by Michael Ryan
Whatever it was, it was fine now. Neither of them stayed with Mr. Hanh more than twenty minutes, hardly enough time for a minor tune-up. When I walked in, he was in his usual place in the far corner, cross-legged on his mat next to his plaid thermos of fruit juice. He was a dead ringer for the Dalai Lama, smaller and darker, but the same glasses, the same shaved head and orange robes, and, especially, the same facial muscles that were either smiling or about to, with infinite compassion for all living creatures, twinkly-eyed, welcoming, unshockable.
I sat down facing him where one always did, on the mat in the center of the room.
“How are you today, Mr. Hanh?”
“I am breathing. And you?” This was always his answer.
“Barely breathing.” This was always mine.
“I see you are very troubled today. Great turmoil in your soul.”
“Yes.”
“You speak. I will listen.”
I took a deep breath and dumped out everything. He nodded every few seconds, apparently amused at what seemed to me the worst stuff: my untrustworthy impulses, my crashing-and-burning career, my demented adventure with Angela. I speculated that it was reading the report about Angela that had finally unnerved me, or maybe it was realizing what I had done to Doris, or Don reminding me of what Doris might do to me.
When I was finished, Mr. Hanh waited, smiling.
“This is everything?” he asked.
I said it was.
“Not so bad. Now we will breathe together.”
We did, for at least a half hour. When I opened my eyes, he was looking at me.
“You are here now?” he asked.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Going to lose what you’ve got, not get what you want. Going to lose what you’ve got, not get what you want,” he repeated a number of times. Then he clapped once. “Here is the moment,” he said. “Catch it.” He clapped again. This entertained him no end.
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “You are too hungry.”
“I’m either fantasizing, or criticizing, or regretting. I’m afraid of everything.”
“What do those statements have in common?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“I,” he said.
“I’m stuck in myself,” I admitted.
“What is humility?”
“I have no idea.”
“Freedom from self.”
“How do I get it?”
“You can’t ‘get’ it.”
“Then how does it happen?”
“You must be broken. There must be no choice.”
“I think I’m falling apart,” I said.
“Very good,” Mr. Hanh said. “But you are resisting it. In the resistance is the pain.”
“I’m afraid,” I repeated.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to be insane. Or destitute. Or alone.”
“Going to lose what you’ve got, not get what you want. Are you afraid right now? What is going to hurt you?”
“Doris.”
“I don’t see anyone here but us.”
“I want Angela.”
“Have a fruit juice instead,” he smiled and poured me a little plastic cupful.
I drank a sip.
“It tastes very good, doesn’t it?”
I said it did.
“It’s delicious, is it not?”
I admitted it was.
“Physical pleasure. It is lovely. What weather we’re having. Sunny but mild. You have enough to eat today. A place to sleep. Your health is excellent, yes? No problems. Mindfulness is all you lack. We are like children. Something shiny dances in front of us and we want it. Perhaps we get it so we are fooled into thinking we can get the next shiny thing and the next and the next. Hunger is infinite. It is eating you. Your hunger is not yours, Robert. You are its.”
“I can’t stop it,” I said.
“Of course you can. But it requires humility. Breathe. Be here now. There is nothing else. Bring reality to mind, bring mind to reality. Mindfulness. Stay in the moment.”
“Should I perform tomorrow night?”
“Will you enjoy yourself?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t know either. Are there others involved?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then be kind to them. Don’t worry about yourself.”
“What if I have a nervous breakdown on stage?”
“Then that is what happens.”
“What if I cancel?”
“Then that is what happens. Ask the questions without using I.”
“They don’t make sense.”
“Exactly.”
“Who can imagine the world without himself in it?”
“On the contrary, to be fully in it, but only a teeny teeny part of it.” He pinched the air in front of his nose to show how small I was. “You are no different from anyone else, Robert. The two people who visited me before you are no different from you. I am no different from you. We only appear different from one another. I have all of your fears and desires. They pass through me. I watch them. They are entertaining.”
“How do you decide whether or not to accept an invitation to lecture?”
“Very simple. I accept all invitations. I solicit none.”
“Aren’t you ever frustrated?”
“I enjoy the tricks the mind plays on us. Our heads are frightfully talkative.”
“Mine is driving me crazy.”
“Yes,” he said. “Stop listening. Or listen and be entertained.”
I actually got a glimmer of what he meant. Only a glimmer, but it was like a crack of light inside a cave.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Life is joyful,” Mr. Hanh said. “If you understand this, you will make others feel joyful also. Then you will feel it more and more yourself.”
“I will try,” I said, getting up to leave, and shaking his hand.
“Trying is precisely the wrong approach,” Mr. Hanh said, laughing. “I’m so glad you have learned nothing from me today.”
I wasn’t sure how to take this. He wasn’t being ironic. He did seem genuinely glad I had learned nothing from him.
There was a basket by the door filled with money. You paid what you wanted to pay for Mr. Hanh’s time. The perverse part of me wanted to go every day without dropping any money in the basket until he mentioned it, but this surely would have only entertained him too.
13.
When I got home I called Advantage Private Investigators, Sheed’s subcontractor that prepared the report on Angela. The secretary said that number one, they didn’t have any more information to give me, and number two, if they did they would be giving it to Mr. Sheed since they were working for him not me.
Then I locked my doors and dropped the blinds and spent the evening with Sparky and a fresh box of veggie burritos (which still tasted like mittens but not frozen mittens). I tried to sketch out a routine for the Irvine Improv that would be neither deranged nor false. I only knew one way to perform: to speak the twisted truth about my life. But I also knew a lot of jokes. And why not give myself a breather (a la Mr. Hanh)? A drop-dead performance wasn’t required every time, and I wasn’t exactly being carried off the stage on the audience’s shoulders anyway. I started writing down all the jokes I knew. They were all about sex, of course. Black comics talk about being black, women comics talk about being women, and white male comics talk about sex. But there was something behind the pattern the jokes made, something I might be able to talk about: it was surely as much about me as about the culture, since these were the jokes I loved, but, with luck, it was about the culture, too, and about other people, about something more than myself. I wouldn’t find out what it was until the moment it shaped itself on stage. If it turned out to be nothing, I’d end up standing there with my pants down and my dick in my hand. But maybe that was what I needed to quit this business and begin doing something useful: a
n old-fashioned public humiliation.
Don called at ten. He had read the file. He didn’t express much more sympathy for what he called my “infatuation” with Angela than he had at lunch, although he admitted that there must be something substantial in her to endure if in fact she had gone through both parents’ suicides and now was risking her life to rescue her troubled brother. I didn’t expect more from him than that. I didn’t expect him to see what I saw in Angela. I really couldn’t see what he saw in Francine. I never met a friend’s wife I would marry. But then I never met anybody I would marry, including, as it turned out, Doris. According to Don, Angela was just me in the mirror, in love with my own fantasy—if in fact Angela was even her real name.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The brother business,” he answered.
“What? The kidnapping? What?”
“I’m not sure. The whole story about the ransom seems fabricated. I think Francine knew somebody named Angela Chase from somewhere, maybe from UCLA or some women’s group or something. If I can figure out how to ask her about Angela without arousing her suspicion that I was asking for you, I’ll do it. If she knew I was asking her about the woman you were screwing when you stood up Doris, she’d grind me into hamburger and use me for pasta sauce.”
“But why would Sheed lie? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either. I haven’t figured out that part yet. The whole thing just doesn’t add up. How did Sheed get all that information in—what?—twenty hours? On a Sunday night when the rest of the world was asleep?”
“What do you know about Sheed anyway?”
“Not much more than you. You met him, I haven’t. I watched him win my bozo brother-in-law’s trial, which was some feat, I’ll tell you. He’s supposed to be the best. All behind the scenes now, never goes into a courtroom himself anymore. Doesn’t need to. Hates publicity, hates the press. Used to work at the White House. Likes private dinner parties with heads of state. Still gets lots of calls from political pooh-bahs for advice. He seems to know as much about power as anyone in this town, and that’s saying something.”
“Would he lie to me?”
“If he had to. Sure. But he’d call it interpreting the facts. I don’t think people like Sheed believe there is any truth. Only fallible human impressions, subject to his expert adjustment.”
This idea did not fill me with bliss. I sat there holding the phone, trying to run through the implications and possible scenarios. None of them was very clear. If Sheed was lying, I needed to find out why he was lying in order to reckon what might be in store for me—which in any case was probably not a free lunch and a foot rub.
“Did you faint?” Don asked, after a minute of my silence. “Or drop dead?”
“I dropped dead. My last words were ‘Thank you, dear Don, for recommending such a trustworthy lawyer to work in my behalf. Remind me to put my fate in your hands the next time my life depends on it.’ ”
“Only the best for you, pal.”
“So did you screw me on purpose as payback for standing you up at the wedding?”
“How was I supposed to know Sheed would do whatever it is he’s doing? If he’s doing anything. Where can I reach you tomorrow?”
I said I was going to drop off Sparky at Madge’s and head down to Orange County and he said he would call me at the Laguna Hotel. I apologized for not being able to help search for information about Angela myself, but reminded him that my computer was temporarily unavailable.
“At least it is not yet polluting Santa Monica Bay with your perverse sense of humor,” he said.
“That’s it! Tell Doris that if she throws my computer into the ocean she’ll be committing an environmental crime. She donates about $40,000 a year to the whales.”
“Look at it this way,” he said. “You only have to stay out of trouble until Friday and the week is over. And it will be your unwedding’s one-week anniversary. When Francine comes home, we’ll go shop for your anniversary present.”
“There’s nothing in Orange County but Republicans and golf courses. How could I get into trouble?”
“How could you get into trouble?” Don said. “That is funny. You’re going to kill at the Irvine Improv.”
“Great. I just don’t want to be killed.”
THE NEXT morning after I dropped Sparky at Madge’s, I headed up Lincoln Boulevard toward the entrance ramp to the 10 East that would lead me onto the 405 South to Irvine, but on an impulse turned around and drove directly to Sheed’s office. I couldn’t wait for Don. I had hardly slept. I had to have some answers.
The same guy was working the valet stand outside of Sheed’s office building.
“Buenas dias, señor!” he said enthusiastically, when he opened the Big Spender’s car door. This was going to cost me another five buck tip, even if I did remember to ask Tori to stamp the ticket, or else I’d be responsible for ruining this man’s day. I again had to give my driver’s license to the security guard before he’d unlock the elevator to Sheed’s penthouse offices. He was a black guy in his fifties with a polite smile and a hip holster with a big gun in it. Since I didn’t have an appointment, he called Tori on the house phone, and said, “I got a customer for you.”
When I stepped off the elevator, I saw her at her desk. Today’s outfit was made of some bright pink material that probably had a useful former life as a neon sign. It was so tight it looked like a sunburn. When she wanted to take it off, it would have to be removed by surgical peel.
“That was fast,” she said, as I walked toward her.
“Your elevator is usually slower?”
“Nooo,” she laughed, as if I had produced a great witticism. “I just called your house. I left you a message. I hang up and here you are.”
“What was the message?” I asked.
“Mr. Keene, our entertainment specialist, has gone over your HBO contract and is ready to meet with you. In fact, you can see him now if you want to. I think he’s available.”
“I actually came to see Sheed.”
“Oh, you can’t see Mr. Sheed. He never sees clients without an appointment. He’s booked all day. You’d be lucky to see him before next month.”
“I’ve got to see him, Tori. It’s urgent.”
“Robert,” she said, sincerely. “Really, it’s impossible. I can’t even ring him for you. He left strict instructions. I wish I could do something. I’d be fired if I disobeyed him. Do you want to write a note or something? I promise to give it to him as soon as I can.”
“Sure, thanks,” I said. She handed me a pen and a memo pad with “Folsom Sheed and Associates” in florid script embossed across the top. I wrote:
I found out something interesting about Angela’s brother: she doesn’t have one. What the hell is going on?
Robert Wilder
I folded the paper and handed it to her.
“Would you mind sealing that in an envelope?” I asked. She took one out of a drawer and licked the edge of its flap very slowly with her tongue tip, meeting my eyes as she licked, but my mind was on the note I just wrote. I had had no idea what I was going to write when the pen touched the paper, but, after I wrote it, I knew it was true. Something really weird was going on. Sheed had lied to me. I wanted him to know that I knew it. The next move was his.
I told Tori that I didn’t want to talk about my HBO contract right now, that I was going to be out of town for a few days and I would call when I got back.
“So,” she said after a pause, “guess what other message I left on your answering machine.”
“Pick up the dry cleaning and a quart of milk on the way home?”
“A comedian,” she said. “That’s all right. I like a challenge.”
“I’d like to find out what else you like,” I said. “Let me work out this problem I’ve got with Sheed. Then I’ll have more messages for you than you can handle.”
“Oh, I can handle them,” she said. “Don’t worry about that.”
I wanted
to jump over the desk into Tori Lalala. But I didn’t. I said I’d call her in a few days.
“Better not wait longer than a few days,” she said. “I never go a week without a boyfriend. I’ve got a big appetite.”
I laughed out loud at that on the elevator, but who was I to laugh? At least she knew who she was, and was unashamed of it. What was I doing even considering starting something with Tori (of the two red-ink hearts) much less saying what I had just said to her? That question was too easy to answer. But we’d have the shelf life of a leafy vegetable.
By the time the elevator doors opened onto the lobby, I remembered that yet again I hadn’t asked her to validate my parking ticket, and yet again I couldn’t bring myself to go back up there.
When I handed the parking attendant the twenty-five bucks, he said, “If you are looking for a charity, I can tell you some good ones. The guy who owns the valet concession here, he’s doing fine.”
I just smiled. He shook his head, got my car, and held the door for me. I pressed the folded fiver into his hand.
“You come back, señor. I’m always glad to see you.”
I’m sure he was. At least somebody was telling me the truth.
14.
I had three fortunately quiet days in Laguna Beach and three unfortunately quiet nights at the Irvine Improv. Opening night—Tuesday—I drew eight people. Eight. Not enough for a softball game, even if I pitched for both sides. Ken Mishima apologized before I went on, saying he had beaten the bushes telling everybody he knew not to miss my gig, but he guessed you couldn’t be off the circuit as long as I had and expect people to remember you. That was supposed to make me feel better? Oddly I didn’t care. I was exhilarated to be in front of a mic again. The last five days since I walked into the Bank of America to cash a check became funny. My life became funny. Nothing seemed like a big deal anymore. My self-concern, self-concern in general, became amusing. Even the fact that I drew an audience of eight people seemed amusing. Two retired couples from Leisure World on a double date and four lonely guys who looked like they had nobody to be with and nowhere else to go. When I picked up the mic, I said, “Hi, I’m Robert. I’m a piece of shit the universe revolves around.”
