The 37th mandala : a novel (14 page)

"Hey," he said, "good morning. How are you?"

"Great," she said.

The word was well chosen to fill him with relief, to keep him calm until it was time to goad him on. He squeezed her hand in return, but Lenore was somewhere far away. Something else smiled for her, and kissed his cheek.

You are our natural prey, our predestined slaves, and we joyously swear forever to whip you to our bidding until you fall and fail us, when we shall devour you as is our right.

—from
The Mandala Rites
of Elias Mooney

We are your natural guides, your spirit tutors, and have vowed eternally to spur you on to great accomplishments until the time is ripe for you to transcend the mortal plane and rise with our assistance to your cosmic destiny.

—from
The Mandala Rites
of Derek Crowe

The offices of Veritas Books, a division of Runyon-Cargill International, were located in a refurbished brick warehouse south of Market Street. The window beyond Bob Maltzman's desk looked out on a small park with a swing set and a toddler's gym constructed from creosote-soaked posts that looked like recycled telephone poles. There were no children in evidence. The sandpit resembled a cat box that had never been changed. A ragged man hung in one of the swings, not even bothering to look furtive as he put what Derek surmised was a crack pipe to his lips. Several others sat at tables in the park, or guarded their shopping carts from benches where they sat wrapped in rags, some isolated and rocking back and forth talking to themselves, others in actual conversation.

The door opened behind Derek and Bob Maltzman came in with two cups of coffee. "Too cold for the hookers today, I guess," Bob said, setting a cup down on Derek's side of the desk, taking his around to the other side.

"The view's enchanting all the same," Derek said.

"So ..." Bob settled himself in his chair. There were stacks of manuscripts, proof sheets, everything in neat piles. Bob himself was short, rather plump, well groomed; he was dressed for a financial district office, white shirt and black tie, as if his conservative demeanor might help counteract the implicit flakiness of the books he published. Veritas was a respectable house, atmospheres above the amateurish Phantom Books; it had specialized and prospered for many years by publishing Christian writings and modern interfaith philosophy, before acquisition by the Runyon-Cargill empire. Veritas's recent venture into the New Age market was a risk that rode mainly on Maltzman's shoulders, and he carried it well. On the walls were several framed enlargements of book covers that Bob had purchased and published in his line: a new improved
Egyptian Book of the Dead
, its ancient lessons reinterpreted for the forward-looking yuppie; a colorful Qabala for children; and, naturally, a mandala. "How'd it go in North Carolina?"

"Fairly well. Good practice, anyway, if I can get some larger audiences."

Bob shrugged. "I've still got my fingers crossed, but it's hard with the New Age stuff. I can't quite convince the accountants that it's a growth industry. Eventually they'll see the figures for themselves."

"And how are the
Mandalas
doing?"

"What I've seen so far looks promising."

Derek nodded, but he had come to expect these vague replies. Royalty checks were the real proof, and he was a long way from collecting them for this book.

"What I really wanted to talk about is these Club Mandala people," he said.

"Oh, yes. I've seen their posters around town."

"They're total ripoffs."

Maltzman squirmed almost imperceptibly. "It does sort of look that way."

"What troubles me is that they started appearing just before the book came out. I've been trying to figure out how that's possible."

"I take it you have some ideas."

"Well, it looks to me like someone leaked them." He raised his eyebrows, waiting for Bob to reach the obvious conclusion.

"Someone here?"

"I assume you use temps in your office. Secretaries, receptionists, people who run the photocopiers for instance. People with no particular loyalty to Veritas."

Bob looked distressed, as if Derek were attacking him personally. "I suppose it's possible. But we also sent out quite a few review copies, don't forget. And does it really matter? The fact is, the mandalas are your designs—I mean, insofar as they belong to anyone. Although I suppose the gal who dictated them could make the same claim. ..."

"The mandalas authorized me to take possession of them, for dissemination," Derek said rapidly. Bob had asked once, half in jest, to meet "Ms. A," and Derek had responded that she insisted on anonymity. He suspected Bob had seen through this tale, but he was diplomatic in all things.

"Anyway, you've got the rights to them. If you want to enforce those rights, you don't have to prove how your infringers got ahold of them. But part of the point of the book, I mean, what the mandalas themselves seem to want, is for the widest possible exposure. I know you're not going to make any money out of this club, but on a broader level, it will bring the mandalas to more people and expand that many more minds."

"There's nothing to stop them from distorting the meaning of the mandalas, though," Derek said. "To use them in a nightclub—it's offensive."

"So ... insist on involvement. Make sure what they're doing is in line with the truth. Stay on good terms with them, Derek, and who knows—they might help you promote the book."

Derek sipped his coffee. Obviously Maltzman wasn't going to help him ferret out the spy in Veritas. He had been hoping for evidence to intimidate the Club Mandala people when he confronted them. For the moment he was trying to avoid the expense of involving his lawyer.

"Speaking of books," Maltzman said with a laugh, "how's the next one going?"

Derek crossed his legs and watched the crackhead staggering away from the sandbox. "I'm still sketching out some ideas," he said. "I haven't settled on anything in particular."

"How about that idea you pitched me a few years ago, before you came up with the mandalas?"

Derek stared at him, feeling blank.

"You remember, that Castaneda thing? You were going to interview that old shaman, do a book on his life, his philosophy? Study with him for a while and share his teachings? Whatever happened with that?"

Derek swallowed. "I thought you weren't interested in him."

"Well, at the time ... you were an unknown to us, and so was this old guy. But I think we could get up the interest now, if you could come up with the right angle. In a sense, him being unknown would be an asset—you could present him any way you want. Just as you did the mandalas. There'd be no preconceptions."

"I'm afraid that's impossible now," Derek said. "He died before I had a chance to interview him. Anyway, I don't think it would have worked out in the end. He was rather cracked, as it happens."

Bob looked mildly disappointed. "Oh, well. I thought that might have been a possibility if you were still in touch with him."

"I'm afraid not."

He noticed Bob glancing at his watch and was suddenly eager to end the meeting. "Do you have to be somewhere?"

"I have a meeting in about five minutes, but that's all right."

"I won't keep you. I just wanted to get your thoughts about these Club Mandala people."

"It's really up to you, Derek. Obviously I'd never encourage anyone to get involved in a lawsuit."

"No, I'd rather take care of it quietly myself."

"I hope you do. Good luck." They shook hands. "Give me a call when you've got your ideas in order. It'd be nice to get something in the pipeline, keep up the momentum."

"Yes," Derek said. He started to turn away.

"Oh, one more thing," Bob said, "I almost forgot. I thought I'd bounce the idea off you. What about a deck of mandala cards? You know, a kind of Tarot? Full color, nice stock, for meditation or divination, whatever. You could put together a booklet of interpretations, come up with some layout patterns. It wouldn't be that hard to do it with what we already have. Your artist on the first one, Neil Vasquez? He's working up a full-color computer-generated thing, with three-D modeling, I'm not sure what all."

"Hm." Derek nodded. It was an intriguing idea—a whole new marketing approach, giving him more reason than ever to make sure that he consolidated his rights to the mandalas and came down hard on the club owners. "Yes, that sounds excellent."

"If I've got your go-ahead, I'd like to bring it up in the meeting today. Is that all right?"

"Fine."

"The only thing is—at the moment, the deck is sort of limited. The regular Tarot has seventy-two cards—that's a lot to play around with. With thirty-seven ... I wonder if that's enough to really give people much to work with."

"It ought to be."

"I was only wondering ... you don't think you could come up with more mandalas? If they were, say, to channel more texts—if Ms. A might sketch a few more? That could be enough for another book right there, and it'd give us a nice full deck."

"More ... more mandalas?" Derek said. "I don't think so, Bob."

"No? Well, think about it."

"I don't—there aren't any more of them. There's thirty-seven, it's a fixed number, they're very insistent on that. No more, no less."

Had he even read the book?
Derek wondered. How could he have missed that?

And then he remembered excising that section from the original notebooks. It had opened into discussions he did not care to reproduce for his New Age audience, ones he had been unable to translate into catchy, optimistic phrases. The original texts were nowhere more baffling than in their discussion of the number 37. So, in fact, he was free to invent more if he wished; he hadn't publicly painted himself into that particular corner.

"But you never know," he said. "Maybe they were concealing something from us, and when the time is right—if it ever is—they'll come forward with more revelations. I'd be the last one to say I know everything about them."

"It's no big deal, Derek. If there's only thirty-seven, I'm sure we can work with that." They shook again. "I'll let you know what kind of response I get at the meeting."

The receptionist called him a taxi. He waited just inside the door, watching the sorry figures in the park, hurrying straight to the cab when it arrived. "Market and Sanchez," he said. "Hecate's Haven."

Hecate's stood at a crossroads—more accurately, it stood where three roads met, a location Lilith claimed was of particular potency. She had helped select the spot when Norman Argos moved his shop from its original, cramped North Beach location a year before. Market, Sanchez, and 15th crossed like the arms of an asterisk. The spiky orange crest of Corona Heights, also called Indian Rock, dominated the skyline above 15th Street. Indian Rock, too, was an energy vortex, according to Lilith, lending the whole neighborhood an air of magic. And vortex was a good way to describe the traffic jams that arose among the confluence of cars and pedestrians streaming from six different directions.

Perhaps because of all the power swirling about chaotically, the triangular point of land between Market and 14th had proven too much for most businesses. The building that stood there had changed hands several times since Derek moved to the city, and between each new regime it stood empty, covered with movie and concert posters, its windows fogged with graffiti. The latest doomed establishment had been a Thai restaurant, which had gone to great expense to alter the architecture of the place to suit its menu. The building looked like a pagoda now, with a three-tiered roof of flaking gold, whose corners were tapered and upturned. It was exotic, but no more so than the contents of the establishment it now housed.

Looking through the front window, Derek could see the usual crowd milling among the tall shelves and cluttered glass cabinets, browsing through books, shuffling Tarot decks, gathering various weird appurtenances. Jars of candles, herbs, and incense rose to the ceiling. It struck him as intensely boring; his first few times in the place had brought an odd thrill, but familiarity had sapped the occult of its mystery. Now he walked behind the scenes, immune to the illusions.

He went in quietly, hoping that none of the customers would recognize him; but no sooner had he entered than Norman called his name from the back of the shop. Several customers parted to let him through, looking as if they recognized him or his name; but most ignored him, for which he was grateful. The mandalas were only a tiny fraction of Norman's business; here, countless cults competed for primacy and shelf space, some so old they smelled of mummy dust, others invoking the modern myths of quantum physics, cyberspace....

"I'm looking for Lilith," he said. "I thought she was working today."

"She's in the back," Norman said.

"Has she had lunch yet?"

"Well, she usually runs out for a sandwich."

"Could I convince you to let me have her for an hour?"

He could see Norman resisting the idea, but eventually he cocked his head and tried to give in graciously. "I guess I've got enough girls here. Sure. If she wants."