We had reached my car. Tatum’s eyebrows arched. I could see him trying to figure out how the hell a guy like me had a car like that. It happens a lot-’65 Shelby Mustangs in mint condition are pretty rare. Then his cell phone beeped, pulling him back to reality. He’d have to leave this particular mystery unsolved. He turned to go.
“Detective Tatum.”
He glanced back.
“Did he say anything about the manner of death? Did you do a tox screening to see if any drugs were involved?”
“Let it go,” Tatum said. “You’re off the clock. You don’t need that kind of garbage floating around in your head.”
“Was she clean?”
“Let it go,” he said again, and walked off.
I crawled home through early rush-hour traffic, but I was grateful for the time to think. To remember. To plan. I had Barbara’s license. It should be enough.
Tank greeted me at the door with the throaty, indignant complaint of a domestic quadruped that hasn’t eaten all day. I made up for it with his favorite: a squeeze of tuna juice, straight from the can, drizzled over his bowl of food like a benediction.
I grabbed a handful of satsuma tangerines and moved to the deck to clear my head. I sat for some time, peeling the loose, leathery skins, popping tart sections of citrus into my mouth. Thinking. What did I miss? What would I have done differently, had I known I was meeting Barbara Maxey on her last day on earth?
Tank wandered out and climbed into my lap. He burrowed close. Soon he was purring, his big body vibrating against my belly. I pocketed the peels. The citrus oil on my fingertips smelled tart, and bittersweet.
I knew what was bothering me. I had sensed a couple of things during my brief time with Barbara. Sensed them, and dismissed them. Made wrong assumptions, because of old ideas that still ran me. I’d picked up an impression of weary despair she carried with her, as if she knew time was running out. Despair and a deep loneliness. And yet, and yet. That final set of her shoulders, that last, light wave from her as she headed down the road, pointed to a woman with a renewed sense of purpose. She had been at a crossroads, where hope and despair intersected. Perhaps if I had invited her inside for a cup of tea she might have unburdened herself. Gone in a different direction. She might have locked in on the hope-beam and ridden it to a pear farm in Oregon, rather than ending her days in an old sleeping bag in a park.
As for me, I’d broken my First Rule, already. Ignored the nudge to know more. Rejected the light tickle of attraction. Because to embrace our similarities might lead to intimacy, and there was nothing more dangerous than that. She’d been honest with me. I hadn’t, with her. She’d taken a huge chance. I’d played it safer than safe. She’d followed a hunch. I’d ignored my own.
And now she was dead.
“There’s no such thing, Tank,” I said, stroking his back. His spine rippled and rolled beneath my palm. “There’s no such thing as a minor lapse of awareness. You’re either present with what is-right here, right now-or you’re someplace else.”
A swell of regret washed over me. Tank lifted his head, then nestled closer. Well, I couldn’t change the past. But I could address the present.
“Sorry, old boy,” I said, spilling Tank onto the deck. “Duty calls.” I walked into the kitchen, reviewing what I needed. I put the kettle on to boil. I checked the fridge. Sure enough, I had some leftover brown rice from the other night, so that was okay. The cakes might be a problem. Then I remembered the tin of home-baked cookies, delivered by Martha on Christmas Eve. I opened it. Nope. Empty, except for a few sugar cookie fragments, remnants of edible snowmen, dotted with green and red sprinkles.
I stood for a moment, frustrated. And realized the solution was right in front of me, in the form of half a loaf of moist, spicy pumpkin bread. Every few months, I make a special trip to Carmen Avenue in Hollywood to visit the Monastery of the Angels: a cloistered nunnery, incongruously located a mile south of the famous sign. Set apart from the neighboring world of tinsel and greed, two dozen good sisters prayed year-round for the lost souls of the City of Angels, and baked year-round to support themselves by selling pumpkin bread that rivaled the nectar of immortality.
I cut three dense slices. I smiled. Not so different, in fact, from my own monastery’s torma, the sacrificial barley flour cakes used in every ritual.
I divided the rice equally between three bowls. Grabbed a slightly used candle from my dump-everything-in-here drawer, and also a spare stick of incense. I was a little rusty on the details, but incense never hurts.
A shrill squeal announced boiling water. I filled the pot and let the green tea steep. I laid out the three bowls of rice, three slices of pumpkin bread, and two shallow saucers, one empty, one filled with water. I went into my meditation room and returned with my Buddha statue, hawk feather, and mangled bullet. Set them down as well. I lit the candle and melted enough wax on a small plate to set the taper upright. Propping up the incense presented a bigger challenge. Finally I moved the tiny potted impatiens I was coaxing to life on my windowsill to the table, and pressed the smoldering stick into its soil. Then I set two cups on the kitchen table and filled each one with the steaming, fragrant brew. I stood still for a moment, surveying my work. What was I forgetting?
Of course. Barbara Maxey. She who has left life.
I reached into my pocket for the driver’s license. I carefully leaned it against one teacup, so she was facing me.
A little makeshift, but my intentions were pure. I was ready. I hoped she was as well.
First I invited Barbara to unburden herself, as I wished I’d done the day before. I sipped my tea as hers cooled in her cup, opening my heart and mind to her, wherever she might be. I let the whisper of connection I’d sensed grow, and deepen.
I felt her despair. I felt her hope. I felt something else that saddened me-the deep anguish of an addict who had traded one self-medication for another. She hadn’t escaped the monster; she’d sidestepped it for ten years. She’d locked herself up in a society where giving up personal freedom in exchange for staying clean seemed like a fair trade. She’d had to stay vigilant, obsessive about her abstinence. But she knew the monster was still out there, waiting for her to become vulnerable again. I bowed my head to her valor, and I acknowledged her courage at daring to leave her self-imposed prison, to make a new beginning for herself, to seek another path.
I sensed her terror, to be back out in the world. To be helpless and unprotected, where monsters could find her. Where at least one did.
I lightly touched her photograph. “I’m sorry,” I said.
I couldn’t change the past. But I could address the present. Time to begin the bardo ritual.
I dipped the hawk feather in water and sprinkled it over her smiling image. Mentally reciting what I could remember of the prescribed texts, ritual invocations to the deities of the spirit worlds, I alternated offerings: rice to the Buddha statue, who symbolized the higher realms, and cake to the smashed fragment of lead, representing shadow worlds peopled with dark forces. Rice, then cake, light, then shadow. Six realms. Six gifts. With each offering, I asked that she be allowed to pass through safely, released from peril, invited into joy.
I recited the final blessing out loud, the closing words flowing from my heart to hers: “When the time has come to go alone and without friends, may the compassionate ones provide refuge to Barbara, who has no refuge. Protect her, defend her, be a sanctuary from the great darkness of the bardo. Turn her away from the great storms of karma. Provide comfort from the great fear and terror of the Lord of Death, and deliver her from the long and perilous pathway, into the light.”