Excerpt from a Barroom View of Love

The first stop on the tour was the courtyard. The evening was hot and muggy. An older man sat by himself in a far corner; otherwise, the area was empty. David stopped in front of the goddess statue, where I had often seen people meditating. He said, “Lakshmi. The Hindu deity that represents abundance, both spiritual and material.”

I tried to focus on learning about the ashram, but I found myself caught up in the timbre of David’s voice and his manner of speaking as if he were a the tour guide at a sacred shrine.  I guessed that was how he saw the ashram. I had no doubt about David’s sincerity. And compared with Julia, he was not naïve. He even seemed practical, not what I ever expected in a musician.

I brushed a curl from the side of my face. “Is the ashram Hindu?”

“No. It’s eclectic, that is to say, ecumenical.”

David motioned to a small area behind Lakshmi Hall. When we reached the garden surrounded by miniature hemlocks, I saw in the middle of a group of potted bonsai trees a foot-tall bronze Buddha. White violets and lilies of the valley dotted the dark earth.

David continued, “We also have representations of Christ and other saints.”

“Christ was a saint? Isn’t that a demotion?”

“No, he was a perfected being, probably born that way.” He brushed away a fly that was circling my head. “I think he’s attracted to your shiny hair.”

I stepped away from him. Again, he was too close. “So the burning bush is ahead?” I immediately regretted my sarcastic tone.

David peered into my eyes with intense focus. Although he didn’t say anything, I imagined him thinking: “Why are you here?”

I dropped my gaze and shook my head, but couldn’t find a quick fix to my stupid question.

He pivoted toward the pine forest and walked off.

****I started to apologize for the faux pas, but held back. David was already a full stride ahead of me. As I walked under the canopy of pines along the soft-needled path, I felt tired. The day of running, going to the prison, hurrying back, and meeting with Gary had caught up with me. But I didn’t want to turn down this chance to be shown around. It would be helpful when I was on my own.

I noticed David’s body language had changed, his shoulders tighter, his walk more deliberate. When he spoke, the music was gone. He seemed more distant, more mechanical. Again, I grappled with saying, “Bad joke, huh?” but remained silent. His distance was better, less complicated. As we moved through the lush foliage, the chatter of a swarm of sparrows overtook our silence.

In the distance a crow cawed. Leaves crunched under our feet. A chipmunk, eating a red berry in the middle of the pathway, jumped when it saw us and scurried up the closest tree. I chuckled, but didn’t notice any reaction from David.

The sun was close to merging with the horizon, its light cast over the mountains in wisps of peach and mauve. Even though David was several yards in front of me, his presence helped me relax in the impending darkness. There was no way I would have been there alone; the nights here were too black. The path opened ahead, and I could see a pair of herons fly over. Water must be close by.

***

The trail ended at what appeared to be a man-made lake surrounded by the strangest rocks I had ever seen. They didn’t seem natural to the area. I couldn’t remember seeing such rocks even in a movie or the National Geographic. They were tall and narrow, shaped liked biscotti standing on end. Some were only three or four feet high, yet others towered to twelve feet or more. In the dying sunlight I could barely see their pitted and bumpy surfaces. Smaller, they would have looked like tarnished, blunt nails sticking out of the earth. The boulders were clustered in what seemed like a random pattern around the lake. I thought of Stonehenge; were the stones a nod to druids and pagans?

A small island in the middle of the lake was almost covered by six of the tallest, narrowest stones, leaning against one another and jutting out in all directions like a crystal formation.

The south bank, although abandoned by workers at that late hour, overflowed with piles of wood chips, topsoil, shrubs in containers, small trees with roots bound in burlap, and dozens of flats of salmon-colored impatiens, purple creeping phlox, and bright blue lobelia.

I pointed. “Is that where my seva is tomorrow morning?” I hoped bringing up seva might soften David’s annoyance with me.

“Yes. There’s a push to finish before Panduranga’s birthday next week.” David sat down on a boulder protruding from the hillside, facing west. The setting sun wasn’t visible behind the pine forest, but its descent had created a burst of color, now in deep shades of purple and orange, over the lake. The reflection on the lake’s surface duplicated the sky’s brilliance. I smiled to myself. Like the elephant in the middle of the room, neither of us was going to say anything about it.