Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

It seemed like a lifetime since he’d been to India. He had journeyed there with his teacher, Gil Weiskopf Roshi. They had visited Lumbini, birthplace of Prince Siddhartha Gautama; Bodh Gaya, where Siddhartha was realized beneath the Bodhi Tree; the Deer Park at Sarnath, where he gave sermons on the Four Noble Truths; Sravasti’s great park that hosted the Buddha’s meditation retreats, and where he converted a notorious murderer; and a saal forest in Kushinagar, the final, unglamorous place in which he left the world. The trip saturated him, and he craved India’s sounds, smells, and heart. He craved his teacher too, who had died a year after his mother passed on, to the day — craved the Dharma anew. A few months ago, he’d made vague plans to travel with Meg Ryan at Christmastime to see Ramesh, a disciple of the great sage Nisargadatta Maharaj. But now he was thinking he should make the trip alone, confining his visit to Bodh Gaya, where this year’s Kalachakra would be held.

He readjusted himself on the cushion and focused his breath, suppressing a smile as the mischievous, deconsecrated image of his old friend Alf bobbed before him. Alf wanted to go to a Golden Globe party at the Medavoys’, but Kit had bailed because he didn’t have a film out and was envious of those who did, jealous of the actors — some unknown, others long forgotten and now rediscovered — whose fates had contrived to cast them in one of those overrated, dark horse indies that infect hearts and minds each awards season like a designer virus. He felt defunct, used up, ashamed of his body of work. In the middle of his meditations

he returned to his breath, pushing through. He focused on another trapezoidal tile of sun. Insect buzz. His attention flitted from the face of his root guru, Gil, to a page of Rita Julienne Lightfoot’s love letters to the smell of her hospital room to the taste of Viv’s mouth to the little girl who watched as he came in Cela’s mouth on the edge of the playground of Ulysses S. Grant School.

Alf loomed again, the irrepressible jester, trickster. Shapeshifter. He got his kicks by tweaking his more famous friend and knew what buttons to push. Yesterday, he’d made a point of telling him Spike Jonze was up to something big — Spike was about to do a really wild film, “more genius than Adaptation,” about celebrity look-alikes. Alf said he didn’t know much more than that, but did know Spike was supposedly out there looking for a “Kit Lightfoot type.” When he heard that, Kit had laughed out loud, playing it cool. (He’d secretly resolved to phone the director at home and get the friendly lowdown. If there was something for him, he’d most likely have heard. Spike would have called or his people would have approached.) Kit wanted to do challenging work; it haunted him that he hadn’t yet made his bid. He was desperate — so he told himself — to do something magnificent, to work with an art house hotshot, any hotshot, young or old, step right up. He completely understood Tom’s need to have done the Kubrick thing. Respected it. Admired it. Then the Master went and died, as if in homage to Tom’s great taste and timing, Tom’s great luck. Kit kept telling himself that he wanted to do a film to challenge him in his core the way his practice once had, back in the day. But even if he found the right project, there were obstacles to surmount — he knew that he needed to be empty enough to exceed real or imagined boundaries. Maybe he just didn’t have it in him; never did and never would. Maybe he was just a pretty boy with swagger, gutless and not that bright, the King of People’s Choice. And that was that.

He shivered, straightening his spine.

The zendo had been built by master carpenters from five-hundred-year-old Japanese cedars without benefit of nails or glue. Each morning, the toryos had made offerings of sake and rice to their tools before setting to work. Architectural Digest wanted to put it on their cover, but Kit turned them down in his nobility. He flashed on the whore and the extemporaneous teisho before the shrine of the Buddha: the pornography of hubris. How had the path led him to this? He felt in danger of dying.

Like a warlock, he summoned a Kalachakra invocation to clear the air—“I will achieve complete enlightenment through the four doors of thorough liberation… emptiness, sinlessness, wishlessness, and non-activity!” These words he had said in Wisconsin, before his mentor and friend, the Dalai Lama. These words he had said before Prince Siddhartha, before timeless Shakyamuni, before Nothingness. He whispered Om shunyata-jnana-vajra-svabhavatmako ham and bowed deeply to the void, the hum of his words merging with the drone of a faraway leaf blower.

Stagecoach

RUSTY PICKED BECCA up around seven. Even though Sadge’s things were still in the apartment, she felt single. It was a turn-on. He came in and sniffed around like a cartoon dog. He sniffed his way to the bedroom, and she laughingly had to keep hauling him out.

They drove to Beverly Hills and parked near the big church where Bo Derek got married in Becca’s mom’s favorite movie, 10. Suddenly she got the crazy notion Rusty was going to take her to Crustacean. She started worrying about the sullen maître d’ but figured he probably wouldn’t recognize her — tonight, hair and makeup were in anti-Drew mode.

Rusty walked them toward Wells Fargo, saying he needed cash. He went past the ATMs and into the building’s lobby. It was already after seven.

“The bank’s staying open late,” he said, with a smile. “Just for me.”

For a fleeting moment Becca thought he was going to commit armed robbery, but then she saw a gala group on the other side of the tall windows. A guard was at the entrance. Rusty said, “We’re with Grady and Cassandra Dunsmore,” and he let them in without a hassle.

A peculiar, festive scene greeted them within. Gang bangers and their relations, some in wheelchairs (she was reminded of Valle Verde), upended slim-necked Coronas and sipped champagne from plastic glasses beside jovial white men in suits and loosened ties. A table had been set up with Costco deli platters, some as yet unwrapped; people seemed more thirsty than hungry. Motown played on a boom box. The high-spirited wives wore satiny dresses and as many tattoos as their spouses. Toddlers ran manic circles around their grandparents. Some of the gray-haired folks also had tatts.

“Hey now!” shouted Grady, on seeing Rusty come toward him.

“Hey now.”

They did their bear-hug thing.

“The gravy train has finally pulled into the station!”

“You mean the Grady train,” said Cassandra, waddling over, napkin filled with canapés and little sugar-dusted donuts. Her belly had grown since Becca last saw it underwater.

“You got that right,” said Grady.

“You’re both wrong,” said Rusty. “It ain’t the Grady or the gravy — it’s the ‘bullet’ train.”

“The bullet train!” exulted Grady. “That’s right! That’s dead-on! It’s the motherhumpin bullet-in-the-leg train!”

They had a laugh, then Rusty said, “You remember Becca.”

“I ain’t fuckin senile.” Grady turned to his wife. “Tha’s Rusty’s lady.”

Cassandra nodded, in Barbara Stanwyck— The Big Valley mode — all steely, matriarchal approval. They’d actually met at the party but Cassandra didn’t recollect.

“Honey,” she said, taking Becca’s elbow with mock intimacy, “would you make one thing clear to your boyfriend for me?” She paused for dramatic effect before saying, “ He ain’t gettin any ! Not a dime, OK? He ain’t gettin even the caboose of the bullet train! Not a red Indian cent!”