by Bapsy Jain
“And that means?”
“It means that Whitman, tha poet-physicist, intuited that all things arise from tha soul and float, light as air, so that we may delight in themm. Matter did not give rise to life that gave rise to tha soul. Soul gave rise to life, which gave rise to matter. ‘In the beginning,’ the Good Book says, ‘was The Word.’”
Lucky nodded. Grant was much like Shanti, in an affable, drunken, Irish kind of way. He was one of those curious people who seemed to know a little about everything, despite his lack of formal education. Maybe that was what came of working in a bookstore. Their arguments ran in circles, with Grant asking questions and trapping Lucky into defending answers she knew weren’t true. It was humiliating, like losing at chess to a child. Even if the child was a prodigy, it was of little consolation.
“Okay!” Lucky said. “I’m off.”
“Could I interest ya in a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War? It’s a classic—and unique copy once owned by Omar Bradley, himself. It’s got his ex libris inside the cover. More practical than Whitman, perhaps, but no less valuable.”
“Not today,” Lucky said, making a mental note to Google Omar Bradley. She headed out, the book tucked under her arm.
As she turned the pages of the Whitman on the train she imagined making her PowerPoint presentation on her proposal to revamp the education program at prisons and someone in the committee asking, “But Miss Boyce, what credentials do you have to make such an outrageous proposal?” and herself—slowly turning red—saying, “But it just feels right? Isn’t there something to be said for common sense?” Maybe she could just quote Whitman: “Wisdom is not finally tested in schools.” That would go over real well. No, she would just have to stick to her guns. The plan would save the state money in the long run. It sounded like voodoo until you actually sat down and looked at the numbers—and that was exactly what Lucky was qualified to do.
The next morning, Barkley stopped by her office. Lucky figured he was there to talk about her presentation, but he went to the window and tapped the glass. The protestors had started gathering. The cops were there, too, waiting to load them into police vans. “There’s no bail for them this time,” Barkley said. “They’re going to be charged as domestic terrorists—can you believe that. They’ll all do time. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred.”
“How do you know?” Lucky asked, standing and looking out of the window. It wasn’t a challenge so much as an honest question.
“Coleman told me. He’s excitable that way. And he hates religion. He hates pseudo-religious types. And he especially hates PETA activists. They’ve been badgering him for months now. Seem to have made a pet project out of annoying him. Never mention anything that remotely resembles animal rights to him. Or religion. Or anything else left of the NRA, for that matter.”
“So that’s it? Coleman gets mad and due process goes out the window?”
“Oh, they’ll get due process,” Barkley said. He laughed. “They’ll give ‘em a fair trial and then hang ‘em.”
“Tell me about Coleman…”
“Well, he’s basically a good man, or so I’ve heard. Eccentricities aside. He’s done some good things—twisted some insurance company arms, come down on some pharmaceutical firms, even hamstrung some of the malpractice lawyers. He’s the consummate politician. He claims his goal is workable, affordable healthcare for everyone. Science and medicine—that’s his mantra.”
“A noble ambition,” Lucky said.
“Yes, noble.” Barkley sighed. “A lofty ambition. Not the same thing as noble, necessarily. Don’t let him fool you. Coleman sits in the inner sanctum, the inner core of the Directive Board of the GWC that drives Health and the FDA. He has the president’s ear. Right up there with the Joint Chiefs and the CIA and Homeland Security and the Feds and what-have-you. He could have had any job he wanted, he’s one helluva politician. A good administrator. A real terror to his staff. If he has one fault it’s that he’s ruthless. Ruthless, but good. Always in control. He chose the GWC and not because his background is science, either.”
“Then why?”
“It’s where the real power lies, Lucky. These guys rule the Department of Health and Human Services (H&HS) and the FDA, I may add.” Barkley said with raised eyebrows.
“And it sanitizes him. It suits his ambitions. He’s not military and he’s not an academic. He’s a pure politician. He wants to be visible, but in the right places. His role at the GWC fixes that. He’s not a doctor, but people seem to forget that. They think he is, and who better to trust than your doctor? After all, he has your health foremost in mind.” Barkley placed his right hand over his left breast, “And your best interests at heart. He’s a climber, Lucky, and unconventional. He’s dedicated to his profession, but he wants more.”
“What more could he want?”
“Rumor has it he wants to run the World Health Organization.”
Lucky stood up and stretched. The muscle in her calf was aching again—a small burning pinpoint pain. The smallest muscles, she thought, sometimes cause the most annoyance. Big muscles had plenty of oomph to deal with pushing and pulling, but the small ones, despite being just as useful, are more delicate. That is one of the things about yoga—it makes one work on one’s balance. And what is balance but fine control, the small muscles guiding the big ones? Take the triangle pose, for instance: feet wide apart, one foot aligned north/south, the other on the east/west axis. Bending to the side, stretch those big lats and deltoids and trapezius muscles, as well as the smaller muscles of the neck. Even the calf and hamstrings, and to some extent, the abs and psoas muscles. But the pose simultaneously stretches the thighbone into the hip socket—deepening the bone into the socket in a kind of stretch-in-reverse. And maintaining balance while doing all this involves a myriad of small muscles from the neck right down to the toes. Invariably, when Lucky taught this to new inmates—as she had that morning—they fell. It took new practitioners a month or more of doing the triangle pose with their backs to the wall for support before they had the small muscles tuned so they could support the weight of the whole body. And the more muscular the inmate, the longer it took him or her to develop this fine control. Funny how it was the little muscles that worked like hinges to turn the whole door.
Ambition, Lucky thought, is like the big muscle. But what’s the balance point? Maybe that was where conscience came in.
Lucky bent down and touched her palms to the floor and held the pose for nearly a minute. Then she straightened up and slipped into an extended triangle pose, her legs wide, her left foot pointed out, the right forward. She held her arms wide and leaned as far to her left as she could, finally resting her left hand on her left ankle, her right arm pointed straight up toward the ceiling.
“You knew I taught yoga?” Lucky asked.
“Of course.”
“I taught a class of inmates this morning.”
“I’ve often wondered if there was any benefit to your work. Yet, somehow, your students seem to leave early and return less often.”
Lucky laughed. “Yoga is not just about the body. It is also about the mind. Maybe primarily about the mind.”
Barkley frowned, puzzled. “Like a counselor?”
“A little bit, maybe. You have to work with the whole person.” Lucky changed sides and looked Barkley over. He was middle-aged and overweight. He would have gone bald long ago but for hair replacement therapy. At sixty, he still sported a thick, black, natural-looking head of hair, and a flat, black mustache hung over his upper lip. On his right hand, he wore a large silver ring, inlaid with lapis lazuli that Lucky remembered was only found in Afghanistan. His left hand was bare, however, as he was divorced. He was a good enough boss, in a quiet, unobtrusive kind of way. He preferred to manage from a distance and let his people do their jobs. As long as things got done, he didn’t fuss about the details of how. It made him seem, in some ways, dull-witted, but Lucky wondered if it wasn’t a deliberate ruse. What difference did it
all make, anyway? Aside from work, though, he was a total mystery. Lucky didn’t know if Barkley fished or collected stamps or Hitler memorabilia or cooked or owned a pet rock. Nothing. His personal life was unknown to her.
He patted his belly. “Afraid I could never bend like that,” he said.
“No one can when they start,” Lucky said. “You never know what you can do until you try.” The words came back to her: “Here is realization; Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him…”
“Hmm,” Barkley said. “Some sage of the East?”
“Walt Whitman,” Lucky said. And then it hit her that she understood what Whitman meant about the past and future, majesty and love, and being vacant of them and their being vacant of you. He was talking about attachments. He meant that if people were too attached to the past or the future, they restricted their options and limited themselves to what they knew or what they did not fear. But, Lucky thought, majesty and love aren’t attachments, only attributes of being, qualities that know no fear, the possessions of a man or woman who knows no fear. Or, at least, who is not ruled by fear. These are the kind of attributes that are worth being attached to. “The point is,” she said, “that you never know what you can do until you try.”
“And why would I want to do that?” Barkley said. “I’ve gotten along quite nicely for sixty years without it.”
Lucky sat in lotus pose on the little rug in front of her desk. Then she lay all the way down onto her back in full fish pose. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Your right leg is an inch shorter than your left,” she said, “So your hip and lower back hurt all the time. Sometimes the pain spreads to your shoulders because of the tension in your back. You’ll pay fifty or a hundred dollars for a massage—I can always tell when because the next day you feel better. You’re chipper, more alert, and you move around more. There’s a little bounce in your step. You’ll spend money on massage, chiropractors, orthotics for your shoes, an ergonomic chair, and a back brace, yet you won’t invest a few minutes every day in taking care of your body.”
“What I need,” Barkley said, patting his stomach again, “is an exer-cycle and a weight machine. I used to play lacrosse in college, did you know that?”
“No,” Lucky said. “I would not have guessed that.”
“I was a defenseman, and a rather good one, if I say so myself. Second string all-American my senior year. Strength and endurance—that’s the key to fitness. If I tried that stretch now, I’d probably break something I might need later.” He laughed.
“Anyway,” Lucky said, “the point I started to make is that through yoga, I teach my students how to straighten out their lives. Sending people to prison with no hope, no plan for their rehabilitation, no knowledge of what they need or how to help them, just because you have the power and they piss you off, practically guarantees they will reoffend. It’s all connected.”
“So by teaching them to sit like pretzels you help them straighten out?”
Lucky couldn’t tell if Barkley was joking or serious. She bent down and placed her palms flat on the floor. Carefully she aligned her knees to her elbows and then rolled forward so that she balanced on her hands and her head, her knees resting on her elbows. Then, she slowly straightened into a headstand, and then a handstand.
“Good God!” Barkley exclaimed.
“This is nothing,” Lucky said, and slowly she shifted her weight to her right hand and, holding her left off to the side, executed a perfect one-handed pushup.
“Wow!” Barkley exclaimed. “No wonder those inmates come to class!”
Lucky stood up, feet apart, bent forward, arms stretched, palms upward facing the walls, and placed her head between and beyond her knees. She smiled and explained, “This is my pose—a lucky pose.” As she took a breath to continue, her phone rang.
It was Emil, her secretary. “Lucky,” he said. His voice was quavering.
“Nobody else better answer my phone.”
“Clevis Coleman is on his way to your office.”
“What? My office? Coleman to see me?”
“Yes and nobody else is supposed to be in it.”
“Touché. Did he say why?”
“He didn’t call for an appointment. The front desk called me. They tried to reach you but you wouldn’t pick up.”
“Thanks.” Lucky hung up.
Barkley nodded. “I’d best be going.” But he stood by the window looking at the protestors until Coleman burst through the door. Lucky was smoothing her blue pantsuit and hair with one hand and offering Coleman a handshake with the other.
He ignored her. He looked from Lucky to Barkley and back again, then snapped to Barkley, “Don’t you have something important you were about to do?”
Barkley swallowed and nodded. “I was just about to—”
“Then I suggest you do it.”
Barkley nodded and left.
“Sit down,” Coleman said. He looked at his watch. “I have ten minutes.”
Lucky sat. “Shall I call for—”
“No time for that. I read your file. You’re a smart girl. I’ve had my eye on you for a while now. Really pissed me off with that stunt yesterday, so I won’t beat around the bush. If you don’t know Daphne and I are lovers, you soon will, so keep your mouth shut, understand?”
“I’m pleased to meet you, too,” Lucky said.
“Pleased has nothing to do with it, does it?” Coleman said. “I’m talking about job performance. So we can dispense with formalities. The one thing I can’t afford right now is a public divorce. These things have to be handled delicately—especially in my position. I’m sure you can understand, having had a very public divorce yourself.”
Lucky squirmed in her chair.
“You’re not the only one who can research.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled a thick cloud of blue smoke in Lucky’s direction. “Do you mind?” he asked. “Another of my vices. In a week, you’ll know all of them. And you’ll probably hate me. So what? I’m not here to be liked. And at least I’m not hypocritical. With me, what you see is what you get.” He gestured to Lucky with his cigarette and grinned. “When I was a boy growing up in Kalispell, my stepfather told me to climb a tree and walk out on a limb. He stood underneath, held out his arms, and said, ‘I’m going to teach you a lesson about trust, boy. Now jump and I’ll catch you.’ I jumped and he stepped aside. I landed flat on my back. While I lay on the ground gasping for air, he said, ‘The lesson is, trust no one.’ I don’t make a move before I cover all my options.” He crushed the cigarette out on the strap of his wristwatch and threw the butt into Lucky’s trash.
“Most people think relationships are founded on integrity, idealism, and all that emotional kitty litter. What a crock! Sun Tzu says, ‘Those who are puritanical can be disgraced.’ So I don’t waste any time appealing to religious sentiment. That was Reagan’s angle. I’ve got my own. Healthcare. It’ll be the miracle of the 2000s. Communism is dead. Gangs are on the run. Terrorism will fade as well. So what else are people afraid of? Death! The final frontier. The ultimate enemy. People are scared shitless of it. And death and taxes are the only things constant in this world. We’re going to make health care the Marshall Plan of our generation. Universal healthcare. Vaccinations. Cures. Genetic engineering. People want to live forever and I’m going to give it to them. And at a price they can afford. Or least,” he said, checking his watch, “at a price they are convinced they cannot afford not to pay.
“As for my vices, everybody’s got vices, and the more they deny them, the more vulnerable they are. Successful relationships are founded on three things. One, an-iron clad understanding of power dynamics, i.e., I have it and you don’t. That’s not hard for a bright girl like you to fathom, now is it? Two, clear communication, of which the explanation of the preceding item is a prime example. Still with me? Of course you are. That’s because I communicate clearly and effectively. And item three, fear. Not trust, not love, not devotion or respect or any of that emoti
onal kitty litter, but a simple understanding that I-won’t-tell-on-you and you-won’t-tell-on-me, and if you screw up, I’m going to nail you to the wall and watch you bleed. ‘What restrains competitors is harm.’ That’s why the Allies won World War II. Am I right? Am I?”
Lucky had barely digested the “hate me” part of Coleman’s speech. She nodded.
“So you and I, we have our secrets, I’m involved with Daphne and you’re a divorcee who’s adopted a son with a background better unknown than known. His father, Steve is a convict who escaped while out on bail. Wonder how that happened, Lucky?” Coleman straightened up and glared at Lucky.
Lucky defiantly scowled back, saying, “Nothing to do with me, check the records and before you insinuate me please show me the proof.”
Coleman replied in a calmer voice, “I am merely stating facts here. All I want is that you keep your mouth shut and we’ll get along fine.”
Lucky’s blood ran cold.
Coleman then smiled a tight smile and continued. “Now that we have it all settled, we can move on to the real reason why I’m here.” He looked at his watch. “Eight minutes. May I?” he asked, nodding in the direction of Lucky’s computer. Lucky got up, letting Coleman insert a small gold-plated flash drive into the laptop. “I actually came to ask for your help,” he said. “I had my doubts, but your little demonstration convinced me that you might be onto something.”
A grainy black-and-white photo appeared on the screen. In it, a group of men stood in front of what appeared to be a stone building with a backdrop of high mountains. A line of fluttering prayer flags hung in one corner. There was nothing remarkable about the men; the photo could have been taken almost anywhere: the Andes, the Himalayas. Their square, flat, dark, slightly Asian faces bore humorless expressions. One of the faces was circled in red and, as Coleman clicked away at the keyboard, that face enlarged until it filled the screen, blurring as the program approximated his facial features and filled in the missing pixels. Eventually, there was the unremarkable face of a middle-aged man staring impassively into the camera. He was thin, thinner than the others perhaps, and possibly a few years younger, as well, though his hair was graying and his face was lined with deep creases—the kind of lines Lucky associated with care and worry. The man did not appear menacing. A fatherly face, Lucky thought. A man who understood pain. He wore glasses in a cheap black plastic frame. His eyes, Lucky noted, were bright and alert. They seemed to look right through her, even as they appeared on the screen. It was the face of a man who had no secrets but knew yours. A man who was at peace with the world and his place in it. A man of conviction. A man without fear. He was waiting patiently for you to begin. You would tell him everything, and he would listen. Then he would give you the answer. The photo disappeared and was replaced by a sketch showing a similar, but perhaps slightly older, man.
