“You remember, that Castaneda thing? You were going to interview that old shaman, do a book on his life, his philosophy? Study with him for a while and share his teachings? Whatever happened with that?”
Derek swallowed. “I thought you weren’t interested in him.”
“Well, at the time… you were an unknown to us, and so was this old guy. But I think we could get up the interest now, if you could come up with the right angle. In a sense, him being unknown would be an asset—you could present him any way you want. Just as you did the mandalas. There’d be no preconceptions.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible now,” Derek said. “He died before I had a chance to interview him. Anyway, I don’t think it would have worked out in the end. He was rather cracked, as it happens.”
Bob looked mildly disappointed. “Oh, well. I thought that might have been a possibility if you were still in touch with him.”
“I’m afraid not.”
He noticed Bob glancing at his watch and was suddenly eager to end the meeting. “Do you have to be somewhere?”
“I have a meeting in about five minutes, but that’s all right.”
“I won’t keep you. I just wanted to get your thoughts about these Club Mandala people.”
“It’s really up to you, Derek. Obviously I’d never encourage anyone to get involved in a lawsuit.”
“No, I’d rather take care of it quietly myself.”
“I hope you do. Good luck.” They shook hands. “Give me a call when you’ve got your ideas in order. It’d be nice to get something in the pipeline, keep up the momentum.”
“Yes,” Derek said. He started to turn away.
“Oh, one more thing,” Bob said, “I almost forgot. I thought I’d bounce the idea off you. What about a deck of mandala cards? You know, a kind of Tarot? Full color, nice stock, for meditation or divination, whatever. You could put together a booklet of interpretations, come up with some layout patterns. It wouldn’t be that hard to do it with what we already have. Your artist on the first one, Neil Vasquez? He’s working up a full-color computer-generated thing, with three-D modeling, I’m not sure what all.”
“Hm.” Derek nodded. It was an intriguing idea—a whole new marketing approach, giving him more reason than ever to make sure that he consolidated his rights to the mandalas and came down hard on the club owners. “Yes, that sounds excellent.”
“If I’ve got your go-ahead, I’d like to bring it up in the meeting today. Is that all right?”
“Fine.”
“The only thing is—at the moment, the deck is sort of limited. The regular Tarot has seventy-two cards—that’s a lot to play around with. With thirty-seven… I wonder if that’s enough to really give people much to work with.”
“It ought to be.”
“I was only wondering… you don’t think you could come up with more mandalas? If they were, say, to channel more texts—if Ms. A might sketch a few more? That could be enough for another book right there, and it’d give us a nice full deck.”
“More… more mandalas?” Derek said. “I don’t think so, Bob.”
“No? Well, think about it.”
“I don’t—there aren’t any more of them. There’s thirty-seven, it’s a fixed number, they’re very insistent on that. No more, no less.”
Had he even read the book? Derek wondered. How could he have missed that?
And then he remembered excising that section from the original notebooks. It had opened into discussions he did not care to reproduce for his New Age audience, ones he had been unable to translate into catchy, optimistic phrases. The original texts were nowhere more baffling than in their discussion of the number 37. So, in fact, he was free to invent more if he wished; he hadn’t publicly painted himself into that particular corner.
“But you never know,” he said. “Maybe they were concealing something from us, and when the time is right—if it ever is—they’ll come forward with more revelations. I’d be the last one to say I know everything about them.”
“It’s no big deal, Derek. If there’s only thirty-seven, I’m sure we can work with that.” They shook again. “I’ll let you know what kind of response I get at the meeting.”
The receptionist called him a taxi. He waited just inside the door, watching the sorry figures in the park, hurrying straight to the cab when it arrived. “Market and Sanchez,” he said. “Hecate’s Haven.”
Hecate’s stood at a crossroads—more accurately, it stood where three roads met, a location Lilith claimed was of particular potency. She had helped select the spot when Norman Argos moved his shop from its original, cramped North Beach location a year before. Market, Sanchez, and 15th crossed like the arms of an asterisk. The spiky orange crest of Corona Heights, also called Indian Rock, dominated the skyline above 15th Street. Indian Rock, too, was an energy vortex, according to Lilith, lending the whole neighborhood an air of magic. And vortex was a good way to describe the traffic jams that arose among the confluence of cars and pedestrians streaming from six different directions.
Perhaps because of all the power swirling about chaotically, the triangular point of land between Market and 14th had proven too much for most businesses. The building that stood there had changed hands several times since Derek moved to the city, and between each new regime it stood empty, covered with movie and concert posters, its windows fogged with graffiti. The latest doomed establishment had been a Thai restaurant, which had gone to great expense to alter the architecture of the place to suit its menu. The building looked like a pagoda now, with a three-tiered roof of flaking gold, whose corners were tapered and upturned. It was exotic, but no more so than the contents of the establishment it now housed.
Looking through the front window, Derek could see the usual crowd milling among the tall shelves and cluttered glass cabinets, browsing through books, shuffling Tarot decks, gathering various weird appurtenances. Jars of candles, herbs, and incense rose to the ceiling. It struck him as intensely boring; his first few times in the place had brought an odd thrill, but familiarity had sapped the occult of its mystery. Now he walked behind the scenes, immune to the illusions.
He went in quietly, hoping that none of the customers would recognize him; but no sooner had he entered than Norman called his name from the back of the shop. Several customers parted to let him through, looking as if they recognized him or his name; but most ignored him, for which he was grateful. The mandalas were only a tiny fraction of Norman’s business; here, countless cults competed for primacy and shelf space, some so old they smelled of mummy dust, others invoking the modern myths of quantum physics, cyberspace….
“I’m looking for Lilith,” he said. “I thought she was working today.”
“She’s in the back,” Norman said.
“Has she had lunch yet?”
“Well, she usually runs out for a sandwich.”
“Could I convince you to let me have her for an hour?”
He could see Norman resisting the idea, but eventually he cocked his head and tried to give in graciously. “I guess I’ve got enough girls here. Sure. If she wants.”
“Thanks.”
He found Lilith in the tiny kitchen, screwing lids on bottles of holy water. A box of empty bottles sat on the counter, and the tap was still dripping. She jumped when he touched her in the small of the back.
“Oh, my God,” she said when she saw him. “I thought you were Norman.”
“You said you wouldn’t do this sort of thing,” he said, picking up a damp bottle.
Lilith looked furious. “Norman isn’t qualified to bless a sneeze. I don’t want anyone jeopardized by his negligence.”
“You’re not a priest.”
“My blessing is better than any Christian minister’s.”