Sleeping in Flame

"What do you mean?"

Philip pointed at the television. "That thing is not classifiable, all told. That's what's scaring the experts. If they had a name for it, even a dinosaur a hundred and thirty-five million years old, they'd be more confident and willing to accept the possibility it's there. But it ain't a dinosaur. Scientists don't like things they don't know the names for. See the spikes on the tail? No Elasmosaurus had spikes, as far as they know. Its ears were also supposed to be very small. But this one's ears are big. Stop the film, Weber. Look at the size of those ears.

"The Leucrocotta, Catoblepas, Nasnas, sea serpents. All creatures talked about in legend, but no one's seen any of them since man decided they don't exist anymore. Why? Because man's got to be the biggest and smartest. One of modern man's inventions: If I can't photograph it with my super-duper camera, or get a reading on it with my monster meter, or catch it in my helicopter, then it isn't there.

"Okay, but this thing of yours is there because too many goddamned people saw it. The experts don't want to admit that, so they're scrambling around. Trying to sound convincingly arrogant and dismissive about things like actual sightings, or even your film there. It's all a big trick! You guys did it with hidden wires. Steven Spielberg did it a hundred times better in his last film. Convenient ways of getting out of it, no?

"You know what I was reading about today? Abtu and Anet. Have you heard of them? In Egyptian legend, they were two life-sized fish, identical-looking, that swam in front of the Sun God's ship and protected it from danger. They swam day and night, always on the alert. Isn't that a beautiful image? No Abtu and Anet these days. Only sonar.

"Let's send out for a pizza. I haven't had a good disgusting one since I got back."

While Weber called The Pizza Clinic, Philip turned to me and said in a quiet voice, "I really came over to talk to you. Venasque told me he thought it'd be good if we met and talked a little, if you have any questions or anything."

"Venasque knew I was here?"

Philip smiled and shrugged. "If he can teach you to fly, he can know where you are."

"That makes me nervous."

"It shouldn't. You'll like him. He's an old Jew who watches too much television and eats Doritos. It just happens he's a shaman, too. The best I've ever met."

I leaned toward Strayhorn, already embarrassed about what I was going to ask. "What exactly is a shaman? A teacher or a holy man?"

"Both. More someone who shows you how to read your own map. No matter what you learn, you'll come out the other side of it knowing more about yourself."

"Did he teach you how to fly?" I looked around cautiously after asking, in case someone might hear and think I was nuts.

"No. He taught me how to swim."

"To swim?" I said, too loudly.

He spread both hands and gently breast-stroked the air a few times. "I never learned how. Never cared about it. So Venasque taught me how to swim. I needed it."

"But just to swim? You could have gone to the YMCA for that. Those were pretty expensive swimming lessons!" I was about to go on, but stopped when I saw his gentle face harden. I'd offended him.

"Forget the cynicism, Walker. A good teacher knows intuitively what you need and gives you exactly that. Sometimes what he suggests shocks you, but then you learn fast he knows better than you. Venasque said I'd spent too much of my life looking inside and had to learn how to look out. Someone I know went to him and learned how to do calligraphy. Now they have the most beautiful handwriting you ever saw. What you need depends on who you are."

"All right, but swimming and good handwriting are one thing, Philip. You've got to admit that learning to fly is another! Wouldn't you be skeptical if you were me?"

"I was! Until I met him and talked to him for about an hour. In between his taco chips and Coca-Colas."

"What do you guys want on your pizzas? The works? Anchovies? Extra cheese?" Holding his hand over the receiver, Weber looked at us. Behind him, I could see Maris moving around the kitchen with a couple of green plates in her hands.

Philip got up and started for the phone. Stopping in front of me, he said all he was going to say about the shaman for the rest of the night. "Go and see him. He's waiting for you. Anything else I say will only bias you."

Mansfield Avenue is in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles. The houses vary in style from Spanish to Tudor to postmodern, but are generally about the same size. What I found most interesting were the front yards. Almost all of them were small, but so perfectly green and mown that I got the feeling a billiard ball would roll unimpeded from one side to the other if only I gave it a small push. Driving slowly down the street checking for the right house number, I also noticed an inordinate number of men walking around in stiff dark suits, yarmulkas, and chest-length beards. Later, Venasque said with a wry smile that they were Secret Service men. When I asked "For which side?" he cracked up.

"'For which side?' That's good, Walker. You gotta good sense of humor on you. We can use it later."

I don't know what I expected a shaman's house to look like, but Venasque's turned out to be no different from others on the block. A narrow straight driveway bordered one side of the lawn and went to a garage in back. A shiny black-and-silver Jeep was parked in there. The house itself was khaki-colored, with brown metal awnings and decorative wrought iron over all of the downstairs windows. Most of those windows were wide open when I went up the walk. Loud television noise poured out of them and onto the quiet street.

Before pressing the doorbell, I stopped a moment to hear if I could make out what show he was watching. Maybe if I could, it would tell me something about him. As if on command, the theme song for "I Love Lucy" boomed out. I looked at my watch – three in the afternoon. Right on time. I looked through a window and saw a chubby black-and-white bullterrier standing erect on a couch, staring right back at me. I pulled back. He reminded me of the lions in front of the New York Public Library. As soon as I rang the bell, he gave one blunt bark, jumped awkwardly from the couch, and skittered across the floor to the door.

I was nervous, and it didn't help when no one answered for the longest time. I was tempted to ring again but didn't. I would show the shaman patience. Maybe it was one of my first tests.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm coming!"

The dog barked again. Once.

"Shut up, Big! You know who it is."

I straightened up and quickly tried to decide what expression to have on when he opened the door. A Zen koan I'd once read crossed my mind. "Show me your original face, the face you had before your parents were born."

"Hello, Walker! It's about time you came around."

I don't know how it happened, but the first thing I saw was the pig. It was gun-metal gray and about the same size as the dog. It was definitely a pig, but a scaled-down, swaybacked version. Wagging its stringy tail like a happy dog, it came up and very loudly sniffed (snorted at) my leg.

"That's Co