The Program

Chapter fifteen

In the back of the Growth Hall, Stanley John was beating the kettledrum, which sent a low, anesthetizing vibration through Leah's bones. It made her job – unstacking folding chairs – easier. She moved through her work rhythmically, like a dancer. The backs of her arms were purpling with the bruises.

Lorraine and Winona scrambled around on all fours buffing the lacquered wood. A converted gymnasium from the adolescent facility, the Growth Hall featured a high-tech lighting system, basketball court lines, and a stage. Rewarded for his progress on the Web site, Chris wielded a measuring tape to calculate the space between seating.

TD paced the growing aisles, his usual preshow warm-up, his eyes riveted on the checklist in front of him. He barked his shin on an out-of-line folding chair.

Stanley John stopped beating the drum. The tape recoiled back into the metal square in Chris's puffy hand. The gym fell silent.

TD glanced down at the wayward chair and then at Chris, who did not rise from his knees.

Dots of sweat rose on Chris's forehead. "I'm sorry. I take ownership of my incompetence -"

TD spoke with a calm, honey-coated intensity. "Maybe you can't step up to this task. Maybe measuring the distance between two chairs is too much for you."

"I'm sorry. I'm just a little distracted. I was up all night fussing with the hyperlinks -"

"Well, that's a ready batch of answers. Looks like we've backslid into excuse making. What's our friend Chris need to do, folks?"

"Negate victimhood."

TD brushed Chris's hair out of his eyes. "I think we need to reset your preferences for humility. You can start by unclogging the methane bleeders at the septic tank tomorrow."

Chris's eyes clenched shut. "Thank you, Teacher."

"Where's your wife?"

"Over here, TD," Janie called out with a smile. Her dark, stiff jeans, tight around her firm behind, struck a contrast with her baggy pink sweater. She finished dumping another five-pound bag of sugar into the vat of punch while another helper stirred away.

"Come."

Janie walked over and stood obediently before him, arms at her sides.

"Does your husband default to victimhood, Janie?"

She looked from TD to Chris, then back to TD. "He has lapsed Off Program a little lately."

TD nodded severely. "On the other hand, in the past few weeks, you've closed on" – he turned a half circle and raised his voice -"more Neos than anyone else." His applause was picked up by the others. Still on his knees, Chris clapped along with them. "Not like Sean and Julie, whose numbers have been down." Dark looks from all directed at the laggards. "Chris, give your wife the tape measure. That's it."

Chris raised it to his wife's waiting hands. TD cupped his palm on the ridge of Janie's hip, just above the back pocket of her jeans. Chris's eyes were riveted to TD's gently squeezing fingers.

Janie smiled, basking in TD's glow.

"Others have found it easier to work without a bulky sweater on," TD said.

Her eyes fixed on his, Janie pulled the sweater off over her head, revealing a fitted undershirt through which her nipples showed slightly. TD nodded, pleased, and resumed his pacing. The hall fell back into motion.

Chris rose and sulked in a rear corner, his eyes beady and small above his too-wide cheeks. Leah was relieved TD didn't take note, for something had changed in Chris's eyes, and it was a change he would not have liked.

She pulled the next chair off the stack and handed it to a young graphic-design guru whose name she'd forgotten; he snapped it open and slid it down the assembly line.

TD strolled beatifically through the flurry of activity, his focus never leaving his notes.

"Teacher, do you want the cookies arranged on the trays flat or stacked?"

His eyes stayed on his checklist. "Flat."

Another worker – "I cut my finger pretty good. Can I get a ride to the ER so I can get it looked at?"

"No. You can visit Dr. Henderson in Cottage Three after the Orae."

"TD, I really want to have sex with my wife. It's been almost three weeks."

"Fine. After the Orae. Missionary. In her cottage. Fifteen minutes."

"Thank you. Thank you."

"My father died. The service -"

"Stop crying."

"I'm sorry. The service is twenty minutes away. Can I have money for a bus ride?"

"Leave the dead to bury the dead."

"Will you let me grow a beard, Teacher?"

"Enough, please. I'm trying to prepare."

All talking ceased, the silence broken only by the quiet rustling of the workers.

Leah snapped a chair open, pinching her thumb in a hinge. She bit her lip so she wouldn't cry out, her eyes watering. The pain pulled her from her working trance, and she stepped outside. To her right alongside the building, three pay-phone handsets nestled in their hooks, severed cords protruding stiffly beneath them.

Down the curved road, lights twinkled in the cottages. To her left beyond a fence and a strip of fire-retarding ice plant, a cliff fell away. In the night the abrupt drop was a void. The cold bit her through the thin cotton of her jersey. She thumbed the fabric. Will had brought her the shirt back from location somewhere, a gift without an occasion.

"Leah? What are you doing out here?" Janie's voice yanked her from her thoughts. "You know better than to skulk around alone. Hurry now, or you'll throw off TD's concentration for the Orae."

Leah mumbled an apology and followed her back inside, where the five-foot stacks of chairs waited.

All sixty-eight Pros, stoked with candy bars and punch, packed the seats, riding out a sugar high together. Everyone held hands, swayed, and babbled excitedly. Randall and Skate emerged from outside, Skate's hands glittering with dog slobber, and took up posts at the base of the stage. The drum started beating again. Leah went under its spell.

The overheads dimmed, the footlights came up, and plaintive trumpet notes announced the Orae's commencement. As the music resolved into the opening motif of 2001: A Space Odyssey, TD burst onto the stage, a Janet Jackson mike floating off his right cheek. The thunderous sforzando chords faded, and then there was just the slow, rumbling beat of the drum and the Teacher's words.

"Out there in the world are the Common-Censors. The human husks. The living dead. They're all stuck in the dead links of their Old Programming. They're like the three little monkeys – deaf, dumb, and blind." TD's eyes seemed to take in every face. "Now, some people may say I'm kind of crazy. Some people might call me a weirdo. But I like that label." His lips firmed in a wise little smirk. "They say we're a cult." He made spooky fingers in the light, his smile indicating this was of great amusement. A mocking rumble rose from the crowd.

Randall and Skate stood like Secret Service agents before the stage, hands clasped at their belt lines, all-knowing by proxy.

TD paced back and forth, never breaking stride, the heads of the Pros following his movement as if attached by invisible threads. "Anyone see any brainwashed cult members in here? Anyone see any animals ready for sacrifice? Anyone here against their will?"

Screams of repudiation. Scattered boos and derisive laughter. Protective cries of indignation.

"We're not brainwashed – they are. Obligation has been pounded into them, pounded into their cells since they were babies. They criticize The Program. Why? Because they can't believe we're this strong. That we're this fulfilled. They have to criticize us. In fact, their criticism is proof of how right The Program is."

A number of cries, the words wildly enthusiastic but unintelligible. Leah reeled, unsteady on her feet. The hall zoomed around her, a slow-motion tilt. She caught a glimpse of Chris in the back, crouching beside his chair, his sharp and lucid expression standing out from a sea of softened faces.

Shrieks of laughter. Her head buzzing with sugar, her eyes still adjusting to the dimness and the flickering lights, Leah felt her lungs inflate, her mouth open, her sides shake, and then she realized she, too, was laughing.

"Here" – TD's arms drifted out, shadows consuming the upward drift of the footlights – "we live in the Now."

Janie chattered next to Leah. "Living in the Now. That's so brilliant. It's so crucial to growth."

The drum continued its measured beat. Leah felt herself swaying with the crowd, with the cadence of TD's words. His sentences flowed into one another, rivers merging.

"We negate Victimhood. Those who can't need to -" He stopped abruptly, touched a hand to his ear.

"Get with The Program!" they roared.

"We are a powerhouse of resources. Attorneys. Investment bankers. Computer engineers. Recruitment is on the rise every day. Cambridge and Scottsdale will be ready to launch by the end of next month. All of our future ambassadors are right here among us."

Janie crossed her fingers, squeezed her eyes shut.

"It all starts here. Here in our utopia. This will be the model for all of California, then the U.S.A., then the world. But no matter how we grow, it all comes back to us here in this room. That's you. And you. And you. Why don't you all give each other hugs? That's right, stand up and embrace one another." TD waited, hands clasped.

A few of the wiser Pros remained seated, grinning knowingly.

"Come on, folks. If you want that self-help, feel-good crap, go to a Tony Robbins seminar and Awaken the Idiot Within. We don't need the Common-Censors. We don't need Deepak Chopra and his platitudinous spit-up. We each have within ourselves the potential to do anything. In The Program we don't even need each other. But we're stronger together." TD came to a halt onstage. "Now" – a darker tone – "in the past a few people have left the Inner Circle."

Murmurs. Leah was going hoarse.

"And they haven't had an easy go of it. Because once you've been fulfilled, once you've been part of this great practice, you can't turn your back on it. What's happened to those who have left the security of the Inner Circle?"

Leah's cheeks were wet; she couldn't stand the thought.

"They've gone insane, literally insane, stranded out there with the Common-Censors." TD's voice grew deep and sorrowful. "They've been abused. Abandoned. Controlled." The footlights glowed through his hair like a golden hood. "Many of you remember Lisa Kander."

Boos and shrieks. TD's hand snapped up vigilantly, fingers spread, stealing five streams of light and shooting them to the ceiling. The noise ceased. "Let's be fair. She wasn't a bad girl. She just couldn't make the grade. She couldn't -"

"Get with The Program!"

And then, quietly, "I just found out she killed herself." A mournful pause. "She threw herself into the La Brea Tar Pits. Living out in the world, with them, was so hurtful, she asphyxiated herself with steaming tar."

Hushed silence, broken by a few gasps, even sobs. A row up from Leah, Winona was shaking so hard she seemed to be convulsing. One of the oldest Pros at forty-two, Winona had made sacrifices to Get with The Program, leaving behind a Common-Censor husband and infant twins. As a strong role model, she was accorded a special level of respect on the ranch.

TD fanned his arms, a gesture encompassing the entire hall. "None of you will ever have to feel that emptiness. That loneliness. That abandonment. Not as long as you stay On Program and with The Program."

A tidal wave of emotion. Squeaking chairs and undulating arms. A moment of disorientation as Leah's view was blocked, and then she rose to join the throng.

TD lifted his hands, and the sound ceased abruptly, as if a plug had been yanked. Everyone sat and held hands, rocking gently now in preparation for the Guy-Med. Leah's ears hummed.

TD's voice came calm and smooth. "Everybody close your eyes. Take a stroll back to your childhood. Remember your mind as it was. Free of your Old Programming. Empty of adult cynicism. Empty of adult negativity. Let TD guide you. Picture yourself at five years old. You're standing before your childhood room. Let's go inside. Go ahead – push open the door."

Leah felt her insides rear up as on a roller-coaster drop, then avalanche down and out of her, leaving her adrift in an intoxicating emptiness. When she came to, she felt drained. The formal part of the Orae was over. TD was sitting at the stage's edge, legs dangling, talking to the lucky Pros in the front row. She'd lost a lot of time, as she often did during meditation; Stanley John had told her it was a sign of her great sensitivity.

She never remembered what happened inside her childhood house during Guy-Med.

Squeezing past protruding legs, Chris made his way down the row, the others leaning sluggishly out of his way. Leah first thought he was heading for his wife, but the seat next to her was vacant; Janie was in the back replenishing the punch. Chris squatted in front of Leah, hands cupping her knees.

"Go away," Leah said. "You'll disrupt the Teacher if you're out of your seat when he's onstage."

Chris shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. "He's not looking. Just listen. I wanted to say I'm sorry for pinching you in the Wellness Train."

"You were right to. I needed it."

"No, it wasn't right." Chris's voice was rising. "It's not right for us to treat each other this way. It's not right to be treated this way."

Leah nervously regarded the others talking distractedly around them. "I don't know what you're talking about. It's our own growth."

He stood, flustered. "After TD scolded me, I thought about what you went through, then about my daughter from my first marriage. She's just a few years younger than you."

"It's fine. Chris, you're in a loop. Just sit down."

TD's voice boomed through the mike. "Yes, Winona?"

In the chair in front of them, Winona lowered her hand. Leah and Chris stared at the sprayed shell of blond hair in horror. "I experience Chris as undermining my time here tonight," she said.

Chris's whisper came garbled from his throat. "Please don't do this."

"I experience him as being negative about The Program, Teacher. And about you."

TD's voice, projected through the floor speakers, filled the entire hall. "That's okay. I'm open to criticism. Input, Chris?"

The certainty steeling Chris's posture just minutes before decayed. "No."

"Is that true, Winona?"

Winona's southern accent lent her words a haughty zing. "No. He's deflecting."

Leah felt TD's energy going away from her toward Chris and Chris alone. For a moment she thought the relief might send her unconscious again.

TD's voice assaulted them from the four corners of the room. "So you're willing to be negative to other Pros but not stand up for what you say. That's not a very strong position to take, is it?"

Chris shifted his weight, his eyes darting.

"I think I angered you when I took away the tape measure from you because of your inability to do a job and gave it to your beautiful younger wife. Did that anger you?"

The Pros pivoted in their seats.

"Answer him," Leah murmured, barely moving her lips. "Just give a response."

But Chris stood dumbly, legs shaking, watching some point on the floor between his shoes and the stage.

TD spoke so calmly Leah wondered why she imagined he was angry. "Control is your comfort, isn't it? You want to control how you're treated. You want to control this dialogue by not answering. You want to control your wife. This provides you comfort, but comfort doesn't interest us in The Program. Strength interests us. And you only get strong by rejecting comfort. I think you need some instruction in the matter. Janie? Where's Janie?"

Chris's flesh was a sickly, green-tinted hue, his face awash with sweat.

"Back here, Teacher!"

TD smiled at the crowd. "I think it's time we teach Chris about control."

Cheers of approval.

"I think Chris's unhealthy 'need' for his wife keeps him from maximizing his growth."

Clapping. Shouts. Boos.

"I think we should free Janie from his control."

"No." Chris's voice was barely a croak; Leah was sure she alone heard him.

"What do you say, Janie?"

"You know best, TD." She headed forward, her long hair swaying, brushing the back of her tight jeans.

"Stanley John, why don't you join Janie up here?"

Abandoning the kettledrum in the back, Stanley John strode down the center aisle.

TD helped them onstage and then stood between them, his arms spread across their shoulders. "Every time you confront a fear, you refuse to let it control you. That's the difference between your Old Programming and The Program. This, Chris, is for you." He kept his eyes trained on Janie's husband as he addressed the other two. "Go ahead. Undress her. Undress each other."

Leah felt delirious, drunk, hysterical with joy or terror. She dropped her gaze as noises emerged from the crowd, sighs and grunts and shouts of encouragement. Everyone seemed to be breathing in unison. Chris staggered out into the aisle, barely making it before he dropped to one knee, his other leg bent behind him but not bearing weight.

When Leah glanced up, Winona's eager stance obstructed most of the spectacle, though she made out Janie's hands pressed palms down on the floor, the wispy sheet of her hair spread like a fan from her back to her extended arm. Stanley John labored behind her audibly, blocked from Leah's sight; she saw only the jeans and underwear bunched at his sneakers.

TD stood with his arms crossed, his eyes not on the scene before him but on Chris's crumpled figure in the aisle. Stanley John and Janie finished in a crescendo of gasps and then stood. Neither, Leah saw now, had fully disrobed. Janie rotated her jeans around the leg they'd tangled on, slid her other foot through, and pulled them up, her face red not with embarrassment but exertion. She stood unembarrassed, though a whole room had just partaken of her private, most guttural sounds. Through an evaporating haze of disbelief, Leah realized she was supposed to admire her for it.

Praise and affection rang out for Chris. Staggering up the center aisle, twisting one hand in the other like a limp kitchen rag, Chris bellowed something, his words lost in the ruckus and applause.

"You did it, man!" someone yelled. "You let go."

Winona was shrieking, her voice cracked and throaty. "You're both free now!"

TD twisted off his mike, smiled, and hopped from the stage.

Some of the viewers started to spill out of their rows. Others stayed, slumped and exhausted in the metal chairs.

Eyes narrowed, TD observed Chris's tedious progress toward the stage. Chris spotted him at the head of the aisle and yelled something else – Leah made out, "…people…the truth about you…" – then darted from the hall, banging through the doors into the night. Skate was already turning from his sentry's post at the base of the stage, his eyes somehow expressionless and inquisitive at once. TD nodded, a subtle dip of his chin. Then he turned, smiling. "The truth about me is what makes this work."

Skate moved to the exit. Before the door swung shut a second time, Leah saw the two Dobermans resolve from the darkness, black forms gathering around Skate's legs like the billow of a raincoat.

The celebration lasted until almost two. Leah chirped and giggled and ate candy, bouncing from foot to foot. Her memory went in and out. She remembered being pressed in a full-body hug by the muscular guy who helped unstack chairs – Chad – and she remembered it felt nice. She remembered holding hands with Winona, petting the sun-beaten skin of her forearm in sheer gratitude that she'd told only on Chris and not her. She recalled the remorse in Chris's eyes when he'd apologized to her, the way his features had seemed intent and broken all at once, and the image hit her so deep she felt the tears running even before she could remind herself she was crying with happiness.

After cleanup she walked back down to her cottage. Janie, flying high after TD's praise and her copulating with Stanley John, didn't even notice her solitary departure. The silhouette of a night bird drifted across the five spikes of the cedars. The smell of a distant skunk tinged the air. The night hummed with vitality, more than she'd ever felt in her nineteen years.

As she approached her cottage, a growl froze her stiff. Stretched in front of the door, one of the Dobermans raised his head, collar jingling, pupils iridescent with reflected light. Eyes trained on hers, he tipped his muzzle and resumed licking a moist paw. A sticky substance matted his legs, its color lost in the darkened fur. It was only against the pink contrast of the lapping tongue that she saw the ribbons of crimson.

The air felt at once inordinately cool. The dog groomed and rumbled, fixing her with his stare. She tried desperately to tamp down her spiraling fear, which she knew was radiating from her, an incitement to the dog. The sleek head pulled back on a muscular neck, ears on point. Flat, dead eyes studied her unblinkingly; the upper lip wrinkled away from the teeth.

She shrieked when an icy hand grasped the back of her neck. TD's voice purred over her shoulder. "Skate trained them to attack at the scent of blood." He chuckled. "Even the dogs around here don't like victims."

The Doberman rose, growling, but TD waved it back down.

"Are you still bleeding, Leah?"

She shook her head, still too fearful to take her eyes from the dog.

"I think it might be nice for you to come back to my cottage."

Brambles crunching underfoot. The flutter of a bat overhead. Alone with the Teacher on a dark trail, weeds rising head high on either side of them.

Gathering her courage, Leah forced out the question. "Where did Chris go?"

"Chris couldn't handle The Program. Some people just aren't cut out for it. Like Lisa Kander."

"So…where did he go?"

TD turned to face her, still walking ahead, only a few inches taller than she was despite the lifts she'd found hidden in a box in the back of the shoe closet. She cringed, anticipating a burst of anger, but he just laughed. "What are you worried about? That I'd injure someone who didn't agree with me?"

"No…?"

"Of course not. Skate just gave him a ride down the hill."

"Oh my God I'm so relieved I saw the dog and it was bloody around the muzzle and I should have known I'm so sorry for even thinking -"

"Sh-sh-shhhh. It's okay. I'm sure he just got into a squirrel or something. See how negativity can corrupt your thoughts?"

Her head nodded earnestly.

Nancy and Lorraine were waiting back at TD's cottage. They'd prepared his bed and laid out all his nighttime toiletries. He touched them each on the head, palm flat against their crowns. Smiling, Nancy scurried to the kitchen counter and presented a glass of mineral water and a tray laden with vitamins.

A former born-again and TD's first Lily, Lorraine shuddered, her plain features twisting. "Nancy, I told you vitamins were for the morning only."

Nancy's lower lip was already starting to tremble.

TD said, "It would be nice to have milk and strawberries."

Nancy scurried into the kitchen and emerged with a glass and another tray, strawberries arranged around the edge. TD washed down the first mouthful. Eyes on Nancy, he extended his red-stained fingers and dropped the strawberry's leafy hull. It hit the wood floor with a wet tap.

Balancing the tray, Nancy bent, wide knees cracking, and swiped at the floor with a napkin. As she rose, TD plucked another strawberry from the tray and bit into it. The hull landed about a foot from the last stain.

Tears started down Nancy's cheeks as she bent over. By the time she stood, TD had another strawberry poised before his mouth. A satisfied bite. She offered the trembling tray for his refuse, but he reached past it. Another wet morsel hit the floor.

Leah watched, her face hot.

Gasps escaped Nancy as she squatted again. She lost her balance and fell back, tray clanging off the plastic mail tub by the door. He extended the glass, gripping it with umbrellaed fingers at the rim, and released it. It shattered beside Nancy, splattering her with milk. Continuing to scrub with the dumb, repetitive gestures of a stuck pool cleaner, she started to sob, big blubbering cries.

TD said gently, "Negate victimhood."

Lorraine stepped forward and twisted the skin at the back of Nancy's arm. Nancy wept but made no effort to defend herself.

The door swung open, and Skate's broad shoulders filled the doorway, startling them all, even TD.

Streaks of sweat cut through the sheen of dirt covering Skate's arms. "Done."

"I think you're due for a reward." TD fanned his hand at the three girls. Having found her feet, Nancy picked bits of glass from the folds of the sadly outmoded denim dress that she'd worn so cheerfully to the Orae.

Skate's boots knocked on the wood floor. He paused beside Lorraine, eyeing her profile. She stared straight ahead, blinking hard. The color had left her cheeks. Another step brought Skate before Leah. A squint narrowed his brown eyes. He smelled of dirt and wet dog, and his knees were stained with soil. A sturdy finger rose from his fist, the knuckle caked with dried mud. It tapped her, leaving a stain on her shirt.

Leah felt no wave of revulsion, no horror, just the sucking of the void that had become her insides.

"No," TD said. "Anyone else."

Skate nodded, a thoughtful bounce of his head. He turned and studied Nancy's swollen face. His eyes dropped to her generous thighs, visible beneath the sweat-damp dress. He stepped to the side, a double tap of boot heel and toe, leaning to get an eyeful. He looked back at