The Answer to Everything (10 page)

Meanwhile, I had been slowly working on Eldrich, playing the good disciple—asking for advice, borrowing his
Bhagavad Gita
, accidentally letting a copy of
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
slip from my backpack, and just ostensibly exploring my “cosmic self.” Eldrich, I have to admit, remained unimpressed. He seemed closed off. One morning we were enjoying a breakfast doob in his apartment when I decided to lay it all on him. I started by thanking him. A deep and heartfelt
gracias
. I told him how much his words of wisdom and guidance had meant to me. He didn’t seem to buy it. When I told him he had set an example for me and had placed me on a path of spiritual awakening, he smiled as if he could tell I was full of crap. But when I hauled out the big guns and assaulted him with the sobbiest sob story of my life, he came to sit with me on the sofa and stared acutely into my orbs (his own brimming with moisture and compassion). I went full force then, concluding the attack with my own waterworks, at which point he covered my ears with his hands and pulled my head against his neck (salt/patchouli), his chin resting firmly atop my head. We sat there for a truly crazy amount of time before he saw fit to release me.

I told him he had a gift, a special talent for healing and helping other humans. “Think about it,” I said. “Mindy, Alexa, your friend with the watch, Joyanne … all those people in the park, they come to you for spiritual direction.”

Small nod.

“Me …”

No response.

“What? You think you don’t help me?”

“I hope I
can
help you, John.”

“You have already, Eldrich. And I think you could help others. And I think if you know you can help, you should. It’s almost a duty.”

Mulling.

“You’re a man of God, are you not?”

“It depends what you mean by ‘God.’”

“A powerful, loving force in the universe.”

Nod.

“And you’ve found a way of living through God that you believe to be the correct way to live?”

“Yes.”

“So don’t you want to share that?”

“I do already.”

“But don’t you think God would want you to share it with as many people as possible?”

“I believe the people who need to find me will find me. And I’ll find the people I need to find.” He squeezed my hand.

“OK … But what if a person who found you wants more people to find you?”

Eldrich paused for a long time. “Why?”

“Well … I just think your message is important. Life is short. People are searching for the right way to live. People could benefit from learning what you know. I’ve benefited from it, and I want to help others benefit from it.”

“How?”

“I was thinking of setting up a website.”

I could feel the room grow colder. My words were liquid nitrogen. Eldrich returned to his chair. He stared at his feet.

“Strictly to connect with people,” I said. “Just to get the stuff you talk about out there. Maybe provide links to some of the books you’ve recommended?”

“That’s your thing, John.”

“Well, it’s mostly your thing, isn’t it?”

“No. My thing is to do what I’m doing. But if you want it to be your thing, that’s fine. I’m not going to stop you from doing your thing.”

“OK.”

Oh well. It was a start. At least he hadn’t put the kibosh on my plan. I thanked him and told him he had touched my heart, and for the first time in a long time I felt hopeful. He didn’t entirely swallow it, but he didn’t look displeased either.

In fact, when I left him he was sitting noticeably straighter in his wicker throne.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad
.

Longfellow said that. The poets know the Truth.

I didn’t have a lot of contact with Eldrich early on. As per John’s instructions, I would print posts from the site and slide them under Eldrich’s door. We weren’t sure if he was reading them or not. One morning, as I was doing this earlier than usual, the door opened and there was Eldrich, standing there in his gotch. I found myself almost at eye level with what looked like some very big business stuffed into a pair of formerly white, now washed to oblivion pinkish-grey Stanfield briefs.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “John asked me to …” I gestured to the pages on the floor.

He nodded. Scratched his stomach. For someone who never seemed to do anything but sit around or lope along, he had a surprisingly muscular belly. And nice hair placement.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No,” he said with his simpleton grin. “Want tea?”

“Um, no thanks, I have to—” I pointed to my door across the hall.

“It’s already made,” he said, standing aside and gesturing for me to enter. “Dragon fruit zinger.”

“Oh. OK.” I was flustered, trying not to look at his crotch or dwell on the words “dragon fruit.”

I went into the living room, which was basically the same as mine but with the furniture arranged haphazardly, or seemingly not arranged at all. There were a million plants everywhere, and the sun was streaming in through the east-facing windows. It smelled like pot and tea and wet soil. Fecund. Pleasant. He must have just watered. There was soft piano music playing on an old-fashioned record player, and the small
pops
and
clicks
of needle on vinyl made a rich, soothing sound.

It was very peaceful until Eldrich came in with my tea and proceeded to sit cross-legged in this tall Addams Family–type chair directly across from the low vinyl sofa where I was seated. Here’s the thing: he still hadn’t put any clothes on. Once again, I was almost eye level with his package, but now there was no escape. Or no escape until I finished my tea—have you ever tried to guzzle hot tea? What’s worse, sitting on the ottoman between us was a stack of junk mail and on top of the pile was a glossy Burger King flyer, advertising a sandwich called the Angry Whopper.

So there I was, drinking dragon fruit tea, with the Angry Whopper directly in my sightline, trying to focus on what we were talking about, which was how long I had lived in the building, what I was studying at school, how I got involved with the website, etc., etc., but I can’t honestly remember because the entire time I was really just trying not to laugh, thinking about Eldrich’s big old donkey dick and imagining how I was going to tell it to John.

Eldrich was full of crap. Which, as it turns out, was great for me. In the days leading up to the first social, he was still playing the taciturn card—
This is your thing, John. This isn’t my thing. I’m far too modest and retiring to ever become involved in a thing like this
. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if he would show up to our little party, and had no idea if he’d been reading the website posts or not. I emailed him the link at least half a dozen times, and even went so far as to jam hard copies of website correspondence under his door, but whenever I tried to talk to him about anything to do with the site or its users, he would get all vague and cagey. He would change the subject. Nevertheless, on the morning of our first official gathering, there he was, right on time, looking like Jesus Christ in a billowing cotton tunic, hemp genie pants and sun-baked Birkenstocks, pressing the flesh and welcoming the flock like a good guru should. He seemed to know all the people and their tales of weird.

Eldrich, obviously, had been reading all along.

Amy invited forty individuals to our rooftop party (thirty-one from the website), and twenty-nine showed up. I invested a hundred of my own bucks for refreshments, and within ten minutes every plate was picked clean. No one seemed to
care though. Even super-rich dude, who was probably used to the snazziest catering, appeared content with a handful of Cheetos and a plastic tumbler of lemonade. I finally got a chance to meet the guy. He introduced himself as “Phil,” but I later learned that his real name was Chen Xi Quan and that he was originally from Singapore. He was short and pudgy, with sallow skin and teeth all askew in blackish-purple gums—like a cemetery after a mudslide. He had no chin to speak of and large, oddly gelatinous eyeballs that reminded me of cloudy aquarium water that needed to be cleaned. He was an affable fellow, though—instantly chummy, with a high-pitched, giggly laugh. When I asked about his watch, he whipped it off and handed it to me to examine. “Parmagiani Fleurier,” I said, reading the brand as I strapped it on my wrist. “Interesting design.”

“You see it when you’re driving.” He pointed to the face on the side of the cylinder, and mimed holding his hands on a steering wheel.

“Ah.”

“It was a good deal,” he said, trying hard not to smile. “Only a hundred and eighty-seven thousand.”

This was a routine he evidently enjoyed performing. Now I was supposed to play my part, i.e., gasp with disbelief and either pretend to walk away with the treasure or tear it off as if its very value were burning my flesh. But I just stared at the thing, seemingly unruffled. “Well,” I said, “it’s a pretty nice wristwatch.” In other words, what a colossal waste of cash, you dunderhead. He seemed to get my inference. As I handed it back, he told me it had actually been a gift from his father,
who saw him admire it in a store once. “He thought it would make me happy. Nice things don’t make you happy.”

Ordinarily, I would have said, “But they don’t make you
unhappy
, do they, bro? Not like crappy old things that break down and actually incite misery.” But given the circumstances, I just nodded in agreement and said, “Eldrich has some very profound insights on happiness.”

“Yes,” he said, giggling and squeezing my upper arm. “You’re a good-looking fellow.”

The non sequitur threw me for a moment. I laughed loud and was about to say, “That’s what Mama tells me,” but he was already moving away when my mouth found the words. I saw him give Eldrich an effusive high-five and a great big hug, then he took off, though not before slipping something into the donation box I had set up by the patio door. Later, when Amy and I emptied it, we found a dozen toonies and loonies, a few crumpled fives and tens, and one very crisp hundred-dollar bill. Amy was all excited. And equally piqued when I told her I was keeping the cash to pay for expenses. She refused to have sex with me that night, even though I assured her there would be many more donation boxes to empty in the future. Whatever. I took the stiff hundred-dollar bill and slid it into my wallet—a colourful woven thing that one of my ex-girlfriends had bought in Guatemala. It looked good in there. Like a business man on holiday.

I decided that “Phil” was a swell guy, and I would get to know him better.

The first meeting was a pain in the butt. Even though I was back at school and already extremely busy, I was somehow charged with making pinwheel sandwiches for forty people. Fun fun fun. John promised to help, but all he did was pay for supplies and help me carry stuff home from the corner. Then he fucked off to some screening of a friend’s short film, while I spent the day up to my elbows in egg, tuna and salmon salad. The apartment reeked for a week. The sandwiches looked pretty, though. I make great party sandwiches.

I think John’s original intention had been to hold the event at Eldrich’s place, but Eldrich wasn’t exactly down with the plan in the early days, so that wasn’t going to happen. Then John tried to persuade me to have it at our place, but I refused. Who knew what kind of degenerates were going to show up? Did I really want a bunch of spiritually starved sociopaths tracking bedbugs into my apartment? No thank you. I thought we should just do a picnic in the park where Eldrich usually busked—familiar, safe, easy to disperse if things got weird—but John thought it wasn’t official enough. Also, he didn’t want to attract attention from suspicious Mommy types—especially if some super-freaks decided to attend. I compromised and
said we could hold it out on the rooftop terrace, as long as he agreed that nobody could use the bathroom in our apartment. And if it rained, tough luck. No one was coming in. He grudgingly agreed.

Almost everybody who I invited showed up. Unfortunately, Heather, the one person I was actually hoping to see, didn’t make it. We’d been corresponding through the website quite a bit, and even though we’d never met, I considered her a friend. She was traumatized by the loss of her child and was suffering from PTSD, but she wasn’t totally bonkers like some of the others. Wayne, for example, our UFO nut job, who arrived with a big-ass SLR digital camera and proceeded to photograph all the satellite dishes on the roof of our building and the buildings around us, as if they were picking up alien messages instead of the latest episode of
Modern Family
. Or dippy Anne-Marie, who insisted on greeting everyone forehead to forehead so she could feel their energy. Or wild-eyed Tyson who was completely covered in religious tattoos: a giant crucifix that started on the back of his neck, then sprouted elaborate wings all across his shoulder blades, Jesus Christ nailed to the cross and bleeding all down his left arm, and another Christ—this one in extreme close-up with a woeful expression and a blood-dripping thorny crown, on the right arm. He also had GOD’S SOLDIER tattooed as a kind of word bracelet, and a pair of realistic-looking hands clasped in prayer, with rays of light shooting out all around them, on the side of his tree-trunk neck.

Can you say “crazy-town”?

Eldrich took it all in stride, though, and seemed to adore everybody. There was a lot of hugging. Far too much hugging
for a group of people who had never met before. And there were a few uncomfortable minutes when Eldrich jumped atop a plastic milk crate and recited a fable about a young man who stood in the centre of town, boasting about his beautiful, perfect heart. All the villagers gathered around to marvel at his pristine muscle. But then an old man approached and said that his tattered and torn heart was the superior heart because it was missing pieces that he had given away, and because it was scarred from emotional upheavals, blah blah blah. All the villagers scoffed and turned away. But the young man saw that it was true, and wept, and tore a piece of his heart out and put it in the old man’s heart and they walked away arm in arm. Or something like that.