Coattail Karma

by Verlin Darrow

  Once again, my father’s dogs weren’t with him. For that matter, where had Spot gotten to?

  I wished he were here with us, and suddenly he was lying on the table in front of me, blocking my view of my mother. I wished he’d move, and he did. Spot now perched on my mother’s lap. He lowered his head and glowered at me, his ears back. I don’t think he liked being bossed around.

  Sam spoke up for the first time since we joined my parents. “Sid seems to be perfectly fine,” she reported. “We’re ready to move forward with the plan.”

  “After we eat, dear,” my mother said. “Chris, would you mind being our waiter? I need to talk over some things with the others, and this way you can pick out whatever you deem to be the most delightfully crappy menu items.”

  “That’s a compelling argument,” Chris replied. “But I’m disappointed that you used the word ‘crappy.’ Don’t stoop to my level, Mrs. M.”

  My mother ignored this. Chris took our orders and wandered off.

  “Jason,” my mother said. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you hearing what I have to say, either.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I can sit across the way there.” He gestured to a bench across the boardwalk that abutted a ring toss game.

  “Or you could just play the game while you’re over there,” I suggested.

  “Really?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  He jumped up and jogged into the stream of tourists. Sam, my parents, and I sat quietly and watched the parade of people for a few moments.

  “So what’s on your mind?” I asked my mother.

  Her phone rang. She picked it up and mouthed, “It’s Paul.” Then she stepped away to talk. In just a few seconds, she rushed back.

  “The Maoris are headed here,” she said, her voice raising in pitch. “Paul’s been serving as a lookout. They’re on the boardwalk.”

  “I guess we’d better go,” I said. “Should we split up?”

  “That’s a good idea. Your father and I will stay,” my mother said. “We need to look out for our novices, and I don’t think they’ll try anything here in public. At least, not with us.”

  “Are you sure?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, yes. Hurry, dear. We’ll call you when things settle down.”

  I noticed several of the RGP women trailing Chris as he headed back to the table with a heaping cardboard tray of food. I hoped the others were safe.

  “Chris! Jason!” I called. “We need to go!”

  “I’m bringing the food with us,” Chris announced. “I don’t care if it’s the fucking apocalypse.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I led the way toward the south end of the amusement park, where a railroad trestle bridge spanned the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. Once we got across that—there was a narrow, enclosed walkway alongside the rarely used tracks—we’d be home free, just blocks from Chris’s house in the Seabright neighborhood.

  After a few hundred yards, we ran out of boardwalk and began striding up the concrete pathway that led to the bridge. I felt as though I were leading a small parade—as though we were celebrating some sort of unlikely holiday.

  Local people often used the bridge to walk to the boardwalk after they’d parked for free in Chris’s neighborhood, but there was no one on the rickety-looking wooden structure when we got there.

  I decided Jason should traverse first—we needed fighters at both ends. On a bridge, those were the only places we’d be vulnerable. The boards beside the tracks protested the imposition of his weight with disturbing creaks and squeaks. Chris ran onto the bridge next. I followed him—more cautiously—and Sam brought up the rear.

  A wire fence ran along our right shoulders, keeping any daredevil bridge-crossers from the railroad track itself, which had gaping holes between its ties. On the water side, a waist-high wooden railing protected us from falling into the river.

  It was a lovely view inland over the rail. The river was peppered with water birds, and it wound snakelike up toward the mountains. It smelled pretty bad, though. That time of year, the San Lorenzo was still swollen from the rainy season, but didn’t have enough current to fight its way through the sandy beach to the bay.

  When Sam and I were about halfway across, Marco suddenly dropped down from the bridge’s superstructure and stood in front of me, holding a pistol. On the far side of him, Chris and Jason were almost across. Sam was trapped behind me on the single-file walkway.

  “Hello, Sid,” he said, smiling his creepiest smile.

  “A gun?” I said. “Really? I thought martial artists were against guns.”

  “Your thoughts have never been your best ally, have they?” he said. “Why do you still believe any of them? Have I taught you nothing?”

  By now, all the others had noticed him. I wished everyone ahead of me to keep moving; there was no reason they should be in jeopardy. Marco wanted me—or wanted me dead, more likely.

  “Marco!” Sam called from behind me. “Put the gun down. The police are right behind us. This is something we can work out.”

  “I’m going to kill Sid,” he told her. “But you can live if you stay out of it.”

  I watched him. He looked five years older than when I had first met him. And there was a hint of something in his dark eyes that hadn’t been there before. Fear? Desperation?

  I felt none of them, just an interest in how this would turn out.

  “How about this?” Sam said. “You and I fight for Sid. If you win, you go ahead and kill him. If I win, you let him go.”

  “Why would I agree to that?”

  “It appeals to your sense of fun.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And we both know who’ll win, don’t we?”

  “Yes. You have no chance.” He paused and thought a moment. “So this isn’t really about Sid living or dying, is it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about how you’re going to live with yourself after he’s gone. You’ll feel better if you had an opportunity to try to save him.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Give her that,” I said. “Kill me, but let her fight. Come on, Marco.”

  “All right.” He turned to look behind him.

  The others stood on the far side of the water. Jason was straining to return and fight, but my will held him off.

  “Sid, you need to keep the others there and make sure that the police stay away, too. Or it’s no deal.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “How shall we do this?”

  I couldn’t picture how the two of them could fight on the narrow walkway, and I was standing between them, too.

  “You crouch down,” Marco said, “and let Louise step over you. I’m putting the pistol in my waistband. I won’t use it until after we’ve finished fighting. Agreed?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you,” Sam said.

  As she climbed over me, Sam whispered something in my ear that gave me hope. Then she attacked.

  The action was furious. In the confined space, with a mesh fence on one side and the railing on the other, there was no room for anything exotic. Both performed a series of straight-ahead punches, blocks, and feints. Neither landed a significant blow for the first thirty seconds.

  Marco smiled continuously. Clearly, he was having fun as he toyed with his former student.

  Sam tried a few snap-kicks, aiming them at Marco’s legs. He evaded them easily and countered with a similar kick that would’ve landed much higher on Sam’s body if she hadn’t backed away. All of this was happening more quickly that I could clearly see, and Sam blocked my view of most of Marco’s moves.

  When she crouched and swept a leg forward to trip Marco, though, I could see that he was waiting for this. He cocked his left leg, and then paused to savor the moment before he kicked her in the head.

  “Watch out!” I called.

  She lurched to the side, below the wooden railing, and then shouted, “Now!” to me.

  We both grabbe
d the railing, swung ourselves over, and jumped off the bridge. It was probably sixty feet down to the San Lorenzo River.

  I didn’t know if it would be deep enough to absorb our plunge, and perhaps Marco could pick us off from above before we could swim out of range. But all that seemed less risky than remaining on the bridge.

  I hit the water feet first, and I thought my ankles would break. But they didn’t. The river was very cold and also very dirty. As I surfaced and looked for Sam, I heard the pistol and saw splashes nearby. Sam burst to the surface a moment later, gasping for breath.

  “Stay under,” she gasped. “Swim underwater—that way!”

  We both dove again, heading inland, away from the river mouth.

  Could I wish anything for myself? Could I hold my breath for fifteen minutes if I willed it? Swim like an Olympian? Maybe I could wish that someone would rescue us—haul us out of the polluted water into a boat or something.

  When I needed to come to the surface, I heard the gun again. But it was definitely farther away now, and I didn’t see any splashes this time.

  “Here I am, Sid!” Sam called from behind me.

  I turned around to see her, and damned if there wasn’t a boat in the water behind her.

  “Look,” I said, pointing.

  It was a good-sized motorboat, and it was towing two inner tubes—empty inner tubes. Had I wished this? From the water line, I couldn’t see who was steering the boat. Maybe I’d influenced a random fisherman to help us.

  We both swam frantically toward the inner tubes, reaching for them before the boat zoomed past us. Sam grabbed hers first. I didn’t think I’d get to mine in time, but the boat slowed down a tick—just as much as it needed to—and then I snared the other tube. I locked onto it with both arms up to my armpits, and then the boat sped up again.

  Several more shots rang out. I kept my head ducked down and hung on as the boat accelerated. On another day, if the water were cleaner, it might have been fun to be towed up the river. As it was, I just focused on holding on tight, periodically checking on Sam.

  After a few hundred yards, she smiled from her perch alongside me in the boat’s wake. “I love you,” she mouthed.

  “I love you, too,” I mouthed back.

  Ten minutes later, after we’d been pulled through several bends in the river, the driver of the boat slowed and then stopped.

  I sat up on my tube, and Sam did the same. Did whoever it was even know we were back there? A moment later, a slight figure appeared at the bow. The sunlight was behind whoever it was—we could only see a stark silhouette at first. Then she moved to the side.

  It was Lannie. Lannie Chow from Howick, New Zealand.

  “Hello, Sid,” she said. “Hello, Samavati.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I didn’t know I was still capable of being surprised on a grand scale, but I was.

  Lannie’s accent was completely gone now. She spoke flawless American English. And she looked even more beautiful than I remembered. She wore her shiny red warm-up suit, and now she stood self-assured and confident in it. Her porcelain-white skin gleamed in the sun, and her very black hair hung long and loose.

  “Who are you?” Sam called from her tube. “How do you know our names?”

  “Sid knows me as Lannie Chow,” she said. “We met at a bed and breakfast of sorts in New Zealand.”

  “And you just happened to be driving by in a boat towing two tires?” Sam asked.

  Lannie began hauling us in, a hand on each of the thick ropes that held the tubes. It didn’t seem as though she’d be strong enough to manage this, but she quickly reeled us in with no visible effort.

  Her dark eyes were incredibly present. She was right there—with no part of her held in reserve or split off on another interior task. As much as Marco had been in the moment—and his eyes reflected a remarkable ability to pay attention, too—Lannie was light years beyond him. It would’ve been alarming if I hadn’t already met her—albeit as Lannie 1.0, not this new improved version.

  We struggled onto the boat’s slippery white fiberglass deck and stood, wet and cold. Both of us towered over Lannie. She was even smaller than I remembered.

  She fetched us each a beach towel from a bin behind her, and we wrapped ourselves in the towels and sat on damp plastic seats.

  Lannie stood in front of us, her arms at her sides, a gentle half smile on her face. She waited for one of us to speak first.

  “Let’s get back to the ‘who are you?’ question,” I said. “And then I’d like to know exactly what’s going on. How did you find us? Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to wake you up,” she said. “Both of you. All the way awake.” Her smile widened; it was so contagious, I smiled too, despite my misgivings.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Lannie put her finger to her lips to silence me. Then she began humming.

  At first, it was a normal sound—just one soothing note. The pitch was slightly lower than I would’ve thought she could manage. Gradually, though, the humming grew louder, and then even louder, and then impossibly loud. How could anyone produce a sound like that?

  Then Lannie lowered the pitch even more, and I could feel something in my gut resonate with the wall of sound. The humming grew more complex—it was a wider band of tones now, and I could feel various parts of me vibrating along with it, especially the top of my head.

  Spot appeared on the deck in front of me, sitting up, watching me closely.

  “Where did that dog come from?” Sam shouted.

  I looked more closely. Spot was completely solid now—the way I’d seen him in India.

  The humming increased in volume again. It hurt. It permeated every cell in me. It was almost too intense to bear.

  Spot’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he passed out, pitching forward. I grabbed him and held him tight. He was very warm, very dirty, and heavier than he looked.

  The humming became a roar and then a crescendo of every sound I’d ever heard—all of it at once. It was the sound, I suddenly realized—the root vibration of the universe. I was experiencing Om—the Big Bang’s impetus to explode into creation. It was an extraordinary epiphany; I had no doubt about what I now knew.

  I felt overwhelmed and panicky for a few seconds. My eyes closed involuntarily, and all the muscles in my abdomen clenched. I concentrated on holding Spot—it helped me center myself.

  Then I began to feel the intense raw love that was embodied in the sound. The root vibration was love. Love was behind it all.

  I’d only experienced dilute versions of this before, but now I was in direct contact with the unadulterated searing heat of cosmic love.

  It burned away my ego—my remaining sense of self. As all of me vibrated along with the love, there was no one left to do anything else. There was no part of me that wasn’t also the vibration itself.

  And then there was no vibration, either. The energy was there, but there was no consequence driven by its presence—no cause and effect. It just was. Nothing else was real.

  An instant later, I found myself in the blackness of samadhi again. It was absolutely quiet and still and blank. I was awareness again—not as any sort of “I,” but as an energy form—the consciousness that I now knew myself to be. I was capable of perception and thought—or something analogous to these, I guessed. But this iteration was something new and more profound—way beyond what I’d experienced in previous visits to samadhi.

  I wondered how Sam was faring—how the Om was affecting her.

  Then she was there, suspended in the void. She wore a low-cut wedding gown. Her blond hair splashed down over her milky shoulders onto cleavage that seemed to be more substantial than I remembered. Her face displayed surprise—not delighted surprise, not shocked surprise. Just surprise.

  She looked down at herself. Is this how you usually picture me? she thought. I could hear her thoughts as readily as I once heard her voice.

  I pictured her in a black bikini, a
nd now she wore that. There was no transition between the two realities; one moment Sam was in a dress and the next she was in a bikini.

  I’m not a dress-up doll.

  Sorry, I thought.

  I didn’t know if she could read my mind in return—or for that matter if this was really Sam. But when I tried to physically say I was sorry, there was no physical me to do it. The urge to talk expressed itself as a projected thought.

  I created an image in which this Sam wore the same clothes she was wearing back on the boat—if anyone was still sitting there. Now she was in her white tunic over her turquoise pants. Unfortunately, they were soaking wet.

  Thanks a lot. Let me try.

  Sam manifested an imperfect, but dry version of the same outfit. The seams of her top were inside out, and her pants were too short.

  I didn’t mean to communicate this perception, but apparently she heard it.

  Hey, that was just a first try, Sam thought, and now her clothes were just right. Wow. She surveyed herself. That was fun. Let me try something more ambitious.

  She thought a mountain into existence, and now we sat on its peak—side by side on a flat, wide rock. As I watched, Sam manifested several other slightly lower mountains around us. They were all remarkably similar—not what you’d find in nature. And while the other mountains were snowcapped, our higher peak was not.

  As I noticed these things, they morphed into a more realistic, logically-consistent version of the original scene. Had Sam heard my thoughts and edited her work, or had my attention to them transformed them directly?

  Beats me, Sam thought.

  I noticed her thoughts were more colloquial than her spoken words. I also noticed she’d forgotten to create a sky, so I transformed the dark backdrop into an azure expanse with a few puffy clouds.

  Sam reshaped the clouds into barnyard animals. Then she made them wave to me. I waved back.

  The distant landscape, however, remained out of focus. It was a gray, undefined haze. I imagined an even more ambitious mountain range that stretched to the horizon in every direction. And it was there. I added several lakes and a vast forest that covered the lower altitudes of the mountains. For good measure, I created a few hawks in the air just below us.