William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“I can’t manage my outer life, what am I going to do with an inner life?”

“Why so defensive, Victor?” she said with a condescending smile. “No one’s saying you shouldn’t keep eating animal flesh and watching Matlock reruns and chasing all the money you want to chase. You should do as you like and be happy. I, on the other hand, am practicing devotion.”

“And that’s why you’re so sweet to our rude waitress.”

“I can’t let my inner life be disoriented by minor annoyances in the physical realm. Only benevolence will lead to spiritual seeing.”

“I’d rather chase the money.”

“And do you think being rich will make you a complete and satisfied person?”

“Maybe not, but at least I’d be able to dress better.”

“You’re no different than the rest of us, Victor. We all see ourselves as this dissatisfied thing, this ego, looking outside ourselves for just that one other thing that will make us complete. That job, that lover, that pot of money. Even enlightenment, as if that too is a thing we can grab hold of to complete what needs completing. There is always something, we believe, that will make us whole. But if you take a finite thing, like body and mind, and look for something outside it to make it complete, something like money or love or faith, what you are seeking is also just a finite thing. So you have a finite thing reaching for the infinite by grabbing for some other finite thing and you end up with nothing more than a deeper sense of dissatisfaction.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t trained myself to see it yet, but it’s out there, it has to be. I think it starts with changing our conception of ourselves.”

It all made more than a little sense and I had to admit that some of what Beth was saying resonated with what I had been feeling that very afternoon while hiding beneath my sheets. I thought for a moment about pursuing it further with her, to see if maybe there might be some answers there for me, thought about it and discarded it. Maybe I was succumbing to the same impulse that made it so hard for me to ask directions when I was temporarily misplaced on the road, or to ask for help from my father, but I figured I’d rather suffer in existential limbo than give myself over to a bunch of chant-heads, as Caroline had so finely described them.

“In the course of your spiritual search, Beth,” I said, “did you happen to find out why, maybe, your sweet teacher Gaylord and his muscle threatened me?”

“The group is building a spiritual center in the suburbs,” she said softly. “In Gladwyne.”

“Funny, isn’t it, how even in the spiritual realm it all comes down to real estate. Henry George would be much gratified.”

“They collect dues and hold fund-raising events, but there is also talk about a benevolent soul who left a great deal of money to Oleanna.”

“Jacqueline Shaw, and the five-million-dollar death benefit on her life insurance policy.”

“I think we can assume that. It appears when that money from the policy arrives it will finance the new building. Until then the group seems nervous to discuss it.”

“What’s the story on this Oleanna?”

“A very powerful woman, apparently. I haven’t had the honor of meeting her yet, but she is the only true seer in the group.”

“A twelve, I suppose.”

“She’s beyond twelve, so they say, which means her powers are beyond the noninitiate’s capacities to understand.”

“So this Oleanna exercised her powers to kill Jacqueline in order to finance her spiritual palace in Gladwyne.”

“It’s possible, of course, and it’s what I figured you’d figure,” she said. “But it doesn’t really jibe. These people truly seem to be after something nonphysical. They seriously believe in karma being passed along through recurrent lives. I can’t imagine them killing for money.”

“That’s the difference between us,” I said. “You can’t imagine them killing for money and I have a hard time imagining anyone not being able to kill for money, so long as there’s enough of it at stake.”

“Your cynicism will be a definite handicap as you climb the ladder of spiritual seeking.”

“Well at least it has some use. So you’re rising?”

“Step by step. I’m now a three.”

“A three already? Once again you outpace me. What’s the next rung?”

“Level four,” she said. “Finding an inner peace through meditation.”

THE SHRIEK OF SKIDDING TIRESsliced through the dark stillness of my room and I jerked to a sitting position, a cold sweat beading on my neck. It was the middle of the night but I wasn’t sleeping. Maybe it was being in a Cadillac riddled with bullets just that afternoon, maybe it was the vision of Beth climbing her mystical ladder step by step and leaving me behind, maybe it was the coffee I had taken with my dessert. “Decaf is for wimps,” I had said, and not being a wimp I had taken a second cup, but whatever it was I was lying awake, under the covers, shivering, letting a raw fear slide cold through my body, when the sound of the skidding car skived the night quiet.

I leaped out of bed and searched Spruce Street from my window.

Nothing.

I spun around and paced and bit and threw myself on the couch, remote control in hand. I spent twenty minutes watching an Asian man explain how I could become as lavishly rich as he by sending him money for a pack of cassettes that would teach me to purchase real estate cheap and put cash in my pocket at the settlement table. I knew how he was getting rich, by suckering desperate insomniacs like me into sending him money, but I severely doubted that I would profit too. Except there were testimonials, all of them convincing as hell, from people I imagined to be stupider than me, and I was seriously debating whether to pick up the phone and make the call that would change my life when I decided instead to masturbate. I tried that for a while but it wasn’t quite working, so I looked in the refrigerator for something to eat. There was nothing to eat but there was a beer, so I drank that, but it was old and not any good and left a bad taste in my mouth. I opened a Newsweek and then tossed it aside. I picked up an old Thomas Hardy paperback I had bought for a dime off the street and had been meaning to read, but who was I kidding? Thomas Hardy. I flicked on the television again and watched babes in tights hump the HealthRider and tried to masturbate again but again it didn’t work. I turned off the television and paced around some more. Then I decided I would follow Beth up her ladder and try to find some inner peace through meditation.

I had of course tried meditation in college, in an undergraduate sort of way, with an exotic redhead, a senior yet, braless, in tight jeans and a low-cut orange crepe peasant shirt. She had explained to me the whole transcendental thing while I had stared transfixed at her breasts. We were kneeling on the floor. We were probably high. David Bowie was probably playing in the background. I remember the soft warmth of her breath on my ear when she leaned close, one breast brushing my arm, and whispered to me my mantra. It was “Ooma” or “Looma” or something like that. When I crossed my legs and made O’s with my fingers and repeated “Ooma” or “Looma” over and over again, I tried, as she had instructed, to force all thoughts from my mind. I generally succeeded, except for thoughts of her breasts, which I thought about obsessively the whole of the time my eyes were closed. “Ooma, Ooma, Ooma,” or “Looma, Looma, Looma.” I imagined her breasts from beneath my closed eyes, all thick and ripe and mysteriously scented. I ran my tongue across my lips as if I could taste them. Sweet, like vanilla wafers in milk.