Jake Fades by David Guy

Author:David Guy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

12

THE THING I LIKE about the Mexican place near Central Square is that it’s not like the American idea of Mexican. Blazing hot salsas and gobs of cheese on everything, Corona beer with a lime on the top. It just had fresh ingredients and the best limeade I’ve ever tasted. People from all over the square come there.

Jake and I got one of the booths, so we could take our time.

It was only the purest accident that I’d shown up at Mass. Ave. when I had. Jake would have come to himself sooner or later, but who knows where he would have been, how many streets he would have crossed? I couldn’t let him off by himself at all. If I wasn’t with him, Madeleine had to be.

“That was bad, Jake,” I said, early in the lunch.

“I really lost it.” He was wearing that little smile.

“I haven’t seen you like that.”

“You just haven’t noticed. Around the shop.”

I didn’t know how far gone he was sometimes.

“Maybe we can put a little collar on me,” he said. “Like a dog.”

He didn’t see how serious this was.

“I’d have figured it out sooner or later,” he said. “People would help me.”

He was digging into his lunch, quesadillas with chicken and guacamole, corn chips on the side. It was a tad sloppy, squirting all over the place, but he sopped up the guacamole with his tortillas, went back for more limeade. There was nothing wrong with his appetite.

“Before I go completely gaga,” he said after a while, “there’s something I want to tell you.”

“You’re not going gaga,” I said. “You just had a bad episode.”

“Partly because I want to tell somebody. Partly because you need to hear it, if you’re going to teach.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Don’t know that I’m ready.”

“You’re never ready. You just do it, when the time comes.”

I knew he was right. I couldn’t picture it.

“Do you remember Olivia?” he asked.

Olivia. I drew a complete blank.

“She was with the group when you started. Years ago.”

The group had been tiny. I thought I remembered everyone.

“That first summer, when you came just a time or two.”

Jake couldn’t remember who or where he was half the time, but was sure of something that happened twenty years before.

“Dark woman. Olive complexion. Big breasts.”

Sounded like someone I would have noticed.

“You wouldn’t have called her beautiful. Maybe not even pretty. But there was something about her. The one student I ever had who took to practice naturally. It isn’t natural in a way. Goes against the habits of a lifetime. But if I ever had a student who dove right into it, it was her.”

There was something different about the way Jake spoke to me now. He’d finished eating, we both had, but it was as if everything had stopped. There was a major pause in the middle of the room. He wasn’t solemn, but didn’t wear that little smile. He was just talking.

“If I’d had to pick a dharma heir, not that I was thinking of that then, it would have been her.

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