"Okay," Andrea asked, "what do you say note?"
"Uncle," Sean answered. "I give. There's something going on with that guy. I mean, I can't deny that the old Quotillion last night was the mind fuck of a lifetime. I've never seen anything-I've never heard of anything-like what he did with Joanna. And she says she felt as if she was conscious all the time, having the most fantastic fuck of her life, but she wasn't aware that her cervix went through all the biological changes implied by giving birth. I've got to admit that someone's got his pinky playing around in the laws of nature like they were a bowl of spaghetti."
Joanna and John came in. Joanna was still a little spacey from the experience of the night before but she didn't hurt a bit and she felt great. "Guess what we heard," she offered.
"Nixon had the CIA take films of the InterFuck Quotillion for his private war against his own obscenity."
"No. The Guru's gone into solitary meditation. Indefinitely. That oriential chick-what's her name, Mei Ling?-says that the experience last night has sent him into a state of Oneness with the Cosmos. I guess that means he's got one hell of a hangover."
They all laughed.
But four days later they weren't laughing any more.
As the True Enlightenment sailed irregularly southward and entered the Caribbean bound for Martinique, the Guru Baalow Nee was neither seen nor heard. His sudden and inexplicable absence had an affect on the moral of the ship as devastating as his presence had been exhilarating.
It was sad but true: the Guru was essential to anyone's having a good time. As one young architect from Florida put it, "He's the only one ridiculous enough to set a proper example." And what was more, people hadn't paid their money to get on a ship and potter about in warm climates. They'd come because of the Guru. They liked what they'd seen and they wanted more. They were entitled to it. They had bought it! "Meditation-Schmeditation," they were fond of pronouncing. "He ought to get his ass out here."
Women started wearing blouses again-mostly, of course, to protect themselves from sunburn-and one or two passengers began to worry that word of the doings on the ship would filter back to hometown acquaintances. Could it be that nobody really ever got anything for nothing?
On Wednesday evening, a week and a day after the Guru had plucked Andrea out of Folk City, there was a fight in the audience during one of her sets. The Guru's bodyguards put a quick and gentle end to it, but it somehow seemed that the atmosphere of felicity and trust that had once been the life's breath of the cruise was definitely-perhaps irrevocably-polluted.
After the performance Andrea and Sean sat around rapping with Joanna, John, Joe, Mindy, and Josh. Things had reached such a tow point that everyone was wearing clothes. Andrea didn't feel she'd sung well, Sean was worried about the fact that he hadn't done any work since the beginning of the cruise and was behind schedule on his deadlines, Joanna was wondering whether there'd really be a job waiting for her when she got back to the City… everyone had his own personal problems. But the question was-why were they worrying about them now? And the answer was, because the Guru had to all intents and purposes vanished. And then the question was-what the hell had happened to him?
"Maybe he really is nuts," Sean offered. Tin sure the guy's some sort of genius, but maybe he goes on the fritz now and then."
"Maybe he died," Josh suggested. "And the others don't want us to know about it"
"Ha. I think he's conducting some land of psychological experiment," John guessed. "Makes sense. He wants to see how we do on our own."
"The answer is… not very good," Andrea observed.
There was a knock on the door. Andrea answered and Mei Ling, with a rather serious expression on her face, beckoned her out into the hall. "The Guru would like to see you. You and your friend-the writer. Sean is his name?"
"Yes. The Guru wants to see us?"
"That's right." Mei Ling peered in at the group in the living room of the suite. "Don't tell the others anything but that you don't know how long you'll be." She whispered almost inaudibly; "You are to take a vital part in one of the Guru's most sacred rituals. No outsider has ever been admitted to these rituals before. Once they are performed the Guru will appear again in public and all will be as before. Come quickly." She walked down the hall and waited.
"Hey Sean," Andrea said casually, "we've got a date." She leaned down and confronted him eye-to-eye. "The Guru wants to see us."
The group came alive with curiosity. "What for?" "What's going on?" "Where is he?" "What's he doing?"
Andrea smirked characteristically. "All I'm allowed to say is that we don't know when well be back." She held out her arm and Sean took it ceremoniously. "So don't wait up for us… " They swept out into the hall and followed Mei Ling up toward the Guru's cabin just aft of the bridge.
When they got there two of the wrestler-types were guarding the door. They nodded to Mei Ling and she opened it with a key and ushered Sean and Andrea in.
The cabin was one single room thirty feet wide by seventy long. It was crowded with potted trees and fountains and streams that ran between mossy artificial banks. Wild birds-parrots and peacocks and hummingbirds-squalked and strutted and flitted about. The entire wall of the cabin that faced the sea was glass-one-way glass, Sean could tell, and recessed. He wondered what it looked like from outside.
Mei Ling led them down toward the far end of the indoor jungle where there was a light burning. They heard the low mumble of voices and the tinny sound of what could only be a cheap portable radio. It was playing oldies from the fifties. 'Teen Angel' was on.
The Guru was sitting at a card table with the black woman. He was flipping cards up casually, one at a time, smoking a Lucky Strike and talking to her like a Brooklyn dockworker. "Whatcha say, honey-pot? Wanna get laid? Huh? I got me a six-pack in my convertible. I got me a packa Trojans. Whatsa matter, ya scared or somethin? Scared a yer mommy?" He wore a greasy T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans held up by a thick belt with a heavy buckle-the land small-time hoods had once been fond of whipping off when the word "rumble" was heard. The remainder of his pack of Luckies was rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt.
"Hey, baby, howya doin?" he asked, jumping to his feet and clapping Andrea on the shoulder as they arrived. He squeezed her ass. "Nice trailer ya got there." He nodded to Sean. "Ready ta have some fun, man?" Sean nodded diffidently, unable to figure out what this newest impersonation meant.
"Okay," the Guru announced. "This here's Sissy." He pointed to the black chick, who was about thirty, very classy-looking, with a sharp-featured face, quick eyes, a bushy Afro, and a five-five figure that looked like it had been poured into a mold. She was wearing a fifties-style dress with sequins.
The Guru picked a couple cans of Rheingold beer from a six-pack that sat on the floor beside him and shoved them across the table to Sean and Andrea as they took their places. Mei Ling disappeared briefly and returned in a pair of shocking green short-shorts and a skimpy blue halter. Andrea didn't know what to think, but the magnetism of the Guru's presence was strong on her and she waited expectantly for the promised ritual to begin.
"So howya enjoyin the cruise?" the Guru wanted to know.
Andrea frowned thoughtfully. "It was great… before you disappeared. Now it's not so great."
"Oh yeah. That. Well, a guy can only do so much, ya know. I'm gonna reappear soon. Doncha worry about that. I'll get the shit under control. In fact, that's why youse guys are here." He looked at Andrea evaluatively. "I needed some sexy chick to bang to get me outa this crappy mood I got inta. Fuckin No Touch Shot always puts me in a bummer for a coupla days. That's why I don't pull that stunt much. Anyhow, in my humble opinion you're the sexiest thing on this tub." He got up abruptly. "And you're hip, too. Get what I mean?" He winked at her.
She wasn't sure she got what he meant but she knew she was going to get laid and that excited the hell out of her.
"So," he said, "we may as well get started." He waved at Mei Ling and Sissy and addressed Sean. "Some mighty fine ass here, pal, and I ain't been able to do much for it in the past coupla days, so help yerself. We're gonna use the couch here." He pointed to an old, dingy-looking gray couch with stains and cigarette burns that sat nearby. It hardly fitted with the opulent decor of the rest of the cabin-and the ship. "Wouldya believe, this is the original couch from my mother's place in Brooklyn? She caught my eighth-grade girlfriend blowin me on that couch." Sean and Andrea laughed and the Guru grinned. "Come on, sweetie," he said, pulling Andrea up by the arm and leading her to the couch. "How about we start with a nice blow-job, just like the one my momma caught Ruthie Goldfarb giving me?"
"I'll do my best," Andrea replied.
The Guru pulled a pack of Doublemint out of his pocket, popped two sticks, and chewed noisily as Andrea drew down his jeans. She laughed when she saw he was wearing plain white Jockey shorts underneath.
"And make it good," he ordered in a tough-guy voice.
Andrea fingered his limp cock, checked out his rather tight ball-sack, and, from a kneeling position on the floor in front of him, went to work. She took the whole thing in her mouth and swirled it around, tugged at it gently with her lips, licked it up and down. Baalow Nee sat smiling down at her with something akin to smug satisfaction.
When, after a few minutes of hard work, Andrea had got absolutely nowhere, he seemed a little frustrated. He grabbed her head between his hands and held it steady and started fucking her mouth. "Hey, baby, way to take it in there!" he cried as he started to get hard and his rod jabbed down her throat. It was a little uncomfortable but it was also exciting.
The wooden cock-statue from Africa came to mind.
Out of the corner of her eye Andrea caught portion of the wide panorama of seascape through the glass wall. The moon was up and the clear Caribbean water sloshed and foamed under a moderate wind. It looked like water in a bathtub.
Mei Ling and Sissy were playing around with Sean-obviously putting on a show they knew the Guru would like. "Hey there, big boy," Sissy began, "want a piece of this?" She pulled up her dress and yanked down her panties and rubbed her pussy. Sean licked it as she stood in front of him and Mei Ling wiggled the rear end of her hot-pants against his extended hand. Sean vaguely wondered when the ritual she had spoken of would begin-or if it had already begun.
"Okay," the Guru said when Andrea's got his rod pretty much erect, "take off yer clothes. I'm gonna bang the living shit outa ya." If anyone had talked like that to her seriously she would have been pissed, to say the least. The Guru was putting on a good act but he always did. "Just he down there on yer back for starters." He pointed to the couch.
Andrea stripped off her clothes. The Guru stood by fingering his erection and staring at her like a sex-starved eighteen-year-old. "Whata life," he said with mixed sarcasm and pride. "A whole goddamned boat-loada pussy, and I get ta take my choice. Any fuckin chick on the whole tub'll come runnin up here an' split her snatch wide open fer me at the drop of a hat" He tossed a remark in Sean's direction: "Not bad, eh? How're ya doin with my private stock?"
Sean took his tongue out of Sissy's box. "Nice." It was strange. This event was so low-key, so studiously pedestrian, compared to virtually everything that had happened since that first date with Andrea. He wondered when things were going to change.
Mei Ling pulled her hot-pants off and she and Sissy got into double-eating formation on the floor-Sissy lying on her back with her legs spread and her knees bent, Mei Ling on top of her face to face with her legs even wider. Sean took off his clothes and straddled them both with his crotch above their heads and his face between their legs. As soon as he started to run his tongue from one cunt to the other, into the black one and then info the white one, things started to change.
"Okay, time for the ritual to begin!" the Guru squealed. He nodded confidentially at Andrea. "So far we've just been rehearsin; gettin warmed up so to speak. It may take you a while to figure out what kinda ritual this is, but it don't matter if ya ever do, really. Ya can just concentrate on gettin' fucked. Now-open wide." She did and he grabbed her cuntlips and yanked them apart.
"Whata beautiful puss!" the Guru exulted. He split her ass cheeks and fingered her asshole. "Wow! First quality!" He dipped his finger into a jar of KY by the side of the couch and smeared her cunt and ass with it. He slipped a finger up her asshole. "Nice and loose. You musta been takin it up the ass a lot"
"Pretty frequently."
That seemed to turn him on. "Ya been fuckin a lot too?" He took the finger out of her asshole and rubbed his cock up and down her slit.
"Yeah," she breathed.
"Terrific. I like a chick who digs cock and ain't afraid ta admit it." He waved his rod at her and glanced at the others. "Man, look at those three. Ain't that gorgeous?" He jiggled the tip of his rod against her clit as they watched Sean. He was now on his back with Sissy astride his cock and Mei Ling on his face. "I gotta say, I give good parties." The Guru reached out, grabbed a Rheingold can, drained it-spilling foam on his beard-and then crunched it one-handed and flung it into an artificial pool nearby, frightening half a dozen carp.
He slammed his rod into her. "Whooopee, Momma, look at me now! How da ya like this one? Beautiful face, far-out body, high-class and gettin it on like a wild woman on the end of my peter! Sonofa bitch, I showed 'em all! Because they are dog-shit and I am the guru!" He pumped and humped like crazy.
Andrea didn't pay attention to what he was saying-it never made any sense to her anyhow-but how he was saying it had an electrifying effect on her. His voice surged on in a high, flat stacatto patter that rained words off her like machine-gun bullets and communicated his ever-growing excitement to her. And inside her his cock was like a thing alive; like the snake it had seemed to be during the demonstration of the No Touch Shot.
"Cousin Ralphie! You fuckin bastard! Used ta kid me about bein ugly, never havin no dates! Usta think ya were so fuckin sooooperior! Now where areya? Sellin TVs in Flatbushj supportin four lads and a wife who's so fat she squashes a new chair to kindling every three months! Whaddya got for money, Ralphie? Where's yer three million in a Swiss bank? Where's yer yacht? Where's yer limousine? Where's yer champagne an caviar? And ya thought I was the dumb motherfucker in the family!"
The words fell on Andrea's ears like rapid-fire raindrops. She was fucking at an incredible rate. All she heard were intoxicating sound patterns, like a hardsell commercial on TV coming over fuzzily at a distance.
The Guru yanked his cock out of her cunt, shoved her legs back up over her head the way you would to change a baby's diaper, and plunged it into her asshole. She wasn't quite ready and for a second she felt like she was taking a huge and uncomfortable shit but she adjusted-helping herself by reaching down with both hands and pressing two fingers hard onto her clit.
"And how about this one, friend Harry? Good old friend Harry, who always got all the chicks and flaunted them in my face? You used to rub their titties when you knew I was looking just to make me jealous! And where are you now? In the fucking Marine Corps! Ya still call me a faggot, dumbbuns? Let's see you go up ta any chick on the street and say, Pardon me, but I'd like ta fuck you up yer pretty little asshole, and get away with it! Look at this, Harry? Don't it make yer Manly Prick green with envy?"
He rolled Andrea over and fucked her ass from behind.
He slipped his cock out of her ass and into her cunt, back and forth, back and forth. She came twice.
Sean was fucking Sissy and watching her eat Mei Ling's pussy. The Guru's words might have been Chinese for all he knew but the din made him feel as if he were fucking in the middle of a battle field. He could smell gunpowder. The smoke was stinging his eyes. The bullets were whizzing around him and death was clutching after him but he was just fucking away laughing at it all.
"Whoooaaaaa!" the Guru screeched, "Its on the way! Its comin from a long way off, but its on the way… " He jumped to his feet and hauled Andrea up and draped her over the back of the couch, banging away at her like there was no tomorrow.
"And all you ignorant creeps put together! You stupid fuckers whining to each other about Enlightenment! Maharanji's the only who who's got the tiniest piece of the truth, and that dumb sonofa bitch doesn't even eat! He knows where I'm at but I've got one up on him because I know where he isn't at, which is inside a pussy with his goddamned cock right now! His peter's probably shriveled up like a fucking prune! Find 'em, feel 'em, fuck 'em and forget 'em! That's my motto! A pussy in every pot! Wheel and deal! A fool and his bunny are soon farted! This one today, that one tomorrow, fake 'em out of their pants, you steal and they borrow!" He flipped Andrea over onto the couch again and dove onto her. His cock found its way into her from the sacred height of three feet with the accuracy of a plumb bob.
"Riches in your britches, space in your head, the only Good God is the one that's Dead! Pants in your aunts and shenanigans-Phooey! My whole act is a lot of Hooey! Yipes! It's getting nearer! Hear that baby? No need to fear 'er!" His loins were pounding away like a jackhammer. His magical rap was carrying everything with him. "Fuck, you fishes in the pond! Fuck, you birdies on the wing! Fuck, you doggies in the pound! Fucking fucks up everything!"
His voice fell to a desperate whispering.
"This is stark raving, this is my craving, to choose and to use and never to lose, to have money that's funny and blabber my lines in a pitcher of honey that charges no fines, to cream 'em and ream 'em and blow 'em away like rain that'll come back on some other day-come back, come back, 'cause they can't stay away-they just gotta do it, they'll never resist, cause I've got the power and I've got the gist and there's nobody home upstairs to be pissed, so the end of the story, the end of the song, is you're all getting fucked by a ding-a-ling's dong!"
Andrea was dizzily cloud-falling in a rainbow-burst of furious storm-wind when the Guru's atomic missile-shot blasted her clear into the eye of the hurricane. Psilocybin mushroom-clouds blossomed in her bosom and tiny tinkling grade-school triangles winked funny noises out of her womb. Holy Hikers tramped the wilderness of Vagina Park carrying garbled messages to the Queen of the Quintessence and scribes scribbled scrumptiously to get them all wrong. Someone delivered a pizza to her shower-head at four-thirty in the morning but the Drano didn't like garlic. There was sumpthing to be done and the pump went to work. Frizzle-frazzle, frizzle-frazzle, clink-clank, think-thank, thunk.
When the humid haze of orgasmic euphoria cleared, every word the Guru had spoken stood wiggling before her flaunting its unmistakable meaning in her heretofore unpresented face. He was a phony and a cynic and as he himself had admitted, Maharanji had been right: the True Enlightenment of this cruise was the tangible enlightenment of the passengers' pocket books.
She was pissed. She was indignant. She was embarrassed because she'd been caught with her pants down, and embarrassed for everybody else who'd been caught the same way.
Baalow Nee was gazing out over the ocean dribbling Rheingold onto his toes when she came to. Sean was lying on the floor in a swamp of semen and cunt-juice. "Perfect," the Guru was saying. "Just what I needed. Never had such a good one. Ho-ho-ho, I'm all set to go back out there and dish up another steaming plate of bullshit to those brainless boobies."
Andrea leapt to her feet. "Oh no you don't. I've figured out what kind of ritual that was. It was the kind you can only have in private-it was a truth ritual!"
The Guru turned with an expression of mild surprise at her accusatory tone. "Of course. Look, do you think silly little Johnny Popper-which is actually my real name-can put on this mystical masquerade perpetually without blowing off some steam? For shit-sake, I'm only human. I think."
"I think you're fucking sub-human. Three million dollars in a Swiss bank account-yachts and limousines and champagne and caviar-and all those people believing that you've got answers to questions that are important to them…"
"Look, Andrea," the Guru said, "calm down. Have a beer." He motioned to Sissy who this time brought a tray of Heinekens and poured the bottles out into crystal glasses. "Why do you think I chose you to do this whole ditty with? Because I need more assistants. Because I'm offering to cut you in. You and your friend here. $50,000 a year to start. What do you say?"
"Baloney!" she screamed. "You're full of baloney!"
Sean did a double-take and the Guru looked like he'd been hit in the head with a rock.
"Baloney! That's what I said! Baalow nee is baloney!"
The Guru shook his head sadly.
Andrea grabbed a beer glass and knocked back a big gulp for emphasis.
Sean sipped slowly. "So that's the secret of your name," he mused.
"Of course. I should've thought it would be obvious to anyone, but to my knowledge you're the first one in the world to figure it out." He drew himself up with some dignity. "Of course I'm full of baloney. But I am also without question the greatest, most profound, and most charismatic religious leader in the world today. If I'm full of baloney, so are all the others. And as I promised, now that you've gained the ability to pronounce my name correctly, you have gained true enlightenment. You've got it in a plain brown delicatessen wrapper. Unfortunately, there is no room aboard the True Enlightenment for those who have already gained true enlightenment… "
"Why you seamy son of a bitch… "
But instead of completing her sentence Andrea fell promptly and deeply asleep, and before Sean could figure out why she'd slumped gracefully to the floor and closed her eyes, he did too.