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I'm sitting here in my office, it used to be Alinga's but she's moved up to Nitya's, which is next to where Durga, when she's here and not on the road doing talk shows and promotion, has a kind of anteroom to the Arhat's ranch house, which I think I told you about last time, with all this silvery fat cheap furniture in it, and the bleached-wood desk. Everybody else is off for their siesta but, you know me, I never could take a nap in the middle of the day, I'm too hyper- Irving used to say my subtle body was tuned up too high for my sthula one. Also there's a lot of sludge to work through in Nitya's account books and records-heaps of papers and figures, and nothing quite matching up, as far as I can see-it's really too much for anyone to make total sense of. I shouldn't talk, I guess, even to you, about the finances, but, in a nutshell, on the one hand there really are substantial assets and income and some very generous donors, mostly these women and widows who either live in Beverly Hills or in Canada, oddly enough, which you don't think of as much of a place normally either for money or for Buddhism, and then on the other side of the ledger a lot of leakages that aren't just the Arhat's limousines and diamond wristwatch bands. Even though everybody works free as a form of worship, the ashram still didn't come out of thin air; there were millions spent on the A-frames and the trailers and the mall and now the Hall of a Millionfold Joys-the steel is all in place but they're waiting now for the sunset-colored vinyl panels-and all the kinds of construction-just one backhoe costs sixty thousand dollars, did you know that!-and the irrigation and septic systems, even though both could be better, let me tell you, especially the latter. Now that the really hot months are here, there's a stink comes up from where they buried the septic tanks, and the creek is so low they've turned off the Fountain of Karma except for half-hours at sunset and dawn, and the fields are baking hard as clay even though Hanuman, our agricultural supervisor, who used to teach plant synergy at Michigan State, bought miles and miles of gauze and had the artichokes and hybrid tomatoes and experimental poppies covered with it to make shade. Also all the fencing and armaments and surveillance equipment our security forces need costs more than a pe

You ask about the Arhat. What can I say you don't already know from his publicity?-except that, up close, he seems a little sad, and I have this ridiculous instinct to mother him. I see him quite often now, usually along with Alinga or Durga or Satya, who's in charge of PR, and it seems often they have to put.the words in his mouth, since he does nothing when they describe this or that emergency to him but smile and look as if he wishes he were elsewhere. Of course, he is a jivan-mukta, which means he's really in nirvana and is staying on earth only to be polite, in a way-about the only thing that perks him up is getting more publicity for the ashram, even publicity that seems adverse to the rest of us. For instance, he insists on being driven every afternoon way over to Forrest to get a Diet Coke from the machine in the bus station there-not actually a station, just a cement shelter next to the motel-and every time he does it there are more picketing people there, local rednecks and Pentecostal Chicanos angry about one thing or another and most of all about the Arhat's being so simply beautiful, and so now Agni has to send a vanful of security perso

[Leaving off attempted accent and becoming conspiratorial.] Midge. I just had the most excising ide &. It's scary, it's so exciting. If the next time I go in to see him I could carry this little tape recorder in my bra under my sari, so the little grid that picks up sound sticks up so only the one layer of silk is in the way, maybe I can get something of his actual casual conversation for you and Irving and the girls to hear! It would be strictly private, of course-you mustn't make or sell duplicates or anything-but I do so want to share with you his precious presence while I still can. It would also be for history-I don't really think, entre just nous, the ashram is going to last forever. I think it's too big a step up for the way the world is now. The outside pressure-all these lawyers and reporters and visiting firemen and county officials in suits, they've become so common around the Chakra we don't even chant and shake tambourines at them any more-all this outside pressure is begi

[Breathlessly] O.K., Midge, here we go. [Noise. Amplified cloth and finger friction. Underlying rustling that may be heartbeat. Much ensuing silence and some unintelligibility. Female voices, difficult to distinguish. One male voice, indicated below by italics.] Shanti, guru.

Namaste, Master.

Namaste, my nayikas.

Come on, let's get the shit rolling.

Durga, don't be so rude. Just because you're uptight-

Oh listen to her now. Listen to the corn-fed princess. Easy for you to say don't do this or that. For you this is all one more space shot. I wouldn't be uptight either if I were you. When it all goes down the drain you'll go back to Cedar Rapids and have Daddy finance six weeks in Guadeloupe at an all-girl Club Med.

Oh dear, one of those days. Darling Durga. That's quite unfairr I'm as committed as you are.

"Why would it all go down the drain? How could it, when it's so basically splendid?

Committed to your own artha is what you are. Committed to your own kama and your little roommate's padma. Could you ask her possibly to keep her mouth shut where she doesn't know a bloody thing? She just got here, for sweet Jesus' sake.