The Zen Detective by Devorah Fox

Author:Devorah Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, addiction, meditation, transformation, zen buddhism, police and detectives
Publisher: Devorah Fox

Chapter 16

Her raincoat dripping

In the droplets on the floor,

hundreds of women—Szan

In the morning, the new tattoo stings and itches. Some pain pills remain from my encounter with the flying pizza and I take a couple of those. Though I’m careful when I pull the tape off the bulky paper-towel bandage Lix applied, I can’t avoid yanking out a few hairs, which only adds to the discomfort. The dark scabs of dried ointment, color, and blood that formed under the bandage wash away more easily than I would have thought. Underneath, pink skin puffs around a lotus outlined with a few bright dots of fresh blood.

I stand, then sit, on the bathroom floor, legs folded loosely, comfortably, not pretzeled into any formal posture, and contemplate not my navel but the flesh below it. Though the tile is cold, I feel flushed. Gradually I come to touch my skin, not with my hands but with my mind, feel it stretched over hip bones and across shoulder blades, warm, elastic, alive. A tiny pulse beats just under the skin of my belly. I discover the throbbing also in my legs and feet, chest and arms, even my jaw. Soon I am no longer skin, muscles and bones, but only this pulse, beating, beating. Finally I rise to finish dressing, my entire body astir.

Saturdays really perk at the Kaffeteria. College students sprung from classes and working folk from the cages of their offices nurse coffees and nibble bagels, in no hurry to go back outside into a cold rain. They wrangle about politics and pop stars and the plots of television commercials as though these were life and death issues. Two kids noisily surf the Net on the computer.

I weave through close-packed tables to the crowded counter.

Dunk skids to a halt in his volley. “Will! What will it be?”

“Coffee. Black. Strong.” Too little sleep has left me so exhausted, I can’t seem to keep from yawning.

“How about a muffin? Frosted cranberry-orange.”

Sugar to go with the caffeine. It might give me a lift but I have no appetite.

He fixes a cup and hands it over the counter. “Look at you, man. Where the hell have you been?”

I catch my reflection in a brewer’s stainless steel side. The gash on my head from slamming into the Dumpster has knitted badly into a jagged red line. Bags hang under eyes that won’t stop tearing. Those eyes stare back as if with the knowledge of some dirty secret. A sly grin turns up the corners of my lips. “Around.”

“Yeah, well, there’s someone here to see you. A girl. A real babe. Rich, too, I think--she’s wearing a ton of jewelry. She wanted someplace private to talk to you. I told her she could wait in my office, OK?”

Heidi! My heart, already racing, beats faster. I lift the hatch in the counter and squeeze through the opening, acutely aware of the scuff of denim against tender freshly-tattooed skin, and open the door to Dunk’s closet office.

A familiar head of blonde hair turns and Heidi rises from Dunk’s chair.

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