Read Online Dinner with Buddha by Roland Merullo - Free Book Online Page A

not to notice. Neither did Cecelia.
    â€œDid you gamble?” Seese asked her husband in what sounded like a worried tone.
    â€œWith the machine,” Rinpoche admitted sheepishly. He pantomimed a man pulling a slot lever and made a sad clown’s face.
    I expected my sister to ask if he’d won or lost, or to chastise him, but she said only, “I’ve been having all these dreams about casinos lately. It’s so weird!”
    â€œDreams lead you to secrets,” Shelsa chimed in, and I shall always remember her saying that and always remember that we “adulted” her, as Tasha used to say when she was a girl. Meaning, we looked at her and smiled but gave no weight at all to her words.
    â€œCan I ask if you have any idea where Rinpoche and I are supposed to go once you and Shels head back?” I said, almost adding,
Have you had any recent visions? Dreams with maps in them?
In my defense, I didn’t speak those sentences. Also in my defense, I was hungry.
    â€œNebraska,” Seese said, without so much as a blink.
    â€œInto the famous Nebraskan mountains?”
    Her smirk. My quick apology.
    â€œDoes he have a talk scheduled there or something?”
    â€œWe have a friend in the sandhills,” she said. “A man I started a food co-op with many years ago, in Berkeley. Alton Smithson. He comes to the Center three or four times a year and does work for us instead of paying the residency fees. Alton’s a computer specialist, a great one. He’s become friends with Natasha, hasn’t she mentioned him?”
    â€œNot that I recall, no.”
    â€œWell, I had a dream last night that you should go see him. I sent him a note this morning. He’s expecting you. It’s less than a day’s drive.”
    â€œIn the wrong direction,” I said. “You had a vision about mountains. The mountains are west of here. Nebraska’s east.”
    â€œI know my geography, thank you, brother. It’s just for one night.”
    â€œI think there’s something you’re not telling me.”
    Seese looked at her husband—Rinpoche was carving the last bits of the white flesh of a baked potato from its skin, with great care. Shelsa had finished her chicken fingers and was playing some kind of game with Topo Gigio, tilting his head left, then right, saying things like, “Tomorrow we ride the bus, Topo, but don’t be afraid, okay? There won’t be cats on the bus. I’ll stay close to you. I’ll protect you, okay? It’s important not to be afraid. Your karma protects you, okay?”
    The waitress checked in, sent a salacious smile toward the object of her affection, and, swinging her hips in an exaggerated way, disappeared again.
    Rinpoche and Shelsa headed off toward the bathrooms and, when the bill arrived, my lovely sister said she wanted to pay and added—another moment I shall never forget—“Shels might be the next Dalai Lama.”
    I blinked once, slowly, holding my eyes closed to keep myself from reacting. I understood at that moment, in the fly-ridden restaurant in Deadwood, Colorado, with part of a pork chop still uneaten on my plate, that my sister was a mad egotist. Other parents, more traditional American fathers and mothers, salved the wound of their own insecurities by making their sons out to be the next Joe DiMaggio, Michael Jordan, or Peyton Manning, their daughters the next Oprah, Beyoncé, or Maria Sharapova. Jeannie and I had run into them countless times at Natasha’s soccer games and Anthony’s football games. There was a particular kind of desperate urgency to the way they cheered for their kids, as if, suckled on the worship of celebrity as they themselves had been, they couldn’t quite bear the thought that their Jimmy or Vanessa might turn out to be just a pretty good tight end or midfielder. My sister wasn’t into sports or music; she was into spirituality. She was married to the