Dinner with Buddha by Roland Merullo Page A

we were greeted by the clanging bells and neon of a bank of slot machines. Here was the check-in desk, and there, a few paces beyond it, a circus of noise, light, and dreams of easy money.
    â€œWery good place, Otto!” Rinpoche said as we stood at the desk, signing in. I felt a splash of guilt. It was one thing to show him America, something else entirely to corrupt him with its vices.
    Celia was smirking, Shelsa leaning into the protection of her mother’s hip. I was recalling a moment from the first road trip Rinpoche and I had made, eight years earlier, New Jersey to North Dakota. Somewhere in Minnesota, on Indian land not far from the headwaters of the Mississippi, thinking I’d show my traveling companion another intriguing facet of Americana, I’d taken him into a casino. It was a sad place, really, just sixty or so chrome-and-glass machines with a dozen old folks spinning the reels in desultory hypnosis. Rinpoche had had the bad fortune of winning on his first spin and was instantly hooked. The clank of coins in the tray, the celebratory bells and sirens—
Free money, Otto!
He kept playing, kept winning, kept ignoring my pleas to quit while he was ahead. I’d ended up having to physically remove him from the premises, and I never knew for certain if it had all been an act, or if the allure of money-for-nothing was too much even for a great spiritual master like him.
    â€œCan we play?” he asked excitedly in the Silverado lobby.
    â€œI tell you what. Come with me to park the car. Seese and Shels can follow the bellman up to the room and settle in, and you and I can gamble away a few bucks before dinner. Good?”
    â€œGood, good,” he said, clapping me on the back forcefully enough to make the cowboy hat tilt sideways on his head. He touched my sister’s hand—so tenderly—planted the Stetson on Shelsa, and out we went to bring the SUV around back.
    In the hotel lot I told him what Natasha had told me—the Chinese guy, the car, the gun.
    â€œWhat means?” he asked.
    â€œI thought
you
would tell
me.
”
    â€œI ask what means this
tented
?”
    â€œTinted. Darkened. Windows made so you can’t see through them.”
    â€œFor why?”
    â€œSo you can’t tell who’s inside. It’s a style favored by criminals, the ultra rich, hip-hop artists, and politicians.”
    â€œOh,” he said.
    â€œ
Oh,
is right. Somebody’s looking for you.”
    â€œLot a people looking for Rinpoche.”
    â€œSomebody with tinted windows and a gun is looking for you. Or maybe for Shelsa. Somebody Chinese, it seems.”
    He turned his eyes forward, away from me, spent a moment pondering, then nodded.
    I’d been worried he’d laugh at me, but now that he wasn’t laughing, the worry bubble swelled in another direction. “Did you have some trouble at the Center?”
    â€œLittle bit trouble.”
    â€œWhat kind?”
    He shrugged. “Few bad phone calls. Some people they painted words on the last retreat cabin one time.”
    â€œThe one I stayed in?”
    Another nod.
    â€œWhat kind of words?”
    â€œ KILL THE MUSLIMS. ”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œSmall people in their minds,” he said. “Maybe the drug people.”
    Or maybe, I thought, one of the Aryan Nations nutcases who wanted to start a “community” in the town of Leith, North Dakota. I’d heard the main man interviewed on the radio. All I could remember—this was more than enough—was his comment about wanting to raise a flag with “a discreet swastika” on it. If there is a more perfect oxymoron I’d like to hear it.
    Rinpoche clapped a hand down on my thigh. “Maybe,” he said, “not to worry too much, okay?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œChinese, maybe a little bit trouble, but not to worry too much.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, but the conversation had already watered my