Read Online Breakfast With Buddha by Roland Merullo - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Roland Merullo
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life.
Escape.
TEN
The General Sutter Inn, located in the quaint village of Lititz, Pennsylvania, turned out to be the absolutely perfect antidote to a long day on the road. From his carpetbag, Rinpoche pulled a wad of bills, and he asked for the least expensive room, which turned out to be sixty-two dollars plus tax. He counted out the money slowly and carefully and smiled at the young woman behind the desk. I handed over a credit card, asked for something larger, and was given a key to a hundred-dollar room, also on the second floor, 212 in fact, my office area code. “What about dinner?” I asked Rinpoche. “My treat. I promised. Make up for any bad moments on the drive.”
He lifted his eyebrows and flexed his cheeks—his face had an amazing elasticity, as if he’d spent years in a specialized gym developing the muscles over his cheekbones—and shook his head, no. “Just sitting now. Just sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow we eat, Rinpoche and you.”
“Fine. Good night then.”
“Good night, you-are-a-good-man.”
Rinpoche and I took the carpeted stairs together, then went along separate hallways without another word.
The inn was 250 years old, and seemed it. In the best sense. Creaking wooden floors, wainscoting, lace curtains, sitting rooms with three armchairs and a shelf of books. Room 212 faced onto the street that intersected with 501, and it was a little noisy but otherwise perfectly fine: a king-sized bed, an old-fashioned tiled bath, heavy mahogany dresser and desk in the style of the pieces I was driving all the way to North Dakota to fetch. A television the size of two half-gallons of ice cream stacked one on top of the other. There were exposed pipes, and the ceiling had suffered from a leak at some point, but I liked all that, liked it a thousand times more than the sanitized chain hotels with three hundred rooms, the kind of place I was used to from my business travel. I liked having an actual key instead of a plastic card, liked the old porcelain handles on the shower, liked the fact that you could actually open the windows, liked the absence of disinfectant smell, generic wall prints, an “entertainment center,” and the “bar” with its four-dollar bottles of spring water and nine-dollar bags of nuts.
I stretched, sat on the bed, took off my shoes and socks, and called home.
“Is this the Prince of the Road?” Jeannie asked when she answered.
“It is. The prince is tired. He misses his wife. He is traveling with a man who wears a gold-trimmed red robe.”
There was a rather long pause. And then, “Otto? Really?”
“The Prince of the Road never lies.”
“Is it some kind of midlife trouble, honey? Is there something I should know?”
A two-second delay and then I lay sideways across the bed and burst out laughing. The laugh was like something from my childhood, and it seemed to wring the whole day’s weariness out of me. When it died, it died slowly, in a fading out of smaller riffs. “Nothing except the fact that my wonderful sister tricked me into taking her spiritual master instead of her. I am traveling with the guru Volya Rinpoche, newly arrived in these United States by way of Siberia.”
“You’re making some kind of a joke.”
“Dead serious.”
“Seese didn’t come? After all that?”
“Seese is back in Paterson regressing a good friend.”
“And who is with you, really?”
“Volvo Rinpoche or Volya Rinpoche, something like that. Shaved head, nice smile, slight trouble with English, and mysterious as the day is long. I like him, I think.”
“You think?”
“He’s hard to get to know. Though Seese seems to have gotten to know him quickly enough. She wants to give him her half of the property. To start an ashram or something. About that, I am not pleased.”
There was an audible sigh on the other end.
“Kids okay?”
“Tasha’s fine. Anthony hurt his elbow at the football try-outs and is up in his room with a bag of ice. Jasper keeps going
Escape.
TEN
The General Sutter Inn, located in the quaint village of Lititz, Pennsylvania, turned out to be the absolutely perfect antidote to a long day on the road. From his carpetbag, Rinpoche pulled a wad of bills, and he asked for the least expensive room, which turned out to be sixty-two dollars plus tax. He counted out the money slowly and carefully and smiled at the young woman behind the desk. I handed over a credit card, asked for something larger, and was given a key to a hundred-dollar room, also on the second floor, 212 in fact, my office area code. “What about dinner?” I asked Rinpoche. “My treat. I promised. Make up for any bad moments on the drive.”
He lifted his eyebrows and flexed his cheeks—his face had an amazing elasticity, as if he’d spent years in a specialized gym developing the muscles over his cheekbones—and shook his head, no. “Just sitting now. Just sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow we eat, Rinpoche and you.”
“Fine. Good night then.”
“Good night, you-are-a-good-man.”
Rinpoche and I took the carpeted stairs together, then went along separate hallways without another word.
The inn was 250 years old, and seemed it. In the best sense. Creaking wooden floors, wainscoting, lace curtains, sitting rooms with three armchairs and a shelf of books. Room 212 faced onto the street that intersected with 501, and it was a little noisy but otherwise perfectly fine: a king-sized bed, an old-fashioned tiled bath, heavy mahogany dresser and desk in the style of the pieces I was driving all the way to North Dakota to fetch. A television the size of two half-gallons of ice cream stacked one on top of the other. There were exposed pipes, and the ceiling had suffered from a leak at some point, but I liked all that, liked it a thousand times more than the sanitized chain hotels with three hundred rooms, the kind of place I was used to from my business travel. I liked having an actual key instead of a plastic card, liked the old porcelain handles on the shower, liked the fact that you could actually open the windows, liked the absence of disinfectant smell, generic wall prints, an “entertainment center,” and the “bar” with its four-dollar bottles of spring water and nine-dollar bags of nuts.
I stretched, sat on the bed, took off my shoes and socks, and called home.
“Is this the Prince of the Road?” Jeannie asked when she answered.
“It is. The prince is tired. He misses his wife. He is traveling with a man who wears a gold-trimmed red robe.”
There was a rather long pause. And then, “Otto? Really?”
“The Prince of the Road never lies.”
“Is it some kind of midlife trouble, honey? Is there something I should know?”
A two-second delay and then I lay sideways across the bed and burst out laughing. The laugh was like something from my childhood, and it seemed to wring the whole day’s weariness out of me. When it died, it died slowly, in a fading out of smaller riffs. “Nothing except the fact that my wonderful sister tricked me into taking her spiritual master instead of her. I am traveling with the guru Volya Rinpoche, newly arrived in these United States by way of Siberia.”
“You’re making some kind of a joke.”
“Dead serious.”
“Seese didn’t come? After all that?”
“Seese is back in Paterson regressing a good friend.”
“And who is with you, really?”
“Volvo Rinpoche or Volya Rinpoche, something like that. Shaved head, nice smile, slight trouble with English, and mysterious as the day is long. I like him, I think.”
“You think?”
“He’s hard to get to know. Though Seese seems to have gotten to know him quickly enough. She wants to give him her half of the property. To start an ashram or something. About that, I am not pleased.”
There was an audible sigh on the other end.
“Kids okay?”
“Tasha’s fine. Anthony hurt his elbow at the football try-outs and is up in his room with a bag of ice. Jasper keeps going
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