Motherless Brooklyn

“No, Roshi’s American. He used to have an American name.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t know. Roshi just basically means teacher, but that’s the only name he has anymore.”

I sipped my scalding tea. “Does anyone else use this building for anything?”

“Anything like what?”

“Killing me!-sorry. Just anything besides sitting.”

“You can’t shout like that in here,” she said.

“Well, if-kissing me!-something strange was going on, say if Roshi were in some kind of trouble, would you know about it?” I twisted my neck-if I could I would have tied it in a knot, like the top of a plastic garbage bag. “Eating me!”

“I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was oddly blase, sipping her tea and watching me over the top of the cup. I recalled the legends of Zen masters slapping and kicking students to induce sudden realizations. Perhaps that practice was common here in the Zendo, and so she’d inured herself to outbursts, abrupt outlandish gestures.

“Forget it,” I said. “Listen: Have you had any visitors lately?” I was thinking of Tony, who’d ostensibly called on the Zendo after our conference at L &L. “Anyone come sniffing around here last night?”

She only looked puzzled, and faintly annoyed. “No.”

I considered pushing it, describing Tony to her, then decided he must have visited unseen, at least by Kimmery. Instead I asked, “Is there anybody in the building right now?”

“Well, Roshi lives on the top floor.”

“He’s up there now?” I said, startled.

“Sure. He’s in sesshin-it’s like an extended retreat-because of these monks. He took a vow of silence, so it’s been a little quiet around here.”

“Do you live here?”

“No. I’m cleaning up for morning zazen. The other students will show up in an hour. They’re out doing work service now. That’s how the Zendo can afford to pay the rent here. Wallace is downstairs already, but that’s basically it.”

“Wallace?” I was distracted by the tea leaves in my cup settling gradually into a mound at the bottom, like astronauts on a planet with barely any gravity.

“He’s like this old hippie who hardly ever does anything but sit. I think his legs must be made of plastic or something. We went past him on the way up.”

“Where? In the room with the mats?”

“Uh-huh. He’s like a piece of furniture, easy to miss.”

“Biggish, you mean?”

“Not so big. I meant still, he sits still.” She whispered, “I always wonder if he’s dead.”

“But he’s not a really big person.”

“You wouldn’t say that.”

I plunged two fingers into my cup, needing to unsettle the floating leaves again, force them to resume their dance. If the girl saw me do it she didn’t say anything.

“You haven’t seen any really big people lately, have you?” Though I’d not encountered them yet, Roshi and Wallace seemed both unpromising suspects to be the Polish giant. I wondered if instead one might be the sardonic conversationalist I’d heard taunting Minna over the wire.

“Mmmmm, no,” she said.

“Pierogi monster,” I said, then coughed five times for cover. Thoughts of Minna’s killers had overwhelmed the girl’s calming influence-my brain sizzled with language, my body with gestures.

In reply she only refilled my cup, then moved the pot to the countertop. While her back was turned I stroked her chair, ran my palm over the warmth where she’d been sitting, played the spokes of the chair’s back like a noiseless harp.

“Lionel? Is that your name?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem very calm, Lionel.” She’d pivoted, almost catching my chair-molestation, and now she leaned back against the counter instead of retaking her seat.

I didn’t ordinarily hesitate to reveal my syndrome, but something in me fought it now. “Do you have something to eat?” I said. Perhaps calories would restore my equilibrium.

“Um, I don’t know,” she said. “You want some bread or something? There might be some yogurt left.”

“Because this tea is corked with caffeine. It only looks harmless. Do you drink this stuff all the time?”

“Well, it’s sort of traditional.”

“Is that part of the Zen thing, getting punchy so you can see God?

Isn’t that cheating?”

“It’s more just to stay awake. Because we don’t really have God in Zen Buddhism.” She turned away from me and began rifling through the cabinets, but didn’t quit her musings. “We just sit and try not to fall asleep, so I guess in a way staying awake is seeing God, sort of. So you’re right.”

The little triumph didn’t thrill me. I was feeling trapped, with the wizened teacher a floor above me and the plastic-legged hippie a floor below. I wanted to get out of the Zendo now, but I hadn’t figured a next move.

And when I left I wanted to take Kimmery with me. I wanted to protect her-the impulse surged in me, looking to affix to a suitable target. Now that I’d failed Minna, who deserved my protection? Was it Tony? Was it Julia? I wished that Frank would whisper a clue in my ear from the beyond. In the meantime, Kimmery would do.

“Here, do you want some Oreos?”

“Sure,” I said distractedly. “Buddhists eat Oreos?”

“We eat anything we want, Lionel. This isn’t Japan.” She took a blue carton of cookies and put it on the table.

I helped myself, craving the snack, glad we weren’t in Japan.

“I used to know this guy who once worked for Nabisco,” she said, musing as she bit into a cookie. “You know, the company that makes Oreos? He said they had two main plants for making Oreos, in different parts of the country. Two head bakers, you know, different quality control.”

“Uh-” I took a cookie and dunked it in my tea.

“And he used to swear he could tell the difference just by tasting them. This guy, when we ate Oreos, he would just go through the pack sniffing them and tasting the chocolate part and then he’d put the bad ones in a pile. And like, a really good package was one where less than a third had to go in the bad pile, because they were from the wrong bakery, you know? But sometimes there wouldn’t be more than five or six good ones in a whole package.”

“Wait a minute. You’re saying every package of Oreos has cookies from both bakeries?”

“Uh-huh.”

I tried to keep from thinking about it, tried to keep it in the blind spot of my obsessiveness, the way I would flinch my eyes fro a tempting shoulder. But it was impossible. “What motive could they possibly have for mixing batches in the same package?”

“Well, easy. If word got out that one bakery was better than the other, they wouldn’t want people, you know, shunning whole cartons, or maybe even whole truckloads, whole deliveries of Oreos. They’d have to keep them mixed up, so you’d buy any package knowing you’d probably get some good ones.”

“So you’re saying they ship batches from the two bakeries to one central boxing location just to mix them together.”

“I guess that’s what it would entail, isn’t it?” she said brightly.

“That’s stupid,” I said, but it was only the sound of my crumbling resistance.

She shrugged. “All I know is we’d eat them and he’d be frantically building this pile of rejected cookies. And he’d be pushing them at me saying, ‘See, see?’ I could never tell the difference.”

No, no, no, no.