Bad to the Bones(58)
Misty raised her eyebrows. “Would you believe Barbara Boxer?”
“Oh, dear,” said Adrian. He looked at Knoxie. “Is she serious?”
“Serious as a midget in a nudist colony,” said Knoxie.
“That’s okay,” declared Adrian, turning back to shelving his supplies. “We can think up something more suitable for you, something bland and harmless. Like Jenny McCartney.” He twirled back around, his face lit up with joy. “Oo! How does that sound? Jenny McCartney?”
“Already taken,” Misty said irritably, and left the room.
Knoxie didn’t blame her. Adrian’s penchant for micromanaging everything irked him a lot of the time. Changing the subject was Knoxie’s only hope. “Listen. I hope not too many people came by looking for me. I shouldn’t be gone for days like that again.”
“The usual suspects came by, our friends as well as frenemies, some morons from that scab factory across town.” Any ink studio that wasn’t theirs was always “some scab factory.” “Probably hoping to steal some of our flash ideas. Oh, and one of those fruitcakes from Merry-go-round Park came by looking for you. I imagine he was looking for poor Bellamy, so I’m glad you never told me where you’re hiding her. You know how bad I am at lying.”
Knoxie did indeed. And it already gave him a very uneasy feeling. About a month ago, Adrian had blindly outed him while having a simple conversation with one of Knoxie’s pass-arounds. Knoxie hadn’t even known he was supposed to be faithful to the first girl until Adrian blabbed about the second girl. It devolved into a drag ‘em out chick fight over in Triple Exposure rooms, with hair weaves being flung and puncture wounds inflicted with stiletto heels. Knoxie had the impression that Adrian was sort of satisfied with his handiwork.
So Knoxie was wary now. “What did you say to this fruitcake?”
Adrian turned to Knoxie, a serene, thoughtful expression on his face as he fingered a box of tattoo ink. “You know, it’s funny. When he started talking, I could see the appeal of living in a place like that. So…soothing. I felt almost mesmerized by his speech.”
“That’s how they reel you in. So what did you tell him?”
“You certainly wouldn’t have to worry about the day to day of eating or paying bills when everything’s taken care of for you. Well, he started talking about their therapy up there. How it’s all based upon which particular trauma is stunting a person. As you and I discussed about Bellamy. Her trauma is her father leaving, her mother turning into a cold, unfeeling witch.”
“Yes…” This did not bode well.
“Their approach is to take the trauma and reenact it, so the person can live it again and move through it. Makes sense from an organic gestalt point of view.”
“Yes, yes, blah blah, so what did you tell the freak?”
A bit of hesitation finally crept into Adrian’s tone. He tilted his head and crossed his arms. “Well…I believe I started saying if that was the case, then you should be thrown into a lion’s den with a bunch of perverted priests, because as a teen you were molested by—”
“Motherf*ck!” The next thing Knoxie knew, he had Adrian’s stupid shirtfront in his fist and was pounding the astronomer’s head against the cupboard. “What gives you the f*cking right to shoot your f*cking mouth off about my past?”
He’d never laid a finger on his business partner before, and Adrian was understandably terrified. His eyes bugged out like a Pixar character, and his fingers scrabbled with no effect at Knoxie’s fist. His voice came high and feminine, as though he were trying out at a singing competition. “It just came pouring out of me! I couldn’t help it, Knoxie! He had some evil, mesmerizing power over me—it was almost as though he hypnotized me into talking! He—he had a broken nose and he said he was a doctor and it all just came spilling out of me!”
Knoxie got ahold of himself. Standing upright, he rattled Adrian around a bit for good measure before tossing him into a stainless steel sink. Adrian made no effort to yank his head and torso from the sink, instead blinking sideways at Knoxie, his features skewed like a lizard that had been run over.
Knoxie raved, “You don’t f*cking understand what you did, Adrian! You think it’s all hypnotic, spiritual fun and games. But the most dangerous part of that cult is the f*cked-up doctrines they spew. The root of all their rot is the frailty of human nature. We’d rather trust others than ourselves. We need to learn to trust ourselves again!”
Adrian squeaked from the sink, “That is a very true truism, Knoxie.”
“Everyone up at Bihari is guilty! They all see that twisted swami driving by every day in his luxury Hummer. Why would a man who lives in peace with the land and the spirits need a f*cking Hummer? How do they justify that to themselves?”
Adrian unfolded himself carefully. “They all must be brainwashed, like that guy brainwashed me.”
“They’re mostly all people with good intentions looking for spiritual redemption. But some of them care more about power than spirituality, and that’s where the problem lies.”
Adrian cracked his neck. “Well, if that’s what you are doing with The Bare Bones, bringing that fake spiritual organization down, then I’m all for it. It was very scary being hypnotized like that. It was like he pumped me full of sodium pentothal or something, some truth serum. Suddenly I was spilling deep, dark secrets that should be left buried.”