Morning in Tara's Teahouse: Chapter 1

Tara's Teahouse
Chapter 1

At the moment of highest tension, one always invests events with such gravity, but in retrospect they become pictures of blissful ignorance. I did not know then what I know now; I was still unclothed and innocent in the garden of rational thought. I still assumed, as I do even now, that life follows certain patterns, preordained by the universe, and that two and two would always equal four, regardless of geography or weather. Yet now I question even that basic axiom – because I have learned Who ordains patterns and logic, and have accepted, reluctantly, the following imperative: that Those who create are not Themselves subject to the creation. They must exist outside of logic and reason, and if Their hands move unbound over the tapestry of time, weaving its folds, then their hands must be free of axiomatic shackles.

Even now, I can recall vividly the images of heaven and hell that had played before my eyes. I can still smell the crisp autumn scent of the Terathaka leaves caught in a late September breeze, and her eyes, like twin pools of honey, watching me dive into the pool of molten gold. Against my cheek, I can feel the soft brush of her kimono, and smell the wild twinge of citrus that trailed in her wake. I remember too the sound of helicopter blades, and a sea of fire, as Fenris consumed the last light of Their manmade sun.

Ragnarok.

The day the gods died.

In the blissful ignorance of Reverend Law’s wood-paneled  office, I had no awareness of Them or Their Teahouse, but now I must ask myself whether They were aware of me – and if so, whether They were guiding me, by unseen hands, to my ruin. I recall all too well the day that Shiva began his tango with my life.          

Reverend Law resembled chicken bones, I thought, after they’d been picked clean of meat. His arms hung down from his thin shoulders and protruded over the desk at a sharp angle, joined together by limp elbows that hung like wings at his side. His balding head was marked by a spray of sweat that stood out like tiny gems encrusted in his pale skull, the eyes of which a skilled taxidermist had already replaced with glass – or so I imagined. His spectacles caught the fluorescent light from the ceiling and threw it back into my eyes if I studied his grey pupils too long.

“Young man, I think you need to reconsider your calling.”

The words hung like a bubble of lead in the air and then fell on me, striking first the back of my head and  then running through my arms, spine, and legs – filling my body with liquid lead until even my eyes became immobile weights in my head. I reached up, adjusted my clerical collar, half-expecting a cloud of steam to burst in my face, as if I had opened a dishwasher during it's "dry" cycle.

I had expected these words for some time now, but to hear the judgment finally read from that wooden throne on the other side of the desk…

“What has transpired here is absolutely unacceptable.” The Reverend continued, in a calm, fatherly voice – that masked, I suspected, his deeper frustrations. I knew as well as he did whose shoulders the debacle would really fall on. “Discernment” was a fad word back then – invented, I believe, to jerk back the pendulum that the emergents had sent flying towards feel good emotionalism – and it would soon be evident to the whole congregation that Rev. Law had none. It was he, afterall, who had championed my entry into the ministry. Why hadn’t the Spirit seized him then, they’d wonder, and given him good “discernment?” I could heard Mrs. Franklin already: “I’ve got to wonder – and don’t misunderstand me – whether dear Brother Karl (that was what she called him; “Reverend,” she said, was for the Catholics) hasn’t quenched the Spirit completely.”

I leaned back in my chair – or tried to. Those wooden antiques weren’t designed for leaning back, and I felt the back of my head – already heavy with the Reverend’s leaden words – clunk uneasily against the chair’s elegant woodwork. I studied the ceiling, half expecting a pendulum to drop.

“And this girl; did you even bother to ask whose daughter she is?”

Of course, I knew all too well whose daughter she was. She was the pendulum that had been strung up over my head these last five months, just waiting for the opportune time to fall. Or perhaps she had already fallen, long before I met her, and I had grabbed the chain too late, only to be jerked down under her momentum.

I had been dimly aware of her for the past year. When I was called up the hill to St. Matthew’s, she hadn’t bothered to introduce herself and did everything she could to evidence her lack of interest in the church’s new vicar. We had passed once or twice in the halls and exchanged the blessed salutation of “good morning,” and I regarded her with an almost instinctive dislike. I was never quite sure how old she was; she wore little makeup, and kept her hair up in some shape resembling a messy bun on Sunday mornings. Although she had a group of friends – mostly girls her own age – she generally regarded the church with the same attitude with which she regarded me – a bland indifference and lack of concern for all that was taking place around her in that sacred corner of town.

Yet, that wasn’t entirely true, either. She would turn up at St. Matthew’s at the oddest times, padding barefoot through the halls and stopping to peer into offices, chapels, sacristies and narthexes. She would smile, wave, and continue past me, moving with catlike silence down the hall and vanishing around a corner. 

We had only one significant conversation in those first five months. Bored one evening, I had decided to wittle a few hours away at the office, and admitted myself to the church building with the key I carried in my pocket. I had just flipped on the fluorescent lights in the hallway when I heard a scurrying in my office.

“Rats.” I mumbled. “Another transient looking for beer money.”

Turning the corner and peering cautiously through the door, I saw her, seated in my chair with her hands still on my keyboard – as if caught midsentence in the middle of composing an important letter. She looked up, flashed me a nervous smile.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. It dawned on me then that I still didn’t know her name.

“Facebook.” She murmured.

“In my office?”

She shrugged, her narrow shoulders stretching the fabric of her black T-shirt.

“Where else?”

“You could try the library. They’ve got internet access, you know.” I said, a bit indignant. She remained seated, and I moved around behind her, tapping her softly on the shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt.” I said. “But I have work to do.”

My eyes darted to the screen. Text messaging.

“I’m in his office – lol. Damn, he caught me. I gotta go.”

Again, I wondered how old she was; my working theory had her pegged at seventeen.

“Ok.” A message flashed in reply. “Catch ya later, Tressa!”

So that was her name.

“Yeah. Catch ya later, Tressa.” I grumbled, spinning the chair around and facing her towards the door. She got up reluctantly, stretched (she must have been sitting in here for hours), found her shoes under the desk, and left with a quick half-wave. I sat there for a moment, wondering how she had gotten in without a key.

I punched up the browser history. Nothing obscene. Good. Tapping the “back” arrow on the toolbar, I navigated back to her chat window – which had been left open.

“Tressa, let me know if there’s any way I can help. I hope things aren’t too bad for you. Hang in there.”

“Hang in there?”

I started for a moment, imaging her to be the poor victim of some unseen abuse, but I checked myself. No doubt she had fallen out with her boyfriend, or had gotten caught throwing back a can of beer at a friend’s party.

“Idiot.” I muttered. As soon as the word left my lips I wondered why I had said it. It wasn’t that it was the wrong thing to say – she was a first-class idiot – but it was the way it had sloughed off my tongue. It sounded as if I had really meant to say “what did you do this time?” Almost pitying. I reassured myself that the only reason I cared – assuming I did at all – about that little idiot with the ripped bluejeans and the messy hair was because I was being paid to do so. I was disgusted, and immediately set to work on a five-page analysis of the local campus drug scene, thinking all the while how she must be a part of it – if she was even old enough to be on campus.

The next Sunday, Tressa wasn’t in church, but I caught sight of her the following week, doing her silent patrol around the church corridors. She kept her head down and didn’t look at me.

“How’s the internet café?” I asked, but she ignored me and kept walking, pausing at the end of the hall to peruse a wrack of religious tracts.

Tressa faded from my consciousness after that, and I saw her only briefly during the summer months. The week before Reverend Law left on his weekly vacation, I had been asked to stand by the exit door with him after the weekly service and shake hands with our congregants as they filed out. He had given me glowing reviews that week, all but noting that I was the very incarnation of the church’s future, and had made the announcement that I would be filling in for him during his absence the following week.

At the door, I was greeted with the expected “congratulations!” and “we’re looking forward to seeing you in action, boy!” That is, until Tressa filed past. Stuck between Reverend Law on one side and myself on the other, she was forced to extend her hand to me. A firm, confident handshake. I was surprised.

She smiled, revealing even rows of white teeth that reminded me a bit of a shark’s maw. She looked as if she were biting something off – my head, perhaps – and her eyes betrayed a keenly sardonic intent.

“I won’t be in church this week, Reverend.” She said, biting off each word with that shark-like smile.

“That’s too bad.” I said.

“I’m sure.” She bit the words off and left, and I knew at once that she regarded me with the same contempt with which I had regarded her. I felt a bit satisfied; at least my contempt now rested on a reasonable foundation.