Criminal Carma

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Did everything go okay?” Ganesha asked when he came up to me, holding his clipboard to his chest.

“It won’t leak anymore,” I said.

“Thank you for your help,” he said, and made a pained face. “I’m sorry if I was rude yesterday. It’s just that there has been so much going on around here lately, and we had some problems yesterday… but that’s no excuse. I was at fault and I apologize. It’s nice of you to help. We’ll be having lunch in a few minutes if you would like to join us.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “Have you seen Mary around?”

“She’s fixing the food,” he said, a different kind of pain on his face. “You’ll see her at lunch. Thanks again for your help.”

He turned abruptly and strode toward the front of the house. I went in the opposite direction, along the side of the house and through a gate into the backyard.

An old brick wall enclosed the yard on the Seventh Street side, shielding it from the view of passersby. A hedge of lilac bushes divided it from the yard next door and the one behind it. At the back of the enclosed space was a rose garden with a bench facing a blue-and-white statue of the Virgin Mary. Near the house, several picnic benches had been pushed together, end to end, and the flower girls, now dressed in work clothes, were going in and out the back door, carrying food from the kitchen to the tables. Several volunteer workers were washing their hands and faces with a garden hose while others stood in groups, waiting for the dinner bell. It had warmed up and most people had shed their jackets and sweaters.

I saw Mary’s face at the kitchen window, looking out at the preparations, and waved to her. She didn’t seem to see me, so I went up the back steps into the kitchen.

She was standing by the sink, filling a pitcher with water.

“Hi,” I said. “What can I do to help?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Everything is under control. We’ll be eating in a few minutes.”

She was wearing flip-flops with a rainbow strap, pink shorts that lived up to the name, showing all but the last and most provocative inch of her slim thighs, and a neat little white sleeveless blouse that buttoned up the front. If she had looked any sexier, I would have done an involuntary back flip with my head spinning around on my shoulders. As it was, I felt impulses. Strong, shameful impulses.

Taking a deep breath to constrict my pounding heart, I walked over and stood beside her. “Why don’t we go to the beach after lunch,” I said, taking a shot. “It’s turned into a real bluebird day out there. We could walk over to the Santa Monica pier and ride the Ferris wheel. It’s so clear, I bet we could see the Channel Islands from the top.”

“No,” she said, turning to look at me with no expression. “I don’t want to do that. Please wait outside. Only staff are allowed in the kitchen.”

“Why so cold?” I said, but she ignored me and handed the pitcher to one of the flower girls.

“Put some ice in this and take it out,” she told the girl, as if I had not spoken.

Going back down the steps into the sunny yard, I cursed myself for being too critical of Baba the night before. That was probably what had offended her. If she was invested in his worldview, she couldn’t afford to see him as a phony.

I sat down at one of the picnic tables, feeling angry and unhappy. The Sunday Los Angeles Times was scattered across the red-and-white-checked tablecloth, and a headline in the California section caught my eye: DISCENZA SAYS PACIFIC CITY LAND ACQUISITION NEAR COMPLETE.

I remembered then where I had seen Discenza’s name prior to reading the documents in Baba’s bedroom. He was an often-investigated member of the Venice City Council, allied with the old-school mayor and two other councilmen against a triad of reformers. The article identified him as managing partner of the LLC developing Pacific City and said he had recused himself from voting on matters connected with it. The project had nevertheless been approved at every phase, in spite of strong neighborhood opposition. According to the city charter, when there was a tie vote on the city council, the final decision was left to the mayor. Because he was a voting member of the council, every vote had been a tie, and he had used his extra ounce of authority to nudge the city’s decision in the developer’s favor at each stage. There was no mention of Finklestein or Baba Raba in the article. Since the construction documents were in the public record, Finklestein’s name would be known to reporters and activists, but probably not his local identity as an XXXL guru. The last paragraph noted that there would be an on-site protest against the development later that afternoon.

“Are you reading the rest of the paper?” one of the cheery old ladies asked, looking at me brightly from where she was standing on the other side of the table.

“No,” I said.

“I’m going to move it out of the way so people can sit down to eat.”

Briskly, she gathered up the real estate, classified, news, and travel sections and marched away.

Baba was providing a nice lunch for his karma yogis. Arranged at one end of the long, rectangular table were big bowls of cole slaw, potato salad, and a green salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, black olives, and feta cheese; platters of cheddar and Swiss cheese sandwiches made with thick whole-wheat bread and garnished with avocado, tomato, and bean sprouts; bowls of fresh fruit and shelled nuts; a big tray of some kind of baked whole-grain desert; and pitchers of water, lemonade, and sassafras tea.

When Mary came down the wooden steps with another tray of dessert, the eyes of every man in the yard followed her, some openly, with approving smiles and nudges, others surreptitiously, glancing and looking away and glancing again, trying to capture her image in their minds or hearts or groins.

“Where is Baba?” Ganesha asked her as she set the tray down.

“How should I know?” Mary said. “I don’t run the ashram.”

Ganesha made his pained, apologetic face once more. “Would you please see if he is going to come down? Everyone is hungry.”

Mary walked away without a word, across the yard and back up the steps into the kitchen. So it wasn’t just me she was being rude to.

The people in the backyard eyed the food while carrying on conversations about yoga, yard maintenance, and local politics that rose from murmur to emphatic discussion and died down again, punctuated by bursts of laughter.

After about ten minutes, Walt called out from across the yard, “Ganesha, we’re starving, man. When do we eat?”

Ganesha looked at the kitchen door, then up at the second-floor windows of Baba’s bedroom and shook his head.

“Right now,” he said decisively. “I guess Gurudev is occupied. Let’s gather around the table and join hands.”

As the group encircled the table, Johnny came up on my left side, Evelyn on my right. I had no consciousness of Johnny’s hand, concentrating on the touch of the fine feminine instrument I had first noticed in the lobby of the Oasis Palms Resort Hotel. Even as it rested quietly in mine, returning gentle pressure with gentle pressure, Evelyn’s hand was articulate and exciting.

Of one accord, everyone bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Ganesha chanted the sacred syllable om, drawing it out for thirty seconds or so as everyone joined in. Twice more the welded circle chanted with a single resonant voice the sound that is said to have ten thousand meanings. Afterward, we stood in silence for another minute, ears ringing, before a simultaneous squeeze of hands signaled the end of the meditation.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that everyone else was grinning, too.

“Dig in,” Ganesha said. “You’ve earned it.”

As people formed a line to get at the groceries, Mary came out the kitchen door and down the steps, looking angry. As she stalked past me, I reached out and snagged her, grasping her bare arm with my hand, which was still glowing from the eloquent touch of Evermore’s smooth skin.

Mary jerked her arm away, whirling to face me, then calming slightly when she saw who I was.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I was just going to say you can cut in line in front of me if you want to.”

“That’s all right,” she said. I couldn’t tell if that meant “No thanks, I don’t want to join you in line” or “No problem, I don’t mind that you touched me.”

As I watched her face for a clue, she looked up at the back of the house. Following her azure gaze, I saw Baba Raba looking down from one of his bedroom windows. The casement window was cranked open and he was visible from the middle of his thick hairy thighs on up, wearing his dhoti and a bent iron frown.

Mary lowered her eyes to mine, smiled, and then slid into line in front of me. There were additional impulses but I kept my hands to myself as we edged forward. When we had our food, she linked her arm though mine and led me to the bench in the rose garden, glancing up once at Baba, who still loomed like a dark demigod above the picnic. I wondered if he recognized me and regretted his invitation.

“You still want to take me to the beach?” Mary asked when we sat down.

“I sure do.”

I didn’t care if she was using me to make a point with the guru. It gave me an opportunity to sit close beside her, with our thighs touching. When we came to dessert, she let me feed her a piece of the coarse sweet cake, taking it from my fork delicately with her lips and tongue, chewing it slowly while looking me in the eye, occasionally blinking her fairy eyelashes. When I tried to feed her a second piece, she laughed and pushed my hand away.

“That’s enough of that,” she said. “Let’s get this place cleaned up, then we’ll go.”

Everyone pitched in to straighten up the yard and put the food away, with Ganesha and Mary supervising.

“You’re really having a good day, man,” Johnny said as we moved one of the picnic tables back where it belonged.

After lunch, some of the volunteers left and some returned to the jobs they had been doing, scraping paint or pulling weeds. I was waiting for Mary by the kitchen steps when Evermore walked up and handed me a card with her name and address written on it.

“When do you think you can come by and take a look?”

“I’m booked up next week,” I said. “But I could stop by tonight if you are going to be home.”

“Super!” she said. “Make it around six-thirty.”

“I’ll see you then.”