“On our last day, Sunday, we were out by the river when we saw the tulku jogging toward the hills. In his Nikes, with his entourage, the whole deal — I’d heard that he loved to run. ‘The jogging Rinpoche.’ We saw the translator again too. (Not jogging.) My friend approached him. He put his hands on the translator’s shoulders and they spoke. I never asked him what was said.
“But the moment — the lesson — ingrained itself. And that’s the first time I’ve told that story. I guess it was a little long. Thank you for listening.”
“That was so beautiful, Michael,” said Dusty.
“Yes — lovely,” said the guest of honor, heartfelt.
Its aftereffect washed over the gathered. Following the Geshe’s lead, everyone closed their eyes in contemplation; deep sighs became a single, collective breath. The room grew quiet as a zendo.
At some point, Jeremy caught the tail end of Allegra vanishing up the kitchen stairs. The guests began talking, in low tones, about the novella-like lushness of Michael’s “fable.” Garry and Donna took bathroom breaks. The Ruschas strolled onto the sand for the night air and stars. The surf, louder with the sliding doors open, was like a raucous prayer.
The Haim and the Rodarte spoke animatedly amongst themselves. Then one of them asked, “What happened — to your ‘silent retreat’ friend? Are you still in touch?”
He cleared sadness from his throat.
“I never saw him again. For a while I got postcards, from all over the States — he was still in America, which for some reason surprised me. I thought he’d have gone back to India or Asia, even South America. Because that was always his thing — to get on a plane and go as far as humanly possible. Get way out of Dodge. Then once he got to the end of the line, go even farther—trekking, climbing… Chökyi Nyima has a brother, Mingyur — Mingyur Rinpoche. And I read that Mingyur left his monastery in Bodh Gaya a few years ago to become a wanderer. Left with no money and only the clothes on his back, told his students there wouldn’t be any way to reach him. Said he was going to do it like an old-school yogi, you know, a mendicant without fixed plans or agenda. It was kind of big news in the dharma. He wrote a farewell letter to the sangha, and when I read it I thought of that time by the river and wondered about my friend. That maybe he’d chosen that path as well.
“In his last postcard, he wrote, ‘I am almost there.’ He said — he said he’d be with his wife soon, with Meghan, which I thought was… strange. I got afraid for him. ‘I am almost there’…” The actor stared out the window, over the dark waves and their undercarriage of lambent moonlight. “It was haunting.”
“What do you think he meant?” asked Jeremy.
“I don’t know. All he said was that he was going to a place called Summerland.”
—
When he found her, she was crying in her cozy bolt-hole. (Her moodiness had distracted him all evening.) He sat on the duvet, stroking the small of her sweatered back.
“Puppy, what’s the matter?”
“Jeremy!” she snot-blathered. “Everything is so fucked …”
“What is it? What happened, pup, what’s wrong?”
“She’s seeing someone!” (Which set off a string of sobs like ugly firecrackers.) “She’s seeing someone!—”
“Who?”
“That woman Larissa! Her camera double…”
“What?”
His wheels were spinning — he couldn’t get traction.
“Dusty and I had this thing with her the night we had that party. After everyone left—”
“Really,” he said sarcastically. “I would never have guessed.”
“—I only did it because I thought it was something she wanted, that they were probably already into it — that Bunny was getting bored with just me. Oh, Jeremy!” she pled. “It was like she set it up, like she totally planned it so she could dump me! She knew what she was doing, you picked up on it, didn’t you? How they were sitting together, with everything touching?”
“Leggy, you are losing it.”
The sarcasm was gone.
“Bullshit, Jeremy! They were climbing all over each other, it was so obvious. And I don’t even know when it started or if there’s been other people! And I guess I was feeling — I’ve been feeling insecure and I guess part of me was just happy she wasn’t trying to hide it, you know, that she wanted to include me. And I know that sounds pathetic but I thought maybe it was even something she was doing to, like, try to start it up with us again.”
“Okay, and so? You all fucked each other. And so?”
“But right after, like, the next day, everything got so weird, it was like something totally changed between us, Jeremy, I can’t explain, it was so radical, like, suddenly — well, not suddenly, because the fucking bed death has kind of been going on—but it was like she just wasn’t into it anymore, with me. Into me anymore, at all… it was like the light totally went out. And Jeremy, you know how hard that was — with the baby — I was, like, suicidal and wasn’t feeling in my body and I know I was a total bitch. But then I was slowly feeling better and starting to reach out but it was just too late… and now I know it’s too late! She’s, like, completely moved on. And I was, like, wondering if she was seeing someone and then I found out it was Larissa—”
“Found out how? What’d you do, read her journal?”
“Just listen! That night we saw her at the Soho House… after you left, she came over to the booth and we talked.” She fudged the truth, but the details were the same. “She said that Bunny was going to her yoga classes, the classes she teaches, like, she’d been going a lot. Which totally didn’t make sense to me because, like, a week after we all fooled around, Bunny told me she couldn’t stand Larissa. I couldn’t even, like, bring her up. I mean, Bunny totally went out of her way to trash her. And now I see that the lies were deliberate. It was a setup…”
“Dusty went to yoga and didn’t tell you — so? She has a life, Leggy. You’re not her mother.”
“No, Jeremy, they’re sleeping together! I know—”
“Are you having your period?”
“—because I’ve been sleeping with her.”