Chapter 23
JOEL
When Shay first told Joel about Synanon at a bar in the West Village last October, he listened.
The last time he’d seen her was at the John Ashbery reading, during which she’d seemed bored and distracted, nervously turning her new engagement ring in circles and then wandering the bookstore aisles with her glass of Riesling as Joel waited to have his book signed.
But then, suddenly, seated on a worn leather stool, she was present, with a calm he had not felt radiating from her since before graduation, before Andrew.
She was clear-eyed, her cheeks full. The girl he’d found lying in the grass.
When she spoke, she was a little shy at first, as if she were telling him about a lover. But it was not one person. It was Cindy and Robert and Simon. It was Susan and Cleo and Jim.
Synanon had helped so many people. It was like nothing Shay had ever experienced, that sort of honesty. She could finally see herself as others saw her, and what a tremendous gift that was.
She had not moved into the building on Riverside yet.
It was still early, a time when it could all seem reasonable.
Senators had visited Synanon centers. Jane Fonda had attended their parties in California, and Edmond O’Brien had played their founder in a film.
Yes, there were some critical articles, some rumblings about its new status as a religion, but it still had polish and sheen, and Joel had friends who meditated and became Hare Krishnas, friends who stopped eating meat and had their biorhythms charted, friends who went to therapy and recounted every banal detail of their dreams. Everyone was trying to be a better version of themselves.
Andrew thinks it’s all bullshit, Shay had said, and that was all it took for Joel to say nothing, to ignore the needles of unease pricking the back of his neck.
It was something Andrew could not understand, so Joel would understand it.
He would understand her, like he always had.
They would be back in her dorm room, saying aloud every unsayable thing at two in the morning as the rest of the campus slept in their hard, narrow beds.
But it was not like that in the end. After they talked that evening, she slipped out of the bar into the night, and like a snake, it swallowed her whole.
When he returned to the hotel, Joel did not stop to stretch on the porch. He kept running up the steps and into the lobby, where he was halted by three of his male college classmates, their hair a spectrum of blond, emerging from the dining room.
“Jesus, slow down,” Ken said, bracing his palm against Joel’s shoulder. The others laughed. They all looked relaxed and revived, their hangovers massaged by coffee and grease. One of them—Joel could not remember his name, only that he never returned any library books—had an unbuttoned fly.
“Sorry,” Joel panted.
These men were healthy and tall. Maybe they jogged like Joel or played racquetball on the weekends, but would they know what to do if a young woman with a shaved head pulled out a switchblade?
He had to hope they would. If he had even one of them by his side, he could pin her down, ask what she was doing here.
“You all right?” Ken asked. “You look—”
“Can I talk to you?”
Ken glanced at his friends with a raised eyebrow, making it clear he had no idea what this was about. They frowned, the book thief shoving his hands in his shorts pockets. Ken scratched at his fair stubble. Each of their polos was striped with a different primary color.
“All right,” Ken said. “Porch?”
No one else was outside. Joel leaned against the railing and took in deep breaths through his nose. Cicadas droned. Clouds had begun to gather and darken, threatening rain, and the petrichor calmed him. Ken sat in one of the rocking chairs, resting his head against its tall back.
“I was just joking last night,” he said. “I understand if you want to keep your girl away from me.”
“I don’t care about that. I mean, you’re a prick, but this isn’t about that.”
Ken laughed, pulling a pack of Parliaments from his pocket. He lit one and inhaled, rocking in his chair. Smoke puffed from his nostrils. “I don’t know that I’d call you a prick. A hanger-on, maybe? A leech?”
“Yesterday you said Synanon had this security force, the Imperial Marines. Do you think they would come after Shay?”
Ken rested his ankle on his knee, studying Joel. “Come after her?”
“That they would try to hurt her?”
“I mean, maybe. The headlines haven’t exactly been flattering, so they’ve probably lost money. If they knew about Andrew—”
“Which they would. Of course they would know.”
“What is going on exactly?”
Raindrops dotted the stone path. A soft patter against the grass. A bee floated up from stalks of purple ironweed, hovering near Joel’s ear.
“On my jog this morning, I think I saw someone from Synanon. I thought it was a boy at first, but I’m pretty sure it was a woman with a shaved head. She was wearing a baseball cap.”
“So you couldn’t actually see her hair?”
“No, but—”
“You just think her head was shaved?”
“Well, yes, but also she had this large pocketknife and she was sitting at one of the tables of the restaurant near the beach, dragging her knife along the wood. Carving it.”
“So you saw maybe a woman, maybe a teenage boy, defacing a table.” Ken’s tone had turned flat and unimpressed. He took another drag of his cigarette, and Joel felt the cramp of frustration. Ken was not understanding.
“With a knife.”
“Like this?” Ken fumbled in his shorts again, extracting a pocketknife with an ivory handle. He clicked it open, the blade mirror bright.
“Yes, but—”
“All right. And did you talk to him, or her?”
“Yes. She gave me directions back to the hotel.”
Ken laughed, and Joel wanted to punch him. The bee droned near his ear again, and he swatted it away. The rain was now a roar.
“Are you trying to come up with a reason to cancel the wedding? I didn’t mean to give you ammunition yesterday. I was just shooting the shit.”
“There was something off about her.”
“There’s something off about this whole fucking island!” Ken lifted one of his arms, gesturing to the unmowed grass, the cluster of nearby houses and the distant shore. “Who would live here year-round? They don’t have milk stocked some days of the week. They don’t even have roads.”
Joel hung his head, pressing his lips together.
It was possible he was right, but Ken had never been to the building on Riverside and sensed that frisson of danger in its damp, unlit halls.
He’d never seen the man the size of a doorway.
Andrew wouldn’t trust Joel either, so he’d have to figure out who else to warn—how to reach Shay.
If Ken didn’t believe him, it was difficult to imagine the police would hear anything more.
If the island even had police. Still, he’d have to try.
“So you won’t say anything to Andrew?” he asked.
“What is there to say? I mean, even if Synanon did want to send someone, you really think it would be a woman? No, they’d send actual muscle. What you’re suggesting doesn’t even make sense.”
The bee returned, and when Joel flicked at his ear, he felt a sharp, pointed burn. He swore, inspecting the top of his right hand. The sting was raising to a red welt, a pin of black at its center.
“What?” Ken asked.
“Nothing,” Joel said, dropping his hand back to his side, the stinger fixed as a nail in his skin.