A Single Eye (13 page)

Here, I poured myself coffee and stood in the silent empty kitchen.

By the time I got to Leo's cabin with his cocoa, it was too late for questions. He poured a cup, inhaled that wonderful chocolate aroma and drank. There wasn't even time for him to finish before he handed me the incense stick. Outside, the clappers had already given the warning three hits. Now the roll-down had begun.

I stashed the incense under my raincoat and walked behind him—past groggy students hurrying to the zendo porch—to the back door of the zendo, the teacher's entrance. He must have guessed we'd be late. As soon as I took off my shoes he handed me a note and whispered, “Read it later.”

I was dying to pore over the note, but even if I'd had time the light was too dim, and I was already worried that the incense would be too damp to catch fire. Normally we would have lit the incense stick at the altar in his cabin and carried it to the zendo, marking the union of the teacher's practice with the community's practice. Now I hunched under the porch roof protecting the matches from the sluicing rain. When I had lit the incense, shaken out the flame, and watched the smoke curl uncertainly upward, Leo nodded and I opened the zendo door.

The zendo was in shadows but for the pearly glow of oil lamps on the altar and the sharp flame from the thick candle. Leo walked slowly across the wood floor, the balls of his feet touching first so that each step had the soft, full sound of intent. He stopped at the end of the mat before the altar and made a standing bow.

Later, I wished that I had savored that moment of him there, bowing in our stead, all of us assuming we were safe, our only worry the pain in our knees.

I walked behind him to the side of the altar, the floor so cold that my feet lost their traction and I had to concentrate on each step as if I was walking in roller skates. He moved around the mat until he was right in front of the altar, took the incense stick from my outstretched hand, and planted it in the small round bowl before the Buddha.

The smoke from it wafted past my nose, the pungent smell connecting this first full day of sesshin with so many others I had sat. Suddenly I thought of Aeneas. Had Aeneas felt this bond when he stood in this spot inhaling this incense, not knowing he was about to vanish like the smoke?

As I walked to my seat the note crackled in my pocket. But the chance to read it didn't come till after three zazen periods, the service, and breakfast. As everyone else on the porch stuffed their feet into their shoes and hurried to their cabins for a precious hour of rest, I pulled out the paper and read. It was the last thing I wanted to see: “Get my newspaper during break.”

A mile through the woods! My stomach went to mush, my whole body was clammy. I stuffed the note in my pocket and strode toward Leo's cabin, launching spray with every step. At 7:30
A.M.
, night had thinned to a sort of dawning, but the rain kept everything gray and was already spreading damp up under my sweater, icing my back. Leo's thermos stood outside his door, on the steps. I knocked. No answer. The thermos stood by my feet. Was this Leo's—
Roshi's
—way of saying: Don't argue with me? Or had he just stepped out and left his thermos?

I took a deep breath, grabbed the empty thermos and headed for the kitchen, my last stop before the woods. Every gag in every movie was wrapped in fear. Every time, I pulled off the wrapping and reached inside for what would make the stunt work. Some gags I tore into, some I approached by layers of research, others by days of practice, some by combinations. But I never balked. Except when it came to the woods. Already I could feel my body tightening, my shoulders going hard, my neck turning into a choke collar.

When I pulled open the kitchen door the smell of cocoa struck me anew, but now it was tainted by Leo's spilling incident, though not so much that I'd have refused a cup if Barry offered. The room had cooled, the heat replaced by the rattling of what looked like a long tin box large enough for a six-year-old to slide through. It was spitting beans into a bucket and Barry squatted next to the bucket staring into it like it held little brown nuggets of gold.

At the far end three or four people—the dishwashing crew—bustled around the sink, shifting great wooden serving bowls, running hot water. They were all in green aprons, but aprons can only do so much. By the end of the sesshin, sleeves and shirt shoulders would be dotted with Clorox stains.

I shook my head and again the rain pelted off my hair. My raincoat had been fine for New York, with cabs and umbrellas. There I hadn't considered a hood; now I would have traded my chance of enlightenment for one. I stood a moment in the warmth, watching Barry watch the beans, wishing I could be as entranced with anything here as he was with those little brown pellets, putting off the trek through the wilderness.

I dribbled a bit of coffee into a cup and said, “How's it going?”

Barry nodded thoughtfully. “I'm only doing a small batch, but I'm cutting it close, getting it done by Thursday. The roasting went fine. These beans only need forty-five minutes. And the winnowing—well, you can see I've got half a bucket of nibs already. The shells are over there. Maureen will be glad to get them for the garden. I'll have the nibs into the melangeur this morning—”

“Melangeur?”

He pointed to what looked like a 1900s washing machine, the kind with two thick hand-operated wringers on the top. “They'll be in there for twenty-four hours.”

“Washing?”

He jolted back and looked at me like I was an idiot, and I could see that a
criollo
and its melangeur were not suitable topics for levity.

“Grinding. Stones are solid granite. Best surface in the world for creating a smooth paste. Aztecs used them.”

I nodded, but he didn't look up. He was nearly talking to himself.

“. . . got to conch and temper and set the chocolate in molds. There's barely time. If the road holds out. So little time. If anything goes wrong . . .”

The last thing Barry needed was me here.

“Oh. Sorry,” I muttered and started for the door.

“Hook.”

“Hook?”

“On the left.”

On the hook on the left there hung one of those parkas like you see in pictures of Arctic explorers, not as heavy, and without the fur all around the face—we are Buddhists after all—but with a hood that was virtually a front porch. It stuck out so far it shielded my coffee when I drank. The coat hung halfway down my shins and even with rolling the sleeves I couldn't get my hands entirely free.

“It's
your
coat,” I said out loud. I felt like I was inside a bear, and it felt real good.

Barry nodded, then looked away quickly as if he might be embarrassed by the effusion of thanks I was on the verge of offering. It was his only coat as far as I could see, and a huge gift to a stranger. If I tripped and tore it, he'd be soaked every time he went outside.

I swallowed hard and was almost glad that his preoccupation kept me from finding the right words of thanks. I gave him a quick squeeze on the shoulder and stepped outside.

Even in the parka the cold was a shock after the toasty kitchen. I made my way across the parking area toward the road, rain drumming on my roof and as thick as a plastic shower curtain in front of me, turning the trees into a dark green blur. I walked cozy, like a kid in a snug and secret hiding spot. It wasn't till I'd reached the road and turned right that the drawback of the parka struck me. It blocked out sounds and any hope of peripheral vision. Bears and cougars along the path could fight over my tastier parts and I would hear nothing.

The road was muddy. Those deep ruts that had kept Leo's truck from bouncing over the edge were now puddles. But the ridge between them was surprisingly wide and firm. The green blur of trees along the sides made a wind break, and the great branches I didn't want to start thinking about held off the rain as long as they could and then dropped their load on my head. I walked stiffly, tensed up, waiting for the next deluge, hunched against the sight of the bridge and the red Japanese maple that would signal the path into the woods. The great coat shifted with each step and I realized the weight was only on one shoulder.

Not weight. A claw! I let out a scream. I'd forgotten about the rendezvous with Rob.

But it wasn't Rob; it was a stranger, a small, soaked stranger, with a lopsided grin. “Hey, hold it down, woman. I'm not Dracula.”

“You could have fooled me.” I spun around on the narrow ridge and ended up grabbing the guy's arms to keep from falling.

“Nice. Real nice!”

He was about Leo's height, with a mat of dark curly hair. The guy looked like a cat who'd fallen in a vat overnight, a grumpy cat ready to spring. And yet, even under all that water, he seemed “pet quality”—not the cat who'd curl up on your lap, but the one who leaps from floor to top shelf, knocks off a bowl in the process, and then stares down at you knowing his cuteness will save him.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Who's asking?”

I pulled myself together and announced, “The roshi's assistant,” as if I had held the job for years instead of hours.

“You got a name, Assistant?”

“You going to answer my question?”

I was smiling now. The man, whatever his name was, was stockier than Leo, and younger, and . . . a New Yorker, no doubt about it. He had one of those accents that instantly endear him to other displaced New Yorkers. He sounded born-and-bred enough to tell Bronx from Brooklyn from Queens.

He must have taken my musing for pressure. He shrugged. “Okay, okay, Assistant. Gabe Luzotta here.”

“From where in New York?”

Now he smiled. “Bronx originally, Upper West Side now. You? You live in the city?”

I nodded.

“Who do you sit with?”

“Yamana-roshi.”

“Lucky you. I sat with him a while, but I don't recall you there.”

“I've only been in New York two years. I flew in for sesshins with him before, but I couldn't make it to them all.”

He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Okay, then. I was before your time.”

“Sesshin's already started,” I said, sure I hadn't seen him in the zendo.

“No diff. I'm going to sleep through the first three days. I've gotta be the most worn-out Zen student in a fifty-mile radius. First my plane gets held up in La Guardia. Then I miss the connection in O'Hare and have to wait six hours and thirty-seven minutes, keeping watch over all my stuff, so I can't even hit the john. So I get to SFO, and would you believe, the damned rent-a-car place has lost my reservation and it takes another hour to straighten that out.”

I started to speak, but he was on a roll.

“So I snag the car and head out on the freeway and all of a sudden I'm heading over a bridge, going east! Would it kill the great state of California to mark its roads so you can get where you're going? I had to hunt up another bridge to get back to my road—all this in a monsoon yet—and when I finally get here and turn onto this road, I can see I need pontoons. So, Assistant, I drive so slow I'm like some guy's granny. And even with that the car sinks—like slurp!—halfway in. So what'm I gonna do, right? I gotta hike. That or wait for spring. But I figure I'm over halfway, so there's like three miles to go. Three miles. Sixty blocks, right? That's nothing. Chelsea to the Museum of Natural History, right? Do you know how long that took me? The whole fucking night! Mud and rain. You wouldn't believe it! You ever been in a pool where they got those water walkers? Well, I'll tell you, I got a lot more sympathy for them now.”

“Maybe Rob will give you a day off.”

“Rob? Rob Staverford? Is that uptight asshole still here? Oh, great, and by now the asshole's in charge, huh? What is he, sesshin director?”

“Yup.” Giving up any attempt at restraint, I said, “So you've been here before?”

“Oh, yeah. On and off since the beginning. Whenever I can get free.”

“From?”

“Deadlines. I'm a writer. But don't tell everyone. It makes people nervous; they always think I'm writing about them.”

“Are you?”

“Not hardly. Writing about a bunch of silent guys in the woods doing nothing but sitting in front of a blank wall? Like there's a big market for that! Nah, I do magazine pieces. Like for the
New Yorker
.”

“Really?” I said, impressed. “Politics? Medical? Food?” Considering where we were meeting, I added, “Religion?”

He winced. It was a small wince, and he covered almost immediately. A person who wasn't used to watching nervous actors for telltale winces might have missed this one.
Don't ask me if I'm afraid of heights. Oh, god, I should never have let on! I want to do my own stunts, without a double!
those winces said.
Don't ask
. . . .

He was grinning now, looking like the cat caught over the broken bowl. “Well, one piece for the
New Yorker
. But I keep hoping, so when you come up with hot topics, call me. In fact”—he stretched back up to his full height, which was a couple inches more than mine—“call me anyway when we both get home. We'll go out for a cappuccino after evening zazen.”