The barista with patches of tattoos on her arm, handed Cody his black coffee. As he hunched to take a sip of the amber liquid, he felt a gentle tap on his bicep.
Cody Minoru. I’m Special Agent Orla Meyer. Thank you for agreeing to meet.
Agent Meyer’s beauty was effortless and unassuming. Her slender face was outlined by wavy, honey blond hair. The coffee bar lamps highlighted the contours of her face, along with her mesmerizing green eyes. Her voice was soft yet confident, commanding attention without demanding it. She was wearing mom jeans, and a silver blouse that cascaded flawlessly with her wavy hair. A leather book bag hung from a single strap across her body.
Of course! My secretary said that you wanted to discuss Maris.
Yes. The café has meeting rooms. I booked one for us. Follow me.
Orla’s thin frame entered a narrow hallway, whose walls were lined with framed black and white mug shots of celebrities. The meeting room was bare. Classroom style plastic chairs, mismatched in color, tucked underneath a weathered wooden table. They were surrounded by plain white walls, with one side showing a crack, probably from the old building settling into its foundation. There was a steel coffee thermos with a spout hanging over the edge of the table with black ceramic mugs on each side. In the middle of the table was a matching black plate with two croissants.
Orla raised the leather strap from her shoulder and carefully threaded her head through the opening. She placed her bag next to her seat, removed a piece of what looked like folded paper and placed it in her lap.
Your secretary seemed sweet. What do you do for work?
I used to be in a band called Sonic Shaman but now, I produce other artists.
Are you serious? I loved the song “Empire of Lies”.
That’s the one most people remember. It made Billboard Charts and everything. As soon as he realized how arrogant he may be coming off, Cody took a sip of his coffee.
Orla took out a notepad and placed a grey recorder with scratches on the screen, next to the croissants. I hope you don’t mind.
Not at all.
Orla pressed the record button with the same hand that was holding a blue pen. You and Maris Liliana had a relationship. Can you tell me how you two met?
Both of our grandmas were in the same hospital, and we met in the play area. She was very quiet and spent hours playing with this one toy. A grin developed on Cody’s face from the memory. She would load paper into the top part of the toy, press a button to get the paper spinning. She then carefully squirted paint from a bottle onto the spinning paper. I never saw a kid focus so hard on something. I used to ask her if I could try but she would just ignore me. After a few days of this, I thought there was a chance that she was deaf. One day, my mom gave me a dollar to get something from the vending machine. I offered her the M&M’s that I got. Soon, she started asking me to pump the button of her toy at different speeds, while she added paint. Slower! Faster! Stop! She commanded. Cody smiled with his gaze towards one of the cracked walls. I remember she hung the tie-dye-like paintings around her grandma’s hospital room. Later, I got her to keep rhythm on this electrical drum that they had. I would try and play this Japanese instrument called “otamatone”. An otamatone looks like a ladle and sounds like a saxophone. Cody stared at his coffee. I used to shout, “Killer Tofu!”, which was a song from the fictional band, The Beets, in the cartoon show, Doug. It’s funny to think how those toys may have primed us for our careers.
Maris loved to make origami figures. She used to make a new fortune teller. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Yes. The different quadrants held a message underneath the fold.
You got it. She used to ask me different fates: my future job, which celebrity I would marry, and how many kids I would have. Sometimes she made all the options undesirable just to see my reaction. She would always try to suppress her laugh and it made her look like she was blowing up a balloon.
I also remember this one movie was always playing on repeat…Ferngully. It was a cartoon about how the rainforest was being destroyed. After a sip, Cody’s slight grin slowly grew into a smile. I remember a song that would play from the movie. It was called “A Dream Worth Keeping”. Maris’s head used to always rest on my shoulder, and she would wrap her arms around mine when that scene played. Cody’s eyes met Orla’s. You know it was probably that feeling, more than me actually liking the song. There was also a popular commercial back in the 90s of an owl being asked, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?” The owl would bite into the pop after three licks and the narrator would say, “The world may never know”. Well, Maris and I took it upon ourselves to find out. 132 licks in case you’re interested. At the time it felt like we made some kind of great scientific discovery that would benefit humankind. A smile bloomed behind Cody’s open hand that was covering his lips and cheek.
Orla smiled with her chin resting on her fist. Did Maris tell you anything about her mom?
I recall one story that Maris told me after we made love in her New York apartment. Maris grew up here, in San Diego. One day her mom came out of an apartment in the Barrio Logan neighborhood. Later, Maris would put together that her mom’s drug dealer lived in that apartment. Her mom was loaded, driving their car to a small-town east of San Diego, somewhere near the Mexican border. She said she remembered her mom drifting into the lane of oncoming traffic. Only the bumps on the dividing line caused her to correct her misjudgment.
Cody took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his seat. She lost consciousness, the car veered off the road and turned on its side. This was before cell phones. Maris saw her mom bleeding, unconscious, not knowing if she was alive or dead. She unbuckled herself from her car seat, climbed out of the broken window and began yelling for help. Who knows how much time had really gone by before this man approached from the distance. She said he was an illegal immigrant who had crossed the border. He had a beige army style backpack and a red bandana. He assured her that everything was going to be okay. He gave her the little water that he had left, wrapped his bandana around his mom’s wound, and talked to Maris. Assuring her that everything was going to be okay. He waited until a border patrol car arrived. Completely sacrificing himself to make sure that Maris and her mom would be okay.
Orla scribbled something onto her notepad, removed and unfolded a photograph from her folder and slid it across the table.
This is that cartel leader who was just killed.
Tomas Rivera, A.K.A hombre de arena, which translates to “The Sandman” for his propensity to put people to sleep for good.
Why are you showing me this?
The FBI had been monitoring Maris before she went missing. We believe the illegal immigrant that helped her was Tomas Rivera. They maintained a relationship after Tomas was deported.
Cody began to rub his eyebrow. Do you think he had something to do with Maris going missing?
Well, we are trying to figure that out.
How do you know that Maris and Rivera maintained a relationship?
We discovered wire transfers to Maris from Rivera’s account. The funds were used to pay for Maris’s grandma’s medical bills, and later, Maris’s art school tuition.
Cody stared at his coffee before taking one last gulp. He opened the nozzle on the thermos to refill his cup.
Do you know why Maris moved from San Diego to Pleasanton, California?
Her abusive mom overdosed, and she went to live with her bubbie in the Bay Area.
And did you attend school with Maris?
She lived on the opposite side of town. Cody leaned slightly over the table. You see both Maris and my mom’s side of the family is Jewish. Her bubbie and my mom planned play dates. The park, the library, the movies. Cody’s hands mimicked “so on and so forth” by waving an open hand across the table. Our grandmas would get together for lunch sometimes, exchange recipes, and our families would meet for dinners during the Jewish holidays. Technically we were both Jewish. You see, the religion is mother descending. I went to her bat mitzvah. Outside the venue, near a man-made pond, I gave her a locket with her bubbie’s picture inside. Maris deeply loved her grandma. When I ran errands around town, I would see the two of them exiting ice cream parlors, the movie theater, or department stores. They used to bake us hamantaschen, which is a Jewish open-faced cookie with jelly exposed in the middle. Inside their home, they had soft jazz playing, live art hanging from the wall, and her grandma would be seated at the table. Their house had a deep floral scent from bowls full of potpourri and Maris’s grandma’s potent perfume. Her grandma was always either having toast with butter and jam or peeling an orange that grew from their backyard tree. We used to pretend that we were archeologists and dig in her backyard, investigate bushes on her side yard, and camp in an old tent that was probably from the 70s. She was the first woman that I obsessed over. Growing up with a Japanese dad and Jewish mom, I felt like I was more valuable having a white friend. Like people were more accepting of me. In middle school she went on dates with other boys and we had a falling out. Mainly due to my jealousy. I stopped talking to her. She ended up attending my rival high school, and we would see each other at sporting events, typical high school hangouts, like pizzerias, taquerias, and parties; but neither of us had enough courage to rekindle things. We would only exchange glances. Showing each other our desire, without words or actions. Or maybe it was a look of accepting that things change with time.
When did you two reunite?
After high school, Maris received an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in New York. I went to a junior college and later transferred to NYU for finance. Maris lived in Williamsburg, and I lived in the East Village. One day after class, I went grocery shopping at Wegman’s. While I was comparing prices of two different containers of Greek yogurts, I heard “Aw-we-oo, killer tofu!” When I turned around, Maris was smiling holding a container of silken tofu. She had a new silver charm bracelet, and I noticed that one of the charms was the locket that I gifted her at her bat mitzvah, nearly a decade ago. She had the same youthful, round cheeks, and her dirty blond hair was shorter but styled the same, with her parted bangs blending seamlessly into her shoulder length hair. She had gotten a subtle nose ring that just looked like a small twinkle above her nostril.
Did you two build some correspondence after that?
Cody gave a brief subdued laugh. Not exactly. You don’t know Maris. In high school she was known for blowing guys off. It became a frequent episode of gossip news that each social group looked forward to. Standing guys up, blowing up on them during dinner at nice restaurants, before storming out. She even broke up with a football player in front of his parents. The stories made her affection a scarce resource, and she dated boys on a step ladder of popularity. Each one excited by the challenge of seeing how long they could date Maris. Just getting her to meet them was an achievement! She always had this infectious smile that comforted people, however, her eyes were a different story. Mysterious. Like something was hidden behind them. She was completely unpredictable. Taking spontaneous road trips up the coast. Taking rides from people she just met. And stealing small items from grocery stores and gas stations. After we met each other at Wegman’s, it was much of the same. We each got a brief update on each other’s lives and exchanged numbers. I texted her continuously for nearly two weeks straight without a reply. It was just like reliving the first couple days in the hospital when we were children and first met. It wasn’t until the beginning of our Senior year that we would see each other again. I was playing in a Williamsburg dive bar with my band. In the middle of our set, I noticed a woman at the bar, hunched over her cocktail. As the show went on, I could see the bartender trying to talk to her as he poured her next drink. The woman’s head remained resting on her folded arms that laid on the bar top. At the end of our show, I walked over to order the customary free beer for band members and saw Maris’ charm bracelet hanging off the wrist of the hunched over woman. I asked a teary-eyed Maris if I could get her next drink. She smiled while swiping her tears away. Later in the night, I would find out that her bubbie had just passed away. Kidney failure. I asked her out to brunch the following day and we dated on and off for a couple of months. Most of my friends were finance bros and Maris’ friends were angsty, art students. Our social groups did not match, which is why I believe she stopped answering my text and calls. It also could have been a retaliation for me doing the same when we were teenagers. Who knows?
There have been news articles discussing your roots, playing at Maris’ galleries.
That’s right! After graduating, I began working as an investment banker. Long hours. Cody’s eyes grew large to emphasize the traumatic experience. Eventually, I worked my way up to co-lead a sovereign wealth fund for Brazil.
Wow! How did you manage that?
I minored in psychology and was always fascinated with some of the studies on Behavior Economics which is essentially why people don’t act rationally. Daniel Kahneman’s books changed my life. I was more aware of all the invisible forces that shaped our decisions. During my free time, I also read about Jim Simons, who was ahead of his time as far as investing goes. His Medallion Fund used mathematical models to invest, taking out the element of human emotion. He outperformed everyone and managed to stay under the radar, keeping his strategy a secret. Denmark has a famous state-owned fund that diversified into everything but Danish companies. You see this is so the fund’s performance was independent of how good or bad Denmark’s economy was doing. I applied everything that I learned to advising investors, until they decided I could apply my strategy to Brazil, who’s main exports are oil, iron ore, and agricultural commodities.
I did some background on you. Your dad is the Chief Operating Officer of one of the largest Artificial Intelligence Semiconductor companies in the world. Surely, he had a cushy job lined up for you. Why didn’t you follow in his footsteps?
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Cody took a sip of coffee and made a bitter face. My dad pushed for that. Growing up he would always hammer the importance of money into my mind. When I became a teenager, I developed an aversion to anything wealth or status related.
Rebel. Orla tore a small piece of croissant and placed it softly in her mouth.
Rebel as most teenagers do. I used to see my dad’s friends’ families that elicited a sense of entitlement. They were assholes! We went out to a restaurant for my mom’s birthday. Inside I remember seeing the family of our waitress sitting at the table next to us. Her husband was in a doorman’s uniform and her son had part of the sole detached from the rest of his shoe. From that moment on, I knew that I didn’t want to have anything handed to me, and sure as hell didn’t want to be a walking status symbol, douchebag. Throughout college, I only shopped at thrift stores, would live on beans and rice for long periods of time, and only went out if I was invited.
So how does this relate to you playing at Maris’ galleries?
I’m getting to that. I rotated between sleeping in a van that I bought, and a queen-sized futon that I had placed near my work desk. One day I was using a camping propane grill to boil water for pasta. Cody started to chuckle as he swirled his coffee. I was draining off the pasta water over a street drain, when I heard someone say my name in a confounded way. It was Maris. I will later learn that she changed her last name from Lilansky to Liliana. She was living in the rundown apartments that I used to park near. This was back when Williamsburg was a rough area, before it was revitalized into a hipster haven. Maybe it was the fact that I was living in a van despite having an affluent job that attracted her? She always liked people that were mysterious puzzles. Probably because she was the same way. Maybe she felt guilty for being indifferent towards me? Ignoring my attempts to connect and keep our friendship going. We started off meeting up for glasses of wine and snacks. It was usually a fine aged cheese and Ritz crackers. Maris was really into this type of wine called Pet Nat. It’s short for pétillant naturel. This type of wine used an ancient method of bottling a young white wine and allowing it to carbonate in the bottle. People would often compare it to champagne, but pet nats typically allowed the natural yeast on the skin of the grape to ferment the wine, giving it some funky flavors. Completely different from champagne.
Sometimes we would sit with our legs hanging out the back of my van. Other times, we would relax on Maris’s balcony. It used to creak every time we stepped onto it. We would joke about how that would be the worst obituary ever. That led to conversations about what are legacy would be, after we died. Would we help people through charity? Would her art live on and be talked about by historians? Would no one care?
Cody’s laughter nearly made him spill his coffee. After one night of drinking in Manhattan, we decided it was better to sleep on the futon near my work desk, than to make the trip back to Williamsburg. Cody tried to suppress the smile on his face. When we woke up, we were surrounded by my co-workers that were all dressed to a “T” for work. Maris was living off potatoes, rice, discounted produce, and canned tuna that she would slide into her pocket as grocery stores. A former college friend lived in a complex that had a chicken coop on the roof. She used to get fresh eggs on the weekends. You know she taught me that in the U.S. we wash and refrigerate our eggs, but in Europe they don’t wash and don’t refrigerate their eggs.
Why is that? Orla asked after chewing a piece of croissant.
I think it has to do with some of the facilities in the U.S. creating warm, moist environments on the eggs. Even though they try and clean them, this warm moisture cultivates bacteria. In Europe, I would imagine that their thinking was to avoid making things worse with an unnecessary fix.
I knew Maris was struggling financially but I also knew that she was too stubborn to take money from me. I would see her reading books on artists like Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Sol LeWitt. She was always watching documentaries on the 1960s, the Vietnam War and cults too. Maris must have been thinking about how some of the events in the 60s relate to the present. At the time, our troops were still deployed in Afghanistan. There were protests after black men were wrongfully killed by police. Maris managed to find families of soldiers that had passed away during their service. The families allowed her to use some of their cremated ashes for an art piece with an anti-war message. The piece started as the American flag with missiles replacing the stars. The flag transitioned into a mother crying over a baby that she was holding, wrapped in a blanket. Behind the mother were vibrant sunflowers. This art piece got her national attention. Soon word began to spread. Graduate students wanted to apprentice for her. Shortly after the news coverage, she decided to open a gallery. I was still playing gigs on weekends and Maris invited our band to play at her gallery openings. I pictured The Velvet Underground playing at Andy Warhol’s galleries with the social elites, welcoming us into their group of friends. In reality, the show’s attendees were members of the media, Maris’s friends, and older wealthy people trying to find something to spend their money on.
At this point were you and Maris exclusive?
Each of our backgrounds made us adverse to conformity as adults. Me being surrounded by pretentious adults and their brat kids. Maris seeing her mom hit rock bottom, moving to a different part of the state, and having to make new friends. A traditional relationship arrangement was out of the question. We just weren’t wired for that. Sure, we were hanging out a lot more. I think it was the comfort of having someone that you could reflect on things with. Someone that understood who you were. Cody’s eyes returned to Orla’s. That was a long-winded response. To answer your question, No. Maris slept with apprentices, gallery managers, and other artists. Male or female. I would often hook up with woman attending my band’s shows. Maris and I slept together, but only as a physical release, when the other options weren’t available. Cody gulped his saliva before his dry throat caused his voice to change. Maris and I used to stay up and stare out her balcony window, talking about bucket list type things. We both wanted to travel but for a reason. Some adventure that would leave a legacy that would survive longer than our bodies would. In fact, Maris talked about legacy a lot. She used to show me postcards with old buildings or her art history books that highlighted photographers. She used to always say,
“They may be gone, but their photos live, breathe, dance and sing”.
Can you speak to the transition from investment banking to touring with your band?
The Brazilian fund that I co-managed was doing great. Averaging over a twenty percent return each of the three years that I was there. But I wasn’t happy. I think it was the monotony of the daily tasks. I needed to do something new each day. Something where I could use my intuition to adapt to the changing environment. During the three years of gallery exhibitions, there was a snowball effect with Maris and her art. She met more people to network with. She was always good at delegating tasks for new projects to her apprentices. She produced more pieces that were meant to challenge supreme court decisions, foreign policy, and corporate greed. This led to certain pieces going viral on social media, more gallery exhibitions, and more sales. Rinse and repeat. Different types of people started attending her shows, including music producers. One happened to like the sound of the band I was in and gave us free studio time. After a tour around New York, we were offered a record deal. They bought plane and hotel tickets for us. They texted us directions to the studio in Malibu which ended up being the famous, Shangi-La. There we deconstructed our songs and experimented with different sounds. A lot of the songs that I wrote were related to Maris. Empire of Lies was written about one of her boyfriend’s before she became famous. He used claims about his connections in the art world, as well as his background in making art deals to use Maris. It turns out he did not have any experience in dealing with art and very few connections. He was a leach that pocketed large commissions off Maris’s art, before she caught on to his scheme. On the flip side, Maris used to title her work with locations of places we used to meet when we were kids. “SJH” for Saint John’s Hospital (where we met), “Orloff Meadows” (the park we used to play at), and Galaxy Theater (the name of the small theater we used to see movies at, before it went out of business). So I know that I mean something to her.
Orla flipped through her papers and slid a photocopy of a Rolling Stones article across the table. Cody immediately remembered giving the interview to the reporter, wearing a strongly scented cologne. It says that it was during this time that you developed a drug problem.
Cody’s eyes scanned away from Orla, back to the crack on the wall. I did not handle the fame well. After our record went triple platinum, I was no longer pushing myself to achieve anything. At first the party scene normalized drug use. A blunt after a show, drinking games with other bands, and uppers before the next show. We were just fitting into the culture, then it became a coping mechanism for anxiety. We used to compare notes with different artists that we met on tour about cocktails of different pill combinations; xanies and muscle relaxers mainly. Finally, it was a way to escape from all the new demands and the depression associated with that. Cody slid the article back to Orla. It is all in there.
Right. In the article you also mentioned that you reconnected with your parents after rehab?
Yes. After collapsing from an overdose on stage, I woke up in a hospital, and later checked myself into a detox program. My parents were extremely supportive. I saw my dad in a whole new light. My entire life I viewed him as someone with zero empathy for others, that only cared about numbers on a spreadsheet. As I kid, I remember getting bullied at school and crying at the bottom of our staircase. When my dad got home, he walked through the front door, and just stepped over me as he walked up the stairs. I felt like a shoeless Eskimo around him. Confused and numb. After enrolling in rehab, he was completely different. He welcomed me back home, drove me to meetings, and pitched ideas to keep me busy with music. There were late nights, where he would cook bacon, since my mom didn’t let him eat it, due to his family’s history with heart disease. He would hand me a plate and tell me how everything would work out for me. That I shouldn’t worry because knowing that I could persevere through tough times would be liberating. He believed that I wouldn’t back down from a challenge after rehabilitation. He was transparent about his living trust, explaining that he was leaving me enough to buy a modest house and live comfortably; but he would not leave so much that I would do nothing with my life. He had his lawyer include installments that were in five-year increments to mitigate overspending. If I were to be convicted of a felony, the trust would be void and I would receive nothing.
Orla’s face remained the same, but her eyes seemed to agree with Cody’s dad’s stipulation.
My dad scheduled time out of his day to teach me about the semiconductor business. He had me apprentice under one of his senior managers. I spent some time using my knowledge in finance to reprioritize orders for his company. The experience humanized him in a way that I did not think was possible. To accept someone like me who had hit rock bottom, that cut off communication for a long period of time…it spoke a lot about who he was. Forgiving and emotionally resilient. Eventually, I accepted a part time position at my dad’s semiconductor company and managed R&D projects. I was good at making people feel heard and appreciated. I like to think that I made them feel a part of something special, and they delivered with some breakthroughs. The CEO congratulated me personally and offered me a permanent position. My dad was so proud, but we both knew that I would not have been happy without music long term.
Orla refilled her coffee and leaned back in her seat. Your next album, “For M”. I’m assuming the “M” was for Maris?
After I became sober, I returned to New York. At the time the artist Banksy was taking off and Maris’s art wasn’t getting as much notoriety as it once had. She became distant. Weeks would go by without her leaving her apartment. I had friends, but that empty, isolated feeling came back, and I wanted to own it this time. Explore it. Assure myself that I was strong enough to get past it without resorting to my old ways. So I rented a cabin in a rural part of New Hampshire for a month. I would literally wake up, go for a walk, buy some groceries, play my guitar, and write. I was constantly sitting on the porch watching squirrels and birds, thinking about how young I was but how old I felt. Meeting Maris and learning about loss. Reconnecting with her, only to be disappointed again. The success, the drugs, reconnecting with my parents; it all influenced my song writing.
Much different than the first album. It was soft and sad. I loved it.
Oh thank you. Cody placed his fist in front of his mouth as he let out a yawn.
You didn’t speak much about your mother. How did she handle everything?
My mom grew up in a poor, Orthodox Jewish home in Portland, Oregon. Her father was a cobbler. He drank a lot and was abusive. Cody scratched the side of his head. Maybe it was just the times? Her family moved next door to my dad. They were high school sweethearts. She was a stay-at-home mom. She loved anything related to home improvement or art. In fact, my mom and Maris used to drink tea and discuss their favorite artists. Maris used to look through my mom’s old art history books from college. When mom got news of my overdose, I think she went into a state of shock. I just think shutting down when the pressures of life fell on her was a habit that she never was able to break. She didn’t say much. It wasn’t until I had been living back at their house, that she invited me into the kitchen to help her try new recipes with her, add glass to wet concrete in steppingstone molds in our backyard; you know, those sorts of projects. In the mornings, we would listen to bands that I was interested in, and she would reference complimentary bands from the 70s and 80s. After each sober week, to celebrate, she would make a new baked good. Week 1 was lemon bars. Week 2 was a chocolate bundt cake. Week 3 was blueberry cheesecake. Well, you get the idea.
It sounds like your dad’s love language was words of affirmation and your mother was acts of service.
That sounds about right. Anyways, I found out later that while I was writing at the cabin, Maris was studying spiritual gurus. While I was in New Hampshire walking in the woods, listening to music and making meals from a box; Maris flew to India. The spiritual leader that she followed had a program of starting the day with an ice bath, a single inhale of marijuana, yoga, followed by a vegetarian meal, and meditation. After a few weeks she came back to New York and started dressing in white robes. She bought a small space where she set up a small business, sprouting greens and grains to make small salads with simple dressings made of lemon, olive oil, tahini, honey, and apple cider vinegar. Once a celebrity posted the salad on social media, young New Yorkers full of optimism and low on cash, lined up to work at the restaurant. From what I understand, they stayed in the open space of Maris’s art studio. Like one big indoor camp of adults sleeping over and having deep conversations. At least that’s how I picture it. Soon they began dressing in white robes, and Maris began leading them in breath work, mediation and yoga sessions. When the small cult wasn’t working at the restaurant, they were maintaining a community garden, walking the streets of New York, or going on retreats to the Adirondack Mountains. People who saw this group, dressed in white robes, with no makeup, and often holding baskets of vegetables got the public talking. More celebrities and athletes started to become regulars at their restaurant, ordering craft salads. The restaurant was called Genesis Café. Her group was referred to as “Root Family”. But Maris was not wired to be a leader for an extended period of time.
What do you mean?
She wasn’t stable. She often made-up stories when we were younger.
About what?
Everything from escaping a serial killer, to seeing ghosts. I assumed they were cries for attention. She would say something shocking to bring the spotlight onto her. Steer conversations the way she wanted them to go. I imagine it made her feel significant.
And you think it was more of the same with this cult?
I would say so. She gave the followers names, all with the last name Gemeni. There was Eternity Gemini, Mystic Gemini, and Harvest Moon Gemini, to name a few. She made them call her Mother Delilah. Stories circulated around the group that she took a few as lovers. I also heard she was referencing ancient scripts about diets. When one of the members challenged her reference, she immediately made them collect their things and abandon the studio. A lot of these young folks were transplants that originally came to New York looking for an opportunity. Only to be taken in by this “family” and abandoned on the drop of a dime. Cody began to shake his head; his scowl made the skin from the edge of his lips all the way up to his forehead wrinkle. Can you imagine? A few more instances of these reactionary outbursts, long lengths of isolation, and increased drug use, led the cult to break up, the community garden to stop being maintained and the restaurant to close. Only a few of the members stayed to help Maris with her art.
Can you speak about your trip to Russia?
I’m sorry Orla, it has been a long day, and I still need to eat dinner. Would we be able to continue this another time?
Of course! When are you available next?
Wednesdays and Fridays are my slower days. These days I’m mainly editing music files and scheduling gigs, or promotions.
Wonderful! Let’s continue chatting on Friday then.
Cody turned around before he opened the door. He showed his gritting teeth, as if he was barring weight on his back. Can we switch from coffee to tea? I’m feeling jittery.
Noted. Enjoy your evening Cody. Orla grinned as she placed her folder back into her leather bag.