“In the course of your spiritual search, Beth,” I said, “did you happen to find out why, maybe, your sweet teacher Gaylord and his muscle threatened me?”

“The group is building a spiritual center in the suburbs,” she said softly. “In Gladwyne.”

“Funny, isn’t it, how even in the spiritual realm it all comes down to real estate. Henry George would be much gratified.”

“They collect dues and hold fund-raising events, but there is also talk about a benevolent soul who left a great deal of money to Oleanna.”

“Jacqueline Shaw, and the five-million-dollar death benefit on her life insurance policy.”

“I think we can assume that. It appears when that money from the policy arrives it will finance the new building. Until then the group seems nervous to discuss it.”

“What’s the story on this Oleanna?”

“A very powerful woman, apparently. I haven’t had the honor of meeting her yet, but she is the only true seer in the group.”

“A twelve, I suppose.”

“She’s beyond twelve, so they say, which means her powers are beyond the noninitiate’s capacities to understand.”

“So this Oleanna exercised her powers to kill Jacqueline in order to finance her spiritual palace in Gladwyne.”

“It’s possible, of course, and it’s what I figured you’d figure,” she said. “But it doesn’t really jibe. These people truly seem to be after something nonphysical. They seriously believe in karma being passed along through recurrent lives. I can’t imagine them killing for money.”

“That’s the difference between us,” I said. “You can’t imagine them killing for money and I have a hard time imagining anyone not being able to kill for money, so long as there’s enough of it at stake.”

“Your cynicism will be a definite handicap as you climb the ladder of spiritual seeking.”

“Well at least it has some use. So you’re rising?”

“Step by step. I’m now a three.”

“A three already? Once again you outpace me. What’s the next rung?”

“Level four,” she said. “Finding an inner peace through meditation.”

THE SHRIEK OF SKIDDING TIRES sliced through the dark stillness of my room and I jerked to a sitting position, a cold sweat beading on my neck. It was the middle of the night but I wasn’t sleeping. Maybe it was being in a Cadillac riddled with bullets just that afternoon, maybe it was the vision of Beth climbing her mystical ladder step by step and leaving me behind, maybe it was the coffee I had taken with my dessert. “Decaf is for wimps,” I had said, and not being a wimp I had taken a second cup, but whatever it was I was lying awake, under the covers, shivering, letting a raw fear slide cold through my body, when the sound of the skidding car skived the night quiet.

I leaped out of bed and searched Spruce Street from my window.

Nothing.

I spun around and paced and bit and threw myself on the couch, remote control in hand. I spent twenty minutes watching an Asian man explain how I could become as lavishly rich as he by sending him money for a pack of cassettes that would teach me to purchase real estate cheap and put cash in my pocket at the settlement table. I knew how he was getting rich, by suckering desperate insomniacs like me into sending him money, but I severely doubted that I would profit too. Except there were testimonials, all of them convincing as hell, from people I imagined to be stupider than me, and I was seriously debating whether to pick up the phone and make the call that would change my life when I decided instead to masturbate. I tried that for a while but it wasn’t quite working, so I looked in the refrigerator for something to eat. There was nothing to eat but there was a beer, so I drank that, but it was old and not any good and left a bad taste in my mouth. I opened a Newsweek and then tossed it aside. I picked up an old Thomas Hardy paperback I had bought for a dime off the street and had been meaning to read, but who was I kidding? Thomas Hardy. I flicked on the television again and watched babes in tights hump the HealthRider and tried to masturbate again but again it didn’t work. I turned off the television and paced around some more. Then I decided I would follow Beth up her ladder and try to find some inner peace through meditation.

I had of course tried meditation in college, in an undergraduate sort of way, with an exotic redhead, a senior yet, braless, in tight jeans and a low-cut orange crepe peasant shirt. She had explained to me the whole transcendental thing while I had stared transfixed at her breasts. We were kneeling on the floor. We were probably high. David Bowie was probably playing in the background. I remember the soft warmth of her breath on my ear when she leaned close, one breast brushing my arm, and whispered to me my mantra. It was “Ooma” or “Looma” or something like that. When I crossed my legs and made O’s with my fingers and repeated “Ooma” or “Looma” over and over again, I tried, as she had instructed, to force all thoughts from my mind. I generally succeeded, except for thoughts of her breasts, which I thought about obsessively the whole of the time my eyes were closed. “Ooma, Ooma, Ooma,” or “Looma, Looma, Looma.” I imagined her breasts from beneath my closed eyes, all thick and ripe and mysteriously scented. I ran my tongue across my lips as if I could taste them. Sweet, like vanilla wafers in milk.

I don’t think I had quite the right attitude for proper meditation in college and it hadn’t worked for me: I neither fell into a meditative trance that night nor got closer to those marvelous breasts than my feverish imaginings. But I was not closed to the idea of meditation and could see no other nonpharmacological solution to my restlessness. So I sat on the floor in front of my couch and crossed my legs and checked the digital clock and closed my eyes and did as Beth had instructed me over dinner that evening. It was two twenty-three in the morning.

I concentrated on my breathing, in, out, in, out, and tried to keep my mind blank of any thoughts other than of my breathing, in, out, in, out. A vision of the white van slid into my consciousness and I slid it out again. I thought about the decrepit remains of Veritas and the venous piece of mutton I had been served and how disgusting all the food had been and I wondered how anybody could have eaten anything in that place and then I realized I was thinking about that when I should have been thinking about nothing and I pushed the thoughts away and went back to my breathing, in, out, in, out. The darkness beneath my lids looked very dark, out, in, out, in, and I remembered how Caroline had felt in bed, how her muscles had slackened and her eyes had glazed even as she was telling me to go on and how kissing her was like kissing a mealy, flavorless peach. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. It was two twenty-five. I closed my eyes, in, out, in, out. A thought about a woman hanging from a tapestry rope started to form and shape itself until I banished it and kept concentrating on my breathing, in, out, in, out, and the darkness darkened and a calm flitted down over my brain. I opened my eyes and saw that the clock now read two forty-six. I closed my eyes again, in, out, in, out, in, out, and slowly I directed my consciousness to pull free from my body, stretching the connection between the two, stretching it, stretching it, until the spiritual tendon snapped back and my consciousness was loose, free to float about the room on its own power.

“The point of the early stages of meditation,” Beth had said, “is to view yourself with the dispassion of a stranger in order to gain perspective on your life. Only with the perspective you gain by placing yourself in a position to observe your life from afar can you dissolve the niggling concerns of the here and now that keep you from hearing the true voices of your spirit.” That was why I had directed my consciousness to escape from my corporeal self, so I could dispassionately see what I was up to. Of course it was all self-directed, and most certainly delusional, but with my eyes closed I imagined my consciousness moving about the room and examining the contents with its own vision.