Imbalance
A short story by Tanya Žilinskas
There was the feeling of something, stubbornly anchored. The bathroom was still humid from Mira’s shower, and in the fogged glass of the mirror Adam saw a pink halo encircling his left eye. He dragged down his eyelid with a finger and spotted it: the familiar white dot. Adam had been prone to styes when he was younger, but hadn’t had one in over twenty years. He wiped the glass and leaned closer to examine it.
He blamed Mira. Not in the undefinable way he held her accountable for their general unhappiness, but specifically for this stye. The night before, in bed, she unexpectedly pulled herself onto his chest and probed at his eye with her tongue. There was no explanation for it — it was something she had never done before. They hadn’t had sex in over a year, but even before then their sex life was best described as unimaginative.
She had licked his eyeball, exploratively, running her tongue along his lashline, and he rolled toward her. Their bodies no longer had the firmness of youth, and they struggled to gain purchase on each other’s shifting surfaces. The novelty and arousal dissipated almost as quickly as it had been brought forth. The encounter had been as unbelievable as a dream, and he woke with an erection. But also, a stye.
Mira, Willy, and Emma were in the kitchen, and Mira frowned when he entered. There was an underlying significance to her look, but Adam did not want to ask her anything in front of the children.
Willy said, “What are you going to make us for breakfast, Dad?” Adam understood Mira’s look had nothing to do with licking, or styes, but the perceived lack of household equity. It was a sticking point with Mira that they share household duties 50-50, even though she had been unemployed since last year, when they moved out of the city and into the suburbs. Something had shifted in their relationship when her company shuttered and he re-joined Barney & Davis, the accounting firm he had worked at before the children were born. Adam was sure Mira would find it pointless to discuss what was going on between them; she was intolerant of what she called navel-gazing culture. Her brutal decisiveness had attracted Adam to her twenty years before; it left no space for questions or doubt.
Adam poured cornflakes and milk into bowls for the children. He didn’t look at Mira as he did so; he knew she would find his efforts lacking. Mira had the same dark eyes as his father and often the same expression: impassive yet voracious, like a shark. By the time he finished his coffee it was 7:55; this business with the cereal put him five minutes later than his normal departure time. The children called out their good-byes as he pulled his bike off its hooks in the garage, but Mira did not look back at him. The incident in the night must have been only a dream, and the stye just an old problem, returned.
The day was mild, but Adam’s eye teared as he pedaled the path that bisected the marshlands and led to the Miwok Valley ferry. He was the last person on the boat, and the ferry worker at the gate muttered something unfriendly as he squeezed past. There were no other bicycles when Adam rolled into the ferry and parked his bike in the usual spot by the stairwells. Adam was discomfited, as though he were doing something incorrectly. He could sense another passenger staring at him. There was an official sign, right above him, that read BICYCLE PARKING, and he was ready to point this out to the person. But instead the other passenger came closer, and said, “Adam? It is you, isn’t it?”
Adam looked up, and saw Cory Langston, or an approximation of Cory Langston.
“Hi Adam. It’s been a minute.”
“Yes. Hello,” Adam said. “What a surprise.”
Cory had been in the same dorm as Adam during his first two years of college. Cory was an affable but odd presence, friendly and slouching; a theater arts major. Now Cory was wearing a fitted denim jumpsuit, his narrow waist trimmed by a belt with an elaborate gold buckle. He had thickly drawn on eyebrows, and ropy veins bulged beneath the jaunty scarf tied around his neck, giving his face a resolute architecture that contrasted with the softening ripeness of age.
“This is weird, isn’t it?” said Cory. “Though we must be rather close — geographically. I live in the city.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, for five years now. I woke up this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, and I remembered a sweet little cafe on this side of the bridge. At five a.m. it seemed necessary to get dressed up and take the ferry to have breakfast. How funny I would run into you like this, after all these years.” He was taking Adam in. Adam normally didn’t change out of his cycling clothes until he got to work, but he felt naked now.
“But I suppose you must live in Miwok Valley, like the rest of them,” Cory said.
“The rest of them?”
“The rest of the people we went to school with. So many people ended up in the suburbs. The Miwok Valleys of the world. Maybe not Miwok Valleys, exactly. Not everyone can afford to end up there.”
The sun shone through the ferry’s port windows and Adam could see a sharp apricot-tinted line on Cory’s jaw, dividing his pale neck from his face.
“I’m sorry, that came out wrong,” Cory said. “I’m not being critical. I live in a walk-up studio by the park, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s been a long time,” Adam said. He was having difficulty speaking; he didn’t know what to say to Cory, but it seemed worse to let Cory see him struggle. “Are you — doing well, these days?”
“Well? I guess that’s up for debate. I’m running a little nonprofit theater company, which is always on the verge of closing. About what you would expect. I’ve run into a few people we went to school with, actually, and nobody seems surprised where I ended up. You know what I mean. But look at you, in your little spandex suit.”
Cory had a way of saying things that was so suggestive; Adam remembered this. It could mean nothing, and yet Adam felt he caught at its meaning. There was something he was supposed to acknowledge.
They hadn’t spent much time together at Hill House, that part was true. Adam was on scholarship, and had to focus more on studying than socializing. Cory was a less serious student, frequently absent from classes, always in his pajamas when he turned up in the cafeteria and common areas. In April of their sophomore year, the popcorn Cory was making in one of the communal kitchenettes caught fire and set off the dorm’s alarms, forcing the residents to shiver outside in the early morning hours while the local fire department hosed everything down. The RAs removed all the shared microwaves after that, and Cory was a temporary social pariah.
Adam had not seen him much after that; he heard Cory dropped out junior year. Adam felt uncomfortable to think of it now — that this small action may have provoked such an outsized consequence. But college was so long ago; Adam wasn’t sure how Cory could expect him to know anything about what kind of person he was.
“Well, it was great to catch up,” Adam said. “I’m sorry to cut this short, it’s just I need to go upstairs to the café and get some coffee.” He forced himself to meet Cory’s gaze. Cory still had those impossibly thick eyelashes.
“Sure,” Cory said. “We can talk later. Enjoy your coffee.” There was something about the way Cory dragged out the word coffee, but Adam nodded and walked up the stairs to the ferry’s dining area.
***
The boat slowed as it approached the Ferry Building, its arrival marked by the usual abrupt downshift. The ride had turned Adam’s stomach to acid, and his coffee cup was full when he threw it away. He had changed into his work clothes in the ferry’s cramped bathroom. When he descended the stairs to retrieve his bicycle, Adam saw Cory positioned near the exit doors. Cory was leaning against the wall, looking down at his phone and smiling. Adam knew an interaction was unavoidable; he had spent the thirty-minute trip considering what he might say to Cory. The best thing was to be friendly yet final in his farewell, avoiding any implication he would like to see Cory again. The thought of shaking Cory’s hand was unbearable. He wiped his moist palm on his pant leg.
“Well,” Adam said, pulling out his phone with one hand while balancing his bike with the other. “I guess this is it. It was good to see you, Cory.”
One of the ferry employees lifted the heavy rope blocking the exit. Cory opened his mouth, but then closed it, with a curt nod to Adam before turning away and striding off the boat. Adam let the other commuters push past him as he walked his bike down the metal ramp. A line of waiting passengers and sightseers stood along the railing that bordered the water. A woman wearing oversized glasses and vivid lipstick waved in the direction of the debarking passengers, and through the sea of bodies Adam saw Cory wave back.
The usual busker was seated on an upside down bucket next to the ferry line, his messy grey pigtails sticking out from an oversized straw hat, a hand-drawn sign with wild theories written in increasingly small print propped up at his feet. The man had a guitar and sang in a deliberately off-tune manner, the small dog on his lap sometimes joining in with a soulful howl. This always captured the attention of the tourists; one time Adam saw the man pinching the dog’s foot before it yelped. The busker was belligerent toward the regular commuters, who ignored his songs and yellowed plastic tip jar.
The man was singing loudly, the Ferry Building visitors snapping pictures beside him. As Adam walked past, the busker belted out, “There goes another suit, going to work. Going to work with his fucked-up eye.” As Adam got on his bike, he saw Cory and his vivid lipped friend just beyond the singer, wrapped in each other’s arms and laughing.
***
“I’ve got just the one for you,” Phil said, dropping a sandwich on Adam’s desk.
“What’s in this?” Adam said. “I might leave early. There’s no point in sticking around today.” It was Walk-In Wednesday at Barney & Davis, but Adam had begged off seeing any potential clients. Mr. Neckle, the branch manager, took one look at his eye and nodded. The eye was no longer merely pink: the lid was red and swollen, streaming tears that Adam had to keep dabbing at. He would have to have the stye lanced; there was no time to mess around with compresses and antibiotics.
“Well, it’s unconventional,” Phil said, sitting down in the chair on the other side of Adam’s desk and unwrapping his own sandwich. “It’s this Buddhist monk Jim’s been talking to. The monk just showed up in our lobby, but Jim is in Tahoe. The guy is loaded, I mean, his monastery is. You can’t believe how much money they have.”
“A rich monk? Why would he do business here?” Adam said. Barney & Davis’s business model was aimed at unsophisticated, low to mid-tier clients.
“What does he know? He’s a monk. He’s not into material possessions and shit. But it’s a long game for sure. He’s been talking to Jim for a month. It sounds like he’s talking to other firms around town, but hasn’t committed to anyone. You could upsell him on the financial advising Neckle’s trying to push. Maybe you’ll have the magic touch. Hey! The magic eye. It’s probably against his religion to turn down a leper.”
***
“Pinkeye?” The monk, shrouded in a voluminous orange robe, gestured toward Adam’s aching eye.
“Sorry about that,” said Adam. “It’s just a stye. It’s not contagious. It looks worse than it is.”
The monk nodded. His head was shaved, but unevenly so, and his patchy hair, gold-rimmed glasses and unlined face reminded Adam of a baby bird, or a mole. It was impossible to tell how old he was. “Nearly all ailments are because of imbalance,” the monk said.
Adam usually took these first few minutes with a client to size them up, come up with an approach and strategy. Barney & Davis’s client philosophy was that there were ten types of people who came in here, ten types of people in the world, for that matter. All Adam had to do was figure out a client’s type and put on the face that would be most agreeable to them. But the monk was serenely unreadable, like the dark mirrored surface of a pond.
“Imbalance,” continued the monk, “is the heart of all struggles. It could be your work. It could be your home life. Maybe the food you are eating. Do you know where your imbalance lies?”
“I wish I did.” Adam laughed uneasily. This was already going wrong; he should have gone home. He was not enough of himself today to pretend to be whoever this monk needed to close the deal.
“Your eye,” the monk said, “is it always your left eye? When you have an ailment, is it always on the left side of your body?”
Adam considered this. “Should my ailments only be on one side of my body?”
“No,” the monk replied. “You should have few ailments, but when you do have them, they should be balanced across the body.”
Adam tried to think back to the last time he had a stye, visualize which eye it had been in, but it was too long ago. He had to somehow steer this conversation, even if just to end it.
“I’ve already taken up too much of your time with my eye,” Adam said. “When really, I’m here to help you. I’d love to discuss how Barney & Davis can secure the financial future of your monastery.”
“Yes,” the monk said.
“I think,” Adam said, “You are looking for the right fit for your monastery, the appropriate shepherd for your financial documents.” Was this the wrong analogy for a Buddhist monk? The monk’s face remained unchanged. Adam handed the monk the usual double-sided one sheet, “The Barney & Davis Difference,” and gave him a few minutes to read it over before clearing his throat.
“At Barney & Davis, we’re not just about getting your taxes done on time. You’ll find we have a moral commitment to our clients.”
“Tell me,” the monk said, and Adam leaned forward, which conveyed a willingness to listen to the client, to treat them as an individual. “Do you sometimes have problems with your left foot?” Adam thought, as he did when the monk first came into his office, that this might be a joke. But the monk was looking at him so guilelessly, waiting for a genuine answer, that it was difficult to believe it was a feint.
“If I could treat your foot, then I could treat your eye,” the monk said. “I will give you a foot treatment.”
Adam was not sure what this meant, but the monk removed something from beneath the folds of his robe and unfurled it. It was some kind of collapsible plastic container — a child’s pool, deflated and folded up. The monk gestured towards the container of water Adam kept on his desk for clients, and Adam nodded, though he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. The monk handed the inflatable to Adam.
“You blow it up,” the monk said. Adam considered the object in his hands. It was well worn, taped in several places where it must have cracked. He wondered how many lips it had passed through.
“You blow,” the monk said again. “And I will meditate on this partnership.”
Adam puffed air into the tube as the monk sat back and closed his eyes, his hands a neat pile on his abundant lap. Adam had tried to meditate before. It was always touted as a rung to productivity, this ability to clear one’s mind until somehow success rode in on clear, undulant waves. He had to look ridiculous right now, blowing this filthy pool up. Adam thought of Cory — Cory, who was so ridiculous, yet looked at Adam as though he saw right down to the core of him, and found it distasteful.
The monk gestured toward Adam’s rolling chair, and Adam sat down. The monk positioned himself before the plastic tub, crossed-legged, pouring the last of Adam’s water into it. Without a word, the monk removed Adam’s shoes and socks. Adam’s feet were nakedly ugly: pale with creases from his socks, dark hairs jutting from the largest toes. It was difficult to sort out what about this was objectively uncomfortable, and what was just him. Perhaps this was meditation; detaching yourself from all the small horrors of life, even if they were housed in your own body.
The monk scooped the warm water over Adam’s feet, his knuckles grazing Adam’s skin. He ran his hands over Adam’s feet, at first with just a light touch, but then his thumbs dug in a little, kneading the joints and bones. He cupped the whole of Adam’s left foot, holding it reverently, as though it were a thing of beauty. When Adam looked at the monk, the monk’s eyes were closed. Adam also closed his eyes, and soon he was moving into the dark cave of himself.
***
It started just before spring break of Adam’s sophomore year. It was one of those inexplicable, unspoken things, hazy even before the veil of memory, but he and Cory found themselves in a series of interactions. Little things, like pranks, back and forth — Adam didn’t hold the door open for Cory, Cory took an extra long shower when he knew Adam was waiting outside the men’s bathroom. Adam would put his name down to watch a basketball game on the house television, and Cory would be sitting there, watching Golden Girls, an arm draped over the back of the couch, the space next to him empty.
One day at lunch, Cory followed Adam to the buffet, so close Adam could sense him at his elbow, could smell him — a mixture of weed, clove cigarettes, citrus-y soap and something else, some dizzying pheromone that belonged only to Cory. There was one last pancake in the warming pan, and when Adam reached for it, Cory’s arm snaked out first, brushing against Adam. He looked at Cory, whose long-lashed eyes were serious.
“Whoops,” Cory said.
The morning of the dorm fire, Adam went to make some coffee in the third floor kitchenette. It was one a.m., and he was studying for a women’s history class. It was a core requirement and he had not taken it seriously, and now he was in trouble — there were too many names and dates to cram in his head before 10 a.m. When he reached the kitchenette, he saw Cory walking in a thin robe he liked to wear around the dorm. Though Cory’s back was to him, Adam felt this swaying gait was intentional, and he watched it make its lazy way back to Cory’s room.
There was a bag of popcorn in the microwave; it had to be Cory’s. Cory was forever making popcorn, so much that the third floor had a permanent stale popcorn smell. The small kitchenette held Cory’s scent, and as he breathed it in Adam felt unaccountably anxious. There were two minutes left on the microwave’s clock. Adam could knock on Cory’s door, bring him the bag. He thought about what might follow this action until he reached the end of all things that could and should happen. The microwave pinged. Adam adjusted the microwave’s remaining time to forty minutes and returned to his room.
***
Adam had fallen asleep, or into a kind of trance-like state during the foot treatment. When he opened his eyes, the monk was readjusting the folds of his orange robe. Adam had this peculiar feeling, this sense that something had been figured out, some weight lifted. He thought he might cry — out of release, out of sheer joy, out of something that was beautiful and painful and not entirely new.
“You feel better now, yes?” the monk asked. “Lighter.”
“Yes,” Adam said. He was amazed to find it true. “Yes, I do.”
“Transformative,” said the monk. “Many find themselves transformed.”
“Yes,” Adam murmured. “I believe it.”
“Good. It is right I should also give you something.” The monk dumped the water from the tub into one of the potted plants, a convincing plastic fake, and squeezed the air out of the tub. “I will tell the monastery of this meeting. I think we have good energy together.”
“Great,” Adam said. “That’s just great.” The monk gave a little bow, and Adam bowed back, which was something that might have made him feel foolish before but now seemed appropriate. Adam opened his office door and walked the monk to the reception desk. The monk needed his parking validated — as he searched for his ticket, he gathered his robe in one hand, and Adam saw a flash of denim, the scuffed toe of a Chuck Taylor.
“Goodbye,” said the monk. “I look forward to revisiting our conversation.” Adam’s eye, which he hadn’t thought of while the monk was rubbing his feet, was re-asserting itself. Adam returned to his office; Phil was sitting in the chair that the monk had just vacated and was grinning broadly.
“Well, how did it go?” Phil asked.
“I think it went well. It sounds like I might have gotten somewhere with him.”
“Oh, I bet you did get somewhere. And how are your feet?”
Adam was looking at the tiny bit of bay visible through his window. He turned to face Phil.
“Excuse me?”
“How do your feet feel? Nice and relaxed? I bet you he’s feeling real relaxed after that meeting. Probably going to need to change his robe.”
“What are you talking about, exactly?”
Phil doubled over, and Adam could see he had been holding in some degree of hilarity that could no longer be contained.
“Oh, man. The look on your face. Everyone working in financial knows about this guy. He’s been making the rounds, giving foot baths. It’s like, his kink or something. Jim is going to die when I tell him this.”
“You —” Adam’s voice rose, and he hated its sharp sound.
“Well, now. No need to get mad. People pay good money for this sort of thing.” Phil was looking at him, as if he had been given some new knowledge. Adam was faint with fury and fear.
Adam picked up the phone on his desk and dialed 911.
“Hello,” he said when the operator picked up. His voice was still uneven, pitchy and out of his control. “I need to report a crime. A —” He stopped before he said “molestation.” He didn’t know what to call it. He became aware of Phil, open-mouthed, and as Adam paused Phil began speaking rapidly.
“Adam, it was just a joke. Why are you calling the police? Who are you calling the police on? Him? Me? Dude, lighten up. It’s just a joke. You’ll never find him.”
***
“Only an idiot would fall for something like that,” Adam’s father said. His father called while he was riding the ferry home and for some reason Adam told him what had happened with the monk. Adam’s father had a way of cutting right to the heart of things, separating the wheat from the chaff, his father would say, so that nothing remained undecided or uncategorized.
“I don’t know,” Adam said. “I’m not well today. I woke up with this big stye. I can’t think of anything else. Maybe that was it.” The pigtailed busker was there when Adam boarded the Miwok Valley ferry, but he didn’t sing anything about Adam’s eye, though it was noticeably worse. The tourists were gone, and the busker had turned away from the passenger line, drinking something from a paper bag while his small dog shivered at his feet.
Adam was standing in the same spot Cory had leaned against earlier that morning. There was a poster on the wall: a faded photo collage of sharks, sea lions, whales, and other marine creatures with the title Denizens of the Bay. The ferry slowed and Mount Imola was visible through the fogged Plexiglass, the water of the bay aglow with the lights of Miwok Valley. Adam had never thought before about how those lights obscured the water, dazzled so you couldn’t peer into it; you had to be satisfied with the fraying poster to see the denizens of the bay. These things were hidden, existing completely apart from him. He wanted to stay here, in this exact spot; he wasn’t ready to go home.
“I thought you were over this,” his father said. His voice was alarmingly clear. “I thought this was kid stuff.” The ferry workers brushed past Adam, opening the door to the outside. The night air stung Adam as he watched them tether the boat to the dock and ready the ramp. He remembered that it was his night to pick up takeout, that Mira and the children would be expecting it.
“I am over it,” Adam said. “I will be. I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and take care of it.”
Tanya Žilinskas lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Florida Review, X-R-A-Y, MumberMag, and Atticus Review. She is currently revising a California Gothic novel-in-stories. Tanya can be found at tanyazilinskas.com and on Twitter @TanyaZilinskas.
Art by Betty “Juniper” Kim
Betty “Juniper” Kim is a comics artist and writer currently pursuing an MFA at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Their work has recently appeared in Nashville Review, Black Warrior Review, Catapult, and SweetLit, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. You can find more of their work at bettyjkimportfolio.com, or say hello via Instagram @doodlingjuniper.