“We’re in Henry Cowell State Park. Why do you think it’s all trees and shit up here instead of bowling alleys?”
“Andrea?” Sam said into the phone. “It’s Sam. We’re okay. Are you?”
As she listened, she nodded to me and then strode away to talk in private. I hoped she was trying to keep our hosts from eavesdropping—not me.
They were much more interested in getting healed. Once Earl told everyone how great he felt from our handshake—although he added that it may have been the bear claws—everyone lined up to get a jolt. I probably didn’t need to shake their hands to get the job done, but since their unspoken leader had gotten his treatment that way, that’s what they wanted. It was interesting to see how varied the energy transmissions were. They ranged from a mild tingle to a full-blown blast—to the woman, as it happened. She weathered it well.
Did the energy know how to distribute itself? Did it embody some sort of wisdom? Was it routing through me from somewhere else? I still knew next to nothing about how it all worked.
It was easy to see why real yogis brought their students along gradually, revamping their energy systems over time. If I hadn’t been a therapist, I might’ve slipped into psychosis by now. Perhaps Marco—or his energy—knew how much I could handle.
Jason stood at the end of the treatment line. “Me too,” he said. Then he added—in a convincing Cockney accent—“More please, sir?”
I cocked my head.
“I played Oliver in Oliver Twist in acting school,” he told me. “Our teacher had a warped sense of humor.”
“I saw the trailer for one of your South African movies,” I told him, shaking my head.
“Hey, those are still big hits in Indonesia and the Philippines. I made a lot of money doing those films.” He looked at me and gestured at my hands. “So are we doing this? Do you mind?”
I reached out to shake his hand, and he stepped forward and engulfed me in a massive hug. Energy immediately shot out from my heart to his. His grip on me loosened, and his muscular body relaxed.
While the energy flowed, I thought about Paul’s assertion that Jason was gay, and the Maori’s declaration of love for me. Was our loving embrace something personal? He knew I was straight.
After a minute or two, the energy faded, and we were simply hugging. “It’s time to let go, Jason,” I said.
Eventually, he did. I could see how hard it was for him; he was getting hooked on bliss. With Marco, I’d also had a strong urge to lose myself in his energy—to submerge my identity and melt into it. But my desire to abdicate personhood always felt selfish—an escape from whatever I was here to do.
As I sat back down and waited for Sam to return from her long phone conversation on the other side of the clearing, I patted the dogs—Magoo and Miss Jessie. They were incapacitated by bliss. Perhaps I needed to learn how to consciously shield my energy. Marco was clearly working undercover in the world—a secret agent for…whatever the hell he was up to. Maybe I needed a lower profile, too—at least energetically.
Sam started back toward me. A young African-American man I hadn’t seen before burst into the clearing behind her.
“It’s the cops!” he called. “The cops are here!”
The campers jumped to their feet and scattered in pairs. Both dogs followed Earl, who took off with Bobby to our right. The woman and the skinny guy ran to the left. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time they’d been raided.
“We don’t need to get arrested for illegal camping,” I said to Sam, clambering to my feet.
“You can’t sleep outdoors in this country?” Jason asked. This was the first time he’d spoken since our hug.
“Not around here,” Sam said. “Let’s go.”
We ran in the opposite direction from the lookout, which, unfortunately, was also in the opposite direction from where our car was parked. I figured we’d be able to loop around and find our way back to it eventually.
Jason led the way, setting a moderate pace on the narrow path. I heard rustling noises behind us at one point, and I pictured a phalanx of cops spread out in a line, methodically marching forward.
In short order, though, we came to another, smaller clearing. They were waiting for us there; we’d been herded.
“Hold it!” a woman’s voice called.
So we did.
Two female park rangers in crisp brown uniforms stood before us. They looked to be about twenty years old—maybe they were interns. They weren’t armed.
“Good morning,” one of them chirped.
“Uh, good morning,” I said.
The one who had spoken was slightly built and wore glasses. She was very attractive, but had taken pains to disguise herself as plain. The black plastic glasses, her blond hair hanging down her forehead in uneven bangs, and the way she held herself all seemed to be designed to fool the eye. “Don’t look at me, don’t desire me”—that was the message.
The other one’s black curly hair sat atop a tall, beefy frame. Her very smooth and rosy complexion reminded me of a farm girl in an Irish movie. She smiled with her mouth, but frowned with her eyes, an interesting combination.
“We really prefer that you not camp in the park,” the tall one said. “It creates all sorts of problems.”
“You’re not cops?” Jason asked.
“Oh no,” the first one answered. “We’re the new park liaison team. We’ll be interfacing between campers and the staff. I’m Julie, and this is Theresa.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Jason, and this is Sid and Sam.”
“What a delightful accent,” Theresa said to Jason. “Where are you from?”
“New Zealand. What about you?” He smiled his million-dollar smile.
“Watsonville—right down the road. I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand. Is it as pretty as they say?”
“Well, Theresa, I don’t know what they say about it in Watsonville, but it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been all around the world.”
“So you’re backpackers?” Julie asked. “You’re traveling internationally? You know, whether you’re homeless or tourists looking for a free place to stay, the rules are still the same.”
“We are going to have to ask you to leave,” Theresa added. “I’m sorry.”
“You know,” I said, “I appreciate the way you’re dealing with us, but I’ve met some of the campers up here. I can’t imagine your approach is going to be effective with them.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Julie said. “It’s a pilot program. And it’s only our third day.”
“What should we be doing differently?” Theresa asked. “Help us out.”
“I think you need to be a bit firmer,” Jason suggested.
“Oh, okay,” Teresa said. She frowned, looked him up and down, and then lowered the pitch of her voice. “All right, you big galoot,” she said. “Get a move on. Don’t make me use this whistle.”
“Very good,” I said. “That should do the trick.”
“What’s a galoot?” Jason asked. “For that matter, what’s interfacing?”
Julie spoke up. “Seriously, though, are you guys going to leave now? We can’t stand here chitchatting. We’ve got other illegal campers to round up.”
“Of course we’ll go,” Sam said, who’d been observing all this with a smile. “Which way is Highway Nine?”
When we got back to the car, there was no car. No one bothered to voice a theory about what might have happened to it. Jason did swear a few times.
“What now?” I asked Sam. “Did you make plans with my mother? Do you still have the phone?”
“The so-called owner of the phone came and reclaimed it right before everyone took off,” Sam said. “And the plan we made depended on our having wheels.”
“Let’s walk down to the highway and hitch,” Jason suggested. “Everyone wants to pick up a beautiful woman.”
“Thank you, Jason,” Sam said. “I guess we’d better. You can hide behind Sid so you don’t sc
are people away.”
He looked confused. “Since he’s smaller than me, how could I hide behind him?”
“You can’t. It’s a joke,” I told him.
We made our way out of the big trees, down the dirt road, and assembled in a driver-friendly formation by the side of the narrow highway. Sam stood with her lovely thumb out, while Jason and I sat on the ground ten feet behind her, minimizing Jason’s bulk. There was a fair amount of traffic, but no one stopped.
Finally, a blue Volvo with tinted windows pulled over onto the gravel shoulder just ahead of us. The driver climbed out as we scrambled toward it. It was Paul, Sam’s brother.
“Hi,” he said rather matter-of-factly. “I’m glad I found you.”
“How the hell did you?” Jason asked.
“Well, I knew where our cousin camps, and even though Sam told Andrea you were safe and sound, I don’t trust Earl or Bobby at all. So I thought I’d drive up and see if you needed help.”
“Do you think those two stole my rental?” Jason asked.
“Probably,” Paul said. “Bobby stole Spink’s car once, although he gave it back later. And Earl is very erratic. I think he’s bipolar, but he won’t take any meds.”
He looked at Sam as we stood beside the car in front of a particularly large redwood. “I can understand why you decided to come here,” Paul added. “But it wasn’t a good idea.”
“Well, we’re here anyway,” I said, “whether it was a good idea or not. Let’s make the best of it.”
“Of course,” Paul said. “Hop in, everyone.”
“You’re such a big brother,” Sam said, giving Paul a hug and a peck on the cheek before the two siblings climbed into the Volvo’s front seats.
“It’s my job,” he told her.
Jason and I squeezed into the back. Although it was a full-sized sedan, Jason’s shoulders barely fit through the door and he filled two-thirds of the bench seat. I imagined the headline of my obituary after Paul took a corner too fast and the Maori spilled onto my side of the car. “Behemoth Flattens Area Therapist.” Or maybe “Rugby Great Crushes Wannabe Messiah.”
Paul, however, drove quite deliberately, and we wended our way back toward the coast safely. It was relaxing to just sit and not need to deal with any weirdness for a while. I felt as though I’d been listening, talking, and processing more in the last couple of weeks than in all my years as a therapist.
Once we reached Santa Cruz, Paul turned south onto Highway One, and we began retracing the first part of the route Jason and Frank had taken when they shanghaied Sam and me to the Monterey airport.
I caught Sam’s eye when she turned her head to look at an art car in the lane beside us—it had doll heads glued to every square inch of its surface.
“Only in Santa Cruz,” Paul said.
“So where are we headed?” I asked her. “What’s the plan?”
“We’re meeting Andrea, your dad Allen, and Chris at the Seascape Golf Club down in Aptos,” Sam told me.
“Why there?” I asked. It seemed like an odd choice. I’d never been to the course itself, but I knew Aptos fairly well. My ex-girlfriend, Susan, and her three flatulent cats had lived there. It was only ten miles as the crow flies from Santa Cruz, but it was on another planet culturally—more like Southern California. You were likely to spot the stereotypical resident in the upscale wine section of the local grocery store—a fifty-two-year-old, tanned, blond, tennis-playing woman.
“It was your dad’s idea,” Paul said. “He went to college with the general manager there—Charles Somebody.”
“Singh?” I asked. “Charles Singh?”
“Yes, that’s him. And who’d look for you at a golf course? It’s not exactly a gang hangout. Even most law-abiding people don’t know they have a restaurant there. Andrea says the food’s pretty good, too.”
I hadn’t seen my father’s roommate—Charles—in years. We’d kept up for a while after my parents had supposedly died. God, it was strange they were back. Wondrous, really. But eventually Charles had taken a new job somewhere else, and I’d gotten involved with friends of my own.
Seascape was tucked away in a ritzy residential neighborhood—Rio Del Mar—about a quarter of a mile inland. The course wasn’t easy to find; I pictured would-be golfers wandering door to door in the suburban maze, looking for where to go to scratch their golf itch.
The parking lot was a third full. By now it was late morning. The fog in Aptos hadn’t dissipated yet—some days it never did. I’m convinced this was one of the reasons Susan had been depressed, although I couldn’t blame any climatic factors for her infidelity.
The clubhouse was a long, nondescript building painted dark green. It blocked us from seeing the course itself from the parking lot. Several exhaust fans on the roof of the building screeched at us as we headed for a pair of glass doors.
We entered a square dining area with a bar on the left. The decor had probably been classy in the 1940s. There were exposed beams and dark wood wainscoting. The walls were covered with black and white photographs of other, more famous golf courses. The room looked like an expanded version of my grandparent’s lake house. We’d summered there when I was quite young.
Two red-faced older men sat on upholstered stools at the bar next to the almost empty dining room, and a foursome of women wearing various shades of red were arranged around a table near a dormant big screen TV.
There was no sign of our people, but Paul walked through the room and we followed. The pro shop loomed ahead of us in a glassed-in area. Racks of golf shirts and sweaters crowded out a few sets of clubs.
To our left was another larger dining area, and Paul led us there. This one overlooked the golf course, and beyond that, Monterey Bay.
I was hungry again when I smelled someone’s french fries. As it turned out, they were Chris’s.
“Yo!” he called from a circular table across the room. “Over here!”
He sat between my parents, facing the interior of the room despite the picture window that soared behind them. They’d saved us seats with a view; this was undoubtedly my mother’s doing.
Chris’s mouth was full of fries. I think he would’ve remained seated, stuffing more into his mouth, but when my parents stood, he was shamed into doing it too. Well, Chris’s version of shame. Whatever he did, he never seemed too upset with himself.
“Isn’t it beautiful here?” my father said, still wearing his dark glasses.
“It certainly is,” Sam said. “It’s like a park out there, isn’t it?” She gestured at the course below us.
“Hello, Sid,” my mother said. “You’re looking well.”
I nodded my acknowledgment.
“I’ve been hearing all about how cute you were as a baby,” Chris said to me.
I looked at my mother, who shook her head.
Chris continued. “And now I know all your embarrassing moments like when you threw up on your prom date and that time you invaded Poland.”
“Your friend is quite a character,” my mother said. “He’s kept us amused while we waited for you. Did you have trouble finding the place?”
Sam spoke up. “There was a problem up in Felton. Paul ended up bringing us down—he knew the way.”
“Oh dear,” my mother said. “Is everyone all right?”
We nodded. I found it hard to think of Andrea as the leader of a spiritual organization. She was such a mom.
Jason coughed loudly, as though he were in a high school play and hadn’t properly calibrated the volume of a real cough.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “This is Jason Patariki. He’s going to be helping to protect me. Jason, these are my not-so-dead parents—Andrea and Allen Menk.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Jason said, reaching his hand out to my father. “Where I come from, we introduce each other first thing.”
My mother had to prompt my father to offer his hand. I’d completely forgotten that he was blind! What a thing to forget.
While they s
hook, my mother spoke to Jason. “We introduce one another here, as well. I raised a barbarian.” She smiled at me lovingly, negating the sting of her comment.
“Well,” Sam said, “at this point, he’s a bit more enlightened than your average barbarian.”
I liked that she was sticking up for me.
“I dunno,” Chris said, reseating himself. We all followed suit as he continued talking. “I’ll bet Attila and Genghis Khan never abandoned their friends in germ-infested countries on the other side of the planet, leaving them in the clutches of power-mad, mind-reading sorcerers. Your son is a brute,” he told my mother.
“Are you hungry?” she asked me, ignoring Chris.
“Starving. Man does not live by doughnuts alone.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” she said, “but the veggie burgers are very good here.”
“Mom, I’m perfectly capable of choosing my own food.”
“Don’t take it personally,” my father said. “She does that with everyone.”
We were right back at the family dinner table, circa 2002. Apparently, I remained a slave to the old family dynamic. “Sorry, Mom,” I said. “I’ll try the burger.”
“No, no. You have whatever you want, Sid.”
This was round two. Since I knew where we were going with this, I headed it off at the pass by changing the subject.
“So Charles Singh runs this place?” I asked my father.
“Yes. I asked him to join us in a while.”
“Why is that?”
“You’ll see.” He seemed to be having trouble breathing again—as he had in India.
The lunch conversation stayed light. Chris provided his usual outrageous counterpoint to whatever real topic someone was attempting to discuss. Jason charmed my parents with anecdotes about fellow celebrities. And Sam and I sat quietly while my parents played their roles as host and hostess. It was their party, it seemed.
Charles joined us just as we finished eating. We all rose again to greet him.
He was a middle-aged, non-practicing Sikh, from Kashmir originally. But he was very American in manner and outlook. He’d been an exchange student in high school and had never returned home. I’d known him my whole life.
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