When I reached Lonnie’s, he sent me back out with a grocery list nearly identical to the last one, except this time he opted for pina coladas over daiquiris. The blender was already full of ice when I came in with the groceries and set them on the counter. As Lonnie rummaged through the bags, Shirley, the cocker spaniel, reared up and pawed at me, and I knelt and rubbed her stinking ears, which made her eyelids sag with pleasure.
The tools and Harley parts in the dining room had not moved since I was here last.
After Lonnie blended and poured his first pina colada, I washed my hands and gave him a bottle of ear drops I’d picked up from the vet. He accepted it with a cold grunt, like maybe he thought I was judging him over the condition of his dog, but I didn’t care. I was judging him.
“Do you know anything about Doegerot torture?” I said.
“What about it?” Lonnie said.
“Is there a cure?”
“Not that I’ve heard. He put the ear drops in his pocket.
“There’s nothing a rekulak can do?”
Lonnie stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.” Then he walked out of the room and down the hall. After a few moments, he returned with a hardcover book and slapped it down on the counter. “You ever hear of Help Me Rhonda? Not the song. The syndicated advice columnist.”
“No.”
“Well, you’re about to become familiar. This is a collection of some of her columns over the years.” He flipped the book open with the hand not holding the pina colada, tore out a random page from the middle, and handed it to me. “I want you to pretend like you’re an advice columnist and go type out a response to one of those letters. You can peek at what Rhonda wrote but don’t copy her. Do your own work. Think it through.”
“Okay?” I’d thought he was leading up to something about Doegerot torture, but apparently, he’d moved on without telling me. “Is this part of the training?”
Lonnie gave me an exaggerated nod, like a horse. “Zen koans are traditional, but I think these work better. Hell, I’ve used critical thinking questions at the end of textbooks before, but it’s better to use a dilemma, and Rhonda’s always good for one of those.”
“This will help me learn how to cure Ghost Heart?”
Lonnie nodded again. “You have to walk before you can run. Go on. All will be clear soon.”
I took the torn page to the backroom, loaded paper into the typewriter, and read one of the letters:
Dear Rhonda: I am a breeder of schnauzers. One of my dogs (Diedra is her name) has won best in her class twice and best in show once. I have been very protective of her chastity, as I don’t want her to be bred for another two years and I want to find her the perfect mate. So imagine my surprise and consternation when I one day found her pregnant.
Long story short, my grandma had been pestering me to mate her golden retriever with my Diedra to make a golden schnauzer (the dog of her dreams). After expressly forbidding the coupling over and over (I don’t do designer breeds) she and my mother arranged a romantic rendezvous behind my back when they were supposed to be taking Diedra on a walk.
I’m so angry and hurt and embarrassed. I’ve had to drop out of two dog shows. I don’t know what to tell my friends. Worst of all, my mother and grandma don’t act very sorry, like I was being the selfish one. I don’t know what to do. When the puppies come, should I even give my grandma one?
Help me Rhonda.
—Bred for Disaster
I was outraged that someone’s mom and grandma would do something like this, and I was mildly disturbed by Rhonda’s response. She advised giving Grandma a twisted kind of choice: Grandma could have her golden retriever, or she could have the golden schnauzer puppy, but she couldn’t have both. Who was this Rhonda lady, and how had she become syndicated?
My advice was considerably more sober: If Grandma wanted a golden schnauzer, Grandma and Mom had to pay for and attend family counseling.
While I typed, no scrill or homunculus diaries appeared. When I finished and presented my work to Lonnie, he crumpled up the paper without reading it, threw it in the trash, and handed me a standard yellow pencil.
I pointed a palm at the trash. “Are you just messing with me now? Why did you have me do that?”
“We needed to establish a choice,” Lonnie said. “Now we start mutilating that choice. Like I told you last time, your choices are symbols in your rekulak’s language of self. We’re trying to reclaim one of those symbols, and you do that by mutilating a choice until you grow on it like a cancer. Then it’s yours. That pencil is going to help you do that. You’re going to turn it into a Homunculus Totem. Go back into the room and read the letter again, only this time your answer should be one of the many uses there are for a pencil. Example: say the question is, should I tell my cousin his breath stinks? You answer by saying, this pencil writes. Then you do it again. Should I tell my cousin his breath stinks?”
Lonnie raised his
