On the way out, Dusty told an employee that the directive for cremation was obviously a mistake because her mother was terrified of fire. (A lie.) Obediently cowed by celebrity, the gentleman apologized and changed it on the spot. She said she’d call soon to make arrangements for Reina’s ground burial, reconfirming there were to be no services or witnesses, at the deceased’s request. (A lie.)
Then she upgraded the coffin to the most expensive, the one made of steel, because she wanted the lifelong claustrophobe sealed in tight for as much of eternity as could be guaranteed. Maybe you could still scream in the afterlife. Who knew? God was full of surprises.
—
Tristen used to walk, hitch, bus, and Lyft himself around town. He biked and skateboarded for a while too but that got old. Then, for his birthday, Jeremy bought him driving lessons and a new car. (Tristen didn’t want to be anyone’s sugar baby but accepted the gift as a goof.) He thought it’d be funny to show up at Mom’s or Dad’s in some doofussy electronic ride.
They drove to the DMV in a brand-new fire-engine-red Honda CR-Z. He passed all the tests. The whole deal made him think of Nikki Catsouras; he had fantasies of himself on a toll road, beheaded. The lulzy image cracked him up.
On the way home, they listened to Sirius. (The car came with it.) A man was talking about how he treated his sex addiction by perfecting the technique of “masturbating without thought.” That way, he avoided the trap of “cheating” on his girlfriend. “I let thoughts of other women come,” he said, “but don’t stay with them, don’t ‘own’ them. They’re just clouds.”
Tristen laughed behind the wheel until he choked.
—
He didn’t have a clue how or why he’d bonded with the runic couple from Plummer Park. Bonded with the hippie girl, anyway. She was actually thirty-five.
They’d really only just begun a conversation when the friend that Jeremy was meeting about the surrogate came along and he had to run. Devi asked for his email and he thought that would be the end of it, so it was a surprise when he heard from her. He invited them to an old haunt on Chautauqua, a quiet place for an early supper, and was delighted when she agreed. He found himself thinking it would be nice if she came without her cohort, and wondered what that was about.
She had an aggressively peculiar, somewhat archaic manner of speaking that both confounded and charmed. What was it about her — about both of them, really — that spellbound? It dawned on him that he was attracted to Devi physically. That occasionally happened with women; once or twice he’d even followed through, to mixed results. He wrote about the encounters in his journal, under the chapter heading “Miss Adventures & Other Ms.-haps.”
“We were interrupted in the park,” she was saying. “You didn’t think you’d hear from me again, did you.”
“That’s true. I didn’t.”
“If you had the energy — if you cultivated what you already have—you probably would have known we were fated to meet.”
“O-kay,” he drawled, sweetnaturedly.
“You might even have known that this restaurant happens to be very close to where my teacher and I are staying.”
“Interesting! And who is your teacher?”
“My guru!” she said, as if he were being silly. “My ‘Sir.’”
“And what does he teach?” he asked, playing a little game of pretend that the Scotsman wasn’t present.
“How to cultivate energy.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I’d very much like to meet him.”
“I think that can be arranged. He’s right here at this table.”
“I had a vague suspicion,” said Jeremy, smiling at the “Sir.” It was just the kind of bizarre back-and-forth he craved. He’d had his share of exotic encounters, back in his salad days.
“My name is Devi.”
“I know that!”
“My teacher says it is of utmost importance to state one’s name before one speaks… of certain things.”
The oversized gentleman was eating, which seemed to be his favorite (perhaps only) diversion. Using a tiny fork that looked positively dollhouse-scale in his hands — mitts so large, swollen, and slow-moving they reminded Jeremy of Mickey Mouse’s gloves in the Macy’s parade — he was daintily in the midst of removing clams from their shells. There was numinous glee in the extraction; the outré smile of a mystic never left him. He began to wonder if the fellow was retarded and the girl possibly dangerous. He decided he didn’t give a shit. It was all too deliciously outlandish and intriguing.
“I’ve been traveling with Sir for seven years now. My daughter would be entering puberty, if she had lived; more of that later. Myself, I was born and raised in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Father was a physician, Mother a housewife. I had a normal childhood, as they say. My single hobby was guitar. Laura Nyro was my favorite — I was a precocious student of the sixties! I was absolutely possessed by her ‘Wedding Bell Blues.’ I was all about the bells! (More of that later too.) I was extremely self-disciplined and drew consistently high marks. My plan was to enter medical school and join my father’s practice. I was completely devoted to him — devoted to them both.
“As I was saying, my childhood was uneventful. Nothing exceptional happened and nothing exceptional in middle school either. I never rocked the boat. I was prudent in my daily life, blessed with a cautious but cheerful disposition. On graduating twelfth grade, I was accepted to Loyola and moved to Chicago. Leaving home was hard but my parents insisted. They wanted me to have a fine education. As you may know, Loyola was a Jesuit school — I wasn’t at all religious and of course no demands were made in that regard. I was at the top of the honors list. I worked weekends in an E.R., helping the nurses as much as I was allowed. It was the happiest time of my life, until my second year of premed, when Mother died.”
Jeremy hadn’t expected that in the laundry list.
“She must have been so young!” he exclaimed, a little too eagerly. The strangeness of it all had gotten the better of him. “What happened?”
“A house fire. She was forty-five. If I’d known that her death was only the beginning of my misfortunes, I would have put a bullet through my head. But of course I didn’t know then what I know now.”
“And what do you know now?”
“That it’s the worst greed to yearn for a different destiny than what we’re given. It’s a sin, and the tragic flaw of man.”
Then just like that, her monologue ended, as if turned off at the spigot. The Scotsman stuffed his face, oblivious. Jeremy had to admit that “Sir”’s glacial uninterestedness, his not-thereness, was immensely appealing. On second thought, there seemed to be a great presence behind it.
At this time in his life, feelings of doubt concerning his own judgment pursued Jeremy with fair regularity, and it didn’t take much — say, impulsively inviting two freaks he’d met at the park to a fancy watering hole — to lead him to that most inane of philosophical questions, “Who am I?” (With its popular corollary, And what the fuck am I doing here?) Perhaps he intuited that Devi had the answer, or at least might be inclined to point him in the general direction.
She must have uncrossed a leg because Jeremy heard the tinkle — more a hollow clank — of a bell. He used its declaration to deflect a looming discomfort. “What are those all about?”