The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 8

some warehouses, and a few good seafood restaurants. But it

wasn’t yet, Horn told me, one of the fashionable, high-cost

addresses for habitation.

Sandy Tessig lived in one of the island’s two-story plain-

concrete multiunit townhouses built on stilts to be safe from

storm surges. So far, the design had worked; the place had not

been swept away by rampaging seas. Tessig had no big sign up,

just a discreet notice next to her door buzzer that read Sandy —

Past, Present, and Future Knowledge — The Freedom to Know and to Be.

Tessig had agreed on the phone to talk to me, and Lou

Horn dropped me off at ten in the morning, planning to pick

me up in an hour. Tessig had said she was worried about

Griswold too, and was willing to help if she could. And, she

said, maybe while I was there I would like a reading.

Sandy’s apartment didn’t give me the kind of willies I was

expecting, and neither did she. There were a couple of

astrological charts on the living room wall over the couch, but

no rooms painted black and no sinister aromatherapy. I could

see Disney-character decals on the side of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the only smell was of the orange Doritos in a dish

on the coffee table. The CD box on the player next to the

goldfish bowl was an early Barbra Streisand collection.

I relaxed on the couch and Sandy brought me a cup of

Nescafe. She was pleasantly beefy in tight jeans and a Conch

Nation T-shirt. She had clear skin, a big expressive face, and

streaked hair cut short.

She perched on a hassock across the coffee table from me

and told me she was excited to have me in the same room with

her.

38 Richard Stevenson

“Why?” I asked.

“You’ve been everywhere. You’ve done everything. Oh, my

God!”

I knew what was coming, but I said, “I was in the army, and

I’ve always enjoyed travel.”

“Wait. Don’t tell me. Lithuania?”

“Nope. Never Lithuania.”

“No, no. Fifteenth century. The royal court.”

“I’m not aware of this.”

“No, but I am. I have the gift. That’s why Gary came to me.

It’s why you’re here, Donnie.”

“Nobody has called me Donnie for a number of years. You

must have me mixed up with someone else,” I said in a kidding

way, trying to get her off this track.

“Are you saying you are not that person anymore? You will

always be little Donnie. Always were, always will be. And many other little Donnies in time and space too.”

“You’re sounding a little too much like my mother, Sandy,”

I said, trying again for a jocularity that did not come across as too disrespectful. “Can we talk about Gary Griswold? You said

you were as worried about him as so many of his other friends

have been.” I told her that a Key West woman apparently had

seen Griswold alive at the Thai–Cambodian border two weeks

earlier, but that his noncommunicativeness and apparent

secretiveness were still a serious cause for concern.

“Gary is home where he belongs. Home is where the heart

is.”

“True enough.”

“He told me after he got back from his first trip to Thailand

that I had been right to urge him to go there, and that he had

found his spiritual and ancestral true home. Here he suffered

from dislocation. I’m not knocking Key West; don’t get me

wrong. I grew up a quarter of a mile from where we’re sitting,

and it’s fine that I’m here now, because I’ve been in Monroe

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 39

County for most of my past lives. This place has been good to

me, except for once in the thirteen forties.”

“That’s pre-Columbian,” I said.

“What? You think there were no people in Monroe County

before Columbus got here?”

“No, in fact I’m impressed. And who can argue with

firsthand experience?”

She gave me a smile that appeared genuine. “You’re a

doubter, I can see. But that’s okay. Your skepticism in no way

alters reality.”

“That’s been my experience.”

“But you’re missing out on something fantastic, Donnie.

Full self-knowledge. It’s liberating. Knowing not just who you

are but who you were enables you to see yourself in your

natural place in the cosmos. Once you grasp this, you’ll never

feel dislocated again. Or alone.”

I said, “How come people in your line of endeavor, Sandy,

tend to locate clients in a cozy royal court? Couldn’t I have been a rural Lithuanian Jew getting speared in the neck by marauding

Cossacks?”

“Of course,” she said. “That’s what happened to me in

1343, until forty-six. Not in Lithuania but here in Florida. It

wasn’t Cossacks, it was Seminoles. It accounts for a good deal

of my present back pain. But I sense strongly that you were

either royalty or were close to royalty. You have also lived many other lives, of course, some of them perhaps replete with rage

and physical agony. But rediscovering those lives would require

time and effort.”

“I’m afraid my immediate concern has to be Gary

Griswold.”

“I couldn’t agree more. It would be so, so sad if Gary’s bliss

had gone by.”

I said, “So it was you who suggested that Gary vacation in

Thailand? I was under the impression that former Key West

resident Geoff Pringle had invited him for a visit.”

40 Richard Stevenson

She adjusted her back — were the Seminoles the problem,

or the hassock? — and let loose a grin of pure satisfaction. “I

knew Geoff was over there. He, too, is a client of mine. But it

was Gary’s journey back to his young life at the nineteenth-

century court of King Mongkut that made him realize his bliss

awaited him in Siam.”

“So, Gary was royalty too?”

“Gary himself was not of the Chakra dynasty. He was the

child of a minor court official. But one of his classmates in the court school run by the incredible Anna Leonowens was the

future King Chulalongkorn, and Gary later became King

Chulalongkorn’s palace art curator. So, you see? Running an art

gallery in Key West was really nothing new for Gary.”

“You know,” I said, “most of that Anna and the King of Siam

and The King and I saga was hooey. Leonowens made nearly all of it up, and later Rodgers and Hammerstein ran with it.

Tunefully, to be sure. But I know that the Thais think it’s a

crock.”

Tessig was unruffled by this additional evidence that I was

just another doubter. She said, “Gary remembers Anna as being

a wonderful woman. If she embellished, that’s only natural.

After all, she loved a king and was loved in return by His

Majesty.”

“Thai scholars say the woman was demented. There was no

romance. And Mongkut never hopped around blurting ‘Is a

puzzlement!’”

She smiled even more serenely, impervious. “Talk to Gary.

He can tell you.”

“I’d like to. I’m flying to Thailand later this week.” I

reiterated the fears Griswold’s family in Albany and friends in

Key West had for him, not having heard from Griswold for six

months.

“Yes, Gary stopped e-mailing me too,” Tessig said. “It was

perplexing, and then I began to worry. His last few messages

had been replete with foreboding. A Thai soothsayer had given

him a bad reading, and his sign of Jupiter had entered the

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 41

seventh house. Gary was also disappointed in a man he had

been involved with named Mango. Apparently the guy had

turned out to be dishonest, and a flaming A-hole to boot.”

“Did he mention what Mango had done to upset him?”

“No, just that Mango apparently had misrepresented himself