"That comes later. Don't look for a contradiction, there isn't one. You just don't understand Now."
"Take pity on a poor pilgrim."
"Well," she said with a smile, "I'm listening to you now, aren't I?"
Listener Dooley shifted on his hard wooden chair, mumbled something, and opened his eyes. He looked at me once, incuriously, and let his lids droop again. Nevertheless, I had a sense that Listener Simpson wasn't the only one whose ears were working.
"I guess you are. Do you get paid for it?"
"The laborer is worthy of his hire."
The door behind the Listeners opened and a dark, extremely handsome man came in. He had blue-black hair and plenty of it, startlingly pure blue eyes, and the kind of beard that actors and politicians shave twice a day. His deep tan was set off by a coral polo shirt, complete with an amphibian of some kind over the left nipple. He'd tucked the shirt meticulously into pleated blue slacks to show off the fact that he'd inherited Fred Astaire's waistline. I disliked him on sight.
"Well," he said, "so you're here to see Mr. Miller." He smiled, revealing white, slightly pointed teeth. "I'm Dick Merryman."
Dick Merryman held out a hand and I shook it. It was warm and hard, with short curly black hairs on the backs of the fingers.
"I'd say I'm Simeon Grist," I said, "but you already know it."
He must have thought that was funny because he laughed. "Has Listener Simpson been helpful?"
"She's been a delight. I was about to tell her my entire life story."
He laughed again and tossed a mean little glance at Listener Simpson, who blushed scarlet to the roots of her hair. "He's just kidding, Dr. Merryman," she said.
"Doctor?" I said. "What kind of doctor? Ph.D.? L.L.D.? Chiropractic?"
"M.D.," he said. "An internist, actually, Simeon. Why?"
" 'Doctor' is such a loose term, isn't it, Dick? The Germans call everybody 'doctor,' and Americans are only slightly more selective. So what's an internist doing at a gathering of the Church of the Eternal Moment?"
"We're not Christian Scientists," he said in an agreeable tone that sounded like it took a little work. "People get sick, you know."
"Then you're not a member of the Church?"
"Of course I am. The Church has a lot of professional men-doctors, lawyers-and blue-collar workers, housewives, what-have-you. Everybody's welcome. Are you a friend of Mr. Miller's?"
"I've known him a long time. I've done him some favors."
"Don't think we're security-happy," Merryman said, reading my mind. "It's just that Mr. Miller is a celebrity, and we've learned to be careful with people who say they want to see one of our celebrities."
"One of your celebrities?"
"We have many people whom the world thinks of as celebrities. There are eight or nine here right now."
"Eight? Or nine?"
"Eight, actually," he said, giving me the teeth again. What do you do, Simeon?"
"Good question, Dick. You could say I'm self-employed." We smiled at one another.
"And you say 'doctor' is a loose term." He chuckled. I chuckled back at him. Then we both stopped chuckling and he waited for me to say something.
When the silence had gotten awkward and Listener Simpson had cleared her throat twice, he rubbed his hands together. "Well," he said, "Mr. Miller will be getting your message soon, and he'll probably come out to see you. Even if he doesn't, I hope you'll stay for the Revealing. You've come all this way, after all."
"All this way from where?" I hadn't told Listener Simpson where I'd come from.
Merryman's smile broadened. "No one really lives in Big Sur, Simeon. Just take a seat. Have you brought anything to read?"
"That's okay. I'll meditate on the present."
"You do that. Even without training, it can't do any harm. Listener Simpson, I think it's time for your next session."
Listener Simpson looked faintly fuddled. "Of course it is, Dr. Merryman. I was just, um, waiting to be relieved."
"Listener Dooley can handle it."
Listener Dooley snapped out of his coma and looked alert. "Sure I can, Dr. Merryman." He had a whiskey voice to match his nose.
"Nice to have met you, Simeon," Merryman said. "See you at the Revealing." He took Listener Simpson's elbow and guided her out of the room. He had the posture of a professional ballroom dancer, but his fingers cut into the flesh of her arm.
"What an interesting guy," I said to Listener Dooley as the door swung shut behind them. "I always think doctors should be unattractive."
"You do, huh? I think everybody should look like what they want to look like."
I calculated the odds against Listener Dooley having chosen his face and came up with the kind of number astronomers are always trying to explain to the rest of us. Conversation with Dooley held no mysteries that I cared to penetrate so I went to a chair and meditated on the present.
Quite a lot of it had flowed seamlessly past when the door opened once again and Skippy Miller jiggled through it. He looked genuinely happy to see me, happier than anyone I'd run into in a long time.
"Simeon, this is great, this is terrific," he boomed in his actor's voice. He looked, as always, like his mother had dressed him in the dark. Skippy wasn't heavy or husky or any of the current euphemisms: Skippy was fat, with the dedicated fat man's fastidious touches-a scarf around the neck, trousers darker than his shirt, shirt loose to conceal the blossoms of flesh inside. Except that, on Skippy, the touches always went awry. The scarf around his neck was too tight, emphasizing the rolls of fat below his chin. The trousers had bulging safari-style pouches that made him look like a man with an extra set of hands in his pockets. But his face was genuinely open and obviously pleased.
"It is? I mean, I'm happy to see you too, Skippy, but why is this such a crowd-pleaser?"
"Well, because you're here. You have to give me credit, Simeon, I never preached to you, but that doesn't mean I'm not happy to see you here."
Listener Dooley was sitting straight up now, or as straight as his paunch would let him, taking it all in.
"Skippy," I said, "you're going a little fast for me. Is there someplace we can talk?"
Listener Dooley looked vaguely affronted and then remembered that he wasn't supposed to be Listening.
Skippy cast a guileless glance around the room. "There's nobody here," he said.
"Think again. How about the parking lot?"
He gazed through the windows. "It's dark out there."
"Darkness is an illusion. If you could see through it, it'd be light."
"Simeon," he said, his face falling, "you mean the only reason you're here is to see me?"
"Well, I didn't fly four hundred miles to be told it's dark outside."
"Aw, hell," he said. "I thought…"
"Maybe later. I've been invited to the Revealing."
He lit up again. "You're going to go, aren't you?"
I took his arm. "We'll see," I said, steering him through the door. "Let's talk first."
In the parking lot, Skippy shivered as if he somehow lacked the fat man's natural insulation. "You really should come to the Revealing," he said a trifle sulkily. "It'd be good for you."
"Skippy, the plane home doesn't leave until ten. Tell me what I want to know and I'll sit through a Maria Montez movie."
"You'll love it. Honestly, you've never seen anything like it. This little girl, except it's not her really, of course, but whoever it is, it's something."
"I'm sure it is."
"So you'll stay?"
"First things first. Do you know anyone who calls himself Ambrose Harker?"
"I think I might have known a Harker a long time ago. I don't think I've ever met anyone named Ambrose."
"Who was the Harker, then?"
"Her name was Alice. Jesus, this is when I was in high school. A little pale girl with terrible skin. A physics brain, remember physics brains? I sat behind her in math so I could cheat off her tests."
"What about
her brothers?" I knew I was getting nowhere, but the only way you learn the answer to a question is by asking it.
"Alice Harker? If she'd had brothers they wouldn't have admitted it."
"So who have you talked to me about?"
He rubbed his chin and then transferred his attention lower down, tugging at his loose shirt where the fat bulged through. "Nobody," he said at last. "Why?"
"Nobody came to you and asked for a recommendation?"
"Simeon," he said, "I haven't told anybody about what you did for me." He finished with his shirt. "How could I, you know?"
"Sensitive."
"Dynamite. Especially for a fat middle-aged actor who's earning a decent paycheck for the first time since he stopped selling real estate."
"So not a soul?"
He opened his mouth and then closed it again. "Nobody at all."
"Okay. Do you know a guy in his late thirties, bony and unpleasant, with a flat-top? Got a tailor who should be a vivisectionist, makes a lot of spit noises when he talks?"
"I certainly hope not."
"Big Adam's apple? Blue eyes?"
"Uh-uh."
"Insists on perfect understanding all the time?"
Something flickered in Skippy's eyes. "Like how?" he said.
"Like asking 'Do you understand?' after every declarative sentence. Like grilling waiters on whether they've got his order straight."
"No," Skippy said shortly. He looked nervous. "Why?"
"Somebody's jerking me around. Somebody who said you sent him."
"Simeon, I didn't send anybody."
"Somebody who maybe set somebody up to get killed."
Skippy's eyes widened. Then a peal of bells rang out, a secular angelus floating through the mists of Big Sur.
"That's it," he said. "Come with me?"
"You don't know anything about it."
"Zip," he said, "nothing. I'm sorry. Come on, I want a decent seat."
"For what?"
"The Revealing."
Chapter 6
"It's the best thing that's happened to me since my second divorce," Skippy said earnestly as he steered us between buildings toward a large lighted structure. He was making an obvious effort to keep his fervor in check, but his hammy hand clutched my arm as if he were afraid I'd try to make a break for it.
The paths were full of people, young, old, and in between, mostly white, mostly prosperous-looking, clearly eager to answer the summons of the bell. Ever the gentleman, Skippy stopped to allow an old lady in a walker to make a wobbly right from a tributary path onto the main drag. Listener Simpson was helping her, to the old lady's obvious irritation, and she flashed us a harried smile. Once they'd set off in front of us, Skippy hit his pedestrian's overdrive and dragged me past them.
"So why is it so great? Are your arteries any better? Is your blood pressure down?"
"No and yes, in order. Even with all this blubber, my blood pressure is lower than it's ever been. And without medication, too," he added triumphantly.
This was a revelation. Back when I'd known him, Skippy's medicine cabinet had been bigger than my living room. "Your druggist must be furious," I said.
We were slowing now as the faithful converged into a couple of well-behaved lines in order to pass through the single open door. The light flooding through the door was brilliant. We'd walked a quarter of a mile, and despite the coolness of the night, Skippy's face was filmed with an enthusiast's sweat.
"Calm down," I said. "Bliss can kill. Orgasms claim many lives each year."
"That's another thing," he said, heedless of all the ears around us. "I feel much less compelled to womanize." One of Skippy's problems was that he didn't have a subconscious. Like a character in a Dostoyevsky novel, he said everything, and usually to the wrong person.
We were toddling slowly along in the line now. Skippy's eyes shone and he licked his lips hungrily. I felt as if I were boarding an airplane for Akron or Duluth, someplace I'd never been and didn't want to go.
"It's changed my life," he said. "The Church has changed my life. And at my age, too."
He was so eager for me to ask him about it that I almost didn't have the heart not to. But I managed.
"Look at me, Simeon," he finally said. "Do I look like a success?"
"Do you want me to say no? You're doing okay. Take away most successes' Piaget watches and they look like shoe salesmen. Dress a bum in Armani and spritz him with cologne, and he looks like the CEO of Gulf and Western."
"Yeah, yeah, turn it into a joke. But do I look like a Hollywood success?"
"Somebody has to play people who look like you."
"That's what I did for years. Walked by in the background wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a bottle in a bag. Bumped into featured players in elevators. I had a three-year stretch where my longest line was 'Oops.' Now I'm a star. So what's the difference?"
"I give." I hate guessing.
"The Church."
"The Church made you a star?"
"Sure it did. Of course it did. I'm only a TV star, I know that, but, Jesus, Simeon, do you know how much money I made last year?"
"Skippy," I said, disappointing the people nearest to us, "there are a few secrets a man should keep."
He clapped a hand guiltily over his mouth. "You're right," he said from behind it.
"But it's the Church that made the difference," I said by way of a prompt.
"Didn't I say so?"
"Can we be specific, or is that against the rules?"
"There aren't really any rules. It just gave me access to what I already had. I had the skills, I had the experience, the voice, I had all the resources it took to be successful. But I didn't know how to get to them. It was like I was living in a diamond mine but I didn't know what a diamond looked like."
"At the risk of prolonging the metaphor, diamonds look like gray pebbles until they're cut."
"Yeah, and I kept picking up the wrong pebbles. Except there aren't really any wrong pebbles, it all depends on what you want to do with them. If you're going to throw one at a dog, it doesn't have to be a diamond. It all depends on what the moment demands."
"The moment." We were close to the door now, and the hard white light bathed Skippy's face like a second-rate special effect in an Old Testament movie. He looked like a tax collector about to be born again, bad casting for Saul of Tarsus.
"Do you have any idea how terrified I used to be in auditions?"
"No," I said, "but I would be too."
"I couldn't look anybody in the eye. I couldn't use my voice, I'd just mumble at the floor. I couldn't find the experiences that would have brought the part to life. I was picking up all the wrong pebbles."
"Good evening, Mr. Miller," said a woman at the door whom I'd never seen before. "Good evening, Mr. Grist. Welcome to your first Revealing."
Skippy beamed and we filed past. "Christ," I said, "even Japan isn't that efficient."
"So the thing is," Skippy continued as we went through the brilliant light, courtesy of half a dozen thousand-watt spots, and through a second door into the auditorium proper, "the thing is that I didn't realize that everybody-all those casting directors and producers and directors-was in the moment with me and that the moment was in perfect harmony. And I had all my memories and all my experiences with me too."
We were sloping down an aisle in a large hall that was already mostly full. Looking around, I realized that we hadn't had to hurry; here, as in Orwell, some were more equal than others, although Skippy had missed it. A gray-suited Listener, or something, beckoned us to two seats down front. The stage had more flowers on it than the average gardener sees during the month of May. Bells tintinnabulated over the loudspeakers.
"The thing is," Skippy said again, "that there's no reason to be frightened by any situation if you know the moment is in harmony, and especially not if the other people don't know it." He counted on his fingers to make sure he had his verbs straight and then nodded. "All you have to do is key into the mo
ment, surf it like a wave. It's all going in one direction. If you try to fight it, like I used to do, you drown. If you paddle too hard, then you get ahead of it, like I also used to do, and you get slammed into the sand. Just sense it and you can glide down its surface, like the surfer and the wave."
We were sitting, surrounded by people. The bells inspissated in the air. They sounded vaguely Tibetan.
"Swell," I said. "What happens if it gets choppy?"
"What's choppy? Everything's choppy. Nobody's ironed time for us to make it all smooth and starchy. A storm is just a succession of moments, and even that's an illusion. There's only one moment, now, and it and the storm are one. Nothing from the past should weigh you down. Nothing in the future should surprise you. It's all one everlasting moment, and you're already in balance with it. Do you think the ocean is surprised by the waves on its surface? All you have to do is let it carry you."
Skippy laughed just as the lights dimmed. "You just ride on in,' he said. A couple of people shushed him. When they recognized Skippy, they stopped shushing.
The lights on the stage were tremendous enough to make me wonder what the Church of the Eternal Moment's electrical bills might be. A sober-looking individual in a dark suit welcomed us from behind a bleached pine podium. When he'd finished, a curtain behind him rose soundlessly and a sextet-guitar, piano, and four vocalists-went to work.
Their specialty was rewriting the hits. They started with "It Only Takes a Moment" and then segued into the Beatles' "Yesterday," with some minor reworking of the lyrics. Next to be butchered was the Stones' "Time Is on My Side," followed by a version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" that I couldn't follow at all. The general theme, though, was clearly time.
Skippy leaned over to me. "I've talked to them about the music," he whispered. "This isn't the good part."
"I hope to Christ not. I've heard better in an elevator."
"Just wait," Skippy said.
After the music ground to a merciful end and the curtain came down again, consigning the sextet to whatever richly deserved purgatory awaited them, the lights refocused to reveal the dark-suited individual at his place behind the podium. Two ordinary folding chairs had been placed stage center.
The four last things sg-1 Page 5
