Wichita (9781609458904) (7 page)

 

I
n the morning, too groggy to deal with figuring out the new espresso machine, Lewis searches in the cabinets until he finds a familiar old Braun coffee maker. No one else seems to be up. Like evidence of something that might have been a dream, a blue sponge trails a smear of fake butter on the counter by his elbow.

When the coffee is brewed, he pours a cup and goes out through the sliding glass door of the breakfast nook and sits on the back stoop. The sky is a clear cornflower blue fading to a paler band toward the horizon, the sun already intense. At the bottom of a tumbler left outside by someone, sugar ants swarm over orange juice dregs.

The backyard has gone dramatically to the weeds, golden­rod, Queen Anne's lace, a tall, tobacco-like plant with floppy dark-green leaves. Ivy cascades over the patch where Abby made an attempt at a small Zen garden; over the mound where there was a compost heap during her Alice Waters/organic garden moment; over the collapsed remains of a plywood skate ramp built by Seth and Cody; up and over the fence into the yard of the neighbor, lawn-proud Baptist minister Oren, who can't be too pleased with that.

A vine with heart-shaped leaves winds up the rust-speckled legs of a white outdoor chair and over an electrical outlet with hinged caps. An orange extension cord is plugged into one of the outlets. It disappears at an angle into the underbrush like a snake.

Sipping his coffee, Lewis idly follows it around the corner of house, dandelion spores twinkling in the air, a grasshopper launching into a side-slipping arc.

The cord vanishes under the side of a yellow and purple tent made of light silky material. A clothesline runs from the center pole of the tent to a drainpipe on the side of the house and fastened to it with large black paperclips are half a dozen Tibetan prayer flags, a beach towel, a pair of yellowing cream boxer shorts and two small aluminum signs. One says, SLOW NO WAKE ZONE; the other, Gone Phishing.

The weeds have been trampled into footpaths leading to the spigot and hose alongside the house and to a moped on a kickstand, an Army-surplus helmet hanging by its strap from the handlebar. There's a green hammock on a metal frame drawn up close to the house in the shade of the roof.

As Lewis gets closer, the tent quivers and he hears a voice. Wondering with quiet dread whether some homeless person or persons from Inter-Faith Ministries has set up camp here with Abby's consent, Lewis puts his cup of coffee on the ground and stands by the flap and says, “Hello in there!”

The tent shudders again and a tousled white-haired head with white beard emerges in profile from the entrance flap and looks squintingly around—Bishop. He has a sun/windburn and a mosquito bite on his cheek. He withdraws into the tent like a tortoise and Lewis hears him say, in a slightly panicky tone, “How'd you calculate that?”

Now he crawls out of the opening and gets creakily to his feet, still without noticing Lewis, who's standing about four feet away. How old is Bishop, sixty? Quietly, so as not to startle him, Lewis says, “Hi.”

Bishop remains impervious, head bowed. He's wearing jogging shorts, Tevas, and a T-shirt. He puts his hands on his hips and arches backward then does a slow twist, at which point he sees Lewis and flinches in surprise but quickly recovers, his face lighting up.

“There he is!” Bishop says. The T-shirt says REALITY above a check-marked box.

Lewis has his hand out to shake but Bishop won't hear of such “back East” standoffishness and envelops him in a tight Deadhead/Burning Man hug. He smells of bug repellent, Dr. Bronner's mint soap and high-grade weed.

Stepping back to look Lewis over, he smiles slyly and tugs at his own white beard. “I see I inspired a new look!”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Lewis says to humor him, touching his own beard reflexively. He remains silent to give Bishop a chance to explain his presence in a tent in the yard but Bishop just grins goofily, his head cocked to one side, hands open in elfin coyness.

Lewis gives in: “So what the hell are you doing out here in the yard, Bishop?”

“
Abiding near the Goddess
, of course!” Bishop declares, lifting his Tevas in a vague goat dance step.

“Who, Abby?” For there's a good chance Bishop means Gaia; there's a good chance Bishop means any number of things.

“Well, I use the term ‘Goddess,'” Bishop says, making air quotes, “as a way to call forth the highest dimension of her consciousness.” He waits for Lewis to indicate his comprehension.

“OK,” Lewis says provisionally.

“Good!” Bishop says as if Lewis has taken the first step in a Socratic dialogue. “And I see
my being out here
and having this relation
to
her as bringing
her
to
embody
that ‘Divine Feminine.' But it's also a
circuit
—between us—a symbiosis! The God in me, the Goddess in her, in a
circuit
.” Bishop pauses to give this time to sink in then says, “Pretty fantastic, right?”

“It's fantastic, all right,” Lewis agrees, deadpan, but if he detects the irony Bishop elects to overlook it.

“Also,” Bishops says, “it's just
so clear
from various indicators that we're living on the threshold of
an enormous collective shift
. Just fucking e
nor
mous, Lewis! All the usual forms and norms are being cast off and transfigured as we speak, left and right, left and right, my man!” He makes the gestures of someone tossing flowers from a basket. “We're in the
midst
of that. And what a blessing to be incarnated as these ones at this juncture! OK, but which leaves us where on a daily basis? We're just
out here
doing what's before us to do!
That's
where it leaves us. And boy am I feeling just as joyful as hell about
that
. I mean, look around, my friend!”

Lewis glances compliantly around at the weeds and tent and Tibetan prayer flags, the hammock. He wonders whether this “we” of Bishop's includes a certain sleep-eater named Donald.

Bishop snaps his fingers. “Gave up my apartment and all the useless crap that went with it. If you don't use it at least once in three months, it should be tossed out.”

Lewis strokes the side of the tent, toes one of the stakes holding down a corner. “So this is a long-haul sort of commitment?”

“Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.” Lips pursed, Bishop surveys the terrain. “Why not? I really think I'm good year-round, though I'll probably convert to a yurt sort of structure come fall,” Bishop says. “Did you know you can have a Mongolian yurt
delivered
? Here, to this very spot?” He points to the street. “A truck pulls up with a yurt tied to the flatbed with cables.” He mimes a guiding-in with straight arms. “They untether the thing and convey on a forklift to the desired coordinates and
boom
.” He makes a stiff-armed gesture to demonstrate the setting down of a yurt.

“How long have you been out here?” Lewis asks.

“Tomorrow will be day—” Bishop consults his wrist but has no watch. “Twenty-nine or so.” He gives a thumbs-up then his smile vanishes and he says, “Well, it's not a free base, it's a salt!” Now Lewis notices the tiny Bluetooth device clipped to Bishop's left ear.

“What do you get?” Bishop asks the air above Lewis's shoulder. “Call me
right back
, okay?”

Bishop meets Lewis's eye and shakes his head in annoyed, large-eyed wonderment. “That was Jessie.” As if Lewis already knows who Jessie is but this is what it's like talking to Bishop. “The DMT the Feds sent, which arrived two days ago?” he says. “It's already decayed by thirty percent! So unless they sabotaged the stuff—” Bishop bugs out his eyes and laughs wheezily through clenched teeth. “But let's not even go there, right?”

“Right,” Lewis agrees, “better not.”

“Anyway,” Bishop says, “this is according to Jessie, who somehow got it into his head that it's a
free base
.” He lets out an annoyed bark of a laugh. “So who really knows what the fuck is going on!”

“What's DMT, Bishop?” Because it's either ask the obvious now or resign himself to simpering and nodding along in the dark.

Bishop squints at him in disbelief. “DMT?
DMT
!” As if it's the equivalent of the Beatles or Shakespeare. “N, N Dimethyl­tryptamine? —Dimitri'?”

Lewis shakes his head. “Sorry.”

“Well, gosh, let's see,” Bishop says, casting about for suitably basic building blocks. “It's a tryptamine, like 'shrooms, only
way
more powerful.” He pauses and looks at Lewis. “You
have
done 'shrooms.”

Lewis nods as if of course though in fact he's never taken any psychedelic, not after seeing what happened to Seth. Reassured, Bishop says, “The Indians in the Amazon take it in snuff form for shamanic purposes. Most folks smoke it. For the study, we inject it.”

“Wait, is this the toad stuff?” Lewis asks.

“Right, right—it's excreted by certain toads, sure,” Bishop says with gentle condescension. “But it's also in, you know—” he gestures at the yard, “grass, lizards, peas. In
us
too, in our bloodstream, endogenously. The
human fucking brain
produces it! Basically it's the most powerful psychedelic known to man. Launches you into other universes, McKenna's whole machinic-elves realm, etc., etc.”

He turns aside and raises a hand to his ear piece. “Whew!” he says, giving Lewis a thumbs-up. “That's more like it, Jessie! Later.”

Bishop claps his hands and seizes Lewis happily by the biceps. “It
hasn't decayed
! He was just measuring wrong.” Releasing Lewis, he spins in place, lifts his Teva'd feet in a victory dance. ‘It hasn't decayed, it hasn't fucking
decayed
! You don't know how
worried
I was. Oh my God.”

“What sort of study is this?” Lewis asks.

Bishop stops dancing. He looks perplexed, wounded. “Abby didn't tell you?”

Lewis shakes his head.

“Huh, that's strange,” Bishop says, touching his beard. “Wonder what that's all about,” he murmurs, flicking at his lip with a finger and squintingly searching Lewis's face for clues.

“You wouldn't have wanted to be in it anyway,” he says finally. “
That's
why Abby didn't tell you about it. OK, that makes sense.” He nods his head. “OK, yeah, what it is: we're trying to see whether a certain Big Pharma antihistamine that shall remain nameless blocks the serotonin receptor two site.” Bishop grins conspiratorially at Lewis, shaking his head at the absurdity of it. “Good luck getting volunteers for
that
, right?!”

“Why?” Lewis asks.

“I mean, duh!” Bishop says with a laugh. “Receptor two is THE site for psychedelics. Who wants to be part of a study that may well LESSEN the effects of your pure DMT?”

“I see,” says Lewis.

“But we've actually got a good group of folks. Of course,
Seth
's on board,” Bishop adds with a sly smile.

Lewis feels a surge of alarm. “What do you mean?”

Bishop shrugs. “Seth's betting the stuff
doesn't
work to block the effects. Which, hey, is possible, right? Assuming he passes the physical and the psych test, he's good to go. You could still be included if someone drops out, Lewis,” he adds as if worried Lewis is feeling left out.

Lewis is about to say something about the recklessness of giving Seth of all people “the most powerful psychedelic known to man” but decides to take it up with Abby instead.

Bishop raises his eyebrows and spreads his arms as if to say, So that's how things stand in
his
corner of the universe. “To have the
privilege
of having to do
whatever it takes
to be near her,” Bishop says, gesturing at the yard with joyous fatalism. “And
this
is what it takes right now, my friend!” He seizes Lewis by the hands as if imploring him.

Lewis smiles faintly, nods. Bishop probably has no idea about V., who must be installed at the Stonington house by now. Unless she's staying at Andrew Feeling's family summer house in Maine, which Lewis knows about through the grapevine. Bishop is clearly a nut, an eccentric. But is it just possible that Lewis gave up too easily, lacked a great lover's imagination and madness? What if he decided to go on devoting himself to V. with or without her consent and set up his own tent in the garden of the Stonington house? He can see the place for it, between the sedun and potentilla shrubs. Then he can see V.'s father, a taciturn, no-nonsense physicist on the faculty at Trinity College, and her witty, brilliant older brother, who works for a hedge fund as a quant analyst in Greenwich. They're standing in the floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door at back of the house, scowling in disbelief at Lewis and his tent. The mother, a lovely, kind woman who taught Lewis how to sail and made him feel part of the family, appears there with them now, then V. herself, hand raised to her lips. And it's like some hideous Tourette's fantasy: it would be one of the most searingly wrong, embarrassing things he could possibly do.

“AND I LOVE IT!” Bishop cries. “YES!”

A window goes up. “Bishop!” Abby hisses from within. Bishop and Lewis turn toward her voice but she's invisible behind the screen. “We're still sleeping!”

“Sorry!” Bishop calls from a crouch, hands cupped to his mouth. The window slides down with a clicking noise.

“Shit. Oh well,” Bishop whispers, deflated. “Although technically I doubt she would be
telling
me she was asleep if she were actually
asleep
.”

He stands thinking. “Listen, do me a favor?”

“Sure,” Lewis says.

“Tell her—” he holds up a finger and drops to the ground and crawls into the tent with rapid practiced ease, like a cave-dweller or burrowing animal, then crawls backward holding a white Mac laptop and passes it up to Lewis from a kneeling position. “Tell her I finished a draft of the Grateful Gaia website?”