William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“You’re the only one I see in yellow.”

“It’s a very advanced state,” said Gaylord.

The kitchen was large and bright, with yellow-and-white linoleum on the floor and avocado Formica counters. A group of acolytes in orange and green were chopping vegetables and stirring pots on an oversized commercial stove. “Only a few live in the house,” said Gaylord, “but all members are invited to share in the preparation and consumption of the evening meal. You’re invited to stay.”

“Very hospitable from someone who had threatened me with severe bodily harm just a few weeks ago.”

Gaylord stopped and turned to face me and then did something that truly shocked me. He put his hands together and fell to his knees and bowed his head low, touching his forehead to my wing tips. The scene felt horribly awkward, but no one in the kitchen seemed to think much of it. One orange-robed acolyte raised an eyebrow as he watched us for a moment before turning back to his work on the counter.

“I apologize to you with all my will, Victor Carl, for my behavior in your office. I felt my family was being threatened and besieged and I responded with anger and violence instead of benevolence and kindness. You should know that the karmic wound from my behavior has yet to heal and my spiritual progress has been halted for the time being as I continue to deal with my transgression.”

“Get up, Gaylord.”

His head still pressed to my shoes, he said, “I plead now for your forgiveness.”

I stepped back and he raised himself to his haunches, his hands still out in front of him.

“Just get the hell up,” I said. “I’d rather you threaten me again than do this penitent bit.”

“Do you forgive me then?”

“Will you get off your knees if I forgive you?”

“If that’s what you want.”

I looked down at him uncertainly. I would have felt worse about the scene had there not been a strange formality to his words, as if he had performed this same act of contrition when he blew up in the supermarket at a shopper with fifteen items in the twelve-item line or at a taxi driver who took the long way around. But even with the formality of his apology, I realized I didn’t like being bowed to like that, which was a surprise. Who among us hasn’t dreamed, at least for a moment, of being a king? But one robed penitent bowing at my feet had steeled my determination that if ever the Sacred College of Cardinals in their secret conclave in Rome decided to make a Jew from Philadelphia the next Pope, I would turn them down flat. Last thing I ever wanted was the huddling masses sucking on my ring. “Rise, Gaylord. I forgive you.”

Gaylord smiled a sly victory smile as he rose.

He took hold again of my arm and led me to the rear of the kitchen to a doorway which opened to a flight of low-ceilinged stairs. I ducked on my way down to what turned out to be a cramped warren of tiny rooms linked to one central hallway. Some of the doors to the rooms were open and small groups were inside, on the floor, in circles or in rows, chanting or bowing forward and back or sitting perfectly still. The walls were cheap drywall, the carpeting was gray and had an industrial nap.

“In the practice rooms,” said Gaylord, “we teach the many different techniques of meditation.”

“More than just crossing your legs and saying ‘ Om ’?”

He stopped at a room and opened the door. There were five orange-robed followers sitting around a green-robed woman, who knelt before them with a serene, peaceful expression on her face. Three of the orange robes were breathing in and out quickly, as if they were hyperventilating. One man was leaning forward, crying, his eyes still shut. A final woman was shaking as she held herself tightly and screamed like a scared child. No one came to help her as she shook and screamed. Slowly Gaylord closed the door.

“They’re practicing dynamic meditation,” said Gaylord. “It’s the most efficient way to reintegrate the past with the present. This is how many of our followers begin to see the integrity of the inner spirit through its ascendant journey from life to life.”

“You’re talking about past lives?”

“Finding a connection with our pasts is the final step of preparation before we move to illumination. We can’t know where our soul is heading until we know where it has been.”

“Then you weren’t kidding what you said about being a crusader.”

“Dynamic meditation is very powerful,” said Gaylord. He smiled unselfconsciously and led me further down the hallway.

I could feel it all about me, the bustling work of the robed minions searching for that spiritual salvation they know must be there for them, or else why would they ever have been placed on a slag heap such as this. I felt like a stranger in my suit, watching them all hard at their mystical work. I wonder if this was how James Bond felt as Auric Goldfinger led him on a tour of the facilities from which he was planning to detonate an atomic bomb and destroy America’s supply of gold: distant and amused and impressed and appalled all at the same time. I would have gone back to that room and opened the door and hugged the woman who was shaking and crying except that I was certain it was the last thing she would have wanted me to do. She had shaved her head, that woman, and her face was red with her tears and pain. At the end of it they would each tell her how far she had come and she would feel ever so proud, feel ever so much closer to it all. Even Bond would have been at a loss.

Finally Gaylord led me to a room at the end of the basement. He asked me to take off my shoes before entering. I had suspected there might be some shoe discarding so I made sure my socks were without holes that day. Gaylord slipped off his sandals and then opened the door.

The doorway to this room was small, low enough that I had to duck to get inside, and once inside I noticed that the room was very different from the others, more spacious, the floor covered with beige tatami mats, the walls lined entirely with fine wood. On either side and around the back were steplike risers, each also covered with tatami. Flower petals were scattered on the mats and a strong floral incense burned in a bronze pot. In each corner of the room stood columns carved with what appeared to be Sanskrit and on one of the walls was a framed architectural drawing of a futuristic sort of churchlike building looking very Mormonish with its spires and looping curves. There were windows high at the far end and beneath the windows was a niche in which a stone Buddha sat, his belly full and his smile empty, and before the Buddha, resting on a small stone pedestal, were two bronzed feet, a perfect pair, life-sized, cut off at the ankles.

Gaylord walked right up to the wall with the Buddha, dropped to his knees, bent forward until his forehead touched the bronzed feet. Then he stood and gestured to one of the risers and said, “Wait here for a few moments, please.”

I walked around the room for a bit in my stockinged feet, examining the woodwork, the engraved columns, the architectural drawing of what I assumed to be the Church of the New Life building proposed for Gladwyne, the cornerstone to be laid as a result of Jacqueline’s timely death. I stared for a moment at the carved Buddha, it looked to be old and precious, and then at the bronzed feet on the pedestal. I had to admit that the feet were more than passing strange. They were a woman’s feet, slim and gracefully arched, the toes even and slightly curled. They were very attractive for feet, actually. They might have been the prettiest feet I had ever seen. I couldn’t help but reach down and touch one of them, to rub my fingers lightly on the underside of the arch, to place my hand firmly atop of the rise of the tarsal ridge. The bronze beneath my palm was smooth, rubbed shiny over time like on the feet of a statue of a Roman Catholic saint. I let out a long breath, spun around, and then sat on one of the risers, across from the architectural drawing. The risers were wide enough to sit cross-legged, as I assume they were intended, but I just let my legs dangle as though I were sitting in the bleachers for a high school football game.