The Wilds (21 page)

Nevertheless, it’s hard to sustain mental focus when your spring rolls lack almonds, when your wine’s third-rate, when your dermis burns beneath its crust. It’s hard to envision yourself floating in a bubble of celestial light when you look like you’ve been deep-fried. I’m having trouble picturing the crystalline features of the deity. I can’t help but notice that the sea smells of sewage, that our table is sticky, that our waitresses are contemptuous, smooth-skinned and pretty in their way, with decades of insolent youth to burn. When Lissa alights at our table in a translucent white kimono, my misery is complete.

But Red only nods at her, keeps staring out at the empty sea.

I’m studying his profile when I spot a dark figure lurching from a clump of pink hibiscus. Black skin, green shorts, ammo vest. The man lugs a Kalashnikov. He’s yelling in Spanish. More pirates emerge from the landscaping, waving guns and machetes. One of them screams in English: “Surrender, you scab-covered dogs!” Lanky, with a dramatic cheek scar, he tells us to put our wallets on the table, along with all iPhones, handheld
gaming devices, and jewels. Other pirates randomly fire their guns into the air.

In one convulsive movement, patients start rifling through pockets and purses, removing rings and bracelets, plunking valuables onto tables. Then we sit with hands behind our backs as the bandits have instructed. We don’t flinch as they rip designer sunglasses from our faces. We squint with stoicism at the sea while they fill their rucksacks with treasure. Shadows grow longer. The sun sinks. The jhunkit birds, emboldened by our immobility, descend on the tables to peck at canapés.

When the pirates finally creep off into the jungle, crouched in postures of cartoonish stealth, the waitresses spring into action. They bustle about distributing bottled water. They assure us that security has been summoned. They refill our wineglasses, wipe bird shit from our tables, spirit away our dirty plates. The sky flushes pink. Lissa trembles like a Chihuahua until Red drapes a friendly arm over her back. He’s just being courteous, I tell myself, as I wait for this contact to end.

A woman weeps quietly at the edge of the patio, then she blows her nose and orders shrimp dumplings in ginger broth.

According to the pamphlet, the final days before Shedding should be days of intense relaxation—no medical procedures, no exhilarating therapies, no excursions. Even extreme dining is discouraged. It’s difficult to drift like a feathery dandelion seed when Mukti’s security forces have crawled out of the woodwork into our sunny paradise. They’ve always been here, of course, lurking in the shadows, monitoring the island from subterranean surveillance rooms, but now they loiter openly in their khaki shorts, handguns only partially concealed by oversized tropical shirts.

Yesterday, while enjoying an aloe-vera bath in the Bodhi Herb Garden, I heard a crude snicker. I gazed up through a tendril of sarsaparilla to glimpse the smirking face of a security guard. There he was, licking an ice-cream cone, his mustache dotted with pearls of milk. And now, as I float in the Neti Neti Lagoon, stuck in step two of the Instant Calming Sequence, I hear a security guard barking into her cell phone. I count to six and wait for her to finish her conversation. When I start over with a fresh round of uninterrupted breathing, her ring tone bleeps through the gentle thatch of birdsong. So I switch to Microcosmic Orbit Meditation, envisioning a snake of light slithering through my coccyx. Now the security guard is laughing like some kind of donkey. I open my eyes, gaze up into the palms, and spot a tiny
camera perched next to a cluster of fruits. Its lens jerks back and forth like the head of a nervous bird.

In addition to the dread of pirates charging through the bush, in addition to the distraction of security guards and the fears of type-I scarring, we must also worry about the weather, as the island’s now on hurricane watch—or so the powers that be informed us this morning. The ocean breeze has become a biting sandy wind. A weird metallic scent blows off the sea, and I get the feeling that the island’s swathed in bad karma. Plus, a few Crusties, having shed their husks, have been jetted to the mainland without the Rapture Ceremony—a ritual designed to reassure remaining Crusties that their golden time will come, that they too will walk in flowing robes, their silky necks garlanded with narcissus.

Yesterday afternoon, instead of gathering on the beach to watch the smooth-skinned Devas depart in the Ceremonial Boat, we crowded into the lobby of the small airport. Through a plate-glass window, we observed two Devas dashing from flower-decked golf carts toward a commuter jet, their faces shrouded by scarves and sunglasses. Security guards swarmed, their tropical shirts easy to spot. Rumor has it that one of the Devas,
a famous movie star, was being whisked off to California, where she’ll resume her career as romantic-comedy queen—blond icon of feminine joie de vivre, laughing in the sun.

Red, in the final throes of his Remodeling phase, has a
TSF
of 99.6 percent. His exterior has the golden huskiness of a pork rind. And now, as he scans the endless ocean, his beautiful brown eyes burn behind his scabby mask. He’s barely touched his scrambled tofu. He takes long, dreamy slurps of mango smoothie. I know he’ll be jetting off to the mainland soon. Once there, he won’t be able to contact me by phone or e-mail, as the Mukti contract dictates, so we’ve made arrangements to reunite, booking reservations at the Casa Bougainvillea.

I keep picturing that moment when we’ll meet by the pool at sunset. I keep picturing Red reclined beside the waterfall featured on the hotel’s brochure. First he’ll look startled. Then he’ll smile as his eyes run up and down my body. He’ll bask in the vision of a female epidermis refortified with type-III collagen and glowing like the moon. Though I haven’t worn jewel tones for years, I’ll highlight the infantile pallor of my skin with a scarlet sheath dress. I’ll wear a choker of Burmese rubies. Dye
my hair auburn, paint my nails crimson, wear lipstick the color of oxygenated blood.

After we revel in the softness of a ten-minute kiss, we’ll drink Romanée-Conti under the stars.

Yesterday, I stood in the airport lobby, watching Red hop from a flower-decked golf cart and then scurry through strong wind to Mukti’s commuter jet. Keffiyeh-style headgear and huge sunglasses concealed his face. When he turned from the platform to wave, a shadow passed over him, and then he dipped into the jet. I have no idea how his Shedding went. I have no idea what his refurbished carnality looks like, though I’ve seen Facebook pics of his thirtysomething self, his high school yearbook photos, a few snapshots of the young Red rock climbing in Costa Rica.

Lissa too has been spirited away—nubile and golden, I fear. Though she was obscured by a chiffon Lotus robe, I have the sick suspicion that she’s gone through her Shedding unscathed. That she looks gorgeous. That she’ll stalk Red at the Casa Bougainvillea, appearing naked and luminous beneath his balcony in a courtyard crammed with flowering shrubs.

And now, as the few remaining Crusties huddle in the basement of the Skandha Center, awaiting the wrath of
a category-four hurricane named Ophelia, Gobind Singh lectures us on the Deceptive Singularity of the Self.

“The Self you cling to,” says Gobind Singh, “is an empty No Self, or
Shunya
, for the True Self does not differentiate between Self and Other, which is not the same, of course, as the No Self.”

Gobind Singh sighs and takes a long glug of springwater, for we are the Stubborn Ones, unable to take pleasure in the Shedding of Others, greedy for our own transformation. According to Gobind Singh, the True Self must revel in the Beauty of the Devas, even if we ourselves do not attain True Radiance during this cycle, because the True Self makes no distinction between Self and Other.

According to Gobind Singh’s philosophy, I should delight in the divine copulation of Red and Lissa, which is probably taking place right this second on 1,000-thread-count sheets. I should yowl with joy at the thought of their shuddering, simultaneous orgasm. I should partake in the perkiness of Lissa’s ass as she darts from the bed, turning to give Red a full-frontal display before disappearing into the humongous bathroom to pee. According to Gobind Singh, their ecstasy is my ecstasy.

Glowing with self-actualization, floating a few millimeters above the bamboo flooring, Gobind Singh weaves among us. We sit in full lotus, five sullen earthbound
Crusties, slumped in our own hideousness. We fidget and pick at our flaking shells. The second the guru turns his back, we roll our eyes at each other.

And when the winds of Hurricane Ophelia pick up, shaking the building and howling fiercely enough to blot out the throbbing of electronic tablas, we can’t control the fear that grips us. All we can think about is literally saving our skins. As the electricity flickers and the storm becomes a deluge, Gobind Singh tells us that all men, no matter how wretched, have a Buddha Embryo nestled inside them, gleaming and indestructible as a diamond.