Work Text:
"Excuse me! Do you have time to talk?"
Hell, no.
"I'm on the clock," Gabe said, and shouldered past the kid shivering in thin clothes that let the wind and weather through to freeze him. He had no interest in hearing about God or gurus. Or in being scammed in some secular way either. He had a perfectly good job to get to and he wasn't being made late for it.
The bar was full, and Gabe actually had more to do than stand around looking tall. Towards the end of the night some asshole tourist made himself a nuisance to a table of girls and had to be ejected, squealing all the while about his rights and lawyers and bitches until Gabe was itching to give him a good slap. The cameras were working that evening, so he restricted himself to just hustling the guy outside and flagging down a taxi, then shoving the guy, no longer protesting, into it. Maybe the asshole had worked out he was getting off easy, given that he had squeezed one of the girl's boobs. The manager was in a lather inside, comping all the girls' drinks for the whole night and swearing up, down and sideways that the guy had never been in before and would never be allowed in again. Gabe still regretted not rearranging the asshole's face.
The next evening, the kid stepped out in front of him again, a wide smile on his face.
"Excuse me!"
"No."
"Three minutes!"
"No," and Gabe was past.
There was no excitement at work. Which was good, he reminded himself, but he ended up standing outside most of his shift, opening the door, smiling and saying, "Good evening, ladies," and just freezing his balls off as the tourists complained that they thought California was always hot and sunny. When Jorge covered him for his break he almost cried and ran in to get a coffee and then had to go stand out back to have a smoke, which was just adding insult to insult as far as he was concerned. At least there ended up being a load of leftover bar food to divvy up. He took his prize of sandwiches and spicy wings and headed home. Henry would look down on them, but more fool him.
When he got in he couldn't face eating, so everything went into the little fridge, along with the carefully labelled Tupperware of real food that Henry had cooked. Man, that guy would make someone a fantastic housewife one of these days. Gabe reminded himself never to say that to Henry, who could probably kick his ass from one end of the week to the other, and fell into bed without undressing.
"Hello-do-you-have-time-to-talk?"
"Fuck, no."
"Why not? Are you scared of what I might say?"
Gabe had learnt early never to allow another guy to call him chicken. He turned around and got in the kid's face.
"One: fuck you. Two: you're a little student punk, I wouldn't be scared of you if I was drunk, blind and shitting myself. Three: I don't want to hear about Jesus, I was raised Buddhist."
"So was I!" the kid beamed. "That's what I want to talk about!"
He was blond and green-eyed, and a skinny white boy to boot. Gabe looked at him sceptically. On the other hand, this was California.
"Let's leave it at that," he said. "Yay for the Buddha, you've done your duty for today, you can go home."
The kid reached for him and put a skinny hand on his arm. Gabe twitched himself free.
"No, please. Do you know what a bodhisattva is?"
"Uh, sort of. Look, I have to go –"
"No, just a moment, please. They're enlightened beings who help other people reach enlightenment. My teacher is one of them! He can help you reach enlightenment! That's what I try to tell people! Won't you come to a meeting?"
There it was, the invitation to Woo Central.
"Nah, thanks, I'm good. Gotta get to work." And he was gone.
The next day the kid wasn't there, nor the next. Then he was back, looking tired and thinner than ever.
"Hello, do you have time –" he started, sounding dispirited.
"Who the fuck slapped you around?" Gabe said. The kid's face was bone white, and a mark stood out around one eye. That looked old, but the bruise on his cheek was brand new.
"I fell over," the kid said. "I've been fasting and stood up too quickly."
"How long have you been fasting?"
The kid looked confused, like he had to think hard about times.
"Maybe – eleven days? I haven't got anyone to come to a meeting since then."
Gabe stared at him, then grabbed his elbow and towed him down the road and right into a McDonalds.
"Oh, wait, no – I can't eat –"
"Big Mac, large fries, vanilla shake," Gabe said grimly at the counter, and turned to him. "I will watch you eat every bite."
"But I'm vegetarian –"
Gabe glared him into silence and grabbed the food when it came. As he'd expected the first mouthful overcame all the kid's resistance and it vanished in short order. The kid sat there, looking stunned, and his shoulders sagged. He looked warm for the first time that Gabe remembered.
Gabe took out his phone and rang the bar to say he'd be late. Then he looked the kid up and down.
"So, tell me. Give me the sales pitch and I'll promise to come to your meeting, and then you'll be allowed to eat, right?"
"Thank you," the kid said, and his big green eyes filled with tears. "Thank you." He leant forwards. "My teacher, the Venerable Ukoku-Houshi, has reached enlightenment but has put off ascending to a state of bliss so that he might help all mankind achieve the same state. He is a holy and accomplished Buddhist master, and has trained in many traditions and studied under famed and accomplished teachers –"
"Yeah? In the famed Buddhist centres of Idaho and Utah?" Gabe said.
The kid looked sad, as if he'd held out a great gift and had it batted away to land in a pile of shit. "He studied in China and Tibet," he said. "I can understand that you look at me and think he must be some sort of New Age guru, but he isn't! Look –" He pulled a pamphlet out of his battered bag and passed it over. On the back was the most horrific image Gabe had seen since the last time he'd darkened his family doorstep and been confronted with the religious images his stepmom had plastered all over the house. The romanticized image of the young man in wire-rimmed glasses and monk's robes definitely showed Asian features. It also showed a halo and worshippers of various stylized ethnicities crowded in the corners gazing in adoration. He wasn't taking it as anything near a faithful representation.
He turned the pamphlet over, half-listening as the kid nattered on about reality being an illusion and life being suffering and how his Glorious Leader had the answer to everything. He skimmed though the paragraphs describing this monk as a living saint, a bodhisattva and the answer to all the reader's ills. Obviously you joined this guy's cult and then you gave him all your money. And probably he fucked you if he liked the look of you. And if you didn't bring enough people in, his heavies whacked you around. Gabe had listened to enough podcasts and that was how all these Great Leaders seemed to work. Well, he'd promised the kid he'd go to a meeting, but that was it. One meal and one meeting. He'd done his good deed for the year with that. The kid would have to find his own way out.
"You have meetings on Wednesdays?" he said. "I'll get time off this week, OK? I'll come once, that's it."
"We have better meetings at the weekend," the kid said. "Longer teaching, full meditation, a communal meal and a full hour's Q and A –"
"First off, fucking hell, that sounds terrible for a first-time buyer," Gabe said, "and second, no way. I pick up extra shifts at the weekend. Some of us actually work for a living. What do you do, anyway? Study underwater basket weaving?"
"I study the dharma," the kid said. "I'll be ordained soon."
Gabe raised an eyebrow. "You're a monk? You what, work for your guru?"
"I – yeah. Something like that," the kid said. He tapped the address on the pamphlet. "Do you think you can find this on Wednesday? I can meet you and bring you there if you want."
"I'll find it," Gabe said. "I'm Gabe, by the way."
"Kenny," the kid said, and held out a polite, skinny hand. "Thanks for dinner."
"Sure," Gabe said, shaking his hand. "One meeting, got it?"
Kenny grinned at him like a happy child.
* * *
That Wednesday Gabe stood outside the address he'd been given, wondering if he was actually going to go in. He hadn't expected it to be as far downtown as it was, but then a lot of places had closed up since the pandemic. Maybe the owners had been glad to rent to anyone, even weirdos. He had more pressing things to think about, like whether he'd be jumped the moment he went through the doors and would wake up in a bath of ice missing a kidney. Or whether he'd be brainwashed and start worshipping What's-his-Face the Leader. Or whether - Kenny bounced through the doors.
"Gabe! You came!"
"Yeah. I said, didn't I?"
Too late to run. Oh, well. Kenny grabbed his arm and towed him through the door. There were people milling around, about twenty, Gabe figured, men and women. Some looked a bit lost, so they were newcomers, some were clearly repeat visitors and then there were a few directing people here and there, and grabbing on to the newcomers. Right. Cult members. Like Kenny. He wondered if they were getting the chance to stop fasting as well.
"In here," Kenny said, and pulled him into a large room that might once upon a time have been an open plan office. The hardwearing carpet was inoffensively beige and unfortunately stained in a few places where equipment had once been, but scrupulously clean. Cushions dotted the floor, and Kenny pulled him right to the front and sank down onto one, indicating the cushion beside him. Gabe looked at him as he tucked his feet up onto his thighs. Right. He hoped the kid wasn't expecting him to do likewise. He crossed his legs and eyeballed the solitary cushion at the head of the room, a short lectern standing beside it. He'd be getting a good view of the head honcho.
The first order of business was a girl in a long skirt and tie-dye t-shirt who greeted everyone and then led them all in a meditation. Gabe endured being told to feel the ground under him, to feel the cushion holding him up, to pay attention to various parts of his body and then just let his mind wander. When he tuned in again, she was wrapping up and Kenny smiled hopefully at him.
"Do you feel relaxed?"
"Oh, yeah."
There was a general rustling and shifting around from the people who seemed to know what was going on. They looked eager. Gabe poked Kenny's arm.
"What's up?"
"There'll be a spiritual lesson," he said, his eyes shining.
The door at the back of the room opened, and Gabe turned to look. A man in dark ankle-length robes walked in purposefully, looking neither to left nor right, strode past him and seated himself at the head of the room. Maybe the picture in the pamphlet had some basis in reality. He was definitely Asian, and young enough to have a smooth, unlined face. He raised his hands, palms together, to the assembled people.
"Good evening."
"Good evening, Master," half the room chorused, mirroring his pose.
The Twilight Zone theme played in Gabe's mind.
"Welcome to our new guests," the man said, with a friendly smile, "and to those who have come here before. When we think about what it means to have come to this place –"
Gabe listened for a minute or two to stuff about journeys and where people travelled in their lives, and decided it wasn't much different to the kind of things that girls sent him occasionally in flowery typefaces on the internet, with a nugget here and there that he remembered his stepmom beating into him. She hadn't been much on the peace and compassion, but she'd sure been big on him and Jien doing what she said. Gabe had got out of the house as early as he could and planned on skipping her funeral if he ever even heard about it. His eyes widened as he realized the great and powerful Wizard of Oz was looking right at him as he spoke. He focused on the man's face, trying to look like he was paying attention, and tamping down his annoyance at the slight smile. The fucker held eye contact for an uncomfortable time, never once blinking, then shifted his gaze to Kenny and the smile grew wider, fonder. Gabe looked sidelong to see Kenny nearly glow with joy as he raised his joined hands up.
It was a relief when the woo stopped being spouted, and everyone got to stand around and eat a strictly vegetarian sandwich and drink a dismal weak coffee with optional cheap and nasty soy milk. Gabe ate to be polite and to make sure that all his t s were crossed. He refused to dot his is with the soy milk so sipped his dismal coffee black.
"This is Gabe," Kenny said suddenly beside him. "Can I have a sandwich?"
"Yes, kiddo, of course you can."
Gabe lifted his gaze from the Styrofoam cup to meet the amused gaze of Guru What-the-fuck.
"This is Ukoku-Houshi," Kenny said in a loud whisper.
"Yeah, I remember him from five minutes ago," Gabe whispered back. Up close, the guy didn't look quite as young – mid-thirties, probably. It was still pretty young for a cult leader, surely?
"I'm glad you're here, Gabe," Ukoku-Houshi said. "Kenny's been singing your praises."
"Yeah, that's probably because I didn’t think he should starve himself," Gabe said.
Kenny went pink, and Ukoku-Houshi just smiled. No wonder he didn't have wrinkles. The expression never quite reached his eyes.
"Kenny takes these things on himself at times. He's very observant." He put a hand on Kenny's arm and smiled wider. It still didn't touch his eyes. "I'll see you later, kiddo." His hand tightened as he leant forwards and kissed the kid's forehead. Gabe's skin crawled. Not his business. Really not his business. Ukoku-Houshi wandered off to talk to someone else.
"I've got to get going," Gabe said.
"Already?" Kenny looked devastated.
"Yeah. My roommate has this thing about me doing the washing up on my days off. Even if I don't eat at home. And maybe tidying up my crap. He's a total neat freak. Eat another sandwich. Live a little."
He made his escape and got home as quickly as he could.
The next evening Kenny was waiting for him.
"Hello, Gabe!"
"One meeting! We agreed!"
"I'm just saying hello," Kenny said, walking backwards in front of him.
"Fine. Hi. I'm on the way to work. Keep telling the boss that I'll come back any day now, and keep eating the sandwiches, OK?"
"Can I buy you a coffee? I have some money! To say thank you?"
Gabe stopped walking and rolled his eyes. This was a bad idea. He didn't need a pet sort-of-monk. Especially one who was just an underfed kid in thin clothes.
"One coffee. One. Then you get back to spreading the word and I go to work."
Kenny grabbed his hand like an excited child and pulled him towards the same McDonalds they'd been in before. Right. A sublime caffeine experience lay before him. Gabe kept his mouth shut. The kid clearly had limited funds, and he'd drunk worse. The night before, for example.
When they were sitting with their coffees, Kenny pouring packet after packet of sugar into his, Gabe decided that he wasn't above prurient nosiness after all.
"So, how long have you and your guru been an item?"
Kenny looked at him in incomprehension. "A what?"
"A couple? Together? Sorry, what term do teenagers use these days?"
Kenny looked even more confused and actually started counting on his fingers. "I'm –" he stopped. "I think I'm probably not a teenager any more." His face brightened as Gabe looked at him sceptically. "We're not a couple! That's so silly! Carnality is beneath such a wonderful man! He fostered me."
Gabe peered closer. Maybe Kenny was older than he'd first thought. The overly bubbly presentation and the skinniness were misleading. As was being so touchy-feely with a foster-parent if he was telling the truth about that.
"You must fast a lot, huh?"
"Oh yes! Ever since Ukoku-Houshi started fostering me."
"When was that?"
Kenny held his hand out to indicate height. "I was about so big, I guess. I'm not sure about the age."
Gabe looked at him, and at his hand, which wouldn't even come up to the level of Gabe's chest. He wasn't great on telling kid's ages but – surely it wouldn't be good for a kid of that size to stop eating? Not his business. Whatever had gone down in the past, Kenny was old enough to choose his own path now. He finished the coffee as quickly as was vaguely polite and got the hell to work.
The next evening Kenny was there again with an offer of coffee, and the next and the third evening Gabe showed up a little early so he could have the damn coffee and not be late for work. McDonalds again. Whatever. Kenny counted the money out carefully and it was clearly all he could afford.
"What's it like, working in a bar?"
"Same as working anywhere else, only with more drunk people, I guess. We get a lot of tourists; they like to cut loose."
Kenny poured his sixth – fucking hell - packet of sugar into his coffee and gave him a stern look. It was like he was about to be reprimanded by a kitten.
"Excessive consumption of alcohol is a significant barrier to spiritual development."
"Says who? Reverend U-bend?"
The offended look was really like an annoyed kitten. "Ukoku-Houshi! And yes. And so does the Buddha, which you have to know –"
"I'm nowhere near religious," Gabe said. "And I have to pay my rent. I don't drink on the job, I'm as sober as a judge, me and the rest of the staff there. It's not an orgy, it's a job."
The annoyed kitten look had subsided. "I didn't mean to be rude! I just want to be helpful to you."
"You and Henry both. I'm surrounded with helpful guys."
"Who's Henry?"
"My roommate. He has a lot of helpful opinions."
"Oh," Kenny said, fiddling with an empty sugar packet. "That's right. You have a – roommate."
"Yeah, have you seen the cost of rent? You gotta have roommates too, right?"
Kenny shrugged, still fiddling with the paper, tearing it into tiny pieces. Gabe frowned and thought about the little stress he'd put on the word. Oh, for –
"He's a friend. We're roommates, that's all. Hey. Are you hitting on me?"
Kenny peeped at him guiltily from under his messy fair hair, his face bright pink, looking like a middle-schooler with a bad crush. " . . . no?" he said.
Well, shit.
"I'm real flattered," Gabe said, "but I don't date teens and anyway, I don't want to be seduced into your group, sorry."
"What? That's weird! I wasn't – why are you so mean and gross?" Kenny said, looking upset. "And I told you, I'm not –" He started counting on his fingers again, a look of concentration on his face, then stopped, an expression of deep frustration taking over. "I'm twenty! . . .one. Or two!"
"You seriously don't know how old you are?" Gabe said, his eyebrows climbing of their own accord.
"We don't celebrate birthdays," Kenny said, as if it should be obvious. "They're just a sign of our attachment to the world. I know kids like to make a big deal of them, but I've been indifferent to such nonsense since Ukoku-Houshi saved me."
"Wow," Gabe said. "It must have been a barrel of fun growing up with that guy. Fasting and meditating since you were a kid and not even a birthday cake to look forward to."
"He's incredible," Kenny sniffed. "It was the best childhood ever. He taught me how to read the scriptures and how to carry out rituals and how to manipulate elements and –"
"Yeah, he's a peach," Gabe said and against his better judgement added, "Look, I didn't mean to be rude about him, I'm sure he's great. But you don't have to stick around in his cult if you don't want to, and you don't have to tell people he saved you just 'cos he took care of you when you were a kid. Anyway, I'd better go. Thanks for the coffee." He was out the door before Kenny could respond.
* * *
The next couple of days were without interruption on his way to work, but at the weekend Kenny popped out of nowhere with a wide grin on his face. It was nowhere near the normal time Gabe's weeknight shift started and he had the uncomfortable feeling Kenny must have been waiting patiently for him to appear.
"Uh, hi," he said.
"Miss me? Let's have coffee! I have enough to go somewhere else, where would you like to go? I've never been to Starbucks, is it nice? It looks nice from outside, we could go there, or anywhere else you want, or we don't have to have coffee, we could go for pop if you like –"
"Have you taken something?" Gabe said, breaking into the flow. Some sort of accent was surfacing in the patter of words, but he couldn't easily place it.
"No," Kenny said, his eyes wide and innocent. He took a breath and sounded more like a local again. "Stimulants and intoxicants are a hindrance to spiritual growth."
"And how can you never have been to Starbucks? It's literally everywhere!"
"Ukoku-Houshi says they're a capitalist bastardisation of the pure gift of nature that is the coffee plant. He's very discerning about his coffee."
"Not from that swill you were serving after the meeting, he isn't."
"Can we go to Starbucks?"
Gabe sighed. He had the time; he'd been planning on doing some window shopping before work. If Kenny wanted to rebel and go to a temple of caffeinated naughtiness, who was he to say no? He nodded.
It was when they were sitting, tucked far from windows and he was watching Kenny suspiciously sip his heavily sweetened cappuccino that he thought about the fact that maybe they were in a place safe from the prying eyes of other cult members. Maybe he was going to get some juicy details for Henry to shake his head over.
"I didn't see you the last couple of days," he said.
"I was working over in the French Quarter," Kenny said. "I got four new members! Ukoku-Houshi was very pleased. He said I was a good boy."
"That's not creepy at all," Gabe said cheerfully, and grinned at the look he got.
"I wanted to tell you that he did save me," Kenny said. "And I know you laugh at us and what we teach, but he's a good man and he took me away from bad people, and he brought me up right."
Gabe nodded. Kenny's home life couldn't have been a bed of roses if he'd ended up permanently in foster care, though it seemed a bit odd for him to have been put with someone claiming to be a monk, of all things. He thought about Ukoku-Houshi's amused smile; surely he could only have been in his early twenties when Kenny said he was placed with him? That seemed pretty young. He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, remembering his stepmom's threats to dump him on the county. He still didn't know if she could have done that. Sometimes he wished she had.
"You ever talk to your family now?" he asked.
Kenny pulled his feet up onto the chair and wrapped his arms around his knees. His voice was hesitant and pitched higher, sounding childlike.
"They don't deserve to talk to me. Ukoku-Houshi says so and I think so too. The lady I was with said my Mom missed me and when everything was straightened out I'd get to go home again. She was a bad person and made me go and be indoctrinated with other kids and she wasn't fixing my eye up at all. But Ukoku-Houshi was sent there by fate – he said it was fated that we would meet! He said I should go with him and he'd make everything all right, and I'd never have to be afraid of anyone else ever again."
"Hold on," Gabe said, unsure of where the story was going. "You were being fostered by some lady, and then this Ukoku guy –"
"I could see the light all around him," Kenny said in a dreamy voice. "I thought he was an angel, but he explained after what a bodhisattva is."
"Wait – he was your actual foster parent, right?"
"He told me what I needed to get and he cast a spell on me to make me invisible," Kenny said, leaning forwards, feet now firmly on the ground. He seemed excited by the memory. "I went into the house and I got all the papers with my name on them and the bad lady's purse and phone and her car keys so she couldn't run around causing trouble. And then Ukoku-Houshi teleported us here."
Gabe stared at him. "Oh shit," he said after too long. "Oh, shit. He kidnapped you. Oh shit."
Kenny looked at him incredulously and then giggled, before laughing like an actual adult, so uncontrollably that Gabe felt relief flood all through him as he waited to be told how gullible he was.
"No, silly!" Kenny said, wiping his eyes. "Of course he didn't! I wanted to go with him!" He bounced up. "Another coffee? I'm going to get one of those frosted swirly pastries!"
Gabe watched him happily pointing at sweet treats and laughing with the barista, just a carefree, slightly odd guy.
He felt like he might throw up.