Congratulations on your new role.
Whether you have just joined the Company or been with us for some time, we are confident you will find the Company a dynamic and rewarding place in which to work, and we look forward to a successful association.
Welcome, says our new Employee Handbook. Not two years after Todd and I launch Zensor 1.0, the Company is experiencing a period of fast growth. Our corporate advisor, Michael Allen, informs us we should hire a bunch of new people, then take a week of vacation in order to enter Q3 with the strongest synergy yet. Since we’re hiring total strangers now, having run out of shared connections, we had to pay our lawyer to write an Employee Handbook about the “perks, amenities, and other miscellaneous joys of being an employee of the Company,” but it turns out anyway to just be stuff employees can and can’t do legally. “Not that people are going to defect.” Our lawyer always looks at me when she says this. “Not that you should expect defection. You just want to cover your bases, is all.”
Well, I fully agree with her. I love to cover my bases.
I expressed the desire to adjust the legalese of the Employee Handbook toward a friendlier tone, but according to our lawyer, “there are legal implications for doing that.” Now, Todd and I are writing an Introduction which skews good vibes, in order to increase the net good vibes of the document as a whole.
Todd is my cofounder. He does the business and I do the tech. Would I call our association successful thus far? Michael Allen advised us in the beginning that we should each get a therapist. Two therapists from two different clinics. Yes, I tell my therapist, at present I am successfully related to Todd. I love Todd like a brother. Todd and I bring out each other’s authentic selves, which is excellent, because a creative and constructive company culture depends on employees bringing their authentic selves to work, each and every day.
“Add that,” I say, and knock back my third Vitamin of the evening.
“I guess.” Todd types up my authenticity statement. “Don’t OD.”
Vitamin, noun proper, being a popular wellness pill containing a vigorous potpourri of B vitamins, D vitamins, chamomile, L-theanine extract from green tea, and lion’s mane mushroom powder. “You can’t,” I say. “It says so on their website.”
“They can say whatever they want; they’re not FDA-approved. No one’s checking for legitimacy. There’s no legitimacy with these kinds of things.”
“Explain, then, how I’m down to two cups of coffee a day,” I say. “How my Zensor has stopped buzzing to suggest memory-boosting brain games. How my skin now emits the radiant glow,” I say, “of someone who spends all day cavorting around in nature under the light of a moderate sun.” I say, “Please do explain to me—”
“Either finish the Introduction,” says Todd, “or accept that it already looks great and let me send it to the printer.”
“Almost,” I say. “It’s almost there, but not quite yet. Here, let me copy over the About Zen section from the Organization’s website.” Organization referring to the mindfulness acceleration collective located on the ground floor of our flexible shared workspace, along with a gym and cycling studio. I have been attending the Organization’s group meditations six to eight times per week since the day we moved the Company into the building. “There,” I say. “Look at that. Now it’s perfect.”
“Isn’t that plagiarism?” says Todd. “Couldn’t we get sued for that?” Todd has been sued before and won’t take any chances.
“This is about spirituality,” I say. “The Organization doesn’t have a patent on spirituality. Do we have a patent on authenticity?”
“Those Vitamins are screwing up your brain,” says Todd.
There’s a faint meow from somewhere beyond the wall. I make a shushing gesture. “Listen.”
“What?” says Todd.
I stand up. Then I sit down again. I think I catch some purring, but it’s too soft to know for sure. “Cat,” I say.
“That’s my cue.” Todd leans in and, before I can react, confiscates my laptop. “I’m not letting you hold me past eight one more night, especially on a Friday. I have a friend to meet and you have a vacation to start.”
We have to stagger our vacations, and my week’s up first. “So leave without me.”
“Can’t. I’ve been told by Allen to make sure you actually take the week off. I think I’ll hold on to your office key.”
What I find is, people who act decent most of the time can let slip some alarming flashes of cruelty. Todd is entirely aware, for instance, that I would rather chop off my left arm than take a week off. All these years getting the minimum optimal level of sleep—waking up before everyone else, going to bed after everyone else—in order to get ahead of the curve, only to plunder it all via seven days of doing nothing except falling behind. In my less logical moments, I toy with the possibility that “burnout” was invented by Michael Allen, who didn’t make it to Forbes until he was forty, to sabotage Company operations. Which is to say, more logically, that sometimes, the young should be wary of the envy of the old.
I dry-swallow another Vitamin. Todd is gazing at me with questioning intent; I reply by closing my eyes and nodding with flowing grace.
“Hey,” he says. “Calendar notification. You’re supposed to be at group meditation in three minutes.”
“I’d like my computer back, please, so I can finish the Introduction.”
“You’re joking me,” says Todd. “You’re playing hooky on meditation? For this?”
“A pagan,” I say, “ought not complain about a Christian skipping church.”
“Take yourself a little more seriously,” says Todd, “I dare you. And since when does this Christian skip church?”
Since last Friday’s group meditation, when that new girl showed up. Her name is Ana K. According to Ana K, five years ago Ana K survived a car crash that killed her entire family, causing her to quit her phenomenal job, sell her many material possessions, and go live in a nunnery in Lhasa. Ana K says that for five years she spent the entire day, from four in the morning to ten at night, silently meditating or tending to the garden.
Everyone else at the Organization is in love with her, might as well marry her. I have my suspicions. For instance, Ana K claims that, living at the nunnery, she only ate rice and steamed broccoli, sometimes carrots, some of which, she confided to us, were purple, which she had never seen before. A person doesn’t live on carbs and steamed vegetables for five years and come out of it looking like she does. Besides, she’s only twenty-seven years old, as stated by her driver’s license, which I saw by accident in her cubby when I was retrieving my shoes and wallet from my own cubby.
Ana K, everyone is saying, has seen the Truth.
Who is she? I don’t know. What is she here to do? Nothing good. Group meditation is all about the harmony of the group. It’s delicate. It requires trust. How I feel about it is, I could definitely use a group meditation right now, but I couldn’t use walking into the Organization and seeing Ana K. That’s how I’ve felt about it all week.
“My friend,” says Todd. “It’s official. I think I’m actually worried about you.”
“Sounds like a you problem,” I say.
“Get up,” says Todd, “and go look at yourself in a mirror.”
“Let’s do dinner,” I say, “and then you can go. I’ll drop my office key in your mailbox on my way home.” At the thought of dinner, I observe that my Zensor has not buzzed a suggestion all day, even though I skipped lunch. This is promising; I’ve heard rumors at the Organization that some members, thanks to sustained meditative practice, can metabolize efficiently enough to thrive on only one meal a day, liberating time for other, more valuable activities.
“I could do dinner,” says Todd.
Together, we leave the office and walk down the hall. Even this late, the shared workspace remains occupied with hundreds of startup founders hunched at their desks, squatting on their chairs, walking and talking at a steady pace on their desk- treadmill hybrids. Each office is lit with the same single frame of fluorescent light. I have the notion I’m traveling through a space zoo, with every exhibit flicking up its unfamiliar eyes to scope out my threat level as I pass.
I’ll admit that, years ago, when I first started the Company, I too was starved for a slot in history’s credits. Then I attended my first Organization event, a weeklong silent meditation. One could say that my life is enriched by spiritual development. To put it lightly.
In the microkitchen, Todd retrieves two plant-based health drinks, each of which contains all the nutrition per meal a person on the standard two-thousand calorie diet needs. We tap them together like they’re flutes of champagne. “Cheers,” he says. Then he goes to the pantry and selects a bag of cheese puffs which, despite being vegan, are still, at the end of the day, cheese puffs.
People like Todd, they can’t fully comprehend what they’ve been given. The gift of existence is limited by a fixed number of years. We call this a constraint, in data science. And the optimization equation is what allows one to make decisions so that the ultimate desirable quantity, such as profit, or perhaps happiness, is maximized—within the given constraints.
I’m not saying anything new here. I just look at Todd munching on his cheese puffs, with his rumpled clothes and Friday-night plans to go bar-hopping with some friend who’s getting a divorce, and I feel truly sad for him. Out of brotherly love. I have seen his Zensor buzzing him to spend more time in idle contemplation, among other things, but what does the man do? Hits Snooze on his own Company’s Product.
I suppose there is only so much an outside influence can do. Like the About Zen section states, the only way to achieve complete synchronization with the Truth is self-awareness. And that must necessarily originate from within.
Back in the conference room, I think I hear another meow. But when I switch on the lights, the place is empty, and what appears to be cat hairs at the far end of the table turns out to be a few wilted microgreens from my breakfast bowl.
“Tough luck,” says Todd. “I saw the tabby just a few days ago.”
“Me too,” I say, even though, as a rule, I prefer not to lie unless the situation is dire.
That night, I dream that I’m delivering a sermon. “Life,” I say.“The eternal question. For what is human experience but gems of meaningless emotions, strung together by the thread of a soul to form what feels like meaning, only to turn out ultimately to be a bracelet of a life that is but an accessory to the planet we call Earth?”
Too late, I realize I’m reciting the latest advertisement for Zensor. The white speck of light by my webcam winks in the darkness, signaling the live broadcast of my face to zillions of people across the dream world. “Can you all hear me?” I say.
We can all hear you, replies God, a woman.
I’m not sure I’m enjoying this dream. I feel deeply, abstractly unwell, which is wrong, because I know for sure that I am living my very best life.
Through sheer curtains, I see tiny cats with tiny wings flying through the sky. Having no idea what I just said, and being unsure how to proceed, I start spit-balling phrases from books I’ve read in the past year. “Success,” I say, “like happiness, cannot be pursued.” I say, “If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled.” The white speck winks at me in Morse. “Virtuous deeds make up the light of our lives.”
As I speak, I’m clicking through my open tabs, and in slow, wading motion, I notice a calendar notification for 5:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. I check my watch. It’s 5:37 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Apparently, I’m not dreaming.
I’m giving a virtual keynote on discovering joy in entrepreneurship for the Stanford University Alumni Association’s “Putting the I’m in Impossible” conference in Singapore, where it’s not 5:37 a.m., but 8:37 p.m. As a matter of fact, I spent half of Thursday working with our content team to generate a five-page speech for this very event.
The woman’s voice says, “Wallace? I think you’re frozen.”
The chat box says the event host is Kylie Wakita, the head of the Stanford Alumni Association. The toolbar says 781 participants are present.
I turn off my camera.
“Now we can’t see you at all,” says Kylie Wakita.
“One moment, please,” I say. “Just hold on for one moment.”
I conduct Deep Breathing Exercise 3 from the Organization’s corporate breathing class and start scrolling through my recently opened documents. In-breath. PDF of blood test results. Out-breath. More blood test results. In-breath. Cat adoption certificates. Out-breath. Vision tests, hearing tests. In-breath. Blood tests; I get them once a week, just because.
And it hits me like a chunk of ice: the script is on my work laptop, which is in my office, which is not only a fifteen-minute drive away, but also locked with a key currently locked by Todd’s key in Todd’s house with Todd locked inside it too, probably deep in the most productive phase of REM sleep.
“Wallace?” says Kylie Wakita. Her microphone produces a slight reverberation around my name. “Wallace, are you there?”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “My sincerest apologies. I believe my internet may be faltering.” I say, “Two moments, please.” Then I shut the lid of my laptop.
Outside, the early birds, not tiny cats after all, are flying back and forth between telephone wires in a peachy predawn light.
I am at a loss. If I were still susceptible to the shallow and unproductive emotion that is hate, I would hate myself for this. Wimping out is hardly a regular occurrence in my playbook.
I spend some time staring at the backs of my hands. Then I realize that I’m barely breathing, which is odd, because my Zensor isn’t buzzing me. In fact, my Zensor hasn’t buzzed me this entire time. No Spend fifteen more minutes in bed. No Drink a glass of water. Nothing at all. I tap it to check on its battery—
And receive my second shock of the morning.
I can’t remember exactly how Company protocol goes, but a Product bug like what I’m seeing must be Code Red. I look closer. It’s not just a bug—it’s a potential PR crisis. I dial Todd, put him on speaker, and start pacing the room to get my heart rate up, in case the issue’s in the hardware. “Good morning, sunshine,” I say, “where did you hide my office key?”
Todd says, “Jesus Christ.”
“This is an emergency,” I say. “Company protocol. Code Red.”
“What Company protocol? What the hell,” says Todd, “is Code Red? I thought you didn’t do drugs?”
“Okay, forget that. My Zensor isn’t working. I need to access the code to see if this is related to the features we’re beta testing, or if valued customers across America are actually experiencing this problem real-time. Can you imagine? Right after we broke into Silicon Valley?”
“What do you mean, not working?”
“Right, don’t panic, but now I’m realizing we might have been hacked.”
“Hacked?”
“There’s this new girl at group meditation, her name is Ana K, she has green eyes, maybe you’ve seen her around the building; she presents as, well, I don’t know, all I know is she’s not who she claims she is. I suspect we may be under attack from some competing—”
“My Zensor’s completely fine. It’s actually buzzing me to get the hell back to sleep.”
“My Zensor says I’m dead.”
For a few beats, the line is quiet.
“Well, you’re not,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m aware.”
“I didn’t even realize we had this as a feature.”
“Release 9.3.2,” I say. “I wanted to demonstrate how death and life are harmoniously intertwined, like the heads and tails of a coin.”
“Oh,” says Todd. “God.”
“It’s probably the beta,” I say. “Which is why it’s still in beta. Is my office key still in your mailbox, by any chance?”
“Buddy,” says Todd, “just relax. It’s definitely the beta.” He says, “If I put a ticket in on Monday, I’m sure the dev team will have a look by Friday.” He says, “Hello?”
“How about,” I say, “the dev team has it fixed by Wednesday?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” he says. “We’re way ahead of schedule.”
“Sure,” I say. “Sure, we have loads of time. Time here, time there. All we have is time.”
“Hey,” he says, “that’s the idea.” He says, “I’m going back to bed.”
“Wait,” I say. “Wait just a minute, here.”
“Have a good vacation,” he says. “Hope the keynote went well.”
Which reminds me: I haven’t checked my Zensor in a while.
I stop my speedy pacing and tap the wristband. Even with my intensified pulse, the display hasn’t changed. “Yeah,” I say. “The keynote. Of course. The keynote went well beyond comparison. I’ve never met such an insightful crowd.” If Todd finds out what happened, he’ll sic Michael Allen on me, and I just know Michael Allen is going to call burnout and put me on another vacation. “Todd?” I say. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry about me at all.”
“All right, then,” says Todd. “If you say so.”
“I said it,” I say. “You go back to bed, now.”
“Wow,” he says, “thanks, pal,” and the line goes cold.
For an emergency breakfast, I consume a twelve-ounce smoothie that contains 110 percent of my daily servings of fruit. It’s somewhat lacking in vegetables, so I compensate with a multivitamin gummy, a biotin supplement, an iron supplement, and two Vitamins. As I’m parsing through my stash, I notice that the cap to the sleep-aid melatonin is screwed on crooked. I must’ve taken too much last night. I chew twelve edible mini-espressos to negate the residual drowsiness and, since I will be reviewing thousands of lines of code when I get to the office, swallow another three in quick succession. Anticipating jitters, I empty the contents of a lavender honey tea bag into a bowl, crush it into powder using a rolling pin, wet my fingers, and rub it gently into my gums. I overheard Julian F and Reynold R talking about this at group meditation; I trust it, because they both went to well-ranked med schools. I didn’t stick around to hear how much of the effect is due to placebo.
I dash to the door with my keys. Hand on the knob, I’m struck by the possibility that my Zensor is glitching because I skipped my group meditations last week. I dash back to the kitchen. Cross-legged on my yoga mat, I open the Organization’s mobile app and hit Start on a random guided track.
A male voice says, in a British accent, “You’re standing in an elevator.”
I get inside my elevator.
“You’ve been wobbling at the fiftieth floor, unstable, like you’re at the top of a ladder. Let the elevator take you slowly to the forty-ninth floor. Breathe in—that’s right, slowly, very slowly, descend another floor. Yes, you’ve reached the forty-eighth floor now.
Breathe out. Forty-seven. There’s a window in your elevator— what do you see? Now, breathe in, slow, tracing the breath all the way into your stomach, feeling the sensation of lowering closer to gravity, to gravitas . . .”
The edible espressos have achieved their full effect. My gentle British narrator is still on the thirty-ninth floor when I hit the lobby. Which, yes, I understand is not how the guided meditation is designed to work, but I’m operating in Code Red, over here. I open my eyes and tap my Zensor. No luck.
At Todd’s, I find his key under a rock in the rock garden and enter with ease. I jog up the hall on my tiptoes. I slow down outside his bedroom, for stealth reasons, and then I speed silently into the living room. My office keys are on the end table, all jumbled up with Todd’s wallet and keys. Crumpled napkins. Two plastic forks. Mustard packet. Bottle of aspirin. Superimposed over this scene is an image of Todd from a few hours ago, drunk, knocking back an aspirin, watching fake life play out on television as his real life falls away at constant velocity into the irretrievable past. Man is given a brain and he poisons it with alcohol; given body, and he fills it with chemicals. And—he is given time.
Todd used to invite me over every Friday, but I have trouble getting along with his friends. They slouch around on Todd’s three couches and drink beers; gossip, play cards. I myself own just one couch. I enjoy it with great care, knowing that my future self will thank me for preserving my posture.
I am proud to confess: I certainly haven’t always been this way.
I give a little laugh, thinking of how far I have come.
When I first started attending group meditations, I was in a bad state. My group leader recommended adopting a dog or cat— taking care of a life, she said, is a sure way to find happiness and fulfillment in one’s own life. Stroking a pet’s fur, or even seeing your pet, she said, is enough to generate a rush of happy chemicals. So I went straight to the shelter and signed the papers for Lovely, a slender black cat with white paws. I took her back to the office and let her wander as I set up two ceramic bowls and a litter box. She was curious about me in the beginning—if I called to her, nicely, fairly in a whisper, she would come and sniff my fingers. But every time I tried to touch her, she scooted just out of reach.
After that day, I never saw her again.
When I couldn’t get ahold of Lovely is when I adopted the tabby. Then, when I couldn’t get ahold of either of them, I adopted a third. Everyone else at the office has sighted a cat at one point or another. The litter boxes fill up. The food and water disappear. Once in a while, I find hairs on my chair or a trail of barely perceptible litter-smelling pawprints on the surface of my desk.
And I have to say: I don’t understand.
Nor does anyone I’ve talked to. They say to keep trying. This is just the way cats are, they say. It’s nothing personal; next time, rescue a dog or something. Or try harder.
What am I doing, then, if I’m not trying?
Now, in the conference room, I clean out the litter box, then straighten up Todd’s and my chairs from last night. I go to my personal office and I boot up my work computer. My hands are shaking, likely from the edible espressos, so I eat a chamomile stress-relief gummy as I start to check the code for errors.
After some time, I think I hear lapping at the ceramic bowl in the conference room. And maybe the cats are wandering around in there, playing under the cover of the table, just rollicking about, all fluff and delight, but when I stand up, a can of cat food in my hand, I realize that somehow, despite everything, I don’t have the heart to go after them and check.
It turns out that no one has hacked into our system.
No one has reported a bug, either. The parts of the code I worried about are clean. Now, it’s a matter of exporting the data out of my Zensor into a spreadsheet for analysis, which, judging by the rate of the USB transfer, means three or four hours of waiting, if not five.
The Organization is down three flights of stairs from our office. Exiting onto ground level, one first passes the gym, then the cycling studio, before finally arriving at its double glass doors.
Lately, I have been submitting weekly complaints to building management about the cycling studio. The cyclers possess two large speakers, which they leverage to play today’s pop hits at blast decibels. When asked, they claim the volume is kept on the lowest notch. I can’t say I believe them. People who indoor-cycle for sport parade about like they are fitness kings and queens, but judging by their taste in music, can be nothing more than hacks. I imagine it is difficult for them to cycle peacefully with the idea that right on the other side of the wall sit people who are truly integrated with their inner selves. The brain-dead pop music that bleeds through the walls and into the Organization’s group meditations, I have written to building management, could, at worst, be a ploy to even out the playing field. Which I don’t find particularly conducive to the safe, inclusive working environment this building declares itself to have.
Upon entrance to the Organization, the visitor is faced with an employee at a white desk who, backed by a glowing pine-green infinity logo, emits a peculiar luminescence of her own, the way the moon emits the sun. Plants and T-shirts for sale line the windows. Turn left after checking in at the reception, and there extends the long, dim corridor lined with multicolored doors. Beside each door stands a cubby shelf for personal belongings. Each shelf is outfitted with an essential-oil diffuser, so puffs of steam roil all along the walk, alternating left and right. An otherworldly catwalk for an audience of none.
Usually, on Saturdays, I attend the afternoon session. But here I am, Saturday morning, with a few hours to spare, having gone a whole week without meditating. I see some people gathered outside the blue door, making small talk—Blue Room must be where the morning session takes place. I fade in to the circle, looking forward to meeting new faces. Instead, I see Julian F, Reynold R, Allison S, and Frankie M, all of whom I know from the afternoon session. Which means they have been meditating twice a day on Saturdays, whereas I, heretofore unaware, have only been meditating once.
Of course, like a punchline, Ana K is present too. I consider leaving, but everyone has already given me a warm, welcoming nod. If I don’t return the greeting, I could be passively excommunicated, and many of the Organization’s members are industry leaders or influential venture capitalists.
“So, where are you living?” says Allison S to Ana K. She might as well jump in front of a train for Ana K, if she plans to keep looking at her like that. “Now that you’re back in the States?”
“I’m waitressing at a small family-owned restaurant in exchange for free room and board,” says Ana K, smiling ambiently. “The kindness I’ve encountered is absolutely incredible.”
“Do you find time to meditate?” Julian F is desperate to know.
“The way I think about it,” says Ana K, “if you can’t meditate while you’re washing dishes, you can’t meditate at all.”
“Sublime,” says Allison S. “Truly sublime.”
“You can only say that because you’re advanced,” says Reynold R. “Me, I still have to put myself into a trance state in order to have a meditation that really fulfills me.”
“That’s funny,” says Ana K, “you must be far more advanced than I am; I don’t even know what a trance state is.”
A trance state is Reynold R hyperventilating into a paper bag for five minutes, and then, more likely than not, supplementing with a microdose of psychedelic. “It’s like,” says Reynold R, “it’s like, I kind of like to wander the streets of the city after dark,” he says, “on account of night-walking being, in my mind, the best manner in which to reflect upon the self and self’s relation to the greater world.”
“If that’s what you mean by trance state,” says Frankie M, “I’ve gotten into the habit lately of fasting until noon while taking longer in-breaths than out-breaths, which I find puts me into a prolonged meditative state, not to mention a rather wonderful mood.”
“That’s all great,” says Allison S, “but really, isn’t the whole point to connect with other living creatures, not only the self? I’ve started doubling up on group meditations and I find that I feel a more tangible connection between myself and my peers, and our conjoining fabric in general, than I have in my entire life.”
She turns to Ana K for confirmation.
“You know what,” says Julian F, “I started loving-kindness meditation last year, and you all won’t believe this, but I’ll smile at a crying baby and it’ll stop crying. Just like that.”
No one has anything to say to this. “Well,” I say, “I’m going to go get a warm-up session in.”
“Snaps for Wallace B,” says Allison S.
There’s nothing I want less in the world than Allison S’s snaps, but I fill myself with loving-kindness and float myself straight through the circle and into Blue Room. Which is progress. If my life weren’t enriched by spiritual development, I would have departed in a fit of fury the moment Reynold R plagiarized what I said last month about night-walking. The moment he plagiarized it practically word for word, hands in his pockets, not even glancing in my direction.
Reynold R might as well patronize the cycling studio. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Reynold R turned out to be a spy for the cycling studio.
I sit facing the back of the room, because in the front, there’s the air vent. The air vent has always made me nervous for no specific reason. It’s larger than average, but other than that, it’s exactly like any other vent, and normally, I have no trouble at all looking at vents.
I shut my eyes.
I am clean.
I am lush.
I am a mountain with clouds drifting past my peak, representing my thoughts, which I allow to enter my awareness but not stay, representing that impermanence is the root of all truth. On my peak, shrouded in mist, is a powerful white tiger. What the tiger represents, I’m not sure. But it’s been there since Frankie M said she had a white tiger on her mountain, which made me want to get one for my mountain too.
The white tiger purrs and the vibration courses through me, making the clouds release cool veils of rain which soak me in pure ecstasy.
The tiger opens its muscular jaw and goes, “Take it easy.”
The fact that the tiger has Todd’s voice unsettles me. I choose to ignore him and sink myself deeply into the sensation of bliss.
“It’s time for vacation,” says the tiger, in Todd’s voice. And he begins to purr so loudly that I feel my entire body quiver atop the mat.
After a few more breaths, it hits me that my heart’s going mad and there’s bile in my throat. I swallow it down and that makes my eyes water; I have the sudden, devastating urge to stand up and start jumping rope, though I have not touched, or even seen, a jump rope in many years. “Focus,” I say out loud. “Breathe. Transcend.”
The tiger is choked out of sight by a thick mass of clouds. The jackass, I think. He’s supposed to protect me. “Focus.” I start yelling. “Breathe.” I yell so loud I run out of breath. “Transcend.”
My eyes fly open. The door is open and Ana K is peering around it. “What exactly is it,” she says, “that you’re hoping to transcend?”
“My vacation,” I say, without thinking.
And—she laughs.
Via that easy laugh I see that, despite her being only twenty-seven, she already has smile wrinkles around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes. And maybe it’s this laugh, in juxtaposition to everything I know about her, that causes me to go, “So your whole family really died in that car crash, huh?”
“To be completely honest,” says Ana K, “I find it hard to believe too. Still.”
“Five years in Tibet,” I say, “and you can still speak perfect English.”
“Oh, there was another American at the nunnery. And an Irish woman.”
“You didn’t eat any meat at all?”
“I ate a lot of beans.”
“Scurvy?”
“We had oranges.”
“You didn’t share any of this with the group.”
“Wallace, right?”
I hesitate.
“That’s okay,” she says, “you don’t have to tell me. I’m just curious, why transcend vacation? I mean, before I went to the nunnery, I loved my job, but still, I always looked forward to vacation.”
“I can’t stand being on vacation,” I say, “because there are certain things I wish to achieve every day in order to make the most of my life. I have to work. I have to do a kindness. I have to exercise and meditate. Every day,” I say, “I want to be the best that I can be, and make a dynamic and rewarding experience out of my very limited time here.” I say, “We’re only visitors on this planet, after all. That’s what the Dalai Lama said.”
“He did say that,” says Ana K. “Hold on, I promise I’ve been listening to you, but do you hear that?”
“What?” I say.
Ana K walks over to the air vent I’ve been trying not to look at and, crouching, pries the cover right off. She executes eachmovement with the confidence of a thief, a con man. Someone totally dishonest. I look around. Naturally, I’m the only one here to witness it.
Something inside the vent enthralls her, because she gets on her knees, bends over, and wriggles her entire torso inside. “Jesus Christ,” I say. Whatever this woman is trying to prove, she’s proving it to the wrong guy.
But then her shirt slides and I see the scar. “You won’t believe this,” says Ana K.
She shimmies out and turns to me, expectant. And I have no clue what to say to her.
No idea whatsoever.
Seeing that scar, I have nothing.
“You won’t believe it,” says Ana K, “but there are cats in here. A beautiful white one and a tabby,” she says. “And I think,” she says, “from the meowing, there might even be a third.”
A tectonic shift occurs in my head. “Cats?”
“Yes.” She’s laughing again. “You think I’m crazy.”
“No,” I say, and it comes out in a whisper. “Do—do they seem happy? Healthy?”
“Come see for yourself.”
At first, I worry I won’t fit, but then there I am, inside the vent.
My shoulders are wider than Ana K’s. They block out all the light; only a few thin rays get through.
Ana K’s voice is muffled. “Do you see them?”
I can’t really see my hands, even.
Distant music from the cycling studio buzzes through the walls of the vent and I feel it in the tips of my fingers: this vague, joyful melody, right where my pulse flits against the metal. And out of nowhere, maybe because of the strange, musty darkness, I’m suddenly a kid again, six or seven, in some school friend’s barn for a game of hide-and-seek. I’m hiding on my belly in the crack between two stacks of hay that have tipped against each other. And this sensation fills me. This big sensation. The sensation of lying there, propped up on my elbows, with specks of silver dust drifting through the slanted rays of light.
“Wallace?”
Instantly the haystacks vanish, and I’m kneeling on a hard floor with my torso in a vent, palms pressed against the cold walls. And I find that I am crying. But not in a bad way. Not in a way that I have ever cried before.
I grip the walls hard and start to pull myself deeper, but a hand grabs onto my ankle. Two hands. The huge, invincible hands of Reynold R, or maybe Julian F. Whoever is out there blocks out all the light; the thin rays disappear. Somewhere, an infinite distance away, someone is talking to somebody else. The hands on my ankles begin to tug.
And what I do is, I pull this trick of going completely slack, because I have heard somewhere that dead weight is harder to move. Sure enough, the hands come off of me. I keep lying there, though. I lie there all slack in this vent. The walls tremble. The air conditioning might rush forth at any second.
I say, “I’ve got my eye on you.”
My neck is wet. My own voice sounds unfamiliar. All around me is the buzzing of the music, the darkness where things could be.