The Answer to Everything (18 page)

Most of them, but much to my astonishment (and amusement), not all of them.

Nope.

The meetings changed. For the longest time they followed the same format. Eldrich would discuss one spiritual topic or another, maybe read from a text or his notebook, and then take questions or have dialogues with congregants. Then one day, something different. As usual, he was there before anyone else, seated cross-legged on the stage, waiting for Seekers to arrive and settle. But on this particular day he didn’t start to talk when everyone was quiet. On this day he just sat there, slowly shifting his gaze from this person to that as the tension in the room mounted.
What was going on? When would he begin? Why wasn’t he speaking?

Confusion and discomfort grew increasingly palpable as congregants checked each other for reactions, nobody daring to question the silence or the spell he was silently casting. There were nervous giggles, coughs and throat clearings before a calm gradually began to spread in an invisible wave. You could feel that too. A sort of smoothing, a relaxing. Like a Doberman that’d been on high alert lying down and closing its eyes.

Once tranquility had suffused the room—about fifteen to twenty minutes into the gathering—Eldrich fixed his eyes on
Marina and kept them there. He had a tiny smile on his face. A kind and affectionate smile. Marina stared back. A minute passed, maybe a bit more or less. Then, out of nowhere, she exploded into tears and proceeded to sob mightily, as if every ounce of pain were being wrung from her soul. Eldrich watched for a moment, then went to her and embraced her. She wailed even harder in his arms—anguished animal howls, her body shaking and shaking. And then, little by little, the quaking subsided and the sobs became whimpers and then deep sighs, and finally slow regular breaths, which is when he released her. She blew her nose and dried her eyes. She smiled. No, she
beamed
. I’d never seen her look so happy, or happy at all, for that matter. Marina was not a happy human. There seemed to be an ocean of sadness sloshing behind her blank, ashen facade. But right then in that moment she looked truly joyful. She had colour in her cheeks. She looked … shiny. Everyone applauded as she grabbed Eldrich’s hands and kissed and kissed them.

Seekers were crying and laughing and cheering.

Group catharsis.

I personally found it to be an extremely moving and powerful display. Somehow, wordlessly, Eldrich had provided a spiritual cleansing, one that seemed to offer profound relief. Everyone who witnessed it wanted to experience it for themselves.

And from then on, that’s how the meetings went. It became a huge draw. A kind of premium experience that everybody wanted to try. Seekers sometimes spoke, but Eldrich never did. He would begin onstage, randomly scanning the crowd.
Eventually, his eyes would linger and then lock on somebody. A silent communication would ensue. Sometimes the person would sit quietly and drink it in, bask in it. More often, the person would erupt into a crying jag, or laugh uproariously, or shout praise to God. Some even spoke in tongues, writhed crazily on the floor or fainted dead away. The effect was always sizable, and the staring session always ended with Eldrich coming over to touch and calm the individual. Touch was a big part of it. It could be a tight embrace, or a kiss held firmly on the forehead or eyelids, or a hand pressed over the heart. It changed depending on who was on the receiving end. And over time, the touching became less controlled, more impulsive, almost … feral. But always very compassionate and loving. Like a lion with a cub, there was a lot of nuzzling, some gentle biting, even some licking. I know it sounds strange, but it was actually quite lovely: primal and protective and natural.

Oddly enough, the meetings in which Seekers could converse with Eldrich about their lives and spiritual questions were not nearly as popular as the ones in which Eldrich said nothing at all.

Words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Behind words: meaning. Beyond meaning: truth. Mathematical, molecular truth.

Touch is truth.

We are made of each other. We are made of the cosmos. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen. All of us, atoms. All of us, atomically connected. We came from the universe and we will return to the universe. We will not cease to be.

Our bodies die, but our atoms, which came from stars, are eternal. They will go on to become parts of other matter and other humans. Shakespeare’s atoms are in me. Gandhi’s atoms are in you. Someday you will be in me, and I will be in you.

Reincarnation. Re-embodiment.

Life everlasting.

We can never die. We are infinitely and mysteriously transforming.

Changing.

What a genius freak our boy Eldrich was. He figured out a way—all in the name of enlightenment, of course—to work less, earn more
and
get his hungry hands on Coco without getting daddy’s back up (initially, anyway). Bravo! A triumph! A guru tour de force!

Want to know how he did it? By shutting his trap.

I first heard about it from Amy but didn’t pay any attention. I’d begged off attending most meetings and seminars and was focused on building MAMA. My preliminary construction plan hadn’t been working to my satisfaction, so I decided to embark on a far more ambitious interpretation than what I’d imagined in the beginning. Inspired by Ron Mueck’s sixteen-foot newborn in the National Gallery, I chose to construct a hyper-real MAMA from fibreglass and silicone. I knew basically how to do it. Years ago, I had a fling with an artist who created prosthetics for film and TV. I helped her make dozens of aliens when she was scrambling to meet a deadline. It was very cool and fun. Expensive as hell, but since money was coming in on a regular basis, I figured I could swing it with MAMA. I decided to buy a new womb too. I’d ditched my first attempt at constructing one—a kind of over-sized,
cashew-shaped doggy bed that I’d stuffed with memory foam and lined with soft fleece dyed pink. It looked OK and felt nice, but it was just too flaccid. Too flat. It didn’t
surround
properly. I scrapped it when I stumbled upon the idea of stereo chair as uterus. They were big in the 1960s. Egg-shaped. Very mod. Also comfy and encompassing. Plus they had built-in speakers. You could find retro ones for sale on eBay. But here’s the best part: there was a company in Fairfield, New Jersey, selling glossy new ones with high-quality sound systems that could hook up to your iPad/iPod. Perfect. I could lay one on its side and secure it, and it would have just the right heft and structure for my crawl-in womb. Cozy too. All of this is a long way of saying that as soon as my cardinal-red, deluxe modPod egg chair arrived at Elderbrook, I became entirely engrossed in MAMA and stopped attending meetings altogether. That is, until Amy forced me to check out Eldrich’s new act (
You can’t just hide in your bubble all the time!
).

Here’s how it worked: he showed up and did fuck all. Nada. Bupkis. He’d sit his ass down on stage and look at people. That’s it. That’s what the throngs were lining up to shell out for. That’s what everyone was so excited about. Eldrich just sitting there. Looking. When half an hour had elapsed or when whomever he was staring at started to blubber or lapse into some theatrical grand mal–type seizure, he’d amble over and swathe them in his gangly, giant self, pet and coddle for a while—hug, kiss, stroke, cocoon—until they were all spent and calm and grateful, positively glowing with worship. And that was that.

I’m not kidding.

And the people were loving it, slurping it up with great big hungry spoons.

The day I attended, Eldrich decided to fix his sights on young Coco (surprise, surprise), who was making her second visit with daddy-o. Our boy stared and stared (managing somehow to keep his gaze from drifting down from her rapt, wide-set eyes to her rapt, wide-set breasts, charmingly discernible through a faux-distressed, LA-designer T-shirt), and as soon as the girl’s baby blues grew the tiniest bit moist (it could have been allergies), he went for her, pouncing, enfolding, fondling, nosing … It continued on for a disturbingly long time. He was even licking her head at one point, mere feet from Raine, who looked on smilingly, approvingly. A real proud papa.

Go figure.

Unfortunately, Eldrich’s shut-up-and-grope routine proved a bit too inspiring for the masses. The serene, blissed-out devotion of Seekers—a state I was accustomed to and comfortable with—began to morph into a kind of rapturous hysteria. More and more fervent types were showing up, eager to get to Eldrich and his ostensibly curative orbs. Rumour was his “God Gaze” could heal everything from PTSD to vaginal warts (I thought:
Call me when he can cook up some Superfries with them peepers
).

Mushroom Steve went from being faithful sidekick to awestruck humble servant. He began to shadow Eldrich constantly, and grew creepily protective of his master—personally doing all his laundry by hand, preparing special meals and carrying them to the bedroom, where Eldrich had taken to hiding out for long stretches of time. He also enlisted Tyson and Wayne to act as sentries, guarding the door to keep
Seekers at bay. Even
I
was denied access when I wanted a word one morning. An unnerving turn of events. Steve poked his head out the door and whispered that Eldrich was meditating, but if I had something “essential” to discuss, I could try again after lunch. Then he asked if he could speak to me about something.

He led me down the hall and, all smiles and munificence, said he wanted to “commission” me to do a bust of Eldrich. In bronze. I laughed in his face, thinking he was having me on. Nope. His alarmingly dilated pupils were brimming with sincerity (like one of those big-eyed velvet-painting tykes).

“Does Eldrich know about this?” I asked.

“No. No way, man! Eldrich is, like, the most humble dude in the world! You know that. He’s like, crazy humble. But that doesn’t mean
we
can’t honour him, right?”

Wrong. I disrespectfully declined—told him I’d love to help out but was too busy working on my bust of Kim Jong-un. He was not amused.

Amy, who was well aware of the rising Eldrich frenzy, had done nothing to quell the swell of screaming meemies. On the contrary (without consulting me), she went ahead and plastered the website with zealous testimonials, superimposed over a full-screen close-up of Eldrich staring intensely out at the viewer. “
You
have
to experience it! His force emanates across the room and fills you with luminous self-knowledge.”
/
“I felt potent waves of spiritual influence penetrating my soul.”
/
“He preaches silently, but you hear it louder than any voice!”
/
“It was like he was channelling the Lord’s grace through his gaze, I felt years of pain being replaced with blissful effulgence.”
Um … OK. I had to look
up “effulgence,” which sounds like something that spews from the sewer but in fact means radiant splendour.

Radiant splendour, Amy decided, doesn’t come cheap. She doubled the price of weekend meetings to eighty bucks a pop for first-timers, and forty for repeat visitors.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t have bothered me. If it were all knitting-store proprietors and documentary filmmakers with digs in the Annex shelling out for illumination, tantric-y Os or huggy-wugs, I would have been delighted. But when I saw someone I recognized—a dude who lived on a sewer grate at Simcoe and Dundas, and carved bars of soap into figurines to sell for spare change—when I saw that dude limp in with scabby, frostbitten fists full of rolled-up coins, looking to have his multiple sclerosis healed, I figured things were getting out of control. And later that day when I spied a young woman snailing frailly up Elderbrook Avenue, wheeling her oxygen tank along the icy sidewalk, I knew I had to act.

I went in search of Amy and was told she was by the snack bar in the basement (or what used to be the snack bar—Amy, Drew and Anne-Marie’s son, Richard, had recently transformed the area into a makeshift gift shop). I found her and Drew seated at a table, chiselling chunks of purple stone into tiny fragments.

“What’s up?” I said, perplexed by the geological activity.

“Hey. We’re just getting these ready for Eldrich,” said Amy.

“To bless,” said Drew, reading my confusion.

Turns out these two had concocted a scheme to purchase Auralite crystals in bulk from a mine in Aurora, then unload them (at a 500 percent markup) after Eldrich had “blessed”
them, i.e., ramped up their already stupendous healing powers by snoozing with them under his pillow, or carrying them around in his enchanted pockets.

“What a magical idea,” I said, causing Drew’s pimply cheeks to flush with pride. “Mind if I borrow the boss lady for a bit?”

“Be my guest,” said Drew, perfectly happy to tap away alone, like a little elf with his wee hammer.

I dragged Amy to the bubble, where I grilled her about all the commotion and cash grabs of late. She instantly went on the offensive (as usual), accusing me of being totally out of touch with what was going on at the Institute, of grossly misinterpreting her actions and egregiously misunderstanding her intentions. She wasn’t being avaricious. Not at all. She just felt bad for Phil because so many new Seekers were suddenly flocking to his property. She was just trying to get us into a new headquarters and out of Phil’s hair as quickly as possible. And given the current real estate market, that, unfortunately, required a whack of dough.

Plausible (as usual), maddeningly so. Amy assured me she wasn’t being greedy, she was being thoughtful. And how could I not know that? How insulting. Furthermore, I had zero right to criticize how she was running the Institute, since I was forever disappearing into my bubble to work on MAMA. She recommended I step up and get more involved if I had a problem with how things were going. Or, conversely, if I was uncomfortable with how things were going and didn’t want to get involved to change those things, I was certainly free to get the hell out.

Am-scray. Vamoose.

I ended up apologizing (as usual). Then we had hot makeup sex (also, as usual). It was confusing. Afterward, we lay in the early evening darkness and listened to freezing rain
ping
off the bubble roof. Amy whispered that the Institute would never turn away a Seeker in need, whether that person had money or not. Never
ever
. But she felt it was important to keep prices high for those who could afford it—
for Phil’s sake
. I didn’t argue.