Brooke unglued herself from the dressing table and, with a last toss of her head, as if the mirror had insulted her in some way that was beneath her attention, headed out of her bedroom grabbing the list of new names. She was worried about the late arrival of her house guest Crystal Bukowski. Yes, she was the daughter of old Dr Bukowski, now dead it turned out, and they had met three weeks ago in New York at a fascinating gathering given by some people very close to the Dalai Lama.
What a coincidence, she would have said in the old days, but now she only used the S words, serendipity and synchronicity. Crystal’s mother, her hostess had told her, had been one of her father’s patients who had become accidentally pregnant and then, realizing that he wasn’t going to leave his family but was prepared to pay her not to ruin his practice, she had joined a series of weird cults, taking little Crystal with her.
Crystal was just emerging from a very difficult romance with a Frenchman and Brooke already felt protective towards her, although there was going to be an ugly gap on Adam’s right if she didn’t turn up soon. Still, Crystal had a kind of honorary familial status due to being Dr Bukowski’s daughter. If not a black servant, he was at least a Jewish employee, most of whose family had been wiped out in concentration camps, and on whom she had showered vast sums of money during seven years of analysis.
They’d had to look long and hard at the pleasure she got from paying for missed sessions. It had enabled her to spend money in two places at the same time; it all tied in with having two homes. Really, he had helped her a lot, but in those days she had been so self-obsessed; now she was working for the world. She didn’t regret the years with Dr Bukowski. ‘You have to have your feet on the ground to touch the sky,’ as Kenneth said.
* * *
Crystal Bukowski was in fact on board a delayed flight from New York and had no chance of making it to Brooke’s dinner. Not that she was going to California to hang out with Brooke, but to attend the Dzogchen meditation retreat at the Esalen Institute.
She knew she was headed for the right place when she started fantasizing about sliding a chainsaw through the thick trunk of her neighbour’s neck. With a face of unfathomable stupidity which could only have emerged from the most deeply inbred valleys of Kentucky, perfected by generations of blood feuds and wood alcohol, with a haircut that had just come out of a Marine shearing shop, and a pair of jeans so tight they offered every hope that he would be the last of his line, this hillbilly from hell had writhed in his seat, scratched his balls and tugged at his trousers from the moment the plane left New York. At other times she might have taken refuge in a pair of headphones and a cool chanting tape, but he nudged her with his elbow each time he had a scratch, and now she was obsessed.
What was her anger telling her? That she was feeling hostile towards men right now? That she wanted to scratch her own genitals? That she was feeling dumb about the way things had turned out with Jean-Paul? That she was guilty about being so restless, about burning up her father’s surprise legacy to continue her mother’s soul-searching migrations? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So her mind was projecting again — left to its own devices that was pretty much all it ever did — but she was so bored with catching herself out, she just wanted to go with the aggression today, give in to the hatred she felt for the Caliban beside her.
Crystal closed her eyes and breathed deeply, concentrating her attention on her hara, her navel chakra.
She tried to quiet the part of her mind that kept flashing little analytic mirrors. It had been bad enough having an absent father who had been an analyst without falling for a French philosopher who was training to become one.
Last month she had persuaded Jean-Paul to take psychedelics with her in the wilderness, figuring he needed a rocket launch to lift him into the dimensions beyond his busy intellect. Psychedelics cut through the analytic tic which was currently wasting her time, and took her into the zone where meaning was immanent, tangible and numinous. Unfortunately the mescalin and the magic mushrooms seemed to have the opposite effect on Jean-Paul.
The worst part was what had happened afterwards. Somewhere below the plane Jean-Paul was galloping across the wastes of a North Dakota reservation pretending to be a Lakoda brave, something even the Lakoda had trouble doing. He was living in one of those Third World rubbish dumps which the Federal government had offered the Native Americans, like a mugger tossing a subway token at his bleeding victim. He had even written to the passport authorities in France to say that he wanted to change his name to Little Elk. They had not complied.
It was no use blaming their guide, Robert, he was just a suburban kid from Sausalito who thought he was the reincarnation of a Hopi elder. In any case he said that the Hopis came ‘originally’ from Tibet, so he had all the options covered.
In the end she blamed herself for giving Jean-Paul the psychedelics. He had been enthusiastic, of course, as an anthropologist. He had read Huxley and Leary and so forth; he’d done a lot of reading in his life, he just hadn’t done much else.
Jean-Paul had even started lecturing her on the value and function of psychedelics in primitive and developed societies, on their way from Moab to Canyonlands in their Cherokee four-wheel drive — no doubt Robert would have hired a Hopi four-wheel drive had there been one, although he had said that he ‘honoured the Cherokee Nation’ when she had made a mild joke to that effect.
With her eyes still closed and her arms pressed to her sides, out of range of Caliban, Crystal reluctantly replayed the movie of her trip with Jean-Paul. She had gone over it before, but like a tongue nagging at a fragment of trapped food, her memory returned again and again to those events in the hope of dislodging the truth of what had happened.
Almost immediately Crystal’s thoughts were interrupted by another violent nudge from her neighbour. Caliban had just had a particularly vigorous tug at his jeans. She opened her eyes angrily and scowled at his apparently unconcerned profile. Part of her was relieved to be interrupted. Perhaps she had made him nudge her.
‘I’m sorry to be so moving in my seat,’ said her neighbour in broken English.
He wasn’t a hillbilly at all, he was a Swede or a German.
‘I have, um, problem with the skin. I come to California for doctors.’
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ said Crystal, as much in apology as sympathy. ‘I hope you get the help you need.’
‘Thank you,’ he smiled. Really, he had very nice eyes, and she seemed to see in them a glint of pained intelligence, showing that he’d picked up what she’d been thinking about him.
What a teaching, thought Crystal, as the plane landed at San Francisco airport. ‘What a teaching,’ she murmured in the baggage-claim area. What an incredible teaching, she mused contentedly in the taxi, nodding her head in gratitude, incredulity and embarrassment.
* * *
Brooke had relaxed a little about her dinner party. Moses was taking the herb tea around, and everyone was evidently having a marvellous time. They were mostly a little drunk or high and agreeing with each other about things they already knew they agreed about, and planning fresh opportunities to discuss saving the world at each other’s seminars, conferences, workshops and performances. Brooke was talking to Dave, the marine biologist. She had just delivered her list of plagues bursting from their ‘natural reservoirs’ — she was very proud of that phrase — on to the human scene. Unfortunately, with so many new names to remember, she had included the Irish environmentalist.
‘Isn’t it dreadful about Ebola, Marburg and O’Hara?’ she had said, shaking her head sadly.
Dave didn’t seem to notice the mistake.