The Boys from Santa Cruz

3

Pender and Epstein reached Braxton Hot Springs, a New Age retreat center in the heart of Lake County, shortly after one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. ABSOLUTELY NO MOTOR VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT, declared the hand-painted wooden sign on the gate at the end of the winding, two-and-a-half-mile-long driveway. A half dozen vehicles, ranging from a handsome new Lexus to a rusted-out VW bus with a psychedelic paint job, were parked in a dirt lot by the side of the road.

ELDERS, DELIVERIES, DIFFERENTLY ABLED, USE FOR ASSISTANCE, read a second, smaller sign nailed to the last telephone pole. Skip opened the rusty metal cabinet mounted beneath the sign, picked up the handset inside it, and clicked the hook with his forefinger like a character in an old-timey movie-Hello, Operator, give me Central!

Figuring that the chances of smoking being permitted beyond the gate were slim, Pender fired up a Marlboro while Skip talked to somebody at the other end. He only managed to sneak a few puffs before a lovely, fresh-faced, wet-haired young woman in a damp caftan arrived in a four-seater golf cart. “Are you here for the ceremony tonight?” she asked, looking them over dubiously.

“Could be,” said Pender, buttoning his tomato soup sport coat to hide the Smith amp; Wesson Model 10 in his shoulder holster.

“You never know,” added Skip-he was wearing a tan, zipper-front working man’s jacket long enough to cover the Beretta in his kidney holster.

The young woman dropped them off in front of the Center, a two-story, wood-and-glass building with a cantilevered roof. “O’s probably out on the deck,” she called over her shoulder, casually stripping off her caftan as she trotted up the dusty road in the direction of the hot springs.

“Welcome to California,” said Skip, smugly.

Pender rapped on the aluminum-framed screen door.

“Come on up!”

An open-treaded spiral staircase led to a carpeted, glass-enclosed room as sparsely furnished as a dance studio. Sliding glass doors opened onto a hardwood deck where an overweight, middle-aged man with a shaved head and a bushy, gray-blond beard was standing on one foot. The sole of his other foot was pressed flat against the inside of the opposite knee, and both hands were raised over his head, palms together like a football referee signaling a safety. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry,” called Pender, who remembered Dr. O as a slender, beardless preppy with sandy hair. “We were looking for Dr. Oliver.”

“You found him.” Oliver, who was wearing a pair of white cotton meditation pajamas, abandoned his yoga posture. “What can I do for you?”

Obviously, Dr. O had failed to recognize Pender from their previous meeting, which meant Skip was free to launch into the cover story he and Pender had agreed to try first. They were, he told Oliver, two freelance writers working on a book about the evolution of the spiritual movement in the West from Be Here Now to, well, now. Skip apologized for not having contacted Dr. Oliver in advance, explaining that they had only heard about his institute a few days ago and had been trying to track him down since then.

Ten minutes later, seated at a trestle table in the rustic dining hall downstairs, sipping some surprisingly kick-ass chai in lieu of coffee, Dr. Oliver described the sequence of events that had transformed him from a jacket-and-tie psychologist to a pajama-wearing guru. It included a pilgrimage to the East (no mention of the Mountain Project debacle), a blinding flash of enlightenment, and subsequent years of study and meditation at the bare or sandaled feet of various spiritual teachers, the last of whom ordered him to return to the West to pass on the wisdom he had gained.

He then gave them a brief outline of the two-week training currently under way. The first week had consisted largely of breaking down the trainees’ baseline assumptions and ego structures. This evening’s ceremony marked the turning point, then the second week would be concerned with building up healthier, spiritually oriented human beings.

And no, he told them in response to their request, he would not give them permission to observe the ceremony tonight-dramatic pause-but he would be willing to let them participate in the ceremony, if they agreed to sign waivers and let him vet anything they might write about himself or the institute or the training.

Skip jumped at the offer so eagerly that Pender was afraid he might have given them away. No real journalist would have even considered allowing a subject the equivalent of a filmmaker’s final cut.

But Oliver didn’t appear to have noticed anything amiss. He would have one of his assistants draw up an interim agreement and prepare the requisite waivers for them to sign before the ceremony, he told them. “Until then, feel free to explore our beautiful surroundings, have a soak in the world-famous hot springs. Myself, I’m going back to my cabin for my midafternoon ‘horizontal meditation,’” he added, winking broadly and bracketing the last two words with two-finger quotation marks, in case they hadn’t figured out that he was going down for a nap.