A Single Eye Read online

His hands were on my shoulders, he was looking me in the eye. I expected him to say how sorry he was, that he had lost his balance, grabbed the broom, and in his panic flailed. He said not a thing, merely clapped my shoulders, turned, and strode off.

  I started to walk, like I do after a stunt, heading to the second unit director to see if it was a take or not, focusing totally on the mechanics of the shoot. But now, suddenly, reality doused me. Without my stunt training I’d have broken my neck, or landed on my head, or broken enough bones in arms or legs to leave me laid up for weeks.

  Like Roshi! Like Roshi, I could be not dead but conveniently out of the way. So much more acceptable to those who take vows not to kill.

  “Are you okay?” Maureen asked from behind me, just about jolting me off my feet.

  “Fine,” I snapped, shifted the ladder free of the zendo and headed to the shed, making a show of balancing the ladder in the middle lest anyone else intrude with their help. I must have been curt enough to make my point. Maureen backed away and no one else came near me.

  I tried to replay the seconds before the broom hit me. Had Rob really swung at me, or had he panicked on the roof, grabbed the handle for balance, and swung wildly? Had he meant to apologize and couldn’t handle that either? Or were things exactly as they looked?

  My stomach went queasy; I was shaking. The ladder rattled. I shifted my hands so its weight would settle them. What kind of place was this where a senior student throws a woman off the roof? What kind of lunatic was Rob?

  The ladder smacked into something and slapped me backward. I staggered along, intent on avoiding hitting people as I maneuvered the ladder toward the shed, trying to calm myself with the pretense that I was on a movie set, after a gag, merely moving a prop. If this had been a movie, the shove off the roof would have been a diversion; the important focus would have been the revelation right before: that Aeneas took the Buddha and Rob retrieved it from Aeneas’s luggage where he knew it would be.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Suddenly, the ladder went light at the back. Gabe had come out of nowhere; he was shifting it for two-person carry. I was still shaking from the roof, but I was so relieved to see Gabe, the one person I could trust, the only one who hadn’t been here when Leo was poisoned, I could have hugged him. The rain was heavier; the afternoon wind water-picked my face. Talk from opposite ends of the ladder was impossible, but Gabe called out directions. He was moving at a half run, pushing me from his end of the ladder. I was happy just to move.

  But as soon as I stepped into the dark shed and put down the ladder all the thoughts I’d blocked out flooded back. Roshi’s earlier comment about the disappearance of the Buddha, that nothing was irretrievable, except what someone didn’t want to tell you to begin with. Had Rob really swatted me off the roof? Why did he want me to know Aeneas took the Buddha as Rob knew he would?

  Gabe propped the ladder against a wall.

  “You okay, Assistant?”

  “More shocked than anything. Did you see what happened?”

  “Rob swatted you off the roof.”

  “Intentionally? Did he really intend to push me off?”

  “Well, it looked that way, but hey, no! Not even the Asshole would pull something like that. Look, Rob’s a lawyer, always thinking three steps ahead. He wouldn’t attack you in broad daylight.”

  “Big comfort,” I muttered, trying to sound a whole lot calmer than I was. “And what was with Rob and Aeneas?”

  “Aeneas?”

  Gabe looked as if he was about to question my shift of focus but reconsidered. He inhaled deeply, leaned back, arm on the self, posed like a professor about to pontificate. “Here’s the thing was, Assistant, Aeneas was golden. Rob worked his tail off. He studied sutras, sat sesshin after sesshin, didn’t move when his knees were killing him. You know I’m not Rob’s biggest fan, but I gotta give him this: he’s committed his life to Zen practice. He could have been a seven-figure lawyer in San Francisco. He was shrewd, cleaned up good, knew people; he could have had whatever he wanted. But you can’t keep telling the judge to postpone trial so you can go sit in front of a wall. Even back then, when this place was just starting, he had arranged to sell his practice and buy a way smaller one in town up here. He’d made his commitment to this place. But, look, the key to him is, he’s still a litigator; he still plans ahead and definitely still intends to win. He didn’t come here to be second banana forever. He signed on at the ground floor of a new monastery with a teacher not likely to go the distance. Odds were good that he could sit, study, succeed. He’d already done that in law; why not here?”

  Zen is not statutes and motions, but I didn’t divert Gabe with that, not when I’d be diverting back to the issue of the Buddha in a minute.

  “And Aeneas?”

  “Aeneas outstripped him in everything. And Rob couldn’t figure out how. He’d watch Aeneas, trying to catch him studying texts he didn’t have, practicing intonation of Japanese chants in private, meeting secretly with Roshi. Aeneas was a resident, and Rob was here only on weekends; he figured he was falling behind every week. It drove him crazy. He was obsessed. Plus, he was sure Aeneas was putting the hit on Maureen.”

  “Was he?”

  “Not from Maureen’s reaction. But, Rob couldn’t see that, because the thing was he wanted to put the hit on her, but he didn’t want her to blow him off because she was with the first string guy.” Gabe snickered. “Here’s the real hoot: she didn’t want either one of them, but no way either of them got it.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, she’s had plenty of time since. I’ve been to sesshin pretty much every other year here and I’ve never seen a sign. Believe me, I’ve looked.”

  Gabe shifted to about-to-pounce posture.

  Before he could speak, I said, “When Aeneas took the Buddha, Rob searched his luggage because he knew it would be there. Why is that so important that Rob make a point of telling me even when he was shaking with fear up on the roof?”

  Gabe started, and even in the dim light, I could see things clicked in for him. He knew what it meant, but he said nothing.

  “Goddamn you, Gabe, you’re hoarding this for your big story, aren’t you? That story that’s going to save your career, right? You’ve come to how many sesshins every other year, but always as a reporter, right? And you’re still here as a reporter!”

  He shrugged.

  “What could possibly be a big enough story to keep after it all these years, for all these sesshins? Rob’s jealousy? Aeneas thinking he was the rightful successor? Aeneas’s disappearance? I mean, who cares? What is the big story?”

  He put a patronizing paw on my shoulder.

  “Assistant, if I gave away that, you’d know I was no reporter.”

  “Well, are you? Still?” I hissed, “Or are you just desperate to resurrect a dead career?”

  His mouth dropped open—my attack was a low blow, particularly to him, the paste diamond schlimazel—but before I could say anything he snarled, “Oh, right, Assistant, like you came here to sit zazen and save all sentient beings!”

  He pulled open the door, just about knocked into an old guy headed inside with a bucket, and left the door banging after him. I cleared out of the shed quick. Once I was outside, the light or the fresh air or something gave me perspective on what had just happened in the shed. I’d learned by repetition with Gabe, and this time it didn’t take me as long to realize that this blowup with Gabe wasn’t about his flagging career or whatever story he was after here to make up for his big story years back that got rejected because he couldn’t produce the research. That was all smoke thrown up to cover his reaction to Rob telling me Aeneas stole the Buddha and Rob knew it would be in his suitcase.

  That silly little incident should have been nothing. Why was that so important? To both Rob and Gabe?

  I made it back into the zendo just as the bell was ringing to start the afternoon sittings. I bowed, sat on my cushion, and turned to face the wall. There was a lot to thin
k about, but here in the zendo I wanted to sit zazen. I wanted to recapture that luscious moment in the wide unhurried present that I had so enjoyed minutes earlier. I wanted to prove Gabe wrong about me. But the exhaustion from the travel and the early wakeup and the worry over Leo engulfed me. I nodded slowly forward, feeling nothing but the release of sleep, until suddenly I jerked awake, straightened my back, took a deep breath, and felt my breath flowing in, flowing out, jerked awake. The pattern repeated time after time. I slept, dreamed, jerked awake so suddenly I couldn’t remember more than that I had dreamed, and that the dream had been clearer than this reality in the zendo facing the wall, but the content danced beyond the edges of my mind and I was too tired to draw it back.

  The second zazen period was much the same. I tried to focus on my breath, but slipped into dreams, jerked awake to recall images too fuzzy to give name to, and Amber saying—

  I jolted in my seat, awake now. Amber wasn’t in my dream. She was outside the zendo window. What was Amber doing outside? Students are expected to be in the zendo for scheduled sittings.

  I glanced to my left. Her cushion was empty. I strained to make out whispered words. But all I could catch was the flirty tone and the familiar cadence in Gabe’s voice. Without thinking I let out such a disgusted sigh that Marcus jerked in his seat. Even Amber and Gabe must have heard, for now there was silence outside. Damn Gabe Luzotta! I’d stuck my neck out to let him nap and here he was trotting around the grounds chatting up women like he was at a cocktail party. Soon he’d be in the kitchen demanding cheese puffs and prosciutto-and-melon hors d’oeuvres.

  I sat, viscerally aware of my annoyance in the clench of my teeth, the lift of my shoulders. When the final bell rang I walked stiltedly to Roshi’s room.

  Leo was lying on his side, his head propped with a hand. He looked gray in the dusky gray of his ill-lit room.

  “Don’t hover.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, confused. “This is suppertime. We agreed I’d come by now—”

  “But not earlier.”

  “I didn’t, earlier.”

  “Darcy, I heard you on the porch. I heard the door open and shut right away.”

  “Open and shut quick? Well, it wasn’t me. I’ve been in the zendo all three periods.” Now I was worried. Open and shut: a quick getaway for someone who’d been spotted? “Someone else was on your porch. When?”

  “Help me up.”

  I lifted him, appalled by how shaky he was. He sat crossed-legged, back propped against his one thin pillow, blankets stuffed around him like a baby bird not quite cracked out of the egg. He was so helpless here. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and keep him warm. I compromised.

  “Is this one of those endless Zen silences?”

  He laughed, weakly, but it was definitely a laugh. It almost made me weep. Was it only yesterday we were in the truck laughing?

  “Yes and no,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, it was an endless Zen silence. And no, it probably was during zazen, not kinhin. I think I did hear three bells before the scuffling on the porch. I owe you an apology.”

  “I’ll just use that as credit against the next time I speak out of turn.” Scuffling! I poked at the insipid fire. “So the person was on your porch while the rest of us were in the zendo?” I paused and it was a moment before I realized I was waiting for him to protest about innocent motives and overreactions. But he maintained the Zen silence, and this time I could see its point. He wasn’t creating his own illusions about the porch; he knew he didn’t know. “Leo—Roshi—this is serious. I can’t watch everyone out there. Gabe and Amber were both outside during zazen. It’s partly my fault about Gabe, but I didn’t mean for him to be wandering around chatting up girls—”

  “Gabe!” he said, shaking his head. The familiar grin passed over his face. He was more in control now that he’d been sitting up a minute. “Hot for the ladies, Gabe. He’s never made it through a sesshin without a flirtation. Before the opening he was in San Francisco interviewing a woman from the Asian Art Museum who was leaving for China, so he rode up here with the San Francisco contingent. By the time he arrived, six hours later, he had three dates set up with three different women. If the curator hadn’t been leaving the country he’d had dinner scheduled with her on the way back.”

  “Still—”

  “Right. Yes. We can’t let people wander when they are to be sitting. Bad for everyone, particularly them. And Amber?”

  “The thing is,” I said slowly, “for Amber, sitting is torture; she’s grasping for distractions—”

  “—shouldn’t have let her come,” he mumbled.

  A cluster of replies crowded my mind—Don’t blame yourself, there must always be applicants you aren’t sure about. And Why shouldn’t you have? And Damn right. But he was still talking.

  “It’s asking too much for a first sesshin.”

  “She hasn’t sat sesshin before at all?” I said, amazed.

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “I thought she needed it. I thought having Justin here would help her.”

  “Au contraire.”

  He arched an eyebrow questioningly.

  “I don’t understand.” I could hear the frustration in my voice. But dammit, Leo cared about his students. It didn’t make sense that he would let this kid come up here to go bonkers for two weeks. And come to loathe Zen practice in the process. “She doesn’t want to be here. You don’t think you should have let her. What’s the point of her being here at all? It’s driving her crazy and she’s looking for trouble.”

  He listed to the right. I grabbed him.

  “Help me down.”

  “Can I get you—”

  “No.”

  He looked exhausted. His eyes were already closing. I should have let him alone, but the prospect of spending the rest of the evening and all night trying to protect him, trying to figure out what and whom to protect him from, and knowing so damned little was more than I could bear.

  “My point is that I can’t protect her. I can’t protect her, and I can’t protect you, because, Leo, I don’t know what’s going on here.”

  He seemed to pull himself back from sleep by will alone. “What do you need . . . in order to protect her?”

  “I need to know about Aeneas. Like why was it such a big deal that he stole the Buddha off the altar, and that Rob knew it was him.”

  Leo may have raised an eyebrow or maybe I just imagined it. I thought he was going to answer my question, but I did just imagine that. He sank back and his eyes closed.

  I stoked the fire, made tea. He didn’t drink it, but it seemed right that it should be there waiting. This morning the oil lamp had given the room a Spartan air, but tonight the added light of the fire gave the cabin an eerie, unsafe safe feel. When the bell rang in the zendo I pulled out a cushion here and sat. I wasn’t facing Leo, but somehow I had a clearer sense of him than when we were talking. I had thought he’d slipped into exhausted quiet sleep. But he wasn’t asleep; he was thinking. And that was the answer to my question. He hadn’t thought about Rob’s knowing Aeneas stole the Buddha as being important, but now he was. He was thinking about it a lot.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  By the time I got back to my cabin after my final check on Leo, Amber was snuggled so far down in her bed that only a thatch of her golden hair revealed her presence. I shone my flashlight around my bed, but there was still no sign of my letter. The cabin was icy, the floor carpeted with our bags and clothes. I undressed like a November tree in the wind. The only sounds were the soft thud of my feet in thick socks and Amber’s wheezy breathing, each exhalation a great sleepy sigh of one happy finally to be in bed. All the time she’d been sitting cross-legged in the zendo, she’d have been yearning for the moment when she would crawl into her warm bed, stretch her knees straight, and let her eyes close without having to jerk herself awake. I hoped she’d held off sleep long enough to enjoy it.

  Next t
o Amber’s raincoat by the door I stashed my boots, ready for me to slip quietly back into them in the dead dark of 4:10 A.M. From the look of her, though, there wouldn’t be much danger of waking her when I crept out. I stepped back to turn off the oil lamp. It was then that I heard the telltale squish, felt the spreading cold, and knew the awful truth. My sock was wet. An arctic pool was soaking ever-wider in the wool, turning my cold foot into an iceberg that wouldn’t thaw at all tonight. I’d stepped in the puddle from Amber’s raincoat.

  I think—I know—that’s what tipped the balance. A dry-socked woman would have let her roommate sleep. I shook her.

  “Amber?”

  Digging around in my duffel for another sock, I hissed, “Amber!”

  “What? Is it morning already?”

  “No. Night.”

  She turned over.

  “Amber!”

  “What?” she snarled sleepily. “I don’t have your damned letter. Gabe left it in the wrong cabin.”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “Dunno,” she mumbled after one of those pauses that screams Lie!

  “It was him you were talking to when you weren’t in the zendo during zazen this afternoon.”

  “So! What’re you going to do, report me to Rob? Is he going to tie me to my cushion?”

  As furious as she was, she still wasn’t really awake. If I stopped prodding she’d be back asleep in seconds. And, in a few days she’d be strolling through the woods, poking into buildings, and chatting up anyone she could find.

  “Why did you come to a sesshin as hard as this? Why one this long?”

  “Leave me alone!” she wailed.

  “You’ve never sat a day of sesshin.”

  “So?”

  “So why not join the Olympic Ski Team?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are you doing here? Just tell me.”

  Her eyes closed. I couldn’t decide whether she was trying to crank her mind up for a decent lie or going to sleep in spite of me.

  Finally she muttered, “Roshi called.”