas-to-Oz tornado. The skinny, tattooed girl at the pizza parlor said she liked it, but she was obviously lying.
We found seats by an exterior window that overlooked the short-term parking lot. Chris propped his backpack on one of the plastic chairs, and I placed my antique suitcase by my feet. It was a very stylish piece—dark brown leather with a swirled pattern on it. It was small enough to use as a carry-on, too.
I told my story again while Chris ate, forgetting at first that he already knew the beginning of it. He interrupted me repeatedly to ask clarifying questions, which was annoying but likely to be helpful. I knew what mattered to me at this point—what I thought was worth telling. But Chris’s perspective might be a valuable reality check. What had I missed? What was worth investigating more deeply?
“Well,” Chris said when I’d finished. “I’d like to start by saying I’m totally in favor of saving the world. That’s where all the women live, for one thing. Second, if anyone else told me all that, I’d think they were making it up or crazy. But I know you, and you know people. And Karma never spelled out anything before. So my mind is officially blown. I believe you.” He twirled a corner of his bushy, black beard and frowned. He rarely engaged in self-soothing, but when he did, it was either his beard or his fingernails.
It hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t believe me. “So what jumps out at you?” I asked.
“Well, if Bhante could con you, Marco totally could, too.” Chris kept twirling his beard, but now his face brightened. God knew why. “I don’t know why he’d want to, but obviously he could pull it off pretty easily. If he’d hired Frank and some Maoris, for example, then the invisibility hat deal goes up in smoke. There’s an ordinary-world explanation along those lines for almost everything you said. And I’ve read about gurus that do Shaktipat—send energy. There was Muktananda and Baba Neem Karoli, to name a couple. It means they’ve figured out how to play with energy, but Muktananda liked young girls and Baba Neem Karoli was kinda nuts. So you can have special abilities and still be screwed up. I mean, I haven’t met Marco yet. I’m just saying it’s possible.” His hand was still now. Spinning theories was apparently a more effective soothing strategy.
“Wait until you meet him, then see if that still makes sense to you,” I said. A woman brushed my shoulder with her butt as she walked by. I could tell by how squishy it was.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
I didn’t turn to look, but Chris watched her walk away. “Not bad,” he said. “Worth turning around for, bro. Yoga pants.”
“I’m kind of focused on this conversation I’m trying to have with you, Chris.”
“Okay, yeah,” Chris agreed. “The other thing is all this karate shit. The Jason part I understand. If he’s a professional athlete and he works as a bodyguard in a country with strict gun control…well, of course he’s gonna know how to fight. That makes sense. But why would a mind-reading guru kick butt? It’s anti-spiritual, right? Can you see Mother Teresa squaring off in the ring against the Dalai Lama or Gandhi?”
“She’d knock them both on their asses, I’ll bet,” I said.
“Yeah, well, what I’m saying is you hear about people getting way spiritual from doing martial arts, but that always seemed like a crock to me.” He stared at me expectantly as if my opinion about that mattered more than all the rest.
“What else?�
�� The martial arts piece didn’t seem important to me.
“They could all be in this thing together. That’s another possibility,” Chris said.
“Who?”
“All of them—Bhante, Sam, Marco, Frank, Tommy T., Paul, the supposed clones, the parking lot attackers—the whole cast of characters. That would explain how people seem to know shit they shouldn’t know. Suppose everybody’s working for some James-Bond-type supervillain?” He grinned. Clearly, he liked this theory best. For Chris, the whole deal was still conceptual. I was the one getting knocked around in the trenches. I thought about sharing this perception, but it wouldn’t matter. Chris’s brain was a juggernaut.
“Do you mean Ram would be the villain, or are you just playing devil’s advocate?” I asked.
“It could be him, but yeah, I’m mostly just brainstorming here. I didn’t hear much doubt out of you, so I thought I ought to inject a little into the mix.”
“There were times when I was nothing but doubtful and confused,” I told him. “But now I seem to be past that. And I can’t believe Sam is evil. She’s the best part of this whole thing.”
“You know that’s what’s the most unbelievable, right?” Chris said, smirking. I’d never liked his smirk. It was markedly judgmental. “I can entertain the idea that you might be some new messiah or whatever, and maybe Marco has mastered time and space and knocking people down, but a really hot woman falling for you? Come on. Get real. And your feelings for her sound like pure lust, by the way. You don’t know her at all.”
“Do you think she has an ulterior motive, or are you just trying to insult me?” I knew he was joking, but I still felt hurt. A frown formed, and my gut clenched a bit.
“Well, does it seem likely to you? Why would someone like that have sex right away with anyone?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We did go through some pretty intense stuff together.” I watched Chris finish eating. It wasn’t pretty. He was a shoveler. “What do you think of what Marco said about the progression of energy experiences?”
“I guess it makes sense,” Chris said. “I dunno. I wonder if some of that energy would do me any good—if I go in the tomb over in India, I mean.”
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