After their Quaalude excursion, Greta ran into Sabine every couple of years, always when she least expected it—in line for an ATM in San Francisco, in the bathroom at Grand Central Terminal, at an Ethiopian restaurant in LA, walking down the street in New Orleans, and most recently, in a parking lot at Huntington Beach, where Sabine had kidnapped Greta （and Pi?on） for a second time. She’d been touring the country in a Mercedes Sprinter van, visiting her kids, and convinced Greta, who’d just quit her job, to join her for a few days. It had been Greta’s first taste of freedom in a dozen years. She’d essentially never gotten out of the van.
Om said he rarely left Hudson except to travel to India, to a specific place Greta always immediately forgot the instant she heard its name, but it was the oldest and most beautiful city on earth, a place where nothing was hidden, where literally everything was out in the open—birth, disease, death, lots and lots of garbage, etc.—and you had no choice but to observe life in its culmination. Om traveled to this city once or twice a year—to reaffirm his Om-ness, Greta assumed—but then he said, “Plus I have a guru who tugs on my nadi.”
Greta coughed. “Pardon?”
“Every winter, my nadi becomes corroded—”
“What’s your naughty?”
“My pulse,” Om said. “N-A-D-I. Nadis are channels in our bodies that provide energy to our cells, channels that become blocked—”
“May I ask what your real name is?” Greta asked. “Or is that rude?”
“You can ask me anything. My birth name is Bruce.”
“You changed your name to Om… in India.”
“Twenty years ago.”
“？‘Om’ is a little… on-the-nose,” Greta said, and smiled. “Don’t you think?”
“Look around,” Om said. “Everything in Hudson is a little on-the-nose.”
2
As a pharm tech, Greta had spent eighteen months working in the warehouse of a mail-order pharmacy, filling prescriptions by hand. Warfarin, a blood thinner, was the drug she handled most, but there were about a dozen other friable tablets, usually generic versions of popular drugs, and she often ended her shift covered in pharmaceutical dust. It wasn’t long before any kind of dust began to resemble pill dust, particularly the pale yellow dust of Norco 10s. She was convinced she could see floating particles in people’s personal breathing zones （PBZs）。 She saw pill dust on carpets, mirrors, screens, people’s sweaters. There it was again, sprinkled all over the popcorn at the movies. Long after she quit the warehouse, she continued spotting pill dust wherever she went.
Now Greta saw transcripts. The transcripts belonged to Om’s clients, and they came to her whenever she set foot in Cathedral, the most popular coffee shop in town. The place had perfect acoustics and was crawling with Om’s clients, because his office was located directly above it. Greta always heard at least one voice she recognized. She couldn’t recall the entire transcript, obviously, as they were often quite long, but if she closed her eyes and concentrated, her memory was good for several pages.
Just now, at the table where she sat waiting for Om, she recognized the drowsy voice of the man seated next to her. She didn’t know him personally, but a piece of his transcript came to her while she waited for her Americano. His initials were AAG, and he was sleeping with his sister-in-law. They met in hotel rooms in the city, but right now the man was talking to his wife, presumably, and holding her hand. Like most people in Hudson, they were better-looking than average and dressed like boutique farmers.
OM:?What’s special about Tamara? What does she have that your wife doesn’t?
AAG:?We hate all the same things.
OM:?Such as?
AAG:?Board games, truffle oil, magic realism, Harry Potter, politics, toddlers, the elderly, people who get excited about mac and cheese, scatting—
OM:?Scatting?
AAG:?That thing jazz singers do. It sounds banal, I know, but I’ve never had so much in common with anyone.
OM:?What do you do together?
AAG:?Are you familiar with the eating of the ortolan?
OM:?No.
AAG:?It’s an ancient rite of passage among French foodies. Ortolans are rare, tiny birds. The chef captures them, drowns them in Armagnac, and roasts them whole. Then the entire bird is eaten—feet first, bones included—with a linen napkin draped over the person’s head, to retain the aromas and, as the story goes, to hide from God.
OM:?This is what you do with Tamara?
AAG:?No, but that’s how I eat her pussy.
OM:?By drowning it in Armagnac?
AAG:?With a napkin over my head.
Greta inadvertently smiled at the wife, at whom she’d been staring like a creep. The wife returned her smile. Then AAG looked at Greta and smiled at her, too. Greta scowled at him and then stared at her phone, ashamed.
She was picturing herself walking down the sidewalk with a napkin over her head when she heard another familiar voice order a cappuccino. This voice was deeper and belonged to KPM, a guy in his thirties suffering from PTSD. KPM was being stalked by a lunatic who called herself a life coach, and so he often wore a disguise to Om’s office. Greta turned slightly, hoping to get a look at his face, half expecting to see Darth Vader in a turtleneck.
OM:?Is that really how your penis looks to you?
KPM:?Yeah. I think it’s a pretty common dick shape. Sometimes I imagine it whispering to me in the voice of James Earl Jones.
OM:?What does it say?
KPM:?[DEEP VOICE] “You do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power.”
OM:?Do you believe that’s true?
KPM:?I’m kidding, dingus. My dick doesn’t talk to me.
OM:?Well, if it makes you feel any better, mine looks like it’s wearing a beret!
KPM:?Does it have the voice of Gérard Depardieu?
OM:?I wish.
KPM:?Yesterday I googled “How many bottles of wine does Gérard Depardieu drink per day?” Guess what the answer was.
OM:?Three?
KPM:?Fourteen.
OM:?Why would you google such a thing?
KPM:?Because I’m dying for a drink? Because I’m being stalked? Because I’ve been forced into this hypervigilant state and it’s fucking with my prostate?
As it turned out, KPM had the most unusual forehead Greta had ever seen. It looked as though he’d recently shed antlers and they were just beginning to grow back. Somehow this only increased his attractiveness, as though his forehead were a secondary sexual trait. Additionally, he had a full beard and Willie Nelson braids. He was not wearing a turtleneck but rather a neck brace, and she wondered if it was fake, or part of a larger disguise. He was currently being flirted with by yet another client, a man in his fifties with the memorable initials of BTW. Greta had identified his voice weeks ago—not at Cathedral, but in her own living room, because BTW, whose first name was Brandon, bought weed from Sabine.
Still, three clients in one day was unusual—a sign, perhaps. BTW was himself a huge believer in signs and yet never acknowledged the obvious ones, such as the bloody bandages on his fingertips—telltale signs, in Greta’s estimation, of onychotillomania, which happened to be Greta’s favorite mania and just fun to say out loud. His condition had never been mentioned in therapy. In fact, he seemed to think he’d achieved total enlightenment. He claimed his DNA was so extraordinary that the government was interested in collecting samples and performing a study. In his sessions with Om, he often practiced breathing instead of talking, which was why his transcripts were so short and easy to remember.