Grist 01 - The Four Last Things (5 page)

Chapter 5

B
ig Sur is a long way from anywhere, and that’s where it should be. If it were any closer it would look like the rest of the world.

As it is, it looks like Big Sur: cliffs overhanging the grayest Pacific on earth, Monterey cypresses perched on fragile spits of land, defying gravity to dangle their gray-green needles over the eternal churn of the sea. It’s so perfect that a Hollywood boy like me expects a credit roll scrolling above the horizon. Scenic designer: God. Special effects: the Apostles, and so forth.

Only two kinds of people lived there, rich straights and poor crazies. As I steered a rented car out of Carmel airport at five p.m., I had no idea which kind I was going to see.

I’d made an embarrassed exit from Ambrose Harker’s office, thinking about calling the cops, but to give them what? They already had Needle-nose’s description from the motel, they already had the license number of his stolen car, they already had the number of times he and Sally had been there. What I had was a client who didn’t exist and a burning sense of having been suckered.

They didn’t have Sally’s name, but they’d get that quickly enough. And if they didn’t, I might be able to use it as a bargaining chip for a fact or two.

I also had the fact that Skippy Miller had recommended me for the job. And that was all I had. A poor thing, but mine own.

Cypress Grove was a conference center located in the center square of God’s country. On a map of paradise, it would have been C-3. I hiked down the hill from the parking lot through a stiff November sea breeze, to Reception. WELCOME, the banner read, THE CHURCH OF THE ETERNAL MOMENT IS HERE AND NOW. Beneath the banner was a long Formica table at which were seated two identically gray-costumed individuals wearing Chinese cadre jackets that Mao wouldn’t have sneered at. The nameplates in front of them read LISTENER DOOLEY and LISTENER SIMPSON. Listener Dooley was a red-faced Irishman with the kind of highly weathered nose that, when it occurs in fur-bearing species, causes taxidermists to look for new materials; Listener Simpson was about twenty-four and very pretty. Listener Dooley was snoring gently, which made it easier to follow my instincts and choose Listener Simpson.

“Welcome to the present,” Listener Simpson said. Her eyes were a disconcerting shade of ice-blue. Behind her hung a beautifully lit color photograph of a woman and a little girl of eleven or twelve. The little girl’s blond hair cascaded down over the shoulders of her immaculate white dress.

“It’s kind of hard to escape from the present,” I said. “People spend millions trying to do it. Looks like Listener Dooley’s managed.”

Listener Simpson’s cool blue eyes flicked down to a photocopied sheet in front of her and her voice cooled a couple of degrees. “Are you expected?” she asked.

“Anything can happen in the present. ‘Expected’ is sort of future tense, don’t you think?”

“I think that you don’t understand the present,” she said without looking up. “Everything is here and everything is now. Could I have your name, please?”

“Grist,” I said. “But you won’t find it there. I’m looking for Skippy Miller.”

“Mr. Miller is here.”

“And now. Can someone tell him I’m also here? Now?”

Her eyes engaged mine and held them. “That depends,” she said, “on what you want, and on whether he’ll want to see you.”

“He’ll see me whether he wants to or not.” She didn’t look away, and neither did I. “He owes me a few. A six-pack, at least.”

“He’s in Listening,” she said. She was still staring straight into my eyes. “He won’t be free until seven-fifteen, just before the Revealing.”

“That’s about an hour.”

“As you say.” It was one of the most noncommittal responses I’d ever provoked. “Whom shall I say wants to see him?”

“Whom? Simeon Grist.”

She turned a pad of paper toward me. It said public church business at the top. “Could you please print that?” she said.

“Hell,” I said, “I could probably even write it.”

“We’d prefer printing.” She gave me a tiny public-relations smile. “For the sake of clarity.”

“Ah, clarity,” I said, doing as I was told, “we worship at thy shrine.”

Listener Simpson pushed a button at her right hand and the door behind her opened to admit a clear-eyed fifteen-year-old girl wearing tight black jeans, a blouse of Chinese-checker red, and a pair of seventy-dollar Reeboks. She surreptitiously shifted a wad of chewing gum to her cheek as she approached the table. Simpson scrawled something on the bottom of the page I’d printed my name on, glanced at her watch, and noted the time in the lower-right-hand corner. “This is for Mr. Miller,” she said. “He’ll come out of Listening in 12A in forty-six minutes. He’s to choose whether he wishes to come here or not.”

“Yes, Listener,” the girl said around her gum. “Should I make a copy before I deliver it?”

“Of course,” Listener Simpson said a little peevishly. “If it’s not in the files it doesn’t exist,” she added with the air of one repeating a well-worn dictum. The girl didn’t look particularly grateful for the advice. She let out a world-weary sigh and left the room as though she were happy to be out of it, cracking her gum as the door closed behind her.

“Kids,” Listener Simpson said to herself. Listener Dooley emitted a sympathetic snore.

“You were probably like that once,” I said. “All energy and no direction.”

She gave me a grave look and then shook her head. “I was worse,” she said. “I don’t know why nobody killed me.”

“Children seem to be important to the church. Kids as couriers, the little girl on the poster behind you.”

“Children are important to every Church. Like them or not, they’re the messengers to the future. ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ Jesus was only one of the religious leaders who realized that children were essential.”

“A high-priority demographic group.”

She weighed it for a second. “A little bald, but accurate. It’s probably better than sentimentalizing them.”

“Tell me about the Church.”

“I’m not qualified. I can only tell you a few things, and those are more what we’re not than they are what we are. Does that make sense?”

“It’s not one of clarity’s better moments, but I followed it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Well, to start with, who are the people on the poster?”

“Mary Claire and Angel Ellspeth. Angel is the Church’s Speaker. Mary Claire is her mother.”

“I know what a mother is. What’s a Speaker?”

“That’s a little complicated, and it sounds like mumbo-jumbo unless you’ve heard a Revealing. We’re encouraged not to answer that question, but to ask you to attend a Revealing instead. Like the one at seven-fifteen this evening.”

“Is the Church Christian?”

“Some of us are Christian. I am. Some of us are Jews, some of us are Buddhists, some don’t believe in God at all. It’s not important. The Church teaches us to address the Spirit in ourselves. Do you believe in God?”

“No.”

“You don’t even have to think about it?”

“I’ve already thought about it. Boy, have I thought about it.”

“Don’t you believe you have a spirit of some kind?”

“It’s not something I consider every morning right after I get up. I believe in right and wrong. I guess that must mean I think people are more than just ambulatory mixtures of chemicals. Who cares what happens to a chemical? Is it right to use zinc to make corrugated roofing and wrong to put it on your nose to keep from getting sunburned?”

“Zinc’s a metal,” she said, “but I understand your example. Moral principles don’t make sense in a purely physical world.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Of course it was.” Her smile was friendlier now, and her eyes seemed to be looking into mine rather than challenging me. She really was very pretty. I would have asked her what time she got off, but I had a feeling she didn’t.

“What’s the Eternal Moment?” I asked instead.

“
Now
,” she said in italics. “You already knew the answer to that.”

“I guess I did. What’s a Listener?”

“That comes later. Don’t look for a contradiction, there isn’t one. You just don’t understand Now.”

“Take pity on a poor pilgrim.”

“Well,” she said with a smile, “I’m listening to you now, aren’t I?”

Listener Dooley shifted on his hard wooden chair, mumbled something, and opened his eyes. He looked at me once, incuriously, and let his lids droop again. Nevertheless, I had a sense that Listener Simpson wasn’t the only one whose ears were working.

“I guess you are. Do you get paid for it?”

“The laborer is worthy of his hire.”

The door behind the Listeners opened and a dark, extremely handsome man came in. He had blue-black hair and plenty of it, startlingly pure blue eyes, and the kind of beard that actors and politicians shave twice a day. His deep tan was set off by a coral polo shirt, complete with an amphibian of some kind over the left nipple. He’d tucked the shirt meticulously into pleated blue slacks to show off the fact that he’d inherited Fred Astaire’s waistline. I disliked him on sight.

“Well,” he said, “so you’re here to see Mr. Miller.” He smiled, revealing white, slightly pointed teeth. “I’m Dick Merryman.”

Dick Merryman held out a hand and I shook it. It was warm and hard, with short curly black hairs on the backs of the fingers.

“I’d say I’m Simeon Grist,” I said, “but you already know it.”

He must have thought that was funny because he laughed. “Has Listener Simpson been helpful?”

“She’s been a delight. I was about to tell her my entire life story.”

He laughed again and tossed a mean little glance at Listener Simpson, who blushed scarlet to the roots of her hair. “He’s just kidding, Dr. Merryman,” she said.

“Doctor?” I said. “What kind of doctor? Ph.D.? L.L.D.? Chiropractic?”

“M.D.,” he said. “An internist, actually, Simeon. Why?”

“ ‘Doctor’ is such a loose term, isn’t it, Dick? The Germans call everybody ‘doctor,’ and Americans are only slightly more selective. So what’s an internist doing at a gathering of the Church of the Eternal Moment?”

“We’re not Christian Scientists,” he said in an agreeable tone that sounded like it took a little work. “People get sick, you know.”

“Then you’re not a member of the Church?”

“Of course I am. The Church has a lot of professional men—doctors, lawyers—and blue-collar workers, housewives, what-have-you. Everybody’s welcome. Are you a friend of Mr. Miller’s?”

“I’ve known him a long time. I’ve done him some favors.”

“Don’t think we’re security-happy,” Merryman said, reading my mind. “It’s just that Mr. Miller is a celebrity, and we’ve learned to be careful with people who say they want to see one of our celebrities.”

“One of your celebrities?”

“We have many people whom the world thinks of as celebrities. There are eight or nine here right now.”

“Eight? Or nine?”

“Eight, actually,” he said, giving me the teeth again. What do you do, Simeon?”

“Good question, Dick. You could say I’m self-employed.” We smiled at one another.

“And you say ‘doctor’ is a loose term.” He chuckled. I chuckled back at him. Then we both stopped chuckling and he waited for me to say something.

When the silence had gotten awkward and Listener Simpson had cleared her throat twice, he rubbed his hands together. “Well,” he said, “Mr. Miller will be getting your message soon, and he’ll probably come out to see you. Even if he doesn’t, I hope you’ll stay for the Revealing. You’ve come all this way, after all.”

“All this way from where?” I hadn’t told Listener Simpson where I’d come from.

Merryman’s smile broadened. “No one really lives in Big Sur, Simeon. Just take a seat. Have you brought anything to read?”

“That’s okay. I’ll meditate on the present.”

“You do that. Even without training, it can’t do any harm. Listener Simpson, I think it’s time for your next session.”

Listener Simpson looked faintly fuddled. “Of course it is, Dr. Merryman. I was just, um, waiting to be relieved.”

“Listener Dooley can handle it.”

Listener Dooley snapped out of his coma and looked alert. “Sure I can, Dr. Merryman.” He had a whiskey voice to match his nose.

“Nice to have met you, Simeon,” Merryman said. “See you at the Revealing.” He took Listener Simpson’s elbow and guided her out of the room. He had the posture of a professional ballroom dancer, but his fingers cut into the flesh of her arm.

“What an interesting guy,” I said to Listener Dooley as the door swung shut behind them. “I always think doctors should be unattractive.”

“You do, huh? I think everybody should look like what they want to look like.”

I calculated the odds against Listener Dooley having chosen his face and came up with the kind of number astronomers are always trying to explain to the rest of us. Conversation with Dooley held no mysteries that I cared to penetrate so I went to a chair and meditated on the present.

Quite a lot of it had flowed seamlessly past when the door opened once again and Skippy Miller jiggled through it. He looked genuinely happy to see me, happier than anyone I’d run into in a long time.

“Simeon, this is great, this is terrific,” he boomed in his actor’s voice. He looked, as always, like his mother had dressed him in the dark. Skippy wasn’t heavy or husky or any of the current euphemisms: Skippy was fat, with the dedicated fat man’s fastidious touches—a scarf around the neck, trousers darker than his shirt, shirt loose to conceal the blossoms of flesh inside. Except that, on Skippy, the touches always went awry. The scarf around his neck was too tight, emphasizing the rolls of fat below his chin. The trousers had bulging safari-style pouches that made him look like a man with an extra set of hands in his pockets. But his face was genuinely open and obviously pleased.

“It is? I mean, I’m happy to see you too, Skippy, but why is this such a crowd-pleaser?”

“Well, because you’re here. You have to give me credit, Simeon, I never preached to you, but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy to see you here.”