Motherless Brooklyn (22 page)

“Listen, would you keep an eye out? I’ll give you a number to call.” I had a stash of L&L cards in my wallet, and I fished one out for him.

“Thanks,” he said absently, glancing at the card. He wasn’t afraid of me anymore. But he didn’t know what to think of me if I wasn’t a threat. I was interesting, but he didn’t know how to be interested.

“I’d appreciate hearing from you—
Doorjerk! Doorjam! Jerkdom!
—if you see anything odd.”

“You’re pretty odd,” he said seriously.

“Something besides me.”

“Okay, but I get off in half an hour.”

“Well, just keep it in mind.” I was running out of patience with Walter. I freed myself to tap his shoulder farewell. The dull young man looked down at my hand, then went back inside.

I paced the block to the corner and back, flirting with the Zendo, seeking my nerve. The site aroused reverence and a kind of magical fear in me already, as though I were approaching a shrine—
the martyrdom of Saint Minna
. I wanted to rewrite their plaque to tell the story. Instead I rang the doorbell once. No answer. Then four more times, for a total of
five
, and I stopped, startled by a sense of completeness.

I’d shrugged off my tired old friend
six
.

I wondered if it was in some way commemorative—my counting tic moving down a list, subtracting a digit for Frank.

Somebody is hunting Minna Men
, I thought again. But I couldn’t be afraid. I wasn’t game but hunter this morning. Anyway, the count was off—four Minna Men plus Frank made five. So if I was counting heads, I should be at four. I had an extra aboard, but who? Maybe it was Bailey. Or Irving.

A long minute passed before the girl with the short black hair and glasses opened the door and squinted at me against the morning sun. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, had bare feet, and held a broom. Her smile was slight, involuntary, and crooked. And sweet.

“Yes?”

“Could I ask you a few questions?”

“Questions?&m”>

“If it’s not too early,” I said gently.

“No, no. I’ve been up. I’ve been sweeping.” She showed me the broom.

“They make you clean?”

“It’s a privilege. Cleaning is treasured in Zen practice. It’s like the highest possible act. Usually Roshi wants to do the sweeping himself.”

“No vacuum cleaner?” I said.

“Too noisy,” she said, and frowned as if it should be obvious. A city bus roared past in the distance, damaging her point. I let it go.

Her eyes adjusted to the brightness, and she looked past me, to the
street, examining it as though astonished to discover that the door opened onto a cityscape. I wondered if she’d been out of the building since I saw her enter the evening before. I wondered if she ate and slept there, whether she was the only one who did or whether there were dozens, foot soldiers of Zen.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What were you saying?”

“Questions.”

“Oh, yes.”

“About the Zendo, what you do here.”

She looked me over now. “Do you want to come inside? It’s cold.”

“I’d like that very much.”

It was the truth. I didn’t feel unsafe following her into the dark temple, the Deathstar. I would gather information from within the Trojan Horse of her Zen grace. And I was conscious of my ticlessness, didn’t want to break the rhythm of the conversation.

The foyer and stairwell were plain, with unadorned white walls and a wooden banister, looking as if it had been clean before she began sweeping, clean forever. We bypassed a door on the ground floor and went up the stairs, she carrying the broom ahead of her, turning her back to me trustingly. Her walk had a gentle jerkiness to it, a quickness like her replies.

“Here,” she said, pointing to a rack with rows of shoes on it.

“I’m fine,” I said, thinking I was supposed to select from among the motley footgear.

“No, take yours off,” she whispered.

I did as she told me, removed my shoes and pushed them into an orderly place at the end of one of the racks. A chill went through me when I recalled that Minna had removed his shoes the evening before, presumably at this same landing.

Now in my socks, I followed her as the banister wrapped around through a corridor, past two sealed doors and one that opened onto a bare, dark room with rows of short cloth mats laid out across a parquet
floor and a smell ocandles or incense, not a morning smell at all. I wanted to peer inside but she hurried us along, up another flight.

On the third landing she led me to a small kitchen where a wooden table and three chairs were arranged around a thwarted back window, through which an emaciated shaft of sunlight negotiated a maze of brick. If the massive buildings on either side had existed when this room was built they might not have bothered with a window. The table, chairs and cabinets of the kitchen were as undistinguished and homely as a museum diorama of Cree or Shaker life, but the teapot she set out was Japanese, and its hand-painted calligraphic designs were the only stretch, the only note of ostentation.

I seated myself with my back to the wall, facing the door, thinking of Minna and the conversation I’d heard through the wire. She took water off a low flame and filled the pot, then put a tiny mug without a handle in front of me and filled it with an unstrained swirling confetti of tea. I warmed my chapped hands around it gratefully.

“I’m Kimmery.”

“Lionel.” I felt
Kissdog
rising in me and fought it back.

“You’re interested in Buddhism?”

“You could say that.”

“I’m not really who you should talk to but I can tell you what they’ll say. It’s not about getting centered, or, you know,
stress reduction
. A lot of people—Americans, I mean—have that idea. But it’s really a religious discipline, and not easy at all. Do you know about zazen?”

“Tell me.”

“It’ll make your back hurt a
lot
. That’s one thing.” She rolled her eyes at me, already commiserating.

“You mean meditation.”

“Zazen
, it’s called. Or
sitting
. It sounds like nothing, but it’s the heart of Zen practice. I’m not very good at it.”

I recalled the Quakers who’d adopted Tony, and their brick meetinghouse across eight lanes of traffic from St. Vincent’s. Sunday mornings
we could look through their tall windows and see them gathered in silence on hard benches. “What’s to be good at?” I said.

“You have no idea. Breathing, for starters. And thinking, except it’s not supposed to
be
thinking.”

“Thinking about not thinking?”

“Not thinking about it. One Mind, they call it. Like realizing that everything has Buddha nature, the flag and the wind are the same thing, that sort of stuff.”

I wasn’t exactly following her, but
One Mind
seemed an honorable goal, albeit positively chimerical. “Could we—could I sit with you sometime? Or is it done alone?”

“Both. But here at the Zendo thereߣs regular sessions.” She lifted her cup of tea with both hands, steaming her glasses instantly. “Anyone can come. And you’re really lucky if you stick around today. Some important monks from Japan are in town to see the Zendo, and one of them is going to talk this evening, after zazen.”

Important monks, imported rugs, unimportant ducks
—jabber was building up in the ocean of my brain like flotsam, and soon a wave would toss it ashore. “So it’s run out of Japan,” I said. “And now they’re checking up on you—like the Pope coming in from Rome.”

“Not exactly. Roshi set the Zendo up on his own. Zen isn’t centralized. There are different teachers, and sometimes they move around.”

“But Roshi did come here from Japan.” From the name I pictured a wizened old man, a little bigger than Yoda in
Return of the Jedi
.

“No, Roshi’s American. He used to have an American name.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t know.
Roshi
just basically means teacher, but that’s the only name he has anymore.”

I sipped my scalding tea. “Does anyone else use this building for anything?”

“Anything like what?”

“Killing me!
—sorry. Just anything besides sitting.”

“You can’t shout like that in here,” she said.

“Well, if—
kissing me!
—something strange was going on, say if Roshi were in some kind of trouble, would you know about it?” I twisted my neck—if I could I would have tied it in a knot, like the top of a plastic garbage bag.
“Eating me!”

“I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was oddly blasé, sipping her tea and watching me over the top of the cup. I recalled the legends of Zen masters slapping and kicking students to induce sudden realizations. Perhaps that practice was common here in the Zendo, and so she’d inured herself to outbursts, abrupt outlandish gestures.

“Forget it,” I said. “Listen: Have you had any visitors lately?” I was thinking of Tony, who’d ostensibly called on the Zendo after our conference at L&L. “Anyone come sniffing around here last night?”

She only looked puzzled, and faintly annoyed. “No.”

I considered pushing it, describing Tony to her, then decided he must have visited unseen, at least by Kimmery. Instead I asked, “Is there anybody in the building right now?”

“Well, Roshi lives on the top floor.”

“He’s up there now?” I said, startled.

“Sure. He’s in
sesshin
—it’s like an extended retreat—because of these monks. He took a vow of silence, so it’s been a little quiet around here.”

“Do you live here?”

“No. I’m cleaning up for morning zazen. The other students will show up in an hour. They’re out doing work service now. That’s how the Zendo can afford to pay the rent here. Wallace is downstairs already, but that’s basically it.”

“Wallace?” I was distracted by the tea leaves in my cup settling gradually into a mound at the bottom, like astronauts on a planet with barely any gravity.

“He’s like this old hippie who hardly ever does anything but sit. I think his legs must be made of plastic or something. We went past him on the way up.”

“Where? In the room with the mats?”

“Uh-huh. He’s like a piece of furniture, easy to miss.”

“Biggish, you mean?”

“Not so big. I meant still, he sits still.” She whispered, “I always wonder if he’s dead.”

“But he’s not a really
big
person.”

“You wouldn’t say that.”

I plunged two fingers into my cup, needing to unsettle the floating leaves again, force them to resume their dance. If the girl saw me do it she didn’t say anything.

“You haven’t seen any really big people lately, have you?” Though I’d not encountered them yet, Roshi and Wallace seemed both unpromising suspects to be the Polish giant. I wondered if instead one might be the sardonic conversationalist I’d heard taunting Minna over the wire.

“Mmmmm, no,” she said.

“Pierogi monster,”
I said, then coughed five times for cover. Thoughts of Minna’s killers had overwhelmed the girl’s calming influence—my brain sizzled with language, my body with gestures.

In reply she only refilled my cup, then moved the pot to the countertop. While her back was turned I stroked her chair, ran my palm over the warmth where she’d been sitting, played the spokes of the chair’s back like a noiseless harp.

“Lionel? Is that your name?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem very calm, Lionel.” She’d pivoted, almost catching my chair-molestation, and now she leaned back against the counter instead of retaking her seat.

I didn’t ordinarily hesitate to reveal my syndrome, but something in me fought it now. “Do you have something to eat?” I said. Perhaps calories would restore my equilibrium.

“Um, I don’t know,” she said. “You want some bread or something? There might be some yogurt left.”

“Because this tea is corked with caffeine. It only looks harmless. Do you drink this stuff all the time?”

“Well, it’s sort of traditional.”

“Is that part of the Zen thing, getting punchy so you can see God?

Isn’t that cheating?”

“It’s more just to stay awake. Because we don’t really have God in Zen Buddhism.” She turned away from me and began rifling through the cabinets, but didn’t quit her musings. “We just sit and try not to fall asleep, so I guess in a way staying awake
is
seeing God, sort of. So you’re right.”

The little triumph didn’t thrill me. I was feeling trapped, with the wizened teacher a floor above me and the plastic-legged hippie a floor below. I wanted to get out of the Zendo now, but I hadn’t figured a next move.

And when I left I wanted to take Kimmery with me. I wanted to protect her—the impulse surged in me, looking to affix to a suitable target. Now that I’d failed Minna, who deserved my protection? Was it Tony? Was it Julia? I wished that Frank would whisper a clue in my ear from the beyond. In the meantime, Kimmery would do.

“Here, do you want some Oreos?”

“Sure,” I said distractedly. “Buddhists eat Oreos?”

“We eat anything we want, Lionel. This isn’t Japan.” She took a blue carton of cookies and put it on the table.