The Program tr-2 Page 15

  Tim looked up from his notepad, glancing at the dash. Twenty minutes had passed. "What the hell is keeping him?"

  "Maybe he slipped out the back."

  "I'll go take a look."

  "I'd offer to help," Bear said, "but I'm one of his triggers."

  Tim found Reggie sitting on the floor in the middle of the Action aisle, videos scattered on the floor around him. Mumbling to himself, he appraised the cases like oversize cards in a game of solitaire. A passing father steered his two sons clear. The manager drifted in the vicinity, taking a gander from Special Interest and considering an intervention.

  Reggie didn't seem surprised to see Tim. "There's Rocky III and Rocky IV. I like them both, but I can't decide. I've seen Rocky III more. And then there's classic Willis, you know, the Die Hards, The Last Boy Scout." He pressed his palm to his forehead and massaged it, swirling out a tuft of hair.

  Tim made a reassuring gesture in the manager's direction. Administering a dissatisfied scowl, the man retreated to the front register.

  "Which one should I pick?"

  "I don't know."

  Reggie's hand hovered tremulously over The Last Boy Scout. He looked to Tim for a reaction. "You can't just tell me?"

  "That one's fine."

  Reggie went limp with relief. "Really? You think so?"

  "Yes." Tim crouched parentally, helping clean up.

  Outside, Tim offered Reggie a ride, but Reggie took one look at Bear and said he'd rather walk. Tim went with him, Bear rolling his eyes and shadowing in the truck like an inexpert kidnapper.

  Reggie had been studying the video case, smoothing his hands over it as if it held great sentimental value. "I don't want to talk to you anymore."

  "I'm going to a colloquium tomorrow morning. At the Radisson."

  Reggie dropped the video, eyelids disappearing under his brow. "Don't do it." He snatched up the video and scurried down an alley, glancing around fearfully. Tim followed. Reggie slid up onto a Dumpster lid. He spoke with a whispered urgency. "He'll hook you. That's what he does. There have been others like you, always think you can handle it."

  Tim wondered if Danny Katanga, PI, had liked what he'd found enough to join up.

  "I seen the Teacher turn around angry family members, journalists, pastors, shrinks – man, does he hate shrinks – even cops." Streaks of sweat ran down Reggie's forehead. In his agitation he didn't seem to mind referring to the leader by title. "It's a black hole. It's -"

  "Reggie. Calm down. He's not God."

  A burst of laughter doubled Reggie over, ending in a hacking spell. "Clearly you haven't heard the hagiography."

  "The what?"

  "As a young boy, he had grand mal seizures. During one – when he was six or eight, depending on which version he's telling – he forced himself to stay conscious and gained untainted access to his Inner Source. After that he was a force of nature. He hypnotized other boys at school just by looking at them, left them to wander campus like zombies. Batteries discharge themselves in his hands. He touches books to his forehead and they're read. Lights flicker when he passes them." Reggie snorted up some phlegm and spit. "Don't tell me he's not God. He is whatever he thinks he is."

  A few raindrops flecked their cheeks, then dissolved into a wet breeze. Tim thought of Ernie Tramine's atrophied face and wondered how far gone Reggie's memory was.

  Despite his puffy coat, Reggie was shivering uncontrollably. "He'll eat you alive."

  "Tell me what to watch for."

  A high, agitated whine. "I can't, man. If he fucking finds out…"

  Tim held up his hands. "I just want to know what I'm gonna run into."

  "Fuck knows. He's always improving, always evolving. He had a new set of tricks every time we ran another Orae."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know!" Reggie's eyes darted back and forth as the echo of his voice bounced around brick and metal. It was a narrow alley, the tall buildings seeming to converge overhead. "I been out fifteen months. I've got no idea what kind of shit he'll throw at you now."

  "How many recruits will be there?"

  "Thirty, forty. The goal is just to hook three or four."

  "Three or four what?"

  Reggie looked away in disgust, his breath misting. A leaky gutter lent the asphalt a glossy sheen. "Did they love-bomb you? In your Prelim. The meeting. Did they love-bomb you? Touch you, hang on every word, tell you how fantastic you are?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you like it?"

  Tim shrugged.

  "Don't lie to me. Don't you fucking lie to me. Did you like it?"

  "Yes, a part of me did."

  "You'd better be goddamn honest with yourself when you're in there."

  "Okay, that's one tip. You have more?" Tim took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. "Reggie. I've got to go do this thing in four hours. Help me out, man."

  Reggie looked down. The laces of his left shoe had come untied, the tips tracing circles in the darkness. He mumbled to himself, holding up both sides of an internal argument. His lips stilled, then he said quietly, "Don't drink the punch. Watch the time. Pinch yourself." When he looked up, his eyes held a sharp focus. "Don't do it to her."

  "Do what?"

  "Kidnap her."

  "I'm not really -"

  "It was during a guided meditation at the Teacher's house. I'd been deteriorating pretty good for a couple of weeks. I blacked out. I couldn't stand up. My arms and legs were shaking. I couldn't get them to stop. I was lying on the floor in my own…my own piss." Reggie faced Tim unflinchingly, steeling himself like an AA member who'd toiled long enough to accept harsh facts. "My Gro-Par brought the Teacher over. I remember looking up at them. I couldn't talk, even. My Gro-Par said, 'Maybe we should get him to a doctor.' And the Teacher said, 'No, that'll just injure him more psychologically. He'll be better off on his own.' Two Pros came over, and they carried me out of the house. They set me down on the curb and went back inside."

  He eyed the thin river of slate sky. "It was like falling deep in love, giving every ounce of trust I had only to find…" His hand rose, fluttering, then fell to his lap. "After working and slaving and signing over two and a half million dollars, I was abandoned the second I became inconvenient. I never get to decide for myself. I never get to walk out." His posture firmed, his head rising, his shoulders pulling back. For a moment he looked like a different person. Then he wilted, and he was Reggie again. "I never get to have that. Never. And now you're making sure this girl doesn't get to have it either. She's a ship in a bottle, man, and you're gonna throw the whole fucking thing against the wall so you can play with the pieces."

  He rocked gently, heels striking metal. His sudden alertness vanished as quickly as it had appeared. His lips moved soundlessly.

  Tim waited a few moments, but Reggie's eyes stayed unfocused and lifeless. Tim took a few backward steps, then turned, heading to the block of light at the alley's mouth, the Dumpster resounding like a kettledrum under the slow beat of Reggie's shoes.

  Chapter nineteen

  When she finished this time, TD stroked her hair. "There, now, that was really great progress."

  She slid off the bed onto the blanket and sheets laid out on the floor; the Teacher needed room in bed to sleep undisturbed. TD rolled to his side, and within seconds his breathing slowed. Leah lay awake as she had the night before, one hand clutching the butter-smooth sheets. Not wanting to disturb TD, she didn't move, even though her right arm was falling asleep. Split by the slatted blinds, the moon crept molasses slow up the blanket covering her.

  She certainly had it better than Nancy, who had not reappeared from Skate's shed. All day Skate had patrolled the perimeter and shadowed TD with a satiated grin, disappearing at intervals. On the ranch, sex was a rationed privilege.

  Leah was surprised to catch herself questioning the benefits of this aspect of TD's tutelage. She thought about her perverse need to be negative during a wonderful opportunity like this. Staying On Program, listen
ing to the Teacher – that was how people grew.

  A dying candle persisted on the nightstand beside her, next to a telephone with its cord removed – TD called for the phone cord rarely and only for essential Program business. Tacked to the wall above the nightstand was TD's phone sheet, the schedule of hours at which he had set incoming calls. Callers, knowing they had a window of maybe five minutes to reach him, developed a discipline.

  Her thoughts seemed a Christmas-light tangle, impossibly snared, granting flashes of lucidity at random yet somehow connected intervals. Nestled in the warm swirl of sheets, she reminded herself that she was privileged to be able to learn about her insecurities with the Teacher. She ran through Program precepts until they became thoughtless blurs. After an excruciating block of time, she heard the outside door creak open. The faint tap of a footstep. And then another.

  Leah lay frozen.

  A startled scream – Lorraine. TD bolted upright and rushed to the door, tugging his pants on, Leah trailing meekly for fear of being left behind in darkness.

  TD hit the switch as Nancy shrugged off Lorraine's two-arm tackle. The misaligned buttons of Nancy's dress created mouths in the denim through which skin and bra peeked. The hem was ripped, the fabric marred by muddy groping. Her bed-swirled hair stuck out in all directions. Nancy began sobbing, her words barely comprehensible. "Teacher, please, lemme back with you. Lemme be your Lily. Pleeease."

  TD calmly cinched his silk robe about his waist. "After you were with that filthy man?"

  Skate was in the door, scratching his scalp, his fingernails giving off some good noise. "Guess she got away."

  "Take her off the ranch. This one's not salvageable."

  Nancy emitted a high-pitched moan, collapsed, and began crawling to TD. Skate pinned her beneath a knee and twisted her arm behind her back. Then Randall appeared, controlling Nancy's other side. They picked her up as if hauling a carpet and bore her out horizontally. Her hair whipped about her head, her screams so shrill Leah squinted against them. Her cries continued all the way up the trail. Somewhere around Cottage Circle, the wind finally carried them off.

  TD went back inside and slid into bed. Leah followed and sat on her sheets, trying to sort her thoughts. Finally TD rolled over and said, "Yes?"

  "Where…where will they take her?"

  "Down the hill. Into the city. They'll leave her somewhere safe. But she's no longer my concern. Nor should she be yours."

  "She'll" – Leah wiped her cheeks, glad the darkness prevented TD from seeing how shaken she was – "she'll die without you."

  "She's dying already," TD said with finality. After another pause he sighed and shoved himself up against the headboard. "What, Leah? If you have something to ask, ask it. Don't just sit there radiating stress and fear."

  "What do you mean, she's dying already?"

  "She's decaying. Women peak reproductively at an early age, just after puberty. In primitive cultures and in the early days of this country, females got married when they were thirteen, fourteen years old. They'd bear several children and pass by twenty-five, maybe thirty. Women are designed to peak, breed, and perish. Nancy is twenty-four years old. Her eggs are old and stale. She looks forward to a future only because the artificial intervention of modern medicine has prolonged human life well beyond its natural range. But even medicine can't stop her body – that obese, jiggling mass around her – from slowly breaking down, from dying in minuscule increments as it has been for the last eight years. Her very appearance is indicative of a diseased way of thinking. Nancy won't figure her way out of her death dilemma. She'd rather be a victim. One of the dying. With her mind-set, she has nothing to look forward to but aloneness and the further putrefaction of her body."

  He sighed and ran his hands over his face. "I know it might appear cruel, but I have a responsibility here. I can't let someone like her infect the rest of you who are working so hard to grow past your physical and psychological limitations."

  His indirect compliment warmed her, if only slightly.

  "Before you go weepy for Nancy," he said, "why don't you reflect on the fact that this wake-up call is the best thing that could ever happen to her?"

  Leah asked tentatively, "Do you think it was the best thing for Lisa Kander?"

  She was worried TD might get angry, but he just laughed. "Now that you mention it, yes. She found life without The Program too much to bear. So she took her comfort in the soothing hiss of the tar pits. Beats living a lie. Beats being one of the walking dead. At least she took back some control in her death." He reached over and stroked Leah's head. "Good night. I need my sleep, and so do you." He smiled. "Big day tomorrow."

  Chapter twenty

  Wedged between a smoggy run of Sepulveda and perpetual traffic mainlining up Century Boulevard into LAX, the Radisson held its ground with a certain imperviousness and vanity, as if the recent renovation had fooled the establishment into thinking highly of itself. Tim pulled up and dropped a duplicate key in the palm of a youthful valet who all but Matrixed over getting an eyeful of the banana yellow ride.

  "Keep it up front."

  The valet nodded. "A-ight."

  Standing erect amid streams of incoming attendees, Lorraine greeted Tim at the automatic glass doors, wearing a stewardess's polyester smile. "Nice wheels."

  She took his arm, guiding him through the brochure-glossy lobby, leaving the others to progress unattended. Bill O'Reilly flapped about immigrants from a suspended TV in the bar area. A fountain nestled in the curving staircase's embrace burbled, the sound drifting with them up and around to a spacious second-floor landing. North-facing windows provided a view of a loading dock, a back parking lot, and an emergency exit.

  A confusion of people sorted neatly into the International Ballroom through a set of double doors, the so-called Pros distinguishable by pressed blue polos and matching purposefulness. With a faint grin, Lorraine suddenly receded into the press of bodies, no doubt off to escort some other affluent convert.

  Not only had event attendance grown exponentially since Reggie's day, but the target demographics had fanned out. The Neos, ranging from late teens to thirties, appeared to represent a variety of backgrounds. They hummed with nervous anticipation, picking up on the exuberance of the cult members. A few stragglers gathered near the back of the landing, staring longingly at a roped-off bank of pay phones guarded by an OFF-LIMITS! sign on a stout brass post. No one dared cross the velvet cord.

  Tim scanned the crowd, looking for Leah's distinctive shaggy brown hair. The blue polos and flushed, youthful faces made the cult members easy to pick out as they darted to and fro completing their preparations, but there were too many for him to keep track. He barely had time to eyeball the ushers guarding the ballroom doors before a toothy young jock at a draped check-in table requested his name. Yes, Tom, there was a $500 fee. Wasn't his fulfillment worth spending a few bucks? No, they couldn't accept a personal check, but AmEx or Visa would be fine.

  Another hand-off and he was whisked through the doors by a robust young woman in a shapeless dress. Two segmented partitions divided the fourteen-thousand square feet of ballroom. Another brass-post sign identified the empty first section as ACTSPACE. Led by hand, Tim passed through a gap in the partition into a second area with about three hundred chairs positioned in a giant horseshoe, the open end facing a dais. The sign there, predictably, read HEARSPACE. The woman deposited him in the rear at a banquet table and vanished. Enya oozed, bass-heavy and forlorn, from hidden speakers.

  Tim accepted a glass of punch from a female Pro and surreptitiously gifted its contents to a fake ficus leaning from a peat pot. So he wouldn't stand out, he held on to the clear plastic cup, carrying traces of the punch. He avoided the snacks but crumpled a napkin in his hand. As he drifted effortlessly through the clots of people, he grudgingly recognized that he owed his father much of his ability to work undercover. The others chatted nervously, strained alertness tightening their faces. The 5:00 A.M. commencement meant a four
o'clock wake-up for most participants, giving them a head start on exhaustion.

  "I can't really afford this whole deal," a burly guy in a jean jacket was telling a few uninterested girls and a tattooed Marine, "but the owner said he'd only hire me if I went through this thing." He tapped a passing Pro, who turned glassy pupils and a disarming grin in his direction. "Hey, what are we gonna be doing anyway?"

  "You don't want me to tell you anything about today's work before we get to it. It would undermine your experience."

  Tim stood at the fringe of the group, his eyes picking over the enormous room. Numerous light panels and thermostats, carpeted metal partitions and cloth-dressed walls, hideously patterned rug, equally offensive chandeliers like dimpled breasts. A service elevator briefly came into view when a stressed-out blue-shirt swept through a rear waitstaff door – Tim's favored extraction route.

  Tim craned his neck to see through the fifteen-foot gap in the second partition, but the far ballroom section, labeled PROSPACE, was dark. He edged nearer, wanting a peek at Oz's command center. Cult members continued to stream out like diligent ants; he guessed there were sixty in all.

  Easing away from the crowd, he neared the dark portal to Prospace, his advance going unnoticed. He shouldered against the makeshift jamb near a pinned velvet curtain, ready to slip through. Scurrying figures were barely discernible beyond, shadows against shadows.

  A small orb in the darkness was suddenly illuminated – the glowing red dials of a sound board firing up – and there stood Leah, knock-kneed and soft-faced and taller than he'd imagined, bent over the apparatus like a pianist. Her slim fingers punched buttons and adjusted dials. Her competence and apparent collectedness made clear that the abduction was not going to be as simple as he'd imagined -carting off a zoned-out cult zombie. She looked up, burgundy suffusing her hair at the tips, and their eyes met and held. She smiled, showing off an angled front tooth, and he had just an instant to take in the absolute sweetness of her expression before a block of shadow took form and collided with him, a forehead striking the side of his face.