Just Shoot Me

The new shop is so graceful, stately, and tranquil as to suggest the antithesis of a shop. It hardly seems possible anything so crass as commerce, so gross as chewing and swallowing transpires here.Oh, people eat, but with such rapt concentration the act borders on prayer. They pay, but so wholeheartedly, each transaction seems like a sacred offering.  Semi-subliminal hymns fill the air but not constantly; every now and then the shuffle function selects a pause.

[This is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here for the first episode, or here for the previous one.]

At the west entrance, long contemplative lines of seekers progress to the take-out counter.  At the east entrance, people take off their shoes and make themselves ready for one of twenty-one pedestal tables, waited on by willowy girls in long dresses, their hair pulled into buns and wreathed with flowers.  Sylvia’s Korean; Annick is Dutch, and their ceremonial, sometimes faltering English adds to the portentousness of things.

Carlos in his fine suits and pristine Adidas oversees the operation with a sacerdotal air.  He oversees the bakers, now called novitiates, who also wear white Adidas.  (Do you suppose he’s gotten a sponsorship deal?)  Anyway:  Carlos oversees the clerks who wear white or black clothes and brightly patterned vests, and either shave their heads or wear their hair in long glossy ponytails down their backs. Graham (tawny curling ponytail) works the main room with Sylvia and Annick. Greg (dark hairless head, blazing white smile) works the take-out counter, ringing up sales; while upstairs, four more handsome young clerks man the computers.

I, on the other hand, pad about with no honest work. Other than performing the nightly meeting, I hardly speak, because basically, I don’t know what to say to people anymore.  Everywhere I go, there they are, novitiates, clerks, acolytes, customers, all, waiting to venerate me.  Sometimes they bow their heads before casting a shy glance.  Sometimes they freeze, open-mouthed.  Or else they stare and nudge each other.  But invariably when I enter a room, they stop what they’re doing.  The bolder, more desperate ones vie for eye contact.  Everyone looks at me expectantly, so, so expectantly, and I . . .

I stumble and blush, hurrying to the nearest exit, blush and lurch along as people reach for my hem, jostling each other, trying to grasp my hand. I blush and stammer, “Yes,” and “Hello.”

“Yes.” “Hello.” It’s ridiculous.

Your little girl’s dying of cancer? “Yes.” I pat the mother’s hand.

You lost your job? “Hello.” I squeeze the man’s shoulder.

AIDS? “Yes.” I crouch by his wheelchair and awkwardly try to hug him, “Hello.”
Lied, cheated, stolen—third time in rehab? “Hello.” I nod at the addict, “Yes—” admire his red suspenders.

What’s that?  You feel compelled to drive your car onto the tracks of a speeding train?  “Hello.”  Play with a loaded gun?  “Yes.” Breathe carbon monoxide?  “Well yes, have faith. And yes, hello. ”

I ought to be shot. 

And yet everyone oohs and ahs about my aura, my chakras, my chi.  I stammer and blush, utter inanities when I can bring myself to utter anything at all—and no one complains.  No one raises a fist, tears at the curtains, nothing.  Customers, clerks, acolytes, all, raise their eyes, clasp their hands, and proclaim how my very presence fills them with beatitude.

(To Be Continued.)