No Footprints

by Susan Dunlap

  I headed through the courtyard into the building. The zendo—meditation hall—on the ground floor was dark. I hurried upstairs and found Leo—Garson-roshi, the abbot—sitting cross-legged in his room, waiting for me.

  Leo might have been sitting zazen there on his futon. His legs were crossed in full lotus, a position of torture for most Westerners, except for those who’d grown used to it over years of facing the wall. But he wasn’t turned to the wall now. He was indicating a teapot.

  I nodded, lit the burner under a pan of water, and when the bubbles almost—but not quite—danced, I poured it into the black iron pot on the tray in front of him, as I had done countless times since I’d become his assistant. The little black pot was old and rounded on the bottom and I had to hold the handle to the side and brace it just so to keep from sending the boiling water over the floor and him. It took all my concentration, which was exactly the point. Other times I’d grumbled silently, but tonight I was thankful to be pulled into this bubble of calm, doing this one small manageable task, saving one person from scalding. As he intended.

  I turned off the burner, steadied the pot, and sat on a zafu, a black disc of a cushion, across from him. "How’d you know?”

  "Your brother called.”

  Mike! You were looking out for me, like always. Even if—

  He looked across at me. "How are you?”

  In a formal Zen interview, dokusan, this question sparks an instant response. How are you? Who are you? What are you? What are you this very instant without past or future, just now? But this time I replied to it as the query of a friend. "I don’t know.”

  "'Don’t know’ is a high state.” He was answering as the Zen master. He meant not knowing is not basing your reaction on past, on future, on assumptions. Not assuming. It’s about being poised to move in any direction. Not knowing is reality.

  But still there was a question in his voice.

  "I keep picturing her jumping. She’d’ve done it if I hadn’t—I see her looking at me and then . . . ”

  "Picturing. An assumption.”

  I flinched, then admitted. "Yeah, pretending I know.”

  He poured tea into our small ceramic mugs. It was a task I, the assistant—jisha—should have done. It was a sign of his concern. I wanted to pick up the mug and drink down his caring, but it was too soon, the tea would scald my tongue, the mug burn my fingers. I put my hand over the cup, feeling the steam. Suddenly, everything in this small, bare room—the futon on the floor, the unpainted wood dresser, the book turned face down on the floor, the teapot, Leo in his sweatshirt and pants, the smudge of dirt on the sole of his left foot, the cool air on my neck, the grind of the bus at the corner, the scent of the tea, Leo himself—every bit of it was alive, unique, mine, too valuable to give up.

  "After I pulled her back, she knocked me down hard, banged my head. Then she left her cute red jacket and vanished. Why?”

  I was expecting a quote from some ancient Zen sutra. What he said was, "If you’re going to disappear, best not to wear red.”

  Huh?

  "Where are you now?”

  "What?”

  He sipped the hot tea, put down the cup, and said nothing. He was telling me—no, waiting for me to realize—that I wasn’t operating in the now. Now? "All right.” I took a sip of my tea, using the movement to focus, to let go of imagining and its seductions, of the theories I wanted to try out. "Now,” I said, "I know nothing about her except that she left her jacket after I saved her from killing herself. I can only speculate—”

  "Or not,” Leo said.

  Despite everything I laughed. And he smiled too.

  "But if I don’t speculate how am I going to find her?”

  "Going down the wrong path isn’t necessarily progress.”

  "But I’ve got to do something. I can’t just let her—”

  "You have a message, from Jed Elliot. Your call’s at 6:00 am.”

  "Yikes. I’ve got to get to bed. But, how can I just abandon her? I have to—”

  He turned his attention to his tea and took another sip, as if to say: Words! A flurry of words!

  I put down my cup and stood up. "Dammit, that’s all I’ve got!”

  He took another sip. No reproof, no response.

  I knew he understood, but I was frustrated, baffled, exhausted.

  He lifted the pot, poured more tea in my cup, but didn’t offer me the cup. He was saying the interview wasn’t over. The choice was mine.

  But even now I could see past my feelings to the choice I needed to make. I sat down again.

  As soon as I asked the question I realized it was the one beneath all the swirl. I said, "What is death?”

  "What is life?” He finished his cup.

  It wasn’t, I realized, a question. It was the answer.

  5

  She’s not on the bridge now. She doesn’t know where she is, isn’t thinking about that, isn’t thinking at all. The air pings silently against her face, cold, damp, alive.

  "I’m alive. Alive!” It’s too stunning for speech. She rides on, feeling her feet against the pedals, the burn of freedom in her thighs. She looks up through the tall trees—Golden Gate Park!—at the dark sky. It’s wonderful! She wants to ride forever in the wordless freedom.

  The woman who pulled her back: How can she ever repay her? She eases off on the pedals, lets the bike roll to a stop. "I didn’t even thank her! I’m alive; I’m alive!”

  She sees the red-haired woman lying on the walkway, remembers smacking her down there. Tears burst from her eyes. She’s shaking so hard she has to stop the bike. "How could I do that? She gave me my life!”

  Suddenly it’s vital to get back, to thank her and thank her and thank her. Frantically she looks around, trying to remember how she got here, but the moments since the stranger pulled her back over the rail have been disconnected. There is no "route to here,” there’s just "here.”

  Headlights break the fog. Police? She can’t deal with police. She swings onto the bike and heads over the grass into the bushes. Be careful. You don’t know who’s in there! She laughs out loud. She should be dead—how can she worry about guys smoking hash in the bushes?

  The vehicle slows, stops, starts up again. The fog sucks it in.

  It’s enough to break her sense of freedom. She’s alive, yes, but nothing’s changed. She made her deal; she still has to pay.

  But not yet. She gets back on the bike and rides into the fog.

  6

  What is life? When I sat zazen in my room before going to bed I wasn’t pondering the question, but it was in the back of my mind. I went to sleep with it on my mind. But I found myself in my dream, falling, falling, waiting to hit the water, crashing into it so hard it startled me awake momentarily. Each time I jolted awake, I checked my phone. As if its ring wouldn’t have woken me! It was too early for Mike’s call, but that didn’t deter me the next time I woke. Never have I been so grateful for the alarm at five in the morning. I was sweating and freezing and very glad for the 6:00 am call. Late as it was, I had only ten minutes for zazen—like peering into a familiar room you can’t take a seat in—but I was thankful for that focus on reality.

  When I got to the set at the high point of Dolores Street—another location I had scouted—I stopped at the lunch wagon to pick up coffee and eye my phone again, as if to conjure up his message.

  With its wide grassy center divider of glorious tall, fat palm trees and its lovingly restored Victorians and Edwardians, Dolores Street is all San Francisco. The original white stucco mission church there, built in 1776, still stands open to the public, with its tiny graveyard peopled by the Miwok, Spanish, and Irish dead of long ago. Three blocks east, Mission Street is still the heart of the city’s traditional Hispanic neighborhood. I’d suggested it to Jed Elliot, the second unit director, talked up its crowded sidewalks, dotted by taquerias and women in bright flowered print skirts grilling tacos to sell from their carts—ones we could mock up and send flying in the car gag.
I’d carried on about the old bars with signs above the door: Open at 6:00 am, and ones in the window: Ladies Welcome.

  I’d weighed the local color against the amount of traffic and the hassle of getting the city to block it off, and also dangers like light posts I might hit and end up hiking the company’s insurance. And then there were the unavoidable bursts of noise from customers at those stands, laundromats and early opening-time bars. With delivery trucks sure to try sneaking through the roadblocks, the potential for interruptions was impressive. But in the interval between my eyeballing the site, then contacting the city and starting the search for each of the property owners likely to be involved, our main backer’d gone belly-up.

  Still, I’d called the city liaison to stall, figuring to keep the faith with a project I tried not to believe was headed nowhere. When suddenly, a new group of backers leapt up—not as reliable as the first guy, but with a connection to a big money couple in the city—and the word again was Go. But we had to be gone by Thursday, i.e., three short days from now.

  Oh, and our block of Mission had been nabbed for a church fair.

  Then I’d spotted the peak of the hill at Dolores and 21st. I’d pictured myself driving up, hitting the turn so fast it’d look as if I was about to roll the car—not just over but all the way down to 24th Street.

  Who could not be hooked?

  Here, blocking off the incoming streets wasn’t a problem. But waking the neighbors sure was. We’d had to drive the trucks in before dark and park them overnight, blocking the wheels for some of them on the steep streets. Plus, we’d hired a couple of off-duty cops, not only for fear of our trucks being ripped off by one of the pro gangs and halfway to L.A. by now, but to keep amateur boosters from clanking and smashing and waking the neighbors, thus making our next request for a permit lots harder. It’d been such a hassle I half-wished I’d just hunted up Declan Serrano at the cop shop and paid off. But we had an arrangement with the city, one I wasn’t about to screw up by aligning myself with the boss of the Mission district (and beyond).

  Even so, rerouting traffic doesn’t make you—much less the city—popular with the citizenry. We had an hour, two at best, to block out the action before police would close us down. Tomorrow we’d do the take. As I crossed the barricade, I couldn’t help but smile to finally see the crane and dolly in place and the old Honda sitting ready for its moment of stardom.

  Thoughts—just thoughts! as Leo would remind me—of the woman on the bridge kept tugging. I was glad to have the necessity of the now to push them aside.

  Jed Elliot, my favorite second unit director, was running this stunt operation. His normal mode was three double-caffs tight: Mr. Perfectionism. That’s what you want from the person responsible for the final word on the safety of the movie stunts. He was used to giving orders and having young assistants jump. But now he was snout-to-snout with a fellow I’d never seen. Jed had faced down the city liaison and screamed at a first unit director who could’ve fired him, but this guy had him on his heels. Compared to this lunatic Jed was Mr. Calm. This guy was bouncing foot to foot, arms flying, head in Jed’s face as if there was any chance of Jed or anyone else in the Mission failing to hear his low opinion of Jed’s operating plan, personnel choices, and all-around competence, as illustrated by the ranter’s not having been notified of today’s set-up here.

  There was no way Jed could stop the guy. At six in the morning! At this site I’d busted my butt to set up!

  Only money could create such a scene. Was he one of the new backers? It didn’t matter who he was, because in a minute, blinds in Victorians were going to snap up, neighbors were going to glare, and we’d be toast.

  I could not let that happen, backer or no.

  I strode over. "Hey, Jed. That the car?”

  "What? Yeah.” Quickly, he added, "You met Macomber Dale?”

  "Mac,” he snapped. Seizing the moment, Jed moved off.

  "Darcy Lott.”

  "You’re the stunt driver?”

  "I am. And you’re—”

  "The producer.”

  The producer! Big leap from backer to the producer. Was that truth or self-promotion? I’d have to find out, pronto.

  For the moment, I flashed a smile at the newborn producer, gave his hand a squeeze and release, and called to Jed. "How’re we on time?”

  "You can finish your coffee and do the check, both.”

  This time my smile was genuine. With a stunt car, particularly one I’m going to be close to rolling at the top of the hill, checking it out involves a lot more than lifting the hood.

  I nodded a "so long” to Macomber. For all the good it did.

  He kept pace with me.

  I picked up speed but the hint was lost on him. I’d intended to rescue Jed, but at this rate I’d soon be screaming myself. I put my cup on the car roof and turned.

  He looked at me challengingly. "I know cars. I have an old Studebaker I rebuilt from—”

  "Hey!” I’m not at my most gracious at this hour of the morning.

  "I can—”

  I took a breath and gave him an easy exit. "Go away or I’ll run you over. It’ll make a great shot.”

  "Listen, I’m not some gofer here. Practically, this whole movie’s coming out of my pocket. I can—”

  "No, you can’t! If you’re planning to hang over my shoulder, you can’t. You can force Jed to waste time hunting up another driver, but you’re not going to get anyone as good, and all that time you’ll be paying all these people, plus the city—out of your pocket. Or—” The set had come to a standstill. Everyone, including Jed, was gawking—"you can leave me to do my job. Your choice.” I needed to let him save face. I needed to calm things—

  But I wasn’t calming things. I was glaring at the guy, virtually snarling, "Your investment.”

  "Yeah, my investment! Hey, Elliot, why you got all these jokers standing around like it’s free entertainment time here.” He glowered. Jed was staring, shocked at my outburst. So was I. Now all I could do was to shut my mouth.

  The car was a Honda, an old model I knew pretty well. I’d be riding the slide at the corner, throwing a 90, a seriously tarted-up left-hand turn. I lifted the hood, and stared down while I felt the throbbing in my chest, the clenching in my neck and shoulders, as I made myself stop and focus on them. There’s no upside to pissing off the producer. Sets him out to get you, puts the rest of the crew on edge, and gives the director second thoughts about hiring you again. For me, with ambitions to be second unit director myself, I’d basically screwed myself. If, that is, this guy was more than a blowhard.

  I checked the tires, the suspension, got in, and started the engine. All good. I shifted into first, let out the clutch. This was only the prep, though. Tomorrow I’d be gunning it, shifting to second, ramming the emergency brake to create the skid and squeal, then giving the wheel a slight pull to create the 90. Spin it too hard—easy to do—and I’d find myself in a full 180 shooting back down Dolores on the wrong side of the street.

  But I wouldn’t spin too hard. It was a simple, basic gag. Driving a low, wide Honda Civic’s like riding a frog.

  I circled the block, feeling the gear knob in my palm, sensing the point when the clutch released, seeing how fast I could take a corner without squealing. By the time I eased back to the start mark I felt like myself again.

  Macomber Dale pulled open the passenger door and plopped himself in, primed for battle.

  I just laughed. "What’re you doing?”

  "Auditing my investment.”

  "Good you’re sitting, ’cause you’re going to be bored to death.”

  "Oh, no, not me.”

  Outside the camera crew was adjusting the tracks for the dolly camera that would parallel the action. My first run would be almost slo-mo, that camera chugging beside me. There was another on the sidewalk near the corner hidden behind a plant and an overhead at the corner to get the spin, plus one mounted on the dashboard giving the driver’s-eye view. After those were in
the can we’d set up the speed shot, cameras in place to catch the car vrooming around the corner, smacking a flower or taco or fruit stand and screeching off. The whole sequence would be woven into shots of the actress in the driver’s seat pretending to drive her unmoving car.

  I turned off the engine.

  Dale shot me a look. "What’re you doing?”

  "Waiting.”

  "Why?”

  "That’s what movie making is. For me. You, you can leave any time.”

  But he didn’t. He settled back against the window and said, "So, just how long’ve you been a stunt girl?”

  I filed away the "girl.” "Professionally? Since college.”

  "You been doing car tricks all that time?”

  Car tricks? Girl? Did the guy think I’d never been goaded? Me, with three older brothers? Me, who’d spent twenty years in a testosterone job. I wasn’t going to lose it again. Let him try. "I’ve done this, high falls, burn work. You have to have the whole package.”

  "Just what is your package?”

  The camera slid back three yards and Jed signaled me forward. Except for momentary glee at the end of a saved gag, he always looked like a desiccated lemon worried about life on the compost heap. But now he seemed more unnerved than normal and the cause of that distress was Macomber here in the car with me. Jed was hoping for peace, hoping I’d get that. I did.

  I eased off the clutch so smoothly we were halfway there before we felt the car moving.

  "How’s this baby been modified?”

  "Shop in Berkeley.”

  He started to reply and caught himself.

  "You done driving like in Matrix? You pancaked cars?”

  The camera on the dolly slid forward. I peered around the dashboard mount that would give the driver’s-eye view, and followed.

  "How many bones you break?”

  Where did this guy come from? He was like ultimate groupie meets Mr. Snide! Money was tight, but . . .