Tad got it, finally. He nodded. “Oh. Oh, yeah. I see what you mean.”
“There’s hope for you yet, Tad m’boy — there, there’s the sign, pull off at that next exit!”
Tad nodded. Bobby was almost always a step ahead of the game, even when things got creaky. Push him out a window, and he would land on his feet every time. He had it under control. It felt good to know that.
25
Jay sat seiza and tried, like the old joke about the hot dog vendor and the Zen master, to make himself one with everything.
He was having some problems with it. First, the sitting-on-your-heels position was very uncomfortable. They might do it in Japan, where everybody was used to it, but in America, you didn’t normally sit that way, or knotted up in a lotus pose, or even on the floor — not without a cushion or pillow to flop on.
Second, while he was supposed to be concentrating on his breath, just sitting back and watching it come and go without trying to control it or count it or anything, that was almost impossible to pull off. As soon as he became aware of his breathing, he kept trying to slow it and keep it even and all, and that was a no-no. And counting just came naturally for him, it was automatic. So he had to make a conscious effort not to count, and that was a no-no. Don’t count, and don’t think about not counting.
Third, you weren’t supposed to think of anything at all, and if a thought came up, you were supposed to gently move it away and get back to nothing but breathing. Thoughts were products of the monkey brain, Saji had told him, and had to be quieted to achieve peace and harmony with one’s inner self.
Yeah, well, in his case, the brain was more like a whole troop of howler monkeys all hooting and dancing through the trees, and quieting that jabbering bunch was a tall order.
His knee hurt. That last inhalation turned into a sigh at the end. The thoughts about work, dinner, Saji, and how stupid he felt sitting here just breathing rolled in like a storm tide, as unstoppable as if he stood on the beach waving his arms at the ocean and telling it to hold it right there.
Get a grip, Jay. Millions of people do this every day!
Who knew that meditating would be so difficult? Sitting here and doing nothing was harder than anything Jay had ever done, or in his case, not done.
In the back of his mind, nagging at him, was something about work, some little thing flitting up and around like a moth, something he couldn’t quite pin down. Something about the drug thing, and the DEA and NSA agents Lee and George…
No. Push it away. Get back to that later. For now, just be…
Lee and George. Not much to know about them. Close to the same age, both career men, both lived in the District. Both of them married briefly but divorced, no live-in girlfriends at the moment. A lot alike…
Don’t think, Jay, you’re supposed to be meditating!
Oh, yeah. Right. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in…
Lee’s ex-wife was originally from Florida, now a lawyer in Atlanta who also taught law at a local college. She and Lee had met in law school. Jay had checked her out, and while she was well-regarded as a teacher, she was also considered something of a radical. She was a member of the Lesbian Teacher Association or some such, big on women’s rights. A no-fault divorce, no hard feelings, at least not in any official records or interviews. Still, that must have made Lee feel weird. You get a divorce, your ex-wife switches her sexual preferences to the other side of the street. Might tend to make you doubt your masculinity a little.
George’s ex was a stockbroker. A law-school graduate who didn’t practice but who worked for one of the big trading companies on Wall Street, did well enough that she had a two-million-dollar condo overlooking Central Park, single, no significant boyfriends five years after the divorce, didn’t seem to date much, according to what Jay had uncovered about her. Like Lee with his ex-wife, George apparently got along famously with his ex.
We’re all very civilized here…
Thoughts, Jay, watch it!
Okay, okay! Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in…
Kind of made you wonder, though, how a woman who was rich enough to afford a condo that expensive didn’t have guys lined up waiting for her favor. Good-looking woman, hair cut short, built like a dancer.
Well, it didn’t really matter, did it?
Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…
The next thought that swung down from the monkey tree and chittered at Jay so startled him that his eyes popped open, and he said, “Oh, shit!”
Sitting seiza on floor across from him, Saji came out of her own meditation. “What? The place on fire?”
“No, no, I just had a thought—”
“Don’t worry, it’s part of the process—”
“No, I mean, an idea. About the dope case!”
“Let it wait, it will keep.”
“No, it won’t. I have to get to my computer now!”
“Jay, this is not how to meditate.”
“I know, I know, but I have to check this out.”
Saji sighed. “Fine. Do what you have to do.” She closed her eyes and went back to her sitting. Jay was already up and hurrying from the bedroom to his terminal.
Michaels took the day off to be with Toni. She was still in bed, sleeping hard, and he planned to let her sleep as long as possible. The spotting the day before wasn’t a sign of fetal distress, the doctor had told them, but it had caused Michaels more than a little dry mouth and nervousness. By the time he had gotten to the clinic, Toni had already been examined, was getting some blood tests, and the doctor had pulled him aside to talk to him.
The doctor, a tall, very dark, and spindly gray-haired man of sixty or so with the unlikely name of Florid, was blunt: “Listen, Mr. Michaels, if your wife doesn’t sit down and prop her feet up and do a lot of nothing for the next four months, there is a chance she is going to have a preterm birth and lose this baby.”
“Jesus. Have you told her this?”
“I have. She’s still relatively young and healthy, and the baby seems fine, but her blood pressure is up a little. Normally she’s one twenty over seventy-four, but today she’s at one thirty over eighty-six. That’s not technically considered high, but we always watch that, especially in a primagravida… that’s a first-time pregnancy.”
“Why is that?”
“There is a condition called preeclampsia that happens in around five pregnancies out of a hundred. Usually it’s mild, and by itself it usually doesn’t cause problems, but sometimes it can cause what is known as abruptio placentae, which is a spontaneous separation of the placenta from the uterine wall, not a good thing. Usually this is in the third trimester, sometimes at delivery, and we can work around it, but it makes things hairy.
“Worse, sometimes preeclampsia can progress to full eclampsia, which, while very rare, involves seizures, coma, and sometimes, a fatal event.”
A fatal event.
Michaels swallowed. Now his mouth was really dry.
“Is this what’s happening to Toni?”
“Probably not. There isn’t any albumen in her urine, and she doesn’t have much edema, and usually you get those with the rise in BP, but better safe than sorry.”
“Toni is the toughest, strongest, healthiest woman I know.”
Dr. Florid smiled. “Yes, I expect she can bend steel in her bare hands. Normally, pregnancy is not a medical problem, women can go about their business and do everything they were doing before they got pregnant. Most women. But interior plumbing isn’t the same as voluntary muscles. No matter how strong-willed you might be, you can’t toughen up the inside of a uterus. Toni’s is fragile; likely she was born that way. Now, she could go on to deliver this baby without any more problems, but I’d be a lot happier and that would be a lot more likely if she took it easy. You need to impress on her how important it is for her to relax. After the baby comes, and assuming she has time, she can go swing on a vine like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and kick the crap out of lions and rhinos for all I care, but for now, no strenuous exercise. What I think is strenuous and what she thinks that means are probably different. I don’t want her doing any heavy lifting, jogging, horseback riding, or deep knee bends, and I don’t want her doing those martial art dances she can’t seem to live without. She can lie in bed. She can sit in a chair or on a couch, she can walk to the kitchen to take her vitamins, but that’s about it.”