Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,27
acid night.
13 The Church of Enlightened Capital
By 10 PM I reached the old Asian business district. It had been shuttered and warehoused by developers. Cracked signs in Vietnamese, Korean and Mandarin hung unlit over vacant storefronts. There were no emergency lamps on the street at all. Light from the few apartments still occupied shone down in squares on the sidewalk. I felt like I was underwater. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a cephalopod swam past.
The elation was dissipating. Currents of fear were starting to run through me but I couldn’t place the source. No one had been hurt and I didn’t care about their stupid traffic jam. Still, the fear was there, bordering on panic, flickering and then gone completely like a memory I could feel but not locate.
On the corner was a blinking sign with two neon Chinese children bowing to each other over a bowl of noodles. Underneath was some kind of bar. My legs hurt and I wanted to sit for a while. I walked down the wet stairs into the basement.
The restaurant was empty. I looked around, pink tablecloths, red carpets and video poker. On one side was a bar with a mounted television in the corner. A woman came out of the kitchen and walked up to the register. She set her hand down on the glass counter next to a fat jade Buddha and told me they were closing in half an hour. She was wide and unfriendly and when she brought my tea, she set the pot down so hard it splashed over the table. I watched the tea soak half the zodiac placemat. I read somewhere that the Buddha called all animals to enlightenment but only twelve showed up. The rat was first in line.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Fortune cookies and a rum and coke.”
She brought my drink and set down a black plastic tray with my bill and a white paper bag of fortune cookies next to it.
I turned my cell phone on to check the time and it rang immediately. It was Credence. I let it go to voicemail. He was calling about the anniversary. I was sure of it. It was tomorrow and the last thing I wanted to think about. A minute later the phone rang again. When he called the third time I sent him a text: CLIMBING RAT GOLGOTHA (GREAT VIEW). DON’T NEED ANY HELP. SEE YOU LATER, D. and turned the phone off.
I took the ticket to Tegucigalpa out of my bag and set it on the table. The cream envelope was getting worn and the corners were going, probably because I pulled the ticket out at least four times a day to make sure that nothing had changed—the dates of departure, the flight number, the destination, or my feelings about it. And three out of four was good enough. I held it for a minute then tucked back into the Velcro pocket of my bike messenger bag.
A few minutes later a man came out of the kitchen and sat at the far end of the bar with his back to me. He turned on the television. They were showing the box-mall-church and I felt that thrill return but only for a second because they cut away from it. Two, black faces appeared on the TV in split-screen. Yellow crime scene tape stretched behind a reporter at the base of the Roseway Bridge. The boys, who were wanted in connection with a robbery, had been shot by police near the Roseway Bridge the night before. A cricket with a face pink as a ham swore one had pulled a gun. It turned out to be some kind of robot or space doll, though. They showed the bridge again. It must have been going on while Devadatta and I sat by the storm drain. Can you cause something just by being near it? I let that thought vanish. The station went to a commercial and the man at the bar shouted something at the screen in Chinese. When they returned it was to a prerecorded show, Newscaster Barbie interviewing the head of the Church of Enlightened Capital, chatting intimately on studio couches. I’d seen him speak before down at Davis. It was pouring rain and the auditorium was packed with students, pressed heart to spine waiting for him to start. Steam rose from the audience.
“God is a broker!” he yelled. “We are his clients. We each have a role to play in this free