She dumped all this on Barbet and he was an enormous comfort. He brought a gift, an iPod with the complete downloaded audioworks of Trollope and Dostoevsky (unabridged). Even her favorite, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, was on there, bless his soul. A feature allowed you to fast-forward narration without distorting the text, a kind of “speed listening.” (She couldn’t wait to zip through The Idiot.) Barbet managed to get her laughing, and Joan needed that because she was beyond hysteria. She was beyond beyond. He started riffing on Kate Mantellini’s, which was actually designed by Thom Mayne.
“I know,” said Joan. “Did you see the thing in the Times today where Mayne ass-licked El Zorro?”
“The Phaeno Science Center, in Wolfsburg.”
“Will the shiteating never stop?”
“Not as long as there are anuses. Would you look at this restaurant? It’s like a house in Vegas, commissioned by one of the boobs who hit it big in Blue Man Group. This waterhole’s so fuckin ugly. Are those boxers carved out of metal? Is this supposed to be, like, a postmodern sports bar? I mean, whuh? Look, babe, consider yourself lucky. You could have fucked Ground Control to Major Thom, and be about to give birth to some illegitimate Ichabod Crane Pritzkerfetus who needs anger management. Some bitch-slapping toddler with close-cropped hair and a mean streak who’s destined to do yoga with Saul David Raye and eat strawberry salsa à table, at Table.” He pretended to masturbate then looked around, shivering with disgust as she cracked up. “Even the people here. Realtors and loser comedians with trust funds. The feng shui makes your flesh crawl — the ambience! The whole experience is…it must be like the aftertaste people get when they go for chemo. That Writers Guild crowd trickling in from Doheny; they go see movies for free or listen to Bill Maher ‘in conversation’ with Ariadne Huffington”—he was so bombed (he’d had a head start) that’s what he called her—“for the hundred-thousandth time. The vibe here is so creepy. Don’t you think? A nouveau riche sports bar with Major Thom’s usual warm, fuzzy edges — the poor waitresses must get impaled when they turn the corner into the kitchen! At least you didn’t get impaled on a Thom Mayne hard edge. At least you had the sense to be inseminated by a Jew billionaire!”
Her partner knew the paternity issue was conversationally off-limits, but what the hell. He never believed her one-night-stand Geek Squad story anyhow. “Entre rien” (as Barbet put it), he suddenly asked if she wanted to join him next week at the Airport Hilton to “experience” an avatar called Amma, Mata Amritananandamayi (“Say what?” said Joan. “Amma means mother,” said Barbet), popularly known as the Hugging Saint. He said that someone tried to stab her not too long ago in Kollam, where the Big Wave hit, and Joan riposted, “You’re nobody till somebody stabs you.” She was actually surprised to hear Barbet was even interested. He said wryly, “Why not? Everyone can use a hug. Especially after a fucking memorial reject. Besides, I have ulterior motives.”
“Don’t you always?”
“One of our pretentious potential Buddhist clients said I should go.”
“Ah. Is there such a thing as an unpretentious potential Buddhist client?”
Barbet smirked, and said it might give ARK the edge in getting “the job.”
“What job?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“Some temple in Taos.”
“Been there, done that. Haven’t we had enough faux Buddhists for a while?”
“Well, that ain’t my faux. Anyway, Lew Freiberg isn’t a Buddhist.”
“I hate fucking Buddhists,” said Joan. “I’d rather get raped by a Getty conservator than be invited to another Steve Ehrlich Zen brunch. There are no American Buddhist people of color.”
“What are you, the ACLU now?”
“They’re rich and they’re white and all they do is spend thousands of dollars making precious little pilgrimages to Dharamsala or wherever so they can write 4th-rate prosepoetry ‘essays’ about their cushy, cosmic adventures for Tricycle, or Travel + Leisure. They all suck the Dalai Lama’s 12 inch dick. Legends in their own luminous minds. Oh! And they love to talk about ‘sitting’—you know, my meditation practice can beat up your meditation practice. ‘Just sit’—that’s the big famous phony Buddhist motto. Just sit—on your Prada meditation pillow. You know what I say? Just shit. Take a big shit. That’s what I say.”
“You know why I love you, Joan? You’re the only person angrier than I am.”
Just now, he knew she had every right to be.
“Have you read the magazines, Barbet? I’ve done a lot of research—as you know—and I’ll tell you! Here’s what’s on the covers, every month: Robert Thurman Robert Thurman Robert Thurman, Pema Chödrön Pema Chödrön Pema Chödrön. Robert Thurman in conversation with Robert Thurman in conversation with Pema Chödrön in conversation with Robert Thurman eating out Pema Chödrön. Sharon Salzberg! Sharon Salzberg in conversation with Pema Chödrön! Pema Chödrön in conversation with Sharon Salzberg! Jack Kornfeld on a panel with Jack Kornfeld on a panel with Jack Kornfeld sucking his own dick while Pema Chödrön blows Rudolph the red-nosed Rinpoche!”
“The Aristocrats!”
“Richard Gere Richard Gere Richard Gere! bell hooks bell hooks bell hooks! Oh! And the big controversy—the letters to the editors — are these pathetic assholes who try to distinguish themselves in the hierarchic pecking order by declaring how they think things should be spelled. Barbet, I am serious.” She began to sing, “You say nirvana, I say nibbana, you say the dharma, I say the dhamma — nirvana, nibbana, the dharma, the dhamma—let’s call the whole thing—”
“ ‘Nothingness,’ ” Barbet interjected, arching an eyebrow. She ignored the comment; he grew secretly glum when she didn’t acknowledge a bonafide witticism.
“They even spell tao D-A-O. Like that idiot woman who just had to recycle Swann’s Way: The Way by Swann’s. Dumbshit!”
“You mean ‘The Shit by Dumb.’ ”
“And what is up with the Dalai Lama? Did you hear he said Katrina happened because of people’s karma?”