Crescent City Connection

sitting; he felt better afterward, anyway. Sometimes he felt that his meditating, his spiritual practice, was going nowhere—and yet, what would he replace it with? What else was there (other than his art)?
    The idea terrified him. It had been confirmed again and again—for some reason, maybe only God could say (or one of the gods), he had not been born to be loved. He was innately unlovable. He did not know why this was—why some people had such an easy time, were loved and surrounded by friends, and others were destined to be alone. It was a subject of deep concern to him, and yet if that were the case for him, so be it. One of the goals of his spiritual life was to learn to accept what was.
    He was watching the candle, so caught by the flame, so deep in its hypnotic envelope, that he felt for a moment at peace with the universe and himself, breathing with the tiny fire, and the world. It was the feeling that mystics might mean when they speak of bliss—The Monk wasn’t sure—but it was certainly among the top three feelings he’d ever had. It never lasted more than a moment, but this time it seemed barely to arrive before it was literally chased away by a knock on the door.
    The Monk had no friends who would visit him—Dahveed or Revelas would probably bail him out of jail if he found himself there, and the woman who made the robes would sew for him, but none of them would come calling. It was probably a Jehovah’s Witness.
    He ignored it. But the knock came again; and again, louder, faster, a bit staccato. It sounded slightly hysterical to him, though it was only a knock. What could you tell from a knock? Yet he wondered if there was a problem—perhaps his next-door neighbor’s house was on fire, or her phone was out and she needed his. The Monk had no idea why he kept his phone—each month when the bill came, he considered having it disconnected, yet he never did and he never knew why. Perhaps this was why. Perhaps Pamela needed it now.
    He got up and crossed the room before he remembered two things: Pamela was so fat that he’d have heard her footsteps on the porch. She had come up once before, and he had heard her. And that time she hadn’t knocked, she had yelled, “Monkey.” That was her nickname for him, though she claimed it wasn’t the simian, but the diminutive of “Monk,” therefore spelled “Monkie.”
    It couldn’t be Pamela.
    As soon as he had the thought, the knocking stopped. He returned to his tatami and resumed his meditations.
    He had a breakthrough. It was an image of his mother with her eyes closed, her hands stretched out in front of her, sleepwalking through a busy street.
    Maybe it didn’t have to be that way, he thought. Maybe she could have just opened her eyes.
    Tomorrow, he would meditate on that—his mother with her eyes open, and maybe he’d be able to see what she would have seen.
    He could have his treat now.
    The Monk had a vice, which he permitted himself to indulge once a week on Saturday—Haagen-Dazs ice cream. He had to clean his entire house every day (which he would naturally do anyway) and complete two hours of meditation every day, as well as twelve hours of painting a week, and a few other little things, mostly involving kindnesses to Revelas and Pamela, and then he could have a quart of any flavor he wanted (he varied them), to be eaten over the course of two days. Ice cream could not be eaten on weekdays.
    He got a five-dollar bill and picked up the shepherd’s crook that Revelas had made for him, a multicolored, intricately carved instrument that Revelas said was supposed to remind him of the twenty-third Psalm, though The Monk couldn’t get past the fact that it wasn’t the narrator who was the shepherd. Nevertheless, he appreciated the gesture and he dearly loved the crook, although he never permitted himself to take it to work and used it only on special occasions.
    He opened his door, and nearly tripped over a waif sitting on his steps, her back to him. She turned and said, “Oh. I thought no one was home.”
    It was his Angel.
    He watched fear start at her eyes and spread over her face. “Omigod, I’m sorry. I was looking for my uncle.” She got up and started to back away. But The Monk stepped toward her.
    She stepped backward again. He needed to speak, but he couldn’t. He could only make faces and gesture, waving his crook.
    She turned and ran.
    He could not call to her to stop, could only pound after her until he caught her.
    *