Karma by Susan Dunlap

body-awareness types, you got used to seeing this pose a foot in front of you.
    Kleinfeld pulled back on first one thigh, then the other, making adjustments and, doubtless, using the time to plot out his answer.
    “I was with a friend, a woman friend. Before you ask who, I’ll tell you I can’t answer that. She’s married.”
    “Mr. Kleinfeld, this isn’t the nineteenth century.”
    He sat up straighter, eyes pointed over my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
    “All right, for now. Tell me about your problems with Padmasvana. I understand you were forcibly evicted from the ashram.”
    He bent his torso forward, planting his forearms on the floor in front of him. “I’ll tell you about Padmasvana and Rex Braga and the crew. Yeah, I got tossed out of there, and I’d go back and risk the same thing ten times if I thought it would help. The whole bunch is a pain in the ass. Look out the door. Now, go ahead, now.”
    I got up and went to the door as two students slipped into their sandals and exited. In the middle of the path was a Penlop. There was no way for the students to avoid him. They accepted literature, nodded and escaped when the boy’s attention was attracted by a third student coming toward them. This woman wasn’t so fortunate. I watched for several minutes before she was able to extricate herself.
    To Kleinfeld, I said, “Why didn’t you contact the police if it’s that much of a problem?”
    “I would have looked bad.”
    “As if you were afraid of Padmasvana’s appeal?” He gave me a grudging nod.
    “So you went to the ashram?”
    “Yeah, I went there…”
    “When?”
    He slid his legs under him, knelt and planted the top of his head on the floor, rounding his back forward till it formed a nearly perfect arc.
    I repeated, “When?”
    “Sometime last year.” His voice was muffled.
    “What time?”
    “About this time. About a year ago.”
    “Around the time when the boy died there?”
    He was silent.
    “Mr. Kleinfeld, sit up and answer my questions.”
    He unrolled slowly, and when his face became visible, it was clear he had had time to decide on an answer.
    “Yes. It was shortly after that.”
    Now I hesitated, then decided to go with my feeling. “You knew the boy who died, didn’t you?”
    Kleinfeld paused, then nodded. “Yes, dammit. I knew Bobby Felcher.” The lines around his mouth pulled down hard in anger. “Yes, Bobby’d come here for the body class. He’d taken it on and off. He was on something—not heroin, probably reds. He was too hooked on whatever it was to get much out of body work. You need a steady base and good concentration. But maybe if he’d kept at it he could have shaken the habit; I don’t know. I don’t even know what possessed him to come here in the first place.”
    “What did happen to him?”
    “He got caught by one of those goddamn Penlops. The next thing I knew, he wasn’t coming here anymore; he was over there, living in their goddamn ashram. And then he was dead.”
    “The report says he brought the stuff in himself.”
    Kleinfeld’s fists hit the floor. “So what does that prove? What kind of a place is that? A kid OD’s and no one notices?”
    “And then you went to the ashram?”
    “Not right away. I was outraged, but there was nothing to do. No, I went there when they co-opted my next student. I went over there and found the kid, told him he was abandoning his potential, he was becoming … a tool. That’s when they threw me out.”
    “And the student?”
    “He stayed. His ‘self’ is a mere shadow now. I’ve seen him.” Kleinfeld’s face was red, and nothing so well described his tone of resentment as “sour grapes.”
    “I thought,” I said, trying to disguise my tone of irony, “body work brought some sort of balance—that you wouldn’t be so disturbed by life?”
    I watched as he struggled to put together an answer. “It does,” he said at last, meeting my gaze with difficulty. “For me, this is calm. Before I