Day 68 #2
When it was finally their time, Jesse and the other members of his group were gathered by Nancy, a woman dressed in loose-fitting clothes that made her resemble a high-fashion monk; it was a look Jesse could see himself adopting were he to continue down a path of either enlightenment or sloth.
(He couldn’t indulge in wearing Norman’s clothes forever—even if cropped shirts for men were currently in, they were not in for men his age.) She led them to the Integratron’s second level, up what Nancy called stairs but seemed much more akin to a ladder, and Jesse, always the tallest, had to duck so as not to hit his head on the opening.
Once on the second floor, however, the room opened up, allowing him not just to stand but to properly stretch.
There were mats laid out for everyone covered with clean sheets, and bathers stood frozen before choosing their spots, like they had been asked to pair up in gym class; Jesse hung close to Woodstock.
The others in his session were mostly couples, save for one small cluster of friends who tittered with nervous excitement.
As far as he could tell, the only other single person besides himself and his mat neighbor was an awkward straight man with a meaty build who wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and slacks.
He stuck out like a sore thumb, as if he’d somehow walked out of his year-end performance review at an insurance company and in line to have his biological cells rewired.
There was no place in the Integratron for middle management, so Jesse focused instead on Woodstock, who gathered her sheet around her like she was an animal making a nest. She fanned out her hair when she lay flat, and it looked like it was charged with static electricity.
Different sound baths were offered, designed, Jesse imagined, to encourage repeat visits, and today’s was called Pathways, which would have seemed tailored to Jesse, as he was certainly looking to discover his own pathways (inward, yes, but also one that might lead him to Norman), if it didn’t sound so perfectly like a rehab center for C-list celebrities and CFOs.
Your journey to sobriety begins at Pathways.
Pathways, Nancy explained, was designed to increase our neuroplasticity so we could find new paths within our own brains.
Thoughts, emotions, stressors, pain—these were all merely electrical jumps between brain cells, and it was up to us to show them new ways, leading us to a new understanding of the world around us.
The fuck? Jesse thought, but he kept any doubt to himself.
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.” It was a quote from Nikola Tesla, whose great name had been tarnished by electric cars that had a tendency to explode, but it was read to them by Nancy like his reputation was still unsullied.
Sound travels more efficiently through water, she explained, and since the human body is more than seventy percent water, apparently they were in for quite a ride.
Sound also traveled more efficiently through the Integratron, and Jesse heard every whisper, rustle, and cough as people settled onto their foam mats.
It was like the theater; if anyone needed to unwrap a butterscotch, now was apparently the time.
There were no secrets inside this structure, not from each other, anyhow—he even heard a man wonder in hushed tones if he might get hard from vibrations.
He wished everyone would shut up. The only secrets, Jesse realized, were the ones he was after—the ones from those who lent humankind the plans for the Integratron, and the ones contained within him.
Once she was satisfied everyone knew what to expect, Nancy sprayed the room with rosemary oil and burned palo santo, some sort of natural wood incense, and indeed the scents had a calming effect on the room and people seemed to relax into the experience, the occasional whispering fading into a random cough or a sneeze and then silence.
Jesse reclined on his mat and studied the wood ceiling above him; leglike joists met in the center of the dome around some sort of round light, forming what looked like an enormous spider, the type of alien creature that was so terrifying in Steven Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds.
That in itself was disquieting, the thought of being caught in a web.
So he closed his eyes and focused on Nancy’s voice as she began her narration for Pathways and slowly integrated bowl after bowl, like someone in Greece spinning plates at a wedding, and the whole room began to hum.
Total body stimulation at the cellular level.
It did sound almost sexual, what she described.
Stimulation. Vibration. Circulation. Exhalation.
Release. Maybe the man who joked about getting an erection wasn’t that far off base, and he raised his hips in a discreet effort to adjust himself.
Jesse wasn’t certain he wanted to share all of that with strangers, but he made a mental note to purchase a recording of Pathways, for him to try again in the privacy of his own home.
Sound as nutrition. It was something Jesse tried to swallow as he controlled his breathing and listened to the singing bowls take charge of the room.
And charge was a perfect word, as more and more Jesse felt something electrical happen to his body.
It started in his extremities, his toes, and his fingertips.
It was like he could suddenly feel his fingerprints, energy running through them like they were hedge mazes on the grounds of an elaborate palace like Versailles.
From there he became aware of his limbs as they began to lift from the floor, a sensation he couldn’t quite place.
He was both floating and not, on his mat and hovering just above it, like he was adrift on a sea of dense salt water.
He struggled to see Norman behind his closed eyes.
If there was ever a moment he could glimpse wherever Norman was now, this was it.
He even whispered, “Norman” on an exhale.
Alas, all he saw were great landscapes of color racing against the canvas of his closed eyelids.
Not only could he not see where Norman was, he couldn’t see Norman himself.
The number of days since his disappearance became harder to remember offhand, and each day his husband’s face seemed a little less sharp.
He fell into a dreamlike state where he could only see Norman when he was young, like they both were the day they had met.
They were on the beach. The waves were crashing.
Even though he was indoors now, he could feel the sun on his skin.
The ambient sound of people around him worked its way into his dream.
Someone rustling on their mat was a sunbather applying sunscreen.
A gentle snoring was the rippling of a kite flying high in the sky.
The hum from the bowls filled in everything else: the water, the waves, the wind, the gulls, the sounds of children laughing, crying, screaming, asking for ice cream.
He was in such a perfect trance, until he heard the one thing that sent him plummeting back to the hard wooden floors of the dome.
“Norman isn’t here.”
It was said in the faintest whisper, but he heard it plain as goddamn day; the words crashed into his ears like a freight train.
He bolted upright on his mat, startling Nancy, who nearly dropped whatever it was she was using to tickle the bowls.
He whipped his head around to see who might have said such a thing and saw only the awkward man in the slacks, the one who seemed so out of place, lower his arm to his side.
Nancy glared at Jesse until, properly shamed, he reclined on his mat again.
Norman isn’t here. Sound carried in the Integratron, even in the midst of the sound bath.
Someone or something had said it. Jesse’s blood ran cold as those words stood in for the energy as the thing that was most coursing through him.
He no longer felt light. Instead of floating above his mat, he was strapped to it, the room starting to spin like he was suffering an attack of vertigo, until he rolled onto his side and practiced lifting his head in the manner he saw in a YouTube video as a way to reset the stones in his inner ear.
Afraid to return to his back, he curled into a fetal position, hugging his knees close into his chest.
The sound bath continued for another ten minutes, another half hour—it was impossible for him to tell.
Norman is not here. He felt foolish thinking that rerouting energy was enough to make contact.
And even if he did, what did he expect Norman to say?
Sorry? Was it an apology he was seeking?
An explanation? An invitation for Jesse to come with?
Nothing he imagined seemed satisfactory.
So what was really the point? He banged his head against his mat, a form of self-flagellation, as the bowls kept singing, and the sound kept traveling, and others kept breathing, and someone kept snoring, and harmony kept spreading, and wounds kept healing—for everyone, it seemed, but him.
So he continued banging his head on the mat in a vain attempt to feel…
something. And if Nancy was upset by this, she didn’t scold him, but what could she do, really, chained as she was to twenty-two quartz bowls lest the bath stop bathing and everyone was cheated of balance.
Eventually Jesse stopped, suddenly fearing his head-banging was adding percussion to this symphony, and he didn’t want to be responsible for that.
When the sound bath ended, he quickly purchased his download in the gift shop and raced back to his car to study his fellow bathers as they exited the Integratron.
Norman is not here. This wasn’t The Amityville Horror, the structure itself could not speak.
He didn’t think much of religion, or mystical connection, or cults, or believe that there was any sort of spiritual harmony to the world—even after this experience.
But someone had spoken those words aloud.
Of that much he was certain. Someone else was searching for Norman.
Jesse had to be the one to find him first.