A slight prickle of fear jabbed her. What if these local spirits, whoever they were, didn’t like her flippant attitude? Or worse yet, what if she angered her own Catholic God for playing around with other silly little gods?
She made a half-hearted attempt to appease the divine. “Please, dear God, forgive me. I know it looks like I’m worshipping false idols. I’m only trying to please Mark, and I must be polite to Kate, and yes, I’m curious about Kate’s religion, but in an academic sense, to educate myself, to expand my narrow horizons.”
She rose to walk back to the road. Suddenly, she heard a deafening noise, a savage buzz all around her, could it be a swarm of Africanized killer bees? Confused, she stared straight up into the sun drenched sky. Perhaps some Japanese developer had built a power transmission tower near this remote spot, and planned to build a luxury resort. But no electrical wires were visible overhead. And now, she was panicking. The awe of her Catholic childhood gripped her full force. As a schoolgirl, she had genuflected with reverence in front of the Host enshrined on the altar. The gloom of the Gothic nave heightened her dread as she waited in the confessional line on Saturday afternoons.
She ran pell-mell toward the Neon, scrambling over the black basalt. Her sunhat blew off, but she didn’t stop to retrieve it. Out of breath and dizzy, her heart pounding, she staggered as if intoxicated, and crumpled against the car door, blubbering incoherent half-sentences, holding her ears.
“The sound … are they bees? I can’t see any bees.”
Kate sat on the trunk of the car, surveying the rocky landscape. She smiled, heaved her solid body off the car, and enfolded the younger woman in her arms. The sound stopped.
Diane whimpered as if she were a three year old being comforted by her mother after falling off a jungle gym. Kate helped Diane sit on the ground, out of the direct sunlight, in the shadow cast by the Neon. Kate waited in silence. After ten minutes, Diane got up, woozy and wobbly, and spied the sunhat, a bright pink splash on the black lava. Never mind. Let it be left behind. She must stay on the ocean side of the road, and avoid that hot wilderness moon zone on the far side.
Mark had disappeared. The two women spotted him on the beach a hundred yards away. He waved, and they followed him, wading into the surf. The waves crashed, and eddies of salt water whirled among the rocks, the dense foam bubbling white against the black boulders. Countless smooth dark-gray pebbles lay on the beach. Diane picked up one of the stones, a four-inch ellipsis, its bland surface flecked with mica. She meant to toss it into the sea, but on a whim she slipped it into her pocket. A souvenir, a Maui stone that she could save among her mementos.
“Let’s eat,” Mark suggested when they returned to the Neon.
Diane brought out the cooler, and passed out sandwiches to her companions. She wasn’t hungry, so she took tiny bites from a fragment of a cookie. Its gummy texture and moldy smell made her queasy. She swallowed three ibuprofens, turning away so Mark wouldn’t see.
On the return ride, Kate leaned forward from the back seat, and she and Mark chatted about the acquaintances they had in common, ancient-religion locals and New Age transplants living upcountry in the highlands. Diane slumped immobile in the front seat, the conversation ebbing and flowing, faraway, as if a wall separated her from them. Her head throbbed. Once she turned to look at Kate, who smiled and patted her arm.
“You OK?” Kate asked.
Diane said, “My head is splitting, must be the sun. Sorry to be so grumpy.”
Mark kept his eyes on the road, but his sharp retort hurtled directly at Diane. “Who ever heard of the life-giving Maui sun harming anyone?”
Kate said, “It’s not uncommon for fair-skinned foreigners to be overcome by our bright sun. All in fun, we call you folks the werewolves.”
“Must you play drama queen, hon? Such a deplorable archetype,” Mark said, when they had let Kate off at her trailer.
Her headache intensified, and back at the condo, she popped several more ibuprofens, went straight to bed, and fell into a deep ten-hour sleep.
The next morning, she felt “off.” Her head was still throbbing, and she had no appetite. She got up, and went into the kitchen to brew her coffee, a morning habit Mark disapproved of. He sat on the sofa, talking to someone. After five minutes, he hung up, and said, “Hon, I told Kate we’d meet for lunch.”
“Please, Mark, I’m not up to it.”
With a faint sneer, he folded his arms across his chest. “It surprises me you’d be rude. You, who’s always so midwestern-nice.”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“I told her yes for both of us, and yes it is. Get yourself together, we leave at 11:30.”
He was right, she told herself, her behavior was bad, and she had slipped into childish whining. Her attitude had been negative even before they had left LA. But still, a little sympathy from him would have soothed her.
The coffee shop was vintage 1970’s. Dusty plants with curling brown leaves struggled to grow in cracked ceramic pots hanging from the grease-stained walls. They sat in a red vinyl booth, Mark across from the two women. Dark green duct tape covered gaping slashes in the vinyl. Orange polyurethane protruded from these fissures.
Kate devoured a grilled cheese sandwich and slurped a chocolate milk shake. Diane sipped mint tea, and nibbled on plain pita bread.
Kate turned to Diane and grinned. “I’ve got something to tell you, I didn’t tell you yesterday because I didn’t think you could handle it. I took you to a vortex. It’s a place where our gods talk with their favorites through a hole in the heavens.”
Diane glanced at Mark, who was frowning and picking at an alfalfa sprout salad.
Kate continued her explanation. “Rich Americans fly here and pay me thousands of dollars to show them the sacred places. I don’t guarantee anything. They often get upset because nothing happens.”
She turned to Diane again. “You, my dear, have a true spiritual gift, our gods singled you out to talk to you. Aloha, and welcome to our land.”
She reached out her plump hand and patted Diane’s arm.
Mark grimaced. He stretched over the table and lightly stroked Diane’s cheek. “Hon, you are one in a million. I’m so happy that you finally get what Spirit is all about.”
Diane did not respond. Her chaotic thoughts escalated into a mute diatribe against Mark. See, you jerk, I’m more spiritually advanced than you, even if I don’t follow your goofy Age of Aquarius rules. I’m positive you sweet-talked Kate, the way you charm me and all your patients and every woman you meet, and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you’ll stiff her for her fee. I feel for Kate, she’s an excellent guide, but I certainly won’t offer to pay her anything.
That afternoon, Diane drew the Venetian blinds in the condominium, and shooed Mark away. “I don’t want to spoil your vacation. But I told you I’m not feeling well.”
Mark glowered. Without explanation, he left. Even though she felt abandoned when she heard the door close, still, his absence was a relief. Now she could sink into silence.
Toward evening Kate’s narrative shattered like a meteor into Diane’s mind. There was a dark undercurrent to all religions. They had a way of turning suddenly and attacking a person’s mask of sanity. She felt hot, flushed, unhinged. She tiptoed unsteadily into the bathroom to examine her face in the mirror. The color was a rosy red.
She splashed cold water over her face. The cool wet helped a little. This holiday was a disaster, worse even than her original forebodings. What was Mark up to? Suppose he and Kate were plotting against her, pulling off an elaborate hoax, snickering at her reactions? But her sixth sense told her that Kate would never participate in such a prank. Moreover, what if she was right about these local gods? They might decide to pick up and carry their favorites off to the other side. She stumbled back to bed. She thought of calling Angela, but the long-distance charge for the condo phone was prohibitive.
She couldn’t recall when Mark returned. When she awoke the next day, still
with a terrible headache, he was already dressed, preparing to go out. Sleepily she informed him she was not up to sightseeing. He took off, slamming the door behind him, and when he returned some thirteen hours later, he threw sheets and pillows and a blanket on the sofa, and bedded down there.
The remaining four days on Maui felt like exile. These were not the luxurious quarters of Bonaparte on Elba, but at least there were clean quiet rooms with blinds to keep out the sunlight. The wordless air vibrated with resentment. Mark repeated the pattern of going off alone, returning near midnight, and sleeping on the sofa. She laid down Bleak House, as the lengthy tale of a Chancery lawsuit was too convoluted for her to follow in her present befuddled state. Another novel was tucked inside her suitcase, The Green Knight, by Iris Murdoch. Already in the first chapters the plot proved bizarre, but no more so than the plot of her own real life stranded on this sinister island. Then again, she was stuck with the pedestrian name Diane. Why couldn’t her mother have named her something chichi bohemian like Aleph or Moy? Several of her LA acquaintances had gone to court and changed their names, part of the process of “self-actualization,” but she wondered whether this wasn’t a kind of pretentious cheating. Each night she walked to the strip mall, ate at the vegetarian restaurant, and treated herself to a double-dip chocolate ice cream cone, but otherwise she stayed inside.
The final night, while packing suitcases, Mark confronted her, his controlled voice more intimidating than any yelling match could ever be.
“What’s wrong with you? Epstein-Barr? Early menopause? I see women like you all the time in my practice. But I certainly would never be in a relationship with them.”
“I know, something is wrong. I don’t feel like myself.”
“You should see a physician, have a complete battery of tests. You’re not the same woman you were when I first met you. You were a sexy babe. But you’ve changed into a drooping bore.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t put my finger on it. I’m sure I’ll be OK when we get back to LA.”
“I’m your lover, not your therapist. Get some help. I can’t take it anymore.”
There was nothing to say in reply.
They were uncommunicative after that. At the airport, the agent changed their seats so that they sat apart, he at the front, she at the back of the plane on the five hour flight. She did not see him deplane. Downstairs at the baggage claim, he was standing at the far end of the conveyer belt, chatting with a model-thin, tan, blonde woman, who pointed out a Globe-Trotter suitcase, which he retrieved from the conveyor belt. He stacked it together with his own suitcase on a luggage cart. Laughing, they walked off together. Wilting with fatigue, Diane caught the shuttle bus alone back to her apartment.
Thereafter, Mark vanished, as if their entire seven-month love affair had been a fictive dream. She was too exhausted to care.
Now, Diane’s funk deepened. She barely made it through her busy days. Every hour was crammed with the stop-and-go commute on the 10 Freeway, the nonstop rush of her job duties, frantic trips to Vons, to the manicurist, to the yoga studio, to the Jiffy Lube oil-change kiosk. She collapsed into bed every night at nine o’clock, exhausted. On the weekends, she had no energy to pursue her former activities: standing in line to see the latest foreign film at the Nuart, meeting her girlfriends for cappuccinos at the Coffee Bean, shopping the sales in the Montana Avenue boutiques for clingy silk dresses and costume jewelry.
She cancelled the standing appointment with Adolphe, her Melrose Avenue hairdresser. Her hair was growing in gray, and fell in a disheveled mass to her shoulders. She no longer visited the salon Precious Nails, where Lynn, a subdued Vietnamese woman, had buffed and polished her fingernails for the past fifteen years. She stopped going to yoga class. Her posture slumped, and flab formed around her waist and hips. New wrinkles emerged around her mouth. Loose folds developed in her once unlined neck, and brown spots appeared on the skin on the tops of her hands. She avoided any reflecting surface, bathroom mirrors and plate glass windows, and she removed the compact magnifying makeup mirror from her purse.
Messages piled up on her home answering machine. She checked them, but deleted them impatiently without returning the calls. Several of the calls were from Angela, but she never called her friend back. She had been proud of the cleanliness of her apartment, but now dirty dishes moldered in the sink and a layer of dust accumulated on the furniture. Dirty clothes spilled over the sides of the plastic hamper in her laundry closet. A heap of unopened mail cluttered a corner of the living room. She managed to open the bills, and perfunctorily pay them. An outsized Visa bill listing Maui expenses roused her to a mini tantrum. She pounded the table as she wrote out the check. Mark was a self-absorbed jerk, no, worse than that, a nasty beast. The anger soon subsided, and she hardly thought about him.
Once Gloria, who worked on a different floor, stopped by Diane’s cubicle. All was wonderful in Gloria’s world. She had finally met her soul mate in, of all places, an AA meeting, and they were moving in together. He was sixty, a character actor whose face everyone instantly recognized, though he wasn’t a name. A lot of money in those bit parts, she was amazed to discover. He was a nice guy, many years married and now a widower, skilled in the art of pleasing and protecting a woman.
On a Saturday night in early September, Diane reclined on the chenille sofa in her apartment. Her loneliness was palpable, like an icy bottomless black hole in the center of her gut. The atmosphere was hushed, silent, eerie from the fog. The Maui stone rested on the glass of the coffee table. She liked the Zen look of it, and its smooth gray texture.
As if prompted by a hypnotist, she got up, and walked into her spare room. Propped against the wall were stacks of cardboard moving boxes crammed with books from college. Preposterous, that she still had them. Her nebulous plan had been to buy bookcases to display them, but she had never gotten around to the project. She ripped off the masking tape that secured one of the boxes. The topmost volume was a scholarly tract titled Origins of the Kabbalah. As she opened the yellow pages, the binding split. The dust caused her to sneeze.
She walked back to the front room, and switched on a floor lamp with a Tiffany shade placed near the sofa. She sat down and opened the book. How puzzling was the explanation of zimzum, the contraction of the Deity before His creation. There were notations in the margins. The handwriting was her own. That other younger self materialized from the ether. The girl reclined, propped up on pillows on a plain single bed, in a tiny room on the second floor of a brick college dormitory in central Illinois, studying by the light of a goose-neck lamp. All was hushed. A north wind was blowing. The limbs of a massive oak tree outside the window creaked and groaned. Drifting snow had covered the window panes. The bells of Old Main campanile struck three.
Diane’s eyelids fluttered and closed. The passage was too difficult. She had lost the scholarly discipline of that younger self. With her fingertips she traced the flower pattern of the chenille fabric. She laid the book down, turned out the lamp, and fell asleep.
Sometime later, she awoke with a start. Delicate moonlight etched shadows around the baroque carvings of the curio cabinet in the corner. On the coffee table, the stone glimmered and pulsed, phosphorescing with a bluish glow, and Hebrew script blazed on its surface. In some strange way she recollected the meaning, memorized by that earnest young female figure in a comparative religion class. The letters spelled out Ein Sof. The Irreducible Essence of God.
She reached over and touched the rock. It was hot, as if it had been steaming on an ancient altar over a sacrificial fire. As she studied it, she felt wobbly. A faint electrical whirring filled the room. It was muted, as if miles away, like the murmur in a conch shell, the illusion of a feeble echo of oceanic surf trapped inside the chamber of the shell. The whirring now crescendoed, full throttle, into the angry roar of a giant hive of bees.
Diane fumbled to switch on the lamp. The buzzing ceased abruptly, as if the light had chased it back into the fog-muffled night. The sto
ne appeared plain, gray, unprepossessing. She touched its surface. It was cool, as cool as it was supposed to be, a normal gray rock.
What were the consequences of her innocent theft? She had purloined a rock from the Maui gods who surely had no power outside their remote island. How did these spirits know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? The Greek gods had punished Prometheus for stealing an ember. What sentence would they pass on her? Her head felt winched by a vise. With an effort she got to her feet, shambled into her small bedroom, and slipped into bed.
She awakened early. She padded in cotton socks into the front room and turned the handle of one of the casement windows. Moist fog swirled into the room. She pulled on jeans and a windbreaker. She picked up the stone, slipped it into the pocket of the windbreaker and walked down to the street. It felt good to breathe in the fresh, cold, salty air. At this hour, the entire world was enveloped by fog, and all was deserted, chilly, damp. She walked the twenty minutes to the ocean, meeting only one other person, a tall man who strode with a determined military bearing along the sidewalk at the edge of the beach.
She sat in the cold, wet sand, listening to the crash of the waves. A lone bombardier pelican swooped down to spear a fish. She took out the rock, and studied its contours. It was frigid to her touch. She placed her tongue on it and tasted salt. Salt, a primordial substance, the deep waters over which God had hovered, speaking the creation of the world.
What should she do with this object? Should she hurl it back into the ocean? And if so, which ocean? According to the globe of the world, the Pacific washed up on both the shores of California and of Maui. But what if the spirits were punctilious and exacting? A place for every sacred thing, and every sacred thing in its place. Should she mail it back to Kate, with an apology and a note as to where it belonged? But she did not know Kate’s last name or address. Should she take a plane to Maui and replace the stone in the ocean? No answer came from the pounding surf, from the raucous cries of seagulls, from the drone of a jet overhead.
Curious Affairs Page 2
