The Fifth Rule of Ten

by Gay Hendricks

  The prayer hall was crowded with people. Some sat cross-legged, some knelt on their haunches, feet carefully aimed backward.

  No sign of Julie, but about five rows in, I spotted Bill’s gray-blond head floating above the sea of strangers. To his left, Lola, then Maude and Martha. Eric and Adina were on Bill’s right.

  Eric had never called back. Maybe that was a good thing.

  Up front, the massive Shakyamuni statue had been wrapped in a robe of marigold-yellow silk. His hair was a domed knot of black and his ears hung low, as if someone had pulled hard on the lobes before they’d had time to set properly.

  Five foam cushions with navy canvas-backed supports were lined up in front of the Buddha. Bright wings peeked from either side, as if giant canaries were back there, preening.

  My favorite goddess, Green Tara, was also on the dais, a bronze statue sitting in a jeweled lake of lotus flowers, left leg tucked under, right foot outstretched. She looked ready to leap to her escape. I could relate.

  I was no longer a captive of these commitments and vows. I could even appreciate the powerful spiritual energy—it permeated the hall like ozone. But I not only felt resistance, I tasted dread. My skull-covered feet refused to cross the threshold.

  Adina appeared at the door, a twin in each hand.

  “Potty break,” she whispered. “They’re starting the ceremony in a few minutes. We saved you a seat.” She cocked her head. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s great,” I said.

  I made my reluctant way up the aisle, Bill’s head serving as a beacon.

  I slid sideways past a Tibetan couple in traditional peaked felt caps, wide-sleeved white cotton shirts, and brilliantly embroidered aprons and tunics. Their clothes smelled faintly of mothballs.

  Bill pushed to his feet to face me. Usually we clapped shoulders and executed awkward man hugs but the heat in his eyes held me back.

  “You’re late,” Bill said. “Too chicken shit to face me?” Anger rolled off him like thunder.

  The AirLite.

  “Lola told you?”

  “She told me enough.” His fists clenched. “Do you have any idea how many kids die that way? What were you thinking?”

  I held Bill’s gaze. “I am so sorry. I have absolutely no excuse. It was a rookie mistake.”

  “You got that right!”

  “If you guys never want me to watch the girls again, I totally understand.”

  Bill scrubbed at his scalp with one hand. I waited for the verdict.

  “Ah, hell,” he said, “I left my Beretta in the holster once last year. Hanging on the back of the bedroom chair, full of bullets. Still gives me nightmares, just thinking about it. Only difference was, I got away with it. Now my phone’s set for daily alerts, reminding me to check.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “I’m thinking about putting a separate lock on the closet.”

  “Better put two,” he said. “Lola’s worse than Houdini.”

  He made room for me to pass. I was excused, although not yet absolved.

  Laughter rippled through the crowd. Julie was up front, scanning the room. Homer lolled happily in her arms, his mournful clownish face, as usual, causing a reaction.

  Julie caught sight of me, and her face cleared. She walked off the dais, Homer glued to her chest. I guess they were waiting until I got there to start.

  As I took a seat next to Eric, his face brightened. “I got your message. A slot just opened up tomorrow. It’s yours if you still want to see me.”

  My brain gave off a high-pitched whine, like the stripping of gears.

  “Not sure about wanting to,” I said. “But I definitely need to.”

  “Eleven o’clock okay?”

  That meant getting up before dawn to start my new transatlantic job, but given the time difference, I’d be doing that anyway.

  “Yes. Where?”

  “Los Feliz. I work out of home now.”

  We scrambled to our feet as the five visiting monks processed through the side door. Ceremonial saffron silk was draped over their red robes. Their expressions were stern.

  Then Yeshe seemed to register where he was, and a huge smile illuminated his face. I honestly think he had no idea such a prayer hall might exist outside of India and Tibet. He and Lobsang would be hounding me to attend temple functions after this.

  Adina hurried in with the twins as we took our seats.

  “What did I miss?” In one graceful motion, Adina sank into a lotus posture. Her spine, like Eric’s, was straight and firm. Experienced chanters, they’d brought their own foam- and-canvas back supports.

  Sonam remained standing. “Welcome, welcome. As you know, this time of year, Saka Dawa, is very auspicious, as we honor Shakyamuni’s birth, enlightenment, and death. Special thanks to this beautiful temple for bringing us here to celebrate.”

  People started clapping, but Sonam waved everyone quiet.

  “So. We begin.”

  He sat, and picked up a stack of narrow rectangular pages resting on a pillow at his feet, our chants for the evening. Each page was covered with rows of Tibetan characters, boxy and crimped.

  The monks hooked their right hands behind their stools and returned with curved yellow hats hedged with saffron bristles, which they pressed onto their heads. They looked gloriously crowned, like roosters.

  Yeshe, Lobsang, TJ, and Wangdue reached behind again, this time with both hands. I half expected them to pull out 10-foot Tibetan horns, like some sort of magic trick, but these ritual instruments were easier to manage.

  Their right hands clasped damarus—monkey drums, we called them. Wooden double-sided hand drums shaped like hourglasses and trailing feathered tails of silk and beads. In their left they grasped drilbus, burnished handbells embossed with tiny masks, petals, and Tibetan mantras. Now I knew what was in all those boxes.

  Lama Jamyang’s creaky voice reached across time, once again leading our beginner’s class on the ritual use of tantric implements.

  “Right hand, children. Right hand for the monkey drum,” he would croak. With his hooded eyes and curved spine he resembled a vulture, but no one was better at banging a drum, ringing a bell, or sculpting butter. “Always the male hand to proclaim the sound of great bliss!” He would illustrate, his wrist a blur as he set loose the dangling strikers. I couldn’t work out what that nervous metallic chatter had to do with bliss.

  Meanwhile, across Lama Jamyang’s lap, his left hand—the female hand—rang his drilbu, supposedly generating wisdom by producing another oxymoron, a clanging sound of emptiness.

  Our awkward wrist flicks had rattled pellets against goatskin and sent bronze clappers back and forth in jingling collision until we thought our hands would fall off.

  I shook off the memory as this row of monks sat silently, instruments in their laps.

  I leaned left to find Maude and Lola. I needed to see what they thought of these fantastic drums and bells, and the crazy crayon-yellow rooster hats.

  They stared ahead, captivated. Lola sat closest to me.

  “Lola,” I whispered. “What do you think of my fancy friends?”

  Lola turned and beamed at me, her copper curls glowing.

  She had a bright red bindi in the middle of her forehead. Perfectly round, like a scarlet target.

  No.

  My blood tingled. Something was very off.

  Bindis were part of the Hindu tradition. They had no place in a Tibetan Buddhist ritual.

  Lola clambered over Bill and squeezed next to me.

  “Uncle Ten, I have to tell you sumping!” Her bright voice trilled in the silent hall. Someone laughed. Martha’s head whipped sideways, her mother alarm activated.

  I sent her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

  “Soft voice, Lola. Like this,” I said, using my best whisper. I touched her arm. “How did you get that mark on your forehead?” Maybe the hush in my voice would hide the panic.

  “The lady gave it to me.” Lola’s voice was brea
thy as she strained to speak quietly.

  A man sitting in front of us turned and put a finger to his lips. I ignored him.

  “What lady?”

  “The pretty lady. When I went to go potty. The one wearing the nightgown.”

  My pulse crashed against my eardrums. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

  “Lola,” I whispered, “is the lady still here?”

  Lola glanced around, but she wasn’t really looking.

  “No. But she told me to tell you sumping.” Lola’s girlish voice kept sneaking in. “She said to tell you, um . . . she said to tell you, it’s time.”

  Her words set off a chain reaction: cold to hot, chills to sweat.

  The man turned again. “Shhh!” he said. My right fist clenched.

  Breathe, Ten.

  “Are you sure that’s what she said? Lola, are you sure?”

  A small line formed, a vertical dash of worry. Her eyes were blue marbles of light.

  I would kill anyone who harmed her.

  “Yes. That’s what she wanted me to tell you. It’s time. She called you Uncle Ten.” Lola’s lower lip trembled.

  “I believe you,” I said. I placed my palm against her back.

  She calmed under my hand. “She was nice, Uncle Ten.” Lola’s breath smelled faintly of apple. “She had a polka dot on her forehead. Like Fancy Nancy. When I told her I liked it, she made one on me.”

  With a chattering, clanging eruption, the ritual began and Bill hooked Lola and reeled her onto his lap.

  I climbed past Eric to Adina. I gripped her wrist, my fingers like talons.

  “Who gave Lola that bindi?”

  “What are you talking about? Ouch, that hurts.”

  I loosened my grasp. “The bindi. The red mark on Lola’s forehead. Where did it come from?”

  The thumping and ringing increased, an urgent summons, but I was feeling neither bliss nor wisdom.

  “I have no idea,” Adina said, freeing her wrist. “The girls asked me to wait in the hallway while they peed. The bindi was on Lola’s face when they came back out. I figured the girls found some lipstick or something.”

  After the cacophony, the abrupt hush was as shocking as an icy bath. The monks had set down their instruments and sat with eyes closed, palms in prayer position. For the first time, I understood the power of emptiness. How it could ring with expectation, or in my case, dread.

  Sonam pursed his mouth. An impossibly low sound emerged, dark and guttural, like a rumbled rush of black. Sang gyay chodang tsog kyi chog nam la. The monks wove their own threads into the chant, some low in pitch, some medium, some high. Jang chub bar du dag ni kyab su chi. Their tonal range blended, creating a harmonious path of sound.

  Sang gyay chodang tsog kyi chog nam la, Jang chub bar du dag ni kyab su chi . . .

  How many thousands of times had I chanted these words? I take refuge until I am enlightened, in the Buddhas, the dharma, and the sangha. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings . . . I take refuge . . .

  I turned back to Adina. She’d closed her eyes and started to sway, her lips moving. I touched her shoulder, gently this time.

  “Did you see anyone else leave the bathroom? A woman, maybe, wearing a caftan or a robe?” Adina opened her eyes reluctantly.

  Eric leaned across, his voice concerned. “Everything okay, Ten?”

  “Adina,” I pleaded. “Think.”

  “There was no one,” she said. “I would have noticed.”

  Sonam moved on to the 10-syllable prayer to Green Tara: I prostrate to the Liberator, mother of all victorious ones.

  Closing her eyes again, Adina mirrored Chonam’s fluid hand ballet as she laced her fingers into an intricate configuration—the spirit-subduing mudra; little fingers linked, index fingers pointed sideways, ready to scold and threaten any hovering malignant entities. Her palms fanned outward, like a raptor mantling its prey.

  The frenzied hand drum in my chest would not be consoled.

  I scoured the room, front to back. No one but the monks was wearing a robe. No one else was marked with a daub of red.

  I returned to the girls.

  Maude stared at the front stage, her smooth forehead fragile and pale as the shell of an egg. Lola was in constant motion, watching the chanting lamas, watching everyone else watching the chanting lamas. She reached up to scratch at the bindi. Her finger came away smeared, as if with blood.

  If it were a bullet hole, she’d be dead.

  Black dots swarmed my vision, executing a crazed and dizzying dance. My throat constricted. The container protecting my sense of self collapsed.

  I moved in a clumsy crouch until I reached the side aisle and could make my way to the outside corridor. I ran past the flickering butter candles and smoking sticks of incense, past the list of temple rules, past the piled shoes, stopping only to grab my own. I shoved open the double doors and staggered into the night.

  The chanting followed, the haunted medley of a choir of ghosts.

  CHAPTER 22

  The streetlamps emitted weak beams, as if exhausted from the effort of caring. Their watery light cast a hazy sheen across the sidewalk.

  I turned right, and then left.

  The road was empty.

  I jogged to the temple parking lot and wove between the rows. Every parking space was full, every car vacant.

  Running now, I traversed the paved ridge of road that lay like a narrow bandage between brushy cliff-side and the terrain sloping toward civilization. The farthest point north was a cul-de-sac. It was deserted. No barking dog, no blue-lit blare of a flat screen. Only a ramshackle house, its windows dark.

  I sprinted the other way, running harder, my shoes slipping at the heels. Except for a faint ringing and banging from inside the temple, the entire length of the street was stone quiet, as if under curfew. Completely absent of moving cars or mysterious women.

  Something snagged my vision, and I bent to look, lungs bellowing.

  Skid marks, where the south end of the road veered left before making a somewhat sudden descent back to Figueroa.

  I pulled out my phone and found the flashlight app. I aimed the bright beam onto the asphalt.

  Diagonal smears of rubber. Two thick tires, one fatter than the other. The marks indicated a motorcycle caught in a dangerous fishtail. For a split second I thought the bike must have skated right over the cliff. But no. The marks straightened.

  Whoever pulled out of that slide was very skilled. Or very lucky.

  I switched to the camera function and snapped a few images of the skid marks. The smears were generic, and probably impossible to trace, but I was willing to bet these tires were custom and belonged to an Italian motorcycle that cost more than most people earned in a year. I’d seen it up close on the 134. A Vyrus.

  How appropriate. A virus can be hard to identify, and harder to contain.

  Dangerous. Deadly even.

  Why was that biker following me?

  I shook my head. I was creating stories to justify my fears. Next thing, I’d be walking around with my hands permanently fixed in the spirit-subduing mudra, fending off foes. When I was rattled like this my anxiety groped for any explanation, logical or not, like a hat looking for a hook.

  I returned to the temple garden and leaned against the edge of the fountain. Nothing made sense.

  Someone’s coming. My hand snapped to my waist for a gun that wasn’t there.

  “Ten?” Julie stepped out of the shadows, leash in hand. I tucked my hand into my pocket.

  Homer snuffled at my feet. He peered at me between folds of skin, tongue flap dangling, before carrying on.

  “Too much for you in there, hunh.” Julie moved to my side.

  Homer lifted his back leg and anointed one of the boulders. Mission completed. He sat on his haunches and sniffed the air.

  Julie reached into her pocket and pulled something out. I assumed it was a treat for Homer, b
ut in fact the treat was for me.

  “Khapsay?” She held out the puffy triangle. I opened my mouth and she popped the pastry in.

  I was seven years old. Banished to Dorje Yidam for another summer, aching with loneliness. Lama Sonam had just discovered me hiding in the dormitory. He brought me into his living quarters. We drank sweet tea and shared a platter of warm sugared khapsay. Every bite had tasted like loving-kindness . . .

  It still did. I let the dough soften on my tongue, once again taking refuge in its sweetness.

  “Let’s sit for a minute,” Julie said.

  We moved to a stone bench next to the empty fountain.

  “They’ve been at it for almost an hour,” Julie said. “Do they always chant for this long?”

  “This? This is nothing.” My voice grew bitter. “Try five hours straight with your father glaring at you from the shadows. Watching your every move.”

  Julie made a soft sound.

  “You poor thing,” she said. “No wonder you need therapy.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “Low blow.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  Julie turned her head to look at me.

  “What is going on, Ten?”

  I opened my mouth. Closed it again.

  What could I say? That I was sure someone was after me, but I didn’t know who or why? Or even scarier . . . if? That I wasn’t sure if Julie and I were, in fact, okay? That I felt less and less worthy of love?

  I settled for the only truth I felt comfortable sharing.

  “I’m seeing Eric on Wednesday.” I shrugged. “I guess it’s official. I’m a hot mess.”

  Over by the trees, Homer inched forward, head lowered to the ground. He was using his nose to sniff and push at the soft dirt. With his blocky body and small, wide-set ears, he resembled a rooting pig.

  Julie’s voice was fierce in the darkness. “I don’t care if you’re a mess. Who isn’t? It’s the people who don’t know they’re a mess that scare me.”

  I reached for her hand and gave it a light squeeze. It wasn’t much but it was the best I could do.