11. Not the True Dharma
Summer
He really did go off within twenty minutes to buy a car. With Delilah, even though I told her, “You should stay and rest.”
“Nope,” she said. “I rested already. Here’s a crazy thought. You stay and rest. Whoa, right? Quit being a martyr and let me do something for a change! When you were my age, you were the main breadwinner. You think I don’t know that, but I do. Well, I’m capable too. I keep telling you.”
“I am not a martyr,” I said. “I’m twelve years older, that’s all, and I promised to take care of you.” Feeling about forty, too serious and too weighed down, and so aware of Roman watching us. He’d given me a pair of flannel PJ bottoms and a T-shirt, since my filthy clothes were in the washing machine again along with all the garments I’d managed to rescue. Both the PJ pants and the T-shirt were miles too big, of course, and way too hot for the day, but I wasn’t wearing that dress shirt again with nothing under it. Just no.
“You are exactly a martyr,” Delilah said, “and I’m sick of it. Stop taking care of me, all right? I’ve got a scholarship and loans for college. I’m a legal adult.” Her voice was rising. “I have a fucking right—” I narrowed my eyes, and she slapped a hand against her thigh and said, “What? People swear when they’re passionate. It adds emphasis. And don’t tell me again how we got fired because I swore. I learned, OK? Have I done it since then? I was out of my element. Now I’m back in it.”
“Don’t do it anyway,” I said. “Roman doesn’t want to hear it, and neither do I.”
“Oh, please. Roman swears.”
“No,” Roman said. “Not that word, not around your cousin, you notice? Manners, eh.” He had a hip against the kitchen counter and his ankles crossed, the picture of calm amusement, not a man whose house had been infiltrated by mud and infested by guests.
“Fine,” Delilah said, “but if you do it, I’m calling you on it.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “And ditto.” He shoved off the counter and stood there, relaxed and still, the power all but vibrating off him all the same. “Ready to go? If we don’t get the car, Summer can’t buy those dehumidifiers. What happens to her sense of responsibility if my house ends up covered in mold?”
“I’m ready,” Delilah said. “And Summer? Take a chill pill. And a shower. And a fu— a friggin’ nap.”
Roman
“Right,” I told Delilah as I reversed the still-filthy car up the drive. “Second half of the story, please.”
“I’m not allowed,” she said. “Summer found out I told you—you weren’t supposed to tell her. What are you, an idiot? I told you, verbal diarrhea from the concussion! Do you understand her at all? Aren’t you supposed to be good with women? You look like a guy who’s good with women.”
That was about as much as I got out of her on the drive to Dunedin, though I learned that they’d been working their way around the country for the past ten months, mainly serving in cafés and doing cleaning in the smaller sorts of motels. “Not in the cities,” Delilah said. “Too expensive, and they have no campgrounds. We have one of those DOC memberships. You pay a couple hundred bucks and camp free for a year.”
“You’ve been in that campervan for ten months?” I asked. “It seemed pretty basic.”
“Yeah, but it’s New Zealand. You wouldn’t believe how many people have invited us to take a shower at their place and do our laundry. They ask us to dinner, too. Of course, Summer turns down the single guys, even if they’re old enough to be her dad. Pretty paranoid. I’m amazed she agreed to stay with you. She has to be desperate. I hope she has more than ten thousand dollars. It’s not like she’s spent much, or has a gambling problem, but everything’s so expensive here. Food. Gas. And I told you—if there’s a responsibility gene, she’s got two copies. It’d be a recessive gene, though, clearly.”
I thought about how to answer that and decided on, “I’m amazed I offered, so I reckon we’re even. No shower in the van, eh.”
“Just a solar one, which means a trickle of barely-lukewarm water from a five-gallon plastic bag that’s never going to get you clean. I thought the mobile home we used to live in was crappy. I didn’t realize that you might not even have a shower. But it hasn’t been too bad, I guess. We’ve done a lot of hiking, and I’ve done some swimming, too. We’ve even earned some money. Not enough to buy a new campervan, of course, but?—”
“How long are you staying?” I asked.
“It was supposed to be a few months. Didn’t work out that way, because Summer said she might as well stay, and I don’t have much to go back to, either. Plus I couldn’t exactly leave her alone, could I? She says she’s fine, but—” She stopped, then went on, “I’m on a working holiday visa, which is only a year, so I do have to go home before the end of May and get a place to live and another crappy job until college starts. Good thing I have so much experience at that. Summer’s British, though, so she can stay three years if she wants to. I’m not sure why she’d want to—I mean, it’s nice here and all, but it’s not exactly a career builder, being a waitress, and she was always super ambitious—but for now, I’m just going along.”
“Keeping her company.”
“That’s the idea. So, listen. She says she doesn’t need my help to buy the car, but she’s going to be almost broke and totally stressed. I have ten thousand dollars left, though. I know—who knew? So we can get something halfway decent and say it cost maybe seven or eight thousand, and she’ll still?—”
I said, “I have a better idea.” And kept driving.
When we pulled into Zephyr’s carpark, though, and I opened the door and said, “Now we take an Uber,” Delilah said, “Oh … kay. Not a used-car lot. Well, this seems safe. I guess human trafficking would make you rich.”
“Do me a favor. Come on. Uber. Or I’ll give you money for a café if you’d rather, and collect you once I get the car. Even better.”
She eyed me narrowly, then said, “This seems very shady. You’re up to something. I’m coming with you.”
I said, “I don’t normally get outmaneuvered by eighteen-year-old girls.”
“Then this will be a new experience for you. Let’s go.” They were definitely cousins, because that was a family resemblance.
An Uber, then, to a block of flats. Up in the lift, and then a knock at a door.
Delilah said, “This just gets sketchier and sketchier.” Sounding interested, not worried.
I said, “It’s not.”
Dane opened the door. My new Director of Operations.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He looked between Delilah and me before stepping back and saying, “Come in.”
“Did Esther explain it to you?” I asked as we went inside. Not a bad flat. Tidy, though that could be for the boss’s benefit. Dane wasn’t much of one for sucking up, though, so I didn’t think so.
“Yeh. That she’s getting me a new work ute. Sweet as. Tomorrow, she said. Pretty quick.” Another glance at Delilah.
“Oh,” I said. “Delilah, Dane. Dane, Delilah.”
“Hi,” Delilah said, sticking her hands in the back pockets of her rescued jeans and looking small and waifish, when I was sure she was aiming for cool.
Dane looked more bemused than ever, and I said, “Delilah and her cousin are doing some work for me. My house in the Catlins flooded, and they’re cleaning it for me.”
“Oh,” Dane said, and that was all.
“So,” I said, “keys.”
Dane said, “Yeh. And the bill of sale. Esther emailed that over. You’re buying it from the firm, she said.”
“I am. Transferred the money earlier today.”
“I reckoned.”
He still looked curious, but handed over the paperwork and two key fobs. I folded the bill of sale fast, but Delilah said, “Hang on. That says twenty-nine thousand dollars.”
“Fair market value,” I said. “Otherwise, it’d be fraud.”
Dane said, “What?”
“But—” Delilah said. “How can that be?”
“It’s got some kilometers on it,” Dane said, “but it’s a pretty good wee ute. Toyota Hilux. Six years old. You sure about this?” he asked me. “I appreciate the new one, but I’d be all good.”
“What,” I said, “you want to see it in your pay packet instead? Not happening.”
“Course not,” Dane said. “You can do whatever you want. Seems odd, that’s all, spending money when you don’t have to. Not like you. If I’m going to be your Director of Operations, I need to be able to say that.”
“It’s a special circumstance,” I said.
“Hang on,” Delilah said again. “That can’t?—”
“Got to go,” I told Dane. “Show us where it is, will you?”
He still looked bemused, but he went down in the lift with us to the carpark and pointed it out. Dark blue. Clean. He said, “I washed it. Inside, too.”
“Cheers,” I said. “That’s perfect.” I shook his hand, told Delilah, “Hop in,” and we were off.
She said, the second we were out of there, “First, that guy is hot.”
“I didn’t notice. And he’s thirty.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to have sex with him. Just that he’s hot.”
“Oh,” I said. “Duly noted.” I should continue this line of chat. Distract her. Unfortunately, it was a pretty skeevy subject to discuss with an eighteen-year-old, so I didn’t.
“Second,” she said, “now you won’t have a car, unless this is some very roundabout route back to where we left yours, so you can drive it back and I can drive this one. I have a license, you know.”
“You also have concussion. I’ll get a lift to work from Summer tomorrow. She’ll have to come up to Dunedin to buy that equipment.”
“Do you think of everything?” she asked. “Like—make a plan, and execute?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Must be nice.”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s how I’m made.” All right. Better topic.
She didn’t stay with it, of course. She said, “Explain to me how a twenty-nine-thousand-dollar car becomes a ten-thousand-dollar car.”
“You weren’t meant to see that.”
“Too bad. I saw it.” She had her arms folded again. “Explain.”
“I bought it,” I said. “Fair market value. I can sell it again.”
“For ten thousand dollars.”
“Yes.” I shot a glance at her. “I’ll have a story. Your job is to shut up about it.”
I had no idea whether she’d do it. She thought about it a minute, then said, “Summer’s not an idiot.”
“I told you. I’ll have a story.”
“It had better be a pretty good story. And, what, you think I’ll blow it and tell her? Why would I do that?”
“Your cousin would say you had an ethical obligation. I’m almost certain of that.”
“Well, yeah, but I wouldn’t say that. What’s it to me if you want to blow your money? I’d just as soon not drive another broken-down car down a hillside, you know?”
“I can imagine,” I said. “That bothering you? You should probably talk to somebody about it, if you start having nightmares.”
“I’m not going to have nightmares,” she said. “I’ve been through way worse things than this. And if you’re worried about Summer, she’s really been through worse things.”
“Which you won’t tell me about.”
“Nope. But I’ll tell you one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If you’re doing it because you think she’ll sleep with you, she won’t. She doesn’t have sexual feelings anymore. She told me.”
I thought of her legs over my thighs on the bed, the tremble I’d felt in her when I’d been smoothing antibiotic ointment over her knee. The way she’d told me she was naked under my shirt. I said, “I’ll take my chances.”
“Especially if she finds out you lied,” she said. “Summer hates lying.”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m going to tell her I’m selling her a ute for ten thousand dollars. Then I’m going to sell her a ute for ten thousand dollars.”
“Ha,” she said. “Without lying. Yeah, right.”
“The Dharma that is spoken,” I said, “is not the true Dharma. As soon as you try to explain things, the true meaning is lost.”
“I have no idea what that means,” she said. “But I have the feeling that you’re not a very good Buddhist, or Zen master, or whatever it is you’re supposed to be, because that sounds completely sketchy, and unless Buddhism says, ‘Lying is great! Go for it!’, you’re probably doing some kind of sin here.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll risk it.”