Criminal Karma

by Steven M. Thomas

  When I arrived at Baba’s Hindu church, the place was bustling with volunteer workers. There were cheery old ladies in overalls weeding the flowerbeds and hippies on stepladders washing windows. Along the Seventh Street side of the hulking Queen Anne, a dozen or so men and women were standing by a pile of extension ladders and aluminum walk planks, looking as clueless as Eskimos in Acapulco.

  Ganesha seemed to be in charge, his ocher robe moving back and forth between groups as he offered encouragement and answered questions. I didn’t see Mary or Baba Raba, but Evelyn Evermore, whom I had hoped to encounter, was among the group by the extension ladders. She was wearing Jordache jeans that fit her just right, showing her shape but not constricting her movement, and a brown-and-gold Pendleton shirt with the cuffs turned back neatly to her elbows, exposing downy forearms. Her thick platinum hair was tied back in a ponytail with a yellow ribbon.

  Ganesha walked briskly up to Evelyn’s group just as I joined it.

  “Does anyone here know roofing?” he asked hopefully, looking up from his clipboard.

  I waited to see if anyone else was going to say anything, but they just looked at one another with the silly smiles and shrugs of the spiritually inclined but mechanically inept.

  Karma yoga has a magical allure for most meditation students because washing the dishes or weeding the garden is actually a lot easier than concentrating on a candle flame, and the results are more apparent to others. Honest swamis often are on a shoestring budget. They need volunteer workers to keep their ashrams afloat on the cosmic tide and tend to dole out effusive praise for minor tasks.

  So everyone wants to help. And that works out fine with weeds and dirty dishes. Problems rear when skilled labor is required. Turn most of these proto-yogis loose on a task more complicated than painting a door and you’re courting disaster. Give them a simple plumbing job, for instance, and hot water will soon be coming out of the cold tap while the lights blink off when you flush the toilet. If the group Ganesha was addressing tackled the roof without supervision, you’d be able to take a shower in the living room next time it rained.

  “I know something about it,” I said.

  He turned toward me eagerly, recoiled slightly when he recognized me, then suppressed that reaction with a determined nod.

  “Okay, you will be in charge, then. What’s your name?”

  “Robert Rivers,” I said. “What are we doing?”

  He was writing my name down on the top sheet on his clipboard, which I didn’t like. When he finished, he flipped to the third page and scanned it.

  “You see that part of the roof up there?” he said, pointing. “That part that slopes down?” Since every section of the roof sloped down, his description wasn’t particularly acute.

  “That shed roof over the bump-out?” I asked, following the beam of his index finger.

  “Is that what it’s called?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well—it’s leaking somewhere and Baba wants to put these new shingles on it.” He pointed to some bundles of asphalt singles stacked on the sidewalk. “Are you sure you know how to do it?” He was familiar with the “can-do” attitude that actually can’t.

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Do you know how to set this… stuff up?” he asked, gesturing toward the ladders, ladder jacks, and walk planks. No doubt he had many precise Sanskrit terms for psychic states stored away in his perceptive young mind, but he didn’t have much terminology when it came to construction equipment.

  “I’ll take care of everything,” I said. “But I am not going to need all these people. If you have the right quantity of shingles over there, we’re only reroofing about three hundred square feet. Why don’t you four help me?” I extended my arm to separate Evermore, the artistic guy I’d seen the previous night, and two other able-bodied men from the rest of the group.

  “All right, thanks,” Ganesha said. “The rest of you can come with me and help clean up the backyard.”

  Asphalt shingles come thirty-three square feet to a bundle, each kraft-paper-wrapped package weighing between seventy and ninety pounds, depending on the thickness of the shingles. There were ten bundles stacked on the sidewalk with a gallon of tar and a five-pound box of galvanized roofing nails on top. Hammers and nail pouches lay on the grass.

  After we introduced ourselves, I showed the men how to set the ladders and ladder jacks up to position the walk plank at a comfortable height, so that the edge of the roof was at waist level when we stood on the plank.

  It was a simple job. The section of roof that was disturbing Baba’s nirvana was an unobstructed rectangle, twenty-four feet wide by fourteen feet deep, which meant a minimum of cutting and fitting. The shallow six-in-one slope would be easy and safe for amateurs to work on.

  While the able-bodied guys started carrying the heavy bundles up and spreading them out on the roof where they would be handy as we progressed, I helped Evelyn and the artistic guy, whose name was Walt, run a starter course, then showed them how to place and nail down the shingles. When the laborers had caught their breath, I got them going too, each person working a six-foot-wide section, lacing their shingles in with those laid to their right.

  We put the new shingles down on top of the existing ones. With the old shingles to guide them, my helpers did reasonably good work. It wasn’t the neatest job I’d ever seen, but I was confident the living room would stay dry. When Evelyn started to lag behind, I went over and helped her. Squeezing past her on the narrow walk plank, the front of my body was in full contact with the back of hers. She didn’t seem to mind the intimacy.

  Standing to one side, watching me work, she wiped her forehead with a bandana and smiled.

  “How did you learn to do roofing?” she asked.

  “Funny story,” I said. “I had just gone into the remodeling business in St. Louis, doing carpentry and concrete work, when there were two hellacious hail storms that knocked out about a third of the roofs in the city. Big roofing companies were giving people three-month waits just to get an estimate. I had never nailed down a shingle before but I had an alcoholic friend who knew the trade, and he showed me how. Within a month I had three full-time crews working and more jobs coming in from referrals than I could handle. By the time the season was over, I pretty much knew the business.”

  “Weren’t you worried about learning the trade from an alcoholic?”

  “I didn’t really have a choice,” I said. “All roofers are alcoholics.”

  “Really?” she laughed.

  “Really.”

  “That’s a great story. You were fated to be a roofer. And you know carpentry, too. It must feel good to have all those skills.”

  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it seemed like she was flirting with me. That opened up possibilities.

  “What about you?” I said. “You look like someone with a lot of skills. What do you do?”

  “Oh, I golf and play tennis quite a bit. I used to surf, but I stopped after I hurt my back. I still ski and ride. I have two horses at a little stable up in the valley.”

  “Do you work?”

  She made a wry face. “I guess you could say I am a philanthropist.”

  “That’s a noble calling. Do you help support the ashram?”

  “Yes,” she said, briefly. “I help out a little bit. What’s your connection to the center? I don’t remember seeing you before. Do you take classes?”

  “I am thinking about taking some,” I said. “How ‘bout you? Do you take classes?”

  “Yes, since last summer.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s good,” she said, without conviction.

  “Do you live in the area?”

  “I just moved into a house in the canal district, as a matter of fact. It needs quite a bit of work, but I think it will be a great place once it is fixed up.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Quite a bit of carpentry work, actually.” She paused. “Are you still in
that business?”

  “Yes, I am.” I took one of my Coast Construction cards out of my wallet and handed it to her. I’d worked in remodeling for ten years in St. Louis during my laughable attempt to fit into straight society, five years sober and five years drunk, so I knew enough to make the cover story stick.

  “Would you have time to come by and take a look at the house and tell me what you think?”

  “Be glad to,” I said, keeping my voice light and conversational. “I’ll get your address and phone number when we are done.”

  “Wonderful.” She gave me a nice smile.

  When we had shingled as much of the roof as we could reach from the walk plank, we climbed up onto the roof, kneeling on the shingles we had just nailed down, working our way up the slope to the wall where the shed roof ended. I flashed the final row of shingles to the wooden siding with roofing cement and membrane, using a putty knife someone had thoughtfully sent out with the materials.

  When I was finished, one of the able-bodied guys helped me take the scaffolding down. He was a cowboyish kid named Johnny dressed in Levis and a jean jacket, about twenty-five.

  “It’s nice to see someone around here who knows what they’re doing,” he said, when the equipment was stacked and the trash picked up.

  “Are there some issues with competency?” I asked.

  “You could say that. This used to be a super place when Swami Sankarananda was running it, but it’s gone downhill since the big guy took over.”

  “In what way?”

  “Seems more like a singles bar than an ashram nowadays. Those girls of Baba’s are always trying to cozy up. I told them I’m married and trying to live a clean life, but they don’t seem to get the message. I know it’s supposed to be spiritual union and everything, but it rubs me the wrong way. I come here to meditate and get my head straight, not get laid. I’m about ready to switch to the Ramakrishna Center. It’s farther from where I live, but at least those guys stay down on the farm.”

  “How did Baba happen to take over?”

  “No one seems to know. Maybe Ganesha knows, but he’s not saying. Baba’s not even from the same order as Sankarananda. From what I hear, he came out of the Naropa Institute, and that place got to be a real can of worms. Everybody was fucking everybody and a bunch of them died of AIDS. You can call that tantra if you want to, but I don’t want any part of it.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  “Really?” He cocked his head and gave me a look. “What about Evelyn?”

  “What about her?”

  “Nothing.” He held up his hands at shoulder height with his palms toward me like someone surrendering. “She’s a cool lady. And foxy, too, for her age. I’m just saying she gets around.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah. She pretty much goes with the new flow. I know three or four guys she’s taken home. I guess she’s pretty hot. One of the guys got hung up on her, but she told him she doesn’t want anything serious. Just likes to play around. Which is great. More power to her. It’s a free country. I just don’t reckon this is the place for it, necessarily.”

  Ganesha came around the corner from the backyard and walked toward us.

  Seeing him, Johnny stuck out his hand, which I shook. He had a firm grip.

  “Good working with you, man,” he said. “Don’t tell Evelyn or Ganesha I said anything. I like both of them. I just don’t agree with the way this place is being run.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Did everything go okay?” Ganesha asked when he came up to me, holding his clipboard to his chest.

  “It won’t leak anymore,” I said.

  “Thank you for your help,” he said, and made a pained face. “I’m sorry if I was rude yesterday. It’s just that there has been so much going on around here lately, and we had some problems yesterday … but that’s no excuse. I was at fault and I apologize. It’s nice of you to help. We’ll be having lunch in a few minutes if you would like to join us.”

  “I’d like to,” I said. “Have you seen Mary around?”

  “She’s fixing the food,” he said, a different kind of pain on his face. “You’ll see her at lunch. Thanks again for your help.”

  He turned abruptly and strode toward the front of the house. I went in the opposite direction, along the side of the house and through a gate into the backyard.

  An old brick wall enclosed the yard on the Seventh Street side, shielding it from the view of passersby. A hedge of lilac bushes divided it from the yard next door and the one behind it. At the back of the enclosed space was a rose garden with a bench facing a blue-and-white statue of the Virgin Mary. Near the house, several picnic benches had been pushed together, end to end, and the flower girls, now dressed in work clothes, were going in and out the back door, carrying food from the kitchen to the tables. Several volunteer workers were washing their hands and faces with a garden hose while others stood in groups, waiting for the dinner bell. It had warmed up and most people had shed their jackets and sweaters.

  I saw Mary’s face at the kitchen window, looking out at the preparations, and waved to her. She didn’t seem to see me, so I went up the back steps into the kitchen.

  She was standing by the sink, filling a pitcher with water.

  “Hi,” I said. “What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Everything is under control. We’ll be eating in a few minutes.”

  She was wearing flip-flops with a rainbow strap, pink shorts that lived up to the name, showing all but the last and most provocative inch of her slim thighs, and a neat little white sleeveless blouse that buttoned up the front. If she had looked any sexier, I would have done an involuntary back flip with my head spinning around on my shoulders. As it was, I felt impulses. Strong, shameful impulses.

  Taking a deep breath to constrict my pounding heart, I walked over and stood beside her. “Why don’t we go to the beach after lunch,” I said, taking a shot. “It’s turned into a real bluebird day out there. We could walk over to the Santa Monica pier and ride the Ferris wheel. It’s so clear, I bet we could see the Channel Islands from the top.”

  “No,” she said, turning to look at me with no expression. “I don’t want to do that. Please wait outside. Only staff are allowed in the kitchen.”

  “Why so cold?” I said, but she ignored me and handed the pitcher to one of the flower girls.

  “Put some ice in this and take it out,” she told the girl, as if I had not spoken.

  Going back down the steps into the sunny yard, I cursed myself for being too critical of Baba the night before. That was probably what had offended her. If she was invested in his worldview, she couldn’t afford to see him as a phony.

  I sat down at one of the picnic tables, feeling angry and unhappy. The Sunday Los Angeles Times was scattered across the red-and-white-checked tablecloth, and a headline in the California section caught my eye: DISCENZA SAYS PACIFIC CITY LAND ACQUISITION NEAR COMPLETE.

  I remembered then where I had seen Discenza’s name prior to reading the documents in Baba’s bedroom. He was an often-investigated member of the Venice City Council, allied with the old-school mayor and two other councilmen against a triad of reformers. The article identified him as managing partner of the LLC developing Pacific City and said he had recused himself from voting on matters connected with it. The project had nevertheless been approved at every phase, in spite of strong neighborhood opposition. According to the city charter, when there was a tie vote on the city council, the final decision was left to the mayor. Because he was a voting member of the council, every vote had been a tie, and he had used his extra ounce of authority to nudge the city’s decision in the developer’s favor at each stage. There was no mention of Finklestein or Baba Raba in the article. Since the construction documents were in the public record, Finklestein’s name would be known to reporters and activists, but probably not his local identity as an XXXL guru. The last paragraph noted that there would be an on-site protest against th
e development later that afternoon.

  “Are you reading the rest of the paper?” one of the cheery old ladies asked, looking at me brightly from where she was standing on the other side of the table.

  “No,” I said.

  “I’m going to move it out of the way so people can sit down to eat.”

  Briskly, she gathered up the real estate, classified, news, and travel sections and marched away.

  Baba was providing a nice lunch for his karma yogis. Arranged at one end of the long, rectangular table were big bowls of cole slaw, potato salad, and a green salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, black olives, and feta cheese; platters of cheddar and Swiss cheese sandwiches made with thick whole-wheat bread and garnished with avocado, tomato, and bean sprouts; bowls of fresh fruit and shelled nuts; a big tray of some kind of baked whole-grain desert; and pitchers of water, lemonade, and sassafras tea.

  When Mary came down the wooden steps with another tray of dessert, the eyes of every man in the yard followed her, some openly, with approving smiles and nudges, others surreptitiously, glancing and looking away and glancing again, trying to capture her image in their minds or hearts or groins.

  “Where is Baba?” Ganesha asked her as she set the tray down.

  “How should I know?” Mary said. “I don’t run the ashram.”

  Ganesha made his pained, apologetic face once more. “Would you please see if he is going to come down? Everyone is hungry.”

  Mary walked away without a word, across the yard and back up the steps into the kitchen. So it wasn’t just me she was being rude to.

  The people in the backyard eyed the food while carrying on conversations about yoga, yard maintenance, and local politics that rose from murmur to emphatic discussion and died down again, punctuated by bursts of laughter.