A Single Eye (29 page)

I didn't believe that,
couldn't believe
it, even though it was the second time I'd heard it, but still my stomach felt like it had dropped to the ground.

“Amber! Stop!”

“Okay, have it your own way!” She laughed and strode back into the kitchen.

The wind wrapped around my neck and its clammy fist dug into my chest. Why
wasn't
Justin back? Leo and I had made it from the highway in an hour. Surely it wouldn't have taken Justin more than two to get there, even with swampy hollows in the road, even if he'd had to get out and slip the boards under the tires. He'd left here before seven. Now it was one-thirty. Maybe the doctor had appointments? Maybe Justin had had to wait till noon or even later. It was still okay.

Barry hustled past me toward the circle of hunched figures in knit caps, canvas jackets, jeans, and work boots.

Maureen was holding the clappers now. The rest of us formed as much of a circle as we could manage and still stay out of the mud. Maureen clacked; we all bowed.

“Gabe will be leading a wood clearing crew, with, uh, Jim Washburn and Monica Donikki. Those of you assigned to crews report back to your crew leader. If you complete your job before the end of work period, see your crew leader for another assignment. If the leader has no assignment, see me.” She glanced around the ring. “Ah, Darcy. Your job today is . . . newspaper collection. Has Roshi explained that to you?”

I gasped! I'd forgotten that completely. Leo's newspaper in the meadow a mile through the woods. She expected me to go walking into the woods, walking farther than the point I'd balked at Tuesday. I couldn't do it when I thought my being jisha depended on it, but that was then, before I had stood on the roof and felt the swirling outside of me. Maybe now things would be different, totally different. Now the woods might not be demons but just trees. My heart was pounding against my ribs, fear and eagerness drumming together.

But I couldn't leave Leo, not with the doctor on his way. I felt like I'd been yanked back by the collar.

In a minute the meeting was over and only a few people were clustered around Maureen. I said, “About the paper, I can't go for it. I—”

“I'll go!” Amber grabbed Maureen's arm. “I can handle it. It's no problem. I'll go.”

Amber was all but dancing at the prospect of getting free of the sesshin for an hour's unsupervised walk. Her face was flushed with hope. Even her hair was bouncing.

Maureen hesitated. Had Rob been in charge, he would have been reminding Amber that tasks are not assigned for pleasure and shushing her at the same time. But Maureen looked at Amber, and I had the sense she saw her own agitation reflected in Amber and knew the yearning to escape even if it's escaping to nothing but more of the same. Just the thought of an hour on her own could carry Amber through the day.

An hour on her own, alone, exposed. She was Aeneas's sister, the one person Roshi expected me to watch over. Whatever led to Roshi's poisoning, Aeneas was still key to it. I couldn't let her traipse out into the woods alone. No matter . . . no matter, anything.

“Maureen. It's my job, I'll go.”

“But Roshi needs you.” Amber all but pushed me out of the way.

“I can deal with this.”

“No you can't! You're terrified of the woods!”

I know I flushed as red as my hair. A couple people let out laughs. Maureen looked from Amber to me, a smile twitching on her thin face. I couldn't tell whether she was tickled at this little squabble over this little job, or at my wimpy fear of the woods, the fear that maybe I didn't even have anymore. It's bad enough to be humiliated but ten times worse being dinged for something you've overcome, maybe. And there was not a thing I could say.

“You go, Amber,” Maureen said. “Darcy, check to see if Roshi has things for you to do.”

Maureen had barely finished before Amber was racing away. She had to be called back and given directions. In the end Barry said he'd take her to the path. When they left everyone laughed, but it was a been-there laugh and I wondered if maybe the laughs about me had been kinder than I'd credited. At least with Barry she'd be safe for a while. I followed her as far as the road, and stood watching till she disappeared and Barry walked back. He turned and stared at the empty, silent road.

“That truck's our lifeline. It's our only connection to the outside.”

My whole body went cold. I had known it, but hearing Barry say it gave it an ominous reality. I thought of my own cell phone, frustratingly far out of range here. “Why, dammit? This is so stupid. Why didn't you all run in a phone line at least?”

“Costs a fortune.”

“But surely some kind of cell phone access—?”

“I'm not the likely successor here.”

“You mean Rob doesn't want a phone?” I asked, sidestepping the big issue. “How come?”

“They didn't have phones in traditional Japanese monasteries.”

“So?”

Barry just shrugged and stalked away, leaving me to wonder how long and deep the issue of succession had been smoldering. No wonder Barry was planning to be gone in a year. When Leo was gone things would be done Rob's way. And there'd be no room for Barry.

Barry clumped back to the kitchen. He hadn't slept more than a couple hours at a time in days, couldn't think of sleep now. So much to do. Was the chocolate conching fast enough? Had he ground the nibs long enough or should he scoop some back into the melangeur and prolong the conching? The mixture in the conche had to be perfect and ready for tempering tonight. He'd have to use some of the tempered chocolate from the last batch—only half criollos—to speed the process. No way to avoid it! Damn! A small amount . . . but still . . . Damn!

It'd all be wasted if the truck wasn't here.

Calm down! Years of facing the wall and this is how you react in a crisis?
He forced himself to breathe deeply, to focus on his feet hitting the ground with each step. By the time he reached the kitchen he had a patina of control. He poured coffee, the eighth or twenty-seventh cup of the day.

Maureen! He couldn't let Darcy sideswipe her with questions about that awful weekend of the opening. Maureen was already on the thin edge; they all were. If she had to think about that, even enough to fend off questions . . . he didn't know how bad it would be.

He flashed on her in their two-room flat in the Mission District after she'd been shoved out of the ballet company. Shoved off the edge of her world, left to wander without goal, rant and babble without censoring. Right before the peanut oil fiasco. The worst months of both their lives.

Grief doesn't bind people. Grief is a solitary thing. People say you share your grief. Bullshit. Only in the sense that a hostess shares her box of truffles, offering the guest her pick of one. No guest eats the whole box. One is plenty. The bone-deep dull pain of lost acclaim, never again to hear the audience stunned into silence, then thunder their applause for an adagio she had raised to a new level of perfection, that loss he'd understood. But he could only imagine the prospect of life without dance, and the impotent rage of one who had studied and practiced and lived dance since she could reach the barre. As he'd curled around her sleepless, shivering body, she had tried to explain the longing to move into the transcendent roles reserved for lead dancers, to
be
dance. Then to—finally—be given the title role in Giselle, and the week before the season opened, to be yanked out for an understudy the maestro was screwing; for that she had barely had words. That he had learned from friends: “Guy's a pig. The girl's good; but she's not Maureen.” “Nothing Maur can do. She bitches; she's toast. It's his kingdom.”

“My body is my instrument,” Maureen had said another night. “Without the stage, the company, the orchestra, I can't play it. Without dance, I'm like a musician using his cello for a crutch.”

He could still see her standing at the living room window, her colorless face framed by the thick San Francisco fog outside. She, walking flatfooted back and forth in the night, growing thinner as purpose drained out of her. He had tried tempting her with his best, the torte of crushed pistachio on a bed of bitter chocolate (65 percent cocoa) and drizzled with a sharp raspberry liqueur that had taken him months to perfect. She had taken one bite.
Could
not swallow another, she had insisted. And he had had nothing more to offer, nothing to keep her from walking flatfooted in the night, and worse, in the days, talking nonstop, blurting anything, everything, oblivious to its relevance, or to the listener. She'd been so erratic he had taken the knives to the bakery and been relieved they didn't own a car. Had it been a nervous breakdown? Would she have pulled herself together in another week? He didn't know. He'd been sucker-punched by the Cacao Royale Tasting debacle and the horror of being called a poisoner.

Bringing her here had been pie in the sky; he'd never imagined she'd stay permanently. A shot of guilt stunned him as he remembered how relieved he'd been when she said she wasn't going back to the city.

A month ago he'd have said she was a different woman now, solid, grounded, capable. He'd almost forgotten that ninety-nine pound wraith—until this sesshin. Now he could see the dark circles of sleeplessness under her eyes, the hollowness in them. Look at her leading the work meeting; she'd forgotten to make the announcements, mixed up two men, sent the guy with the bad back on the wood clearing crew. Soon she would be walking at night and words spilling out as if she were pacing with her mouth. If Darcy made her relive that opening weekend . . . He just couldn't let that happen.

He found himself in front of the tempering machine, remembering when it arrived. Maureen laughing, asking if he'd burgled Frankenstein's lab. He tapped the pipes through which the 105-degree slurry would flow to cool and heat again till the cocoa butter crystals turned the liquid to a smooth, fruity solid. Allow too little time and—He shook his head at that thought of the possible gray, crumbly disaster.

I walked back through the empty parking lot, trying to reassure myself that Amber was safe, that somehow Barry having walked her to the path would keep her safe on the entire length of that path, past a mile of bushes in which the poisoner could be hiding, a mile of trees he could pop out from. As I passed the zendo, I spotted Rob on the porch, wagging his finger at someone inside. One down. Then I caught sight of the waggee—Gabe. Two down. Maureen would be giving detailed instructions to new crew leaders; she'd be hard-pressed to find time to light out after Amber. And as for Barry, no matter what had happened with Aeneas, or what Amber knew, it wouldn't be enough to drag him away from his conche.

The clouds had split. There was a hint of sun. I took that as a good sign, rounded the bath house, and trotted down the path to Roshi's cabin to see what I could do for him.

When I opened the door and saw him I was appalled I'd waited so long.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR