“I can tell the future and here's what I learned,” I said with dramatic seriousness. “I will not need to ask anyone to homecoming because I'll be taking you. Paul will be home with mono. You may not know but my pebbles know.”
My anticipation grew. I quickly practiced what I was going to say, hoping I wouldn't forget my own name. The phone rattled again when someone picked it up. I prepared for Susan.
I raced through the line taking food without much thought. Platter piled high, I breezed past the cashier and out into the dining room. Normally, we ate in a small room behind the main hall away from the co-eds, but I refused to miss this opportunity to dine with her.
I turned to Gator. “Over there.” Gator and Ellen leaned closer. They must not have heard me. I nodded in the direction of the middle of the dance floor. Gator scratched his chin. Ellen scrunched up her forehead and squinted, unsure of what I was trying to communicate. But she turned slowly following my gesture. We saw her standing there.
The social worker in the office asked me how long I’d been homeless. I told him for two or three days. That was how long it had taken me to feel destitute on the street and seek help. His next question: Any relation to the man of the same name already in residence at the shelter?
Can it be? I wondered.
He’d pretty much decided he was going to enlist, thinking the navy would be better than just getting drafted and sent to who knows where in Vietnam. Will knew how to act in a bar because he’d gone with his older brother John to St. Jean’s Social Club many times; he knew you just keep to yourself or shout “yeah right” in reply to a joke or to deflect an insult.
Amelia clearly came from a family with a soul, which went a long way to explaining her qualities, abundant and estimable as they were. The Shuter St. building was called “Amelia’s Place.”
At the front desk I asked the concierge if she had seen Amelia. The concierge furrowed her brow and narrowed her eyes. “Amelia? Amelia? I don’t recall anyone named Amelia.” The concierge must have been new, to not know Amelia, although I could have sworn she was an old hand. “What’s the full name?”
On my way, I thought I heard them talking about me. As I neared the table they stopped talking. Zoey looked guilty. Zoey always looked guilty. When I sat down they stared at me with – oh, I don’t know – sorrow, pity: something like that. In response I opened my hands palms up, and said, “What?” as I looked from one to the other.
But the highlight of the event was the momentous meeting between Luna Lyngdoh and Meban Tsangpa, a Samanera or novice monk. A woke, computer-trained graduate, he had been inducted into the monastery as a trainee. He followed many of the cardinal religious precepts but had not yet attained higher ordination which would make him a Bhikkhu or a full-fledged monk.
Meghalaya in monsoon — the perfect time to explore and embrace the beauty of the Sacred Woods. Luna smiled to herself as she recalled this much-loved refrain from her days of childhood and youth. She walked past the moss-slickened stones, boulders flecked with the chartreuse lichen, stopping to admire the white coral mushrooms that were so famous here.
I couldn’t understand why you kept calling our parents, the phone ringing repeatedly before Dad silenced it. “He wants money,” Dad whispered knowingly to Mom. I was too young to understand that you’d done this all before: drunk texts and calls, expectations of payment, always late at night.