Coattail Karma

by Verlin Darrow

  What else? I wanted to be in service to the world in whatever way I could. That was why I’d become a therapist. If I could help humanity on a grander scale by sharing my energy or becoming a spiritual teacher, so much the better. And if we really were approaching a global crisis as Bhante and Marco had asserted, I certainly wanted to play my part in resolving it.

  I also wanted—no, craved—to continue feeling the bliss and power that Marco had unleashed within me. I was surfing some sort of accelerated spiritual wave. I needed to ride it out. I may have become enlightened back on the island, but as Marco had told me, it wasn’t “abiding.” I yearned for abiding. I couldn’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t. My experience had been akin to seeing and hearing after being deaf and blind. Who could be satisfied if they slipped back into the isolation of unawareness? Enlightenment was a benign Pandora’s box.

  Lastly, I wanted to get to know Sam better. Was the familiarity and closeness I felt with her significant or merely a side effect of all the rest? I felt as though I were in love. Was I?

  I should’ve stopped there and turned in. Instead, I made a list of all the pitfalls and dangers that might lie ahead. At the top of this list was a fear I hadn’t faced yet. Was I going crazy? Was all this really happening? What if I were hallucinating or delusional myself?

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the morning, I stretched my sore muscles and took stock of just how battered I was. Nothing screamed at me. Mostly I’d endured a plethora of cuts and bruises that were perfectly bearable.

  I had a feeling there might be something else outside the door, so I took a look. Underwear, socks, a white T-shirt, and a black fleece top sat on a pair of black corduroy pants. A note was taped to the top of the pile.

  Dear Mr. Sid. Justin would like you to use these clothing while you are by New Zealand. If possible, return later. Okay to compute on computer in main room. I make breakfast. Look forward to talk. Honored, Lannie.

  The clothes fit me perfectly since apparently I had the body of a fifteen-year-old. When I’d been younger and scrawnier, this had spawned a great deal of bullying. It didn’t help that I easily fit into my middle school locker once you pulled out all the science fiction paperbacks.

  I tiptoed downstairs at five fifteen thanks to my haywire biological clock. I turned on an overhead light and found a desktop Mac on a table in the crowded living room and fired it up. It was time to Google the crap out of everything.

  There was no one named Giocassini. Anywhere. They’d named one of Saturn’s moons after a medieval Italian astronomer named Giovanni—Gio—Cassini. Gio Cassini. Did Marco Giocassini combine these names to invent an alias for himself? Or perhaps Marco’s powers enabled him to control what showed up in an internet search.

  I also couldn’t find any record of a martial arts school in Palo Alto that matched Sam’s description. On the other hand, there really was a coffeehouse named Marco Isn’t Here Anymore.

  Next, I looked up all the Bhantes I could find and perused their photos. Mine was Bhante number nine—Supun Wimalaratne. He really was from Kandy, Sri Lanka, about halfway up the west coast of the teardrop-shaped island. The Buddhist temple there housed a tooth that had supposedly been snatched from Buddha’s cremation ashes. A succession of kings had guarded it for the last two thousand years, making it a more credible memento than most of the relics in other temples. They kept it in a small gold stupa that looked like a beehive. Once a year, they held a festival and paraded it around on top of an elephant that was lit up with Christmas lights. Why not?

  Bhante W. had been the abbot of a prestigious, historic monastery up in the mountains east of Kandy until about ten years ago. I found photos of him leading ceremonies in Colombo, the capital city, blessing the UN General Assembly, and standing with several celebrities, including Richard Gere, Martha Stewart, and Jason Patariki. The Maori wore his national team’s black jersey and must’ve just stepped off the rugby field. He dripped sweat down onto Bhante’s orange robe.

  From what I could gather from perusing websites of other Bhantes, this all fell within the bell curve for a religious leader in his country. But then Bhante disappeared, and Bhantes did not disappear. Nobody had seen him for years, and there were all sorts of rumors on Sri Lankan websites about what might have happened to him.

  Jason was exactly as advertised—an international celebrity. He may have been the best rugby player to ever “grace the pitch,” as one sportswriter phrased it. And his endorsements had made him extremely wealthy. Apparently, he loved the feel of merino wool against his skin, and he adored using a New Zealand brand of paper towel to capture the “rugged spills” he encountered in his “jet-set lifestyle.” He’d appeared in two South African action movies. I saw a trailer for one on YouTube. He was a god-awful actor—maybe the worst I’d ever seen.

  There was absolutely nothing about RGP or Kasritri—Bhante’s organization—on the internet, no matter how I tried to spell them.

  Meher Baba was featured on all kinds of websites. His devotees still adored him even though he’d died in 1969. One look at a photograph of his face told me why. He’d had the sweetest, most soulful dog eyes I’d ever seen on a human. He radiated love at the camera through his eyes. It was like looking at a preternaturally intelligent golden retriever.

  His friendly, playful mouth lent him a sense of lightness, whether or not he smiled in his photos. Between those eyes and that mouth was a huge—and I mean truly epic—beak of a nose and a bushy mustache. Meher Baba wasn’t handsome.

  The overall effect was arresting, though—it stopped the mind cold in its tracks and invoked the heart. Generally, his followers—who called themselves Baba Lovers—were drawn to him simply by seeing his photo. They were, for the most part, very unsophisticated in terms of spiritual or philosophical background. I gathered most of them hadn’t even read the handful of books that silent Baba had painstakingly dictated letter by letter on an alphabet board. They just loved him. Deeply. Enough to be transformed by their own love.

  Baba—everybody just called him Baba—had been born in India to Persian Zoroastrian parents. He supposedly would break his forty years of silence with “the Word” when the time was ripe for him to usher the world into a new era. Everyone waited around for this, but he never said anything.

  Baba really did set out to charge up his tomb, though. He wrote that he worked with “universal energy” to “awaken mankind” on a grander scale than just a student-teacher dyad. So he wasn’t really a guru, per se.

  Next, I researched the Bay of Islands, which was a major international tourist draw with great fishing, great sailing, and secluded beaches. Rich people with yachts liked to summer there. The internet photos didn’t do it justice.

  Ram Jessawalla was a reclusive billionaire with a stake in a slew of financial ventures. I found more photos of his (former) yacht than of him, and none of the photos were recent. As a younger man, he seemed to be fond of horses, and he favored a high-rise pomaded hairstyle that made him look like an Indian version of a rockabilly guitarist. As Ram had said, he was frequently vilified online, mostly because his large-scale public works projects changed people’s lives in ways they didn’t appreciate, such as his building a dam on a Bangladesh river that forced thousands of villagers to relocate.

  The US consulate was in downtown Auckland, a block or two off the main shopping street and only a short walk from the water. It would be easy to find. And according to their website, they provided emergency walk-in services for US citizens, including those with legal difficulties.

  The Chows’ home was also fairly near the sea, according to their very professional-looking website. A commuter ferry departed from Buckland’s Beach on the half hour all morning. After a bit of cross-checking, I discovered I could walk a couple of miles to the ferry at this end, and then only four or five blocks to the consulate. It couldn’t have been much easier.

  Lannie emerged at that point in a shiny red warm-up suit—the kind that fat Mafia bosses wore in 1970s
movies. She was even prettier without makeup.

  “Good morning,” she said. “You sleep well?”

  “Yes, thank you. How did you sleep?” I spoke slowly, pronouncing each word as carefully as I could.

  “Very different dream. You come with different energy. Different dream now.”

  “Ah.”

  She was staring at me again. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “That’s a good question. I’m not sure,” I told her.

  “Are you an angel?”

  “No.”

  “A ghost?”

  “No.”

  “A demon?”

  “No.”

  “A guru?”

  “No.”

  “A Buddha?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ah. Some breakfast?” Lannie smiled and gestured toward the back of the house.

  “Sure. Thank you. Can I help?” I felt relief that we’d settled on an identity for me.

  “No, no. My job. Poached, scrambled, sunny side up?”

  “Scrambled would be great. I don’t drink coffee, but I’m growing fond of tea,” I said.

  “We have tea,” she told me.

  Her accent charmed me, although I had to work to understand her. “Great.”

  Lannie scurried away. There was no sign of her husband or son. I remembered that email existed, and I checked mine.

  Chris had contacted me a half hour earlier. He owned all the latest gadgets—hell, he’d designed some of them—so it was no surprise that he’d found a way to communicate.

  “Bro, we’re in the air over the Indian Ocean—our flight was delayed in Sydney. Mumbai in three hours. If you get this, write me back. I didn’t want to leave you there, but Marco’s driving this bus, and he said they already had Lucy’s crate loaded up. I didn’t think she’d have much fun in India on her own. I hope you can meet us there. I hope you’re okay. Let me know if you need a good lawyer. I did some research online and found some lawyers in Auckland. I also found out some other stuff about all this. Marco says don’t forget to change your Band-Aids, whatever that means. Chris.”

  I wrote him back a quick email outlining recent events, told him that I’d stay in touch as best I could, and logged off.

  By now, I could smell toast from the adjacent kitchen, and I headed there. A round table sat in the middle of a very small, clean dining alcove. I was glad the Chows weren’t large people or they’d have been banging their elbows on the walls when they wielded their silverware. A bright green tablecloth, an orange placemat, and a red paper napkin greeted me cheerily. Lannie stood by the stovetop.

  “Almost ready,” she said. “Nelson say I don’t sit with guests. I sit with you?”

  “I insist.”

  “Insist?”

  “Please sit with me. Where is your husband?”

  “Work. Double shifts. Justin sleeps.” Most of her attention was on her cooking.

  She brought over eggs, toast, and something fried and brown that could have been sausages or potatoes. I could smell the latter, which was a relief. I had no interest in eating meat now. It wasn’t that it felt morally wrong; it just didn’t seem like food anymore.

  Lannie sat down in one smooth motion across from me and watched me eat with a rapt gaze. I focused on my table manners; surely Buddha didn’t wolf down his breakfast or spill scrambled eggs onto his borrowed fleece top.

  “So how can I help you?” I asked when I was finished.

  “How did you be you?”

  I thought it over. “Genetics. Environment. Therapy. Training. And an energy transmission from a spiritual teacher.” I tried to keep it simple, but I doubted that she got it all.

  “Energy? Can you energy?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m new. Shall I try?”

  “Yes, please.” Lannie sat up straight and closed her eyes. She looked like a little girl—innocent and trusting, expecting something good.

  I tried to arrange my fingers to resemble Marco’s hands when he’d first worked on me. I felt like a total fraud, but who knew what might happen? Even a placebo transmission might help her. And perhaps Marco would tune in and work through me from his seat in first class.

  At first, nothing happened. Then after a few minutes, I felt a great deal of tingling and heat channel between our foreheads just above our eyes. But it moved from Lannie to me! I was the one receiving the energy. My third eye became an expanding vortex—a whirl of energy that grew with each pulse. At first it was dime-sized, then quarter-sized. After five minutes, it was the size of a softball. Eventually, it engulfed my head and stopped spinning. The profound sparkle of the energy was all I could sense. The rest of my body was lost to me. The room was gone. Lannie was gone.

  Then I was in a black void, like outer space, but not empty. It was alive and I was it and it was me and I was right there in that moment. I felt as though I had slipped sideways and entered a deeper reality—the one behind the world I usually inhabited. There was nothing there to perceive, yet it all felt hyper-real. I had the notion that I could think of something and it would manifest in that realm. I don’t know why. I tried it—imagining Karma the dog visiting me—but nothing happened.

  After some time, I became accustomed to not having a body and not being in the world. The awareness that I’d become just rested in the void. I was only the awareness itself.

  Time passed. At some point, it made sense to gradually cram as much of my consciousness as I could back into the Sid shell. I had to jettison so much to fit back in; historical Sid enclosed a very confined space. I felt scattered and spacey when I first saw Lannie across the table again, watching me wide-eyed.

  What a conceit. I was going to teach her. I was going to play Marco and straighten her out with some buzzing. She was a powerhouse of energy—a wondrous being who had effortlessly provided the next transformative experience I’d needed.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “What sort of experience did you have?” I asked.

  “Energy. Light. Calm. Love,” Lannie said. Her English was markedly better now. “Were you in samadhi?”

  “I don’t know. What’s that?”

  “Like a trance. In the beyond beyond. No illusion.”

  “Oh. Yes, I guess I was.”

  “I am honored,” she said, beaming.

  “No,” I said. “You don’t understand. You sent me energy. You put me in samadhi.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Lannie protested, shaking her head.

  “You have no idea who you are,” I told her. “Part of you may live here in this house in Howick, but you are so much more than that. You are a very evolved being. The reason I’m here is to receive your help—not the other way around. Do you understand?”

  “Actually, yes,” she said. Now her accent was hardly there at all. “I’m understanding much better now,” Lannie said. “Perhaps whatever happened, happened to both of us. Perhaps spiritual energy is like a circle—what do you call it? Three hundred degrees?”

  “Three hundred and sixty. Yes, I think you’re right. It’s all-encompassing, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand that.”

  “No worries.” That was my first “no worries.” What a useful phrase. “By the way,” I said, “thank you for a delicious breakfast. Thank you for welcoming me into your home. Thank you for everything. I love you.”

  She frowned and looked down.

  “I love everybody,” I added. “I have a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, of course. Thank you.” She tilted her chin up and smiled radiantly.

  How had the universe managed to put us in the same room? I’d been in Santa Cruz the week before. Lannie’s husband happened to pick me up hitchhiking. It was impossible to imagine the infinite complexity that could make everyone’s life curriculum dovetail with everyone else’s. Or at least ours.

  I asked her about catching the ferry to downtown Auckland, and she insisted on driving me to t
he dock. According to Lannie, I’d been in samadhi for an hour and a half. We needed to hurry to catch the ferry that would arrive in the city at nine thirty.

  I was getting better at reintegrating after these energy experiences. I showered again, brushed my teeth, and remembered to change my Band-Aids.

  In her neighbor’s small station wagon—Nelson had driven the Chows’ only car to work—Lannie asked me more questions. It was a short trip to the ferry, but we managed to work our way through a dozen naïve inquiries and their corresponding ill-informed answers. We were so much more than we knew. So much more than our minds. And yet we wanted to know things. Did I know the future? Would Lannie be in samadhi too, someday? Exactly what happened when you died?

  I answered as best I could, but it occurred to me that I knew several books that were likely to help her more than I could, so I jotted down the titles. I gave her my email address as well.

  “Will you come back? Will I see you again?” she asked as we parted.

  “I don’t think so,” I told her. “But you never know.” I felt deep disappointment as I said these words. We’d shared a profound connection.

  “I never know?” she said, tilting her head.

  “No one ever knows.” I hadn’t intended this to be a piece of wisdom—it was an idiom, after all. But it was true enough.

  It was clear that she wasn’t a hugger, so I put out my hand and we shook. Her hand was tiny and hot.

  Regretfully, I turned and walked onboard the small ferry. Lannie waved continuously until the boat was out of sight. There she was, this tiny red figure on the shore, waving and waving. I began to cry, and I sobbed until I couldn’t see her anymore.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I rode for thirty-five minutes through the Tamaki estuary to the Hauraki Gulf and then to Auckland. The woman who sold me my ferry ticket gave me a pamphlet that outlined “the wonders of the deceptively mundane voyage from Buckland’s Beach to where so many of us find our travail.” I didn’t find the trip mundane at all.