Chapter Twenty-one

Phil was hanging out at the bar looking for trim when it occurred to him that this Blue Wolf joint wasn't a hangout type of place. What he needed was to take a class, like yoga, or meditation. That's where all the broads would be. Of course.

(Meanwhile he kept thinking of Dee Dee, out again with Ziko, probably doing some kind of Kama Sutra thing with him. God, it made him want to break the little fuck's head like a melon.)

He picked a schedule up at the front desk. There was Pilates in an hour. He knew all about that. He'd been doing it for the last five years, before he sold out and retired. Supposed to improve your core strength. But he noticed that a lot of the women who did it weren't very feminine. They were superaggressive business execs, probably ate men for lunch. So Pilates was out. What else did they offer? Oh, here's one. Kundalini Expression: The Art of Zen Sitting.

That should be easy, and maybe there would be some cute chicks in the class.

Phil headed into the Crystal Desert Room. That was clever, the way they turned the desert idea—a bunch of cactus and fucking sand—into a crystal desert, like it was the magical seat of all learning. Sort of what he used to do in his old business days. Give a shithole a good name and watch the folks come running.

His place was called the Evergreen Retirement Community. He'd hired a local hack artist who had painted pictures of big strong evergreen trees with some attractive old people wearing sweaters tied around their waists, holding golf clubs and tennis racquets. He had insisted that they have stunning white teeth and attractive, muscular builds—unlike the real old folks who lived in the snake pit of a building. Most of the denizens of Evergreen were hugely obese old slobs who spent all day eating Twinkies and pounding down the swill he served at dinner. That was another of his gimmicks. “All you can eat” at dinner hour. He got the food cut-rate from a wholesale “meal maker” in Hamilton, Ohio. Third-rate hams, second-rate chickens, and half-dead veggies, and since he bought these “gourmet delights” in bulk he was able to practically give away the food. Of course, he made it up on the exorbitant prices he charged for the condos and the two-bedroom “villas” he sold to the old folks. Between that and the money he soaked them for on their private insurance, he was raking in the dough. The old-folks business was really terrific back in Ohio, but he had to admit it was even slicker down here in the Southwest. Here they not only soaked you for the rooms and booze but they had the phony spiritual thing going as well. What's more, the people who worked here almost seemed to believe it.

Once in the classroom, Phil soon found what he was looking for, a really cute blonde from Sacramento. Her name was Annie. She was in her forties, had the most adorable Doris Day nose, and a really nice figure. She seemed like a real nice girl, too. She told him all about her husband who had died suddenly last winter of a heart attack while snowmobiling up in Seattle. Perfect.

They sat next to each other in the lotus position—well, Phil was sort of in the lotus position—and he thought they had a real vibe going.

The Zen master was a Japanese guy. There seemed to be as many Japs here as Mexes. Guess the crystal desert just lent itself to any fantasy you wanted to lay on it. American Indians, Mexicans, Japs. Ain't it funny that in America all the losers are mystics? After you kill about a million of them you sentimentalize the rest.

Anyway, the guy's name was Sensei Larry. Come to think of it, he might have been Japanese-Indian; they had all kinds of mutts down here.

He was very serious and spoke in a flower-soft voice about getting to the core of oneself by breathing in and out and getting the chakras, which were in your back, to rise up.

During the whole “sit,” Phil kept stealing little peeks at Annie, who was breathing in deeply. Oh, what nice breasts she had!

She smiled at him once and whispered, “Take this seriously, Phil. You'll learn a lot about yourself.”

Well, why the hell not, Phil thought. He'd get into the breathing and holding his back erect and maybe he would have some kind of mystical vision. He could be as spiritual as the next asshole.

He breathed in deeply seven times as instructed, and let it out slowly. Waiting, waiting for a vision. What would it be? A flower? A many-petaled flower that showed the, uh . . . many-petaled layers of existence? Or some kind of mystical animal? A jaguar? A peacock? A prancing caterpillar?

Phil listened to Sensei Larry's voice, low and reassuring. He knew for sure he was going to see something, something he could share with Annie to show her he was a sensitive guy, and pretty soon she'd be sucking his cock like a cheerleader under the stands at halftime.

The thing to do is keep the eyes closed and concentrate on seeing the void. No, not seeing it, becoming it. He'd read enough Zen books back in college to get it. You had to not see it, because then you were, like, not in it. The way to be in it was to be it.

You were not a viewer, you were the view, or some bullshit like that.

Phil scrunched up his eyes and tried, really tried (knowing that he shouldn't be trying but come on!) to become the void, or whatever, and see (no, not see, be) the many-petaled rose.

He felt his knee killing him from back when he played football. He felt his heart beating way too fast and wondered if anyone had ever dropped dead trying too hard to relax.

He just bet they had. (Or, even worse, maybe he would be the first!)

He shut his eyes harder, practically squashing his eyeballs.

He had to get it right.

Had to see, be nothing.

He rocked back and forth a little now, chanting a makeshift mantra (Go, Buckeyes, Go!), and trying to lose all self-consciousness, and lo and behold he began to have a vision in his third eye. At least he thought it was his third eye. That was what the other meditators were always talking about around Blue Wolf. How do you stimulate the third eye? How do you make it see, really see? How did the ancient Babylonians do it? How did they get the old third eye going, flashing amazing visions of a world past ours, the third eye that Hitler had sought as well, the third eye that could show you . . . show you . . . well, Phil wasn't quite sure what it could show you, but something really great and way beyond having biscuits and gravy at Bob Evans in Ohio.

And now, yes, there it was. A vision taking shape right in the middle of his head, exactly where the third eye was supposed to be.

He could see it forming but it was still kind of misty and ill-shaped.

Try harder to try less, Phil thought.

Or is it try less to try harder?

Whatever, he could see it now ... a vision, starting to really shape up. He kind of half expected the vision to be something like Sensei Lar was talking about: the big open flower of reality! It had to be that!

Only now the mist was clearing and he could really see the thing . . . oh, yeah, now he could really see it, and it wasn't a rose or any kind of flower. It was . . . oh, shit. . . fucking Thelma Jackson.

It was her, in all her tattered glory. The sixty-eight-year-old woman who had started a movement against Phil and the entire Evergreen community. Yes, the woman who had signed up fifty, then sixty, then over a hundred and fifty old people who lived at Evergreen. People who followed her into battle against Phil and the Evergreen lifestyle. Yes, Thelma, the evil bitch, who had attacked Phil for not taking care of the rooms, for not maintaining the light fixtures, for hiring sadistic ex-criminals to be on staff at the cheesy dump. (Ex-criminals were so much cheaper.)

Thelma, who said the food was shitty, that the doctors were tenth-rate, and that the on-site grocery store was the biggest rip-off of all time. Thelma Jackson who went to the papers and television and made the goddamned state inspectors come down on Evergreen like killer mosquitoes, probing and prodding and asking questions that Phil couldn't answer.

That bitch cost him millions of dollars in fixes, not to mention the deep embarrassment of being known as a slumlord, the sworn enemy of old folks not only in Ohio but all over the United States of America.

And Thelma Jackson had received some kind of good citizen's medal, while Phil got loads of shit dumped on his head.

And now he had to see her in his supposedly crystal, mystic vision.

His head reeled and he felt his breath come hard as he opened his eyes.

Next to him Annie, of the cute nose and double-pert breasts, smiled, opened her eyes, and said, “ I saw myself a thousand years ago. I was an Indian princess in Bombay!”

“That's great,” Phil said. “That's just fucking great.”

“What did you see, Phil?” Annie asked, smiling in her innocent way.

“I saw ... I saw a great desert,” Phil said. “And coming across it was this . . . this woman in a white caftan, and she beckoned to me. She really did. At first I couldn't see her face at all, but then she got closer and closer and I saw her. And she was . . . she was you, Annie. She really was. It was as though you had something wonderful to teach me.”

Christ, Phil thought, what total, weak bullshit. She'd see right through that. For sure.

But no, Annie was smiling. A three-hundred-watt smile now. Man, she ate it right up.

“Did you really see me, Phil?” she asked, beaming.

“I sure did,” Phil said. “ I felt it when I walked in here today, but I wasn't really one-hundred percent sure until I had my vision. What is it you want to teach me, sweetheart?”

She reached over and touched his hand. Her skin was warm, nurturing.

“I can't tell you now, Phil. But I want to see you, so much. I felt the same kind of thing when you walked in. Can I call you a little later? I have a surprise for you!”

“You bet you can,” Phil said. He quickly gave her his cell phone number.

Phil was so excited he was nearly out of his skin.

“Don't worry, sweetheart,” he said. “I'll be waiting for your call.”