Chapter 3 A Dangerous Business

Two weeks later, Julia Brooks and I met at the church library that served as a lounge. Our handshake was friendly, almost affectionate. Somewhere in the genuine glitter of her smile was a hint of that time, a year ago, when we'd shared a few dinners. I'd seen little of her since, except at church. Julia was my age, nearing thirty, but the sort of woman who could appear child-like or sophisticated by a quick upsweep of her long brown hair. Her petite build gave a hint of curves. I'd always found her disarmingly attractive.

"Thanks for coming," she said, her green eyes somewhere between apologetic and reproachful.

I'd been thinking over what I might say at this meeting, but having her in front of me made me a little less certain. I poured a cup of coffee, she a cup of tea with milk, and we settled onto a worn couch.

"Sorry to involve you in this," she said, traces of her ties to England slipping through in her accent. "The Reverend and I are at a loss. You're the only economist we know."

I gave her a tentative smile. "I can't help this Harold Timms fellow."

"The poor man's going absolutely looney. It's been almost two months since this voice started in his mind." She shook her head. "Channeling isn't his choice, by the way, it's an obsession. Awfully dangerous." She looked at me squarely. "He needs to talk to you."

"Perhaps he should see an exorcist?" I winked, hoping for a laugh. Her lips pinched tighter, and I realized that her opinion of me mattered.

She took a breath and expelled it as a sigh. "Believe me, Rich, this isn't demonic possession. It's not madness, either."

I mumbled "Hmm" and sipped my coffee. Her eyes were pools of liquid sorrow, stirred for a moment. "How do you know?" I asked.

"I've been through it all before," she said, her voice thickening. "You may remember, my mum and dad were missionaries. We lived in Nigeria among the Yoruba. I came to appreciate, if not accept for myself, their worldview that ancestors inhabit the earth, in a spiritual form. They contact spirits for healing and guidance. In America the practice became vilified as 'voodoo'—quite misunderstood."

"How'd you get involved?"

"Before art, I dabbled in anthropology. I even wrote my master's thesis on candomblé. Ever hear of it?"

I shook my head.

"African slaves taken to the New World were stripped of their religions. Banning these spiritual practices didn't make them go away, they just went underground. Drums were used to call the spirits, and that's where Brazilian samba comes from. In America, you've got the blues."

"Interesting," I said, "but out of my academic realm."

"This isn't academic to me, it's personal." She crossed her arms. "Harold went to the Reverend for help, and the Reverend asked for mine. Harold's channeling someone good and kind, with a terrible urgency to be heard."

"So it seems."

"His wife died a year ago. He's been unhappy and bitter, with outbursts of anger—revealing, I think, loneliness and fear. He has no family near, and he's lost his friends. Along comes this voice jabbering in his head twenty-four hours a day. He can't sleep. He can't work."

"Maybe he's speaking in tongues," I said, making sure Julia saw my grin.

"Speaking in tongues?" echoed a deep voice from behind me. I turned. It was the Reverend. He had his head cocked and his hands on his hips a few yards away. He was a broad-shouldered man with silver hair and steel-rimmed wire glasses. His short-sleeved black shirt was set off by a white clerical collar.

"It's Harold Timms," Julia said, "he's speaking in tongues, babbling economics."

"Speaking in tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit." The Reverend had a resonating baritone, developed in a Chicago slum. "I've heard of American Indians—shamans—talking to spirits. Does it strike you as odd, Rich?" He greeted me with a pat on the shoulder.

"Very odd."

"Well, I just got a phone message from Harold. Bad news, I'm afraid. He's lost his job at the garage."

Julia slapped the arm of the couch. "Oh no!"

"You can't fight change," the Reverend said, "you've got to face it." He turned to leave. "I'd better go see him."

"I don't see why Harold needs me," I said to Julia.

"You've got the background to understand what this voice is saying. Harold can't possibly do that, nor could a doctor who would just drug him into silence. If he resolves this Harold will be free to reclaim his life. Rich, promise me you'll help? Besides, it's summer. You've got free time now, don't you?"

Time is money, I thought, but instead I said, "I'm really busy."

"Who isn't?" She gave me a look from those sparkling eyes, and I found myself regretting my flip words.

I was not an extrovert, and sharing my life's problems was not something I did naturally. It made me feel vulnerable, especially with a beautiful woman whom I'd once dated. I pulled a crumpled letter from my pocket. It was from the Provost at Hearst College.

"Listen," I said, imitating the stilted cadence of the Provost, "Renewal of your fall contract is contingent upon satisfactory completion of a terminal degree."

"I understand the words," she said quietly, "but what does it mean?"

"I need to finish my dissertation or I'm canned." I stood, not waiting for her response, but mumbling mostly to myself, "It's mid-June and I need two papers accepted, in good journals, or I'll never win the Samuelson Prize. Can't you see? I don't have time."

She was impassive. Then she said, "Perhaps you've more time than you think." Her response was penetrating because it revealed how well she knew me. Harold, my research papers, the Provost—they were not excuses, but fears. More important, she seemed to know the secret to them.

* * *

Julia's quaint federal house, across the Rappahannock River in Falmouth, was one of the few surviving from colonial times. Its wood siding was freshly whitened, the red tin roof neatly painted. Her few pieces of furniture were an eclectic mix of antique and modern, blended to create a warm environment despite the sparseness.

Julia, Harold, and I sat in the living room. It was already a hot morning. How I ended up there was not entirely clear to me. I knew I didn't understand Julia, not very well, even as I was drawn to her once again. I loved the control she seemed to have over her life, so unlike my own. That realization both shamed and encouraged me. A few days ago I had felt like water rushing into a vortex, and today I was doing what she wanted, and not just for her sake.

On the coffee table was a small tape recorder placed between Harold Timms and me. We were an unlikely pair: blood vessels lined his curved nose, descending from outsized brown eyes. His portly jowls bore long sideburns. By contrast, my black beard hid childish cheeks, and my hair lapped the back of my collar. Tortoise shell glasses perched on my nose. Unlike Harold's paunch, my stomach was lean and tight, much of that from stress.

Julia sat across the room. She watched me as I strained to be obliging to Harold Timms: "What should I call you then ... Dr. Smith? Or, Professor Smith?"

Harold Timms covered a cough and closed his eyes. When the eyes re-opened a new voice became eerily apparent, strong but hoarse. A crisp British inflection obliterated his stutter.

"Call me ... Smith. Plain Smith will do."

I sat upright, startled by the stark change. I searched Julia's reaction, but she was looking down, listening intently.

"Where do we start?" I said. "I've never done this before." My embarrassment showed.

"Leave it to me," he said with authority. "The record needs setting straight, and I'm the one to do it. People have such an abominable view of me. I've become a caricature! Oh, it's not my pride talking, I tell you our very liberty hangs in the balance!"

The Free World about to collapse? I kept a straight face.

Harold curled his hand into a fist and brought it to his mouth. His teeth clenched the knuckle of his forefinger. I waited for him to speak. He said nothing, nothing at all. I used the silence to peruse the room. Every wall was covered with panels of Julia's framed art, each one a bright pastel of oversized flowers, with giant and beautiful insects on them. In one a black widow spider perched on a leaf, its belly glistening. I nodded at the canvas, then at Julia. She nodded back, smiling.

The voice continued intensely. "Our system of commerce is under attack, and people are scurrying around like ants on a pot of honey, no one attending to the big questions. The fundamentals. Oh, you may laugh, but without that, civilized society is lost, adrift." He rapped the arm of the chair. "I address this in particular to my fellow economists!"

"Like hell," I muttered.

"What did you say?" The man's eyes narrowed.

"Economists idolize Adam Smith," I said. "If we were a Catholic order, Smith would be our patron saint."

He shook his head. "Economists may honor me with their lips, but not with their hearts. In vain do they worship me, teaching their own precepts as my doctrines."

Julia inclined her head. "That's the Gospel of Mark, isn't it?"

"Economists stoke the flame of free markets and promote the workings of the 'invisible hand,'" I said. "I'm afraid you're woefully unaware of events in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere. Even in Russia, of all places, they're privatizing industry."

"You've got half of it." He lumbered to his feet, towering over me. He shuffled to the window and turned back, his large hands on his hips. "You've got wick and you've got wax, but a candle won't burn without oxygen."

"Meaning?"

"I'm delighted with the move to free markets, don't misunderstand. The reason I've come back, and by God, it wasn't easy—you try getting through the mind of Harold!—is because you've all missed the essence of what makes a market work in society. In society, do you see?"

I was about to ask what in blazes sociology had to do with modern economics when Julia walked over to this "Smith" and sat tentatively on the edge of the couch.

"You know, there's one thing ... one thing that doesn't seem to fit," she said. "Your accent is English, not Scottish."

I raised my eyebrows, "Ah-hah."

The figure stared back impassively.

Julia continued, "That's easy for a Yank to miss, but I'm English, you know. And Rich told me the real Adam Smith was Scottish."

Julia glanced at me, then back at Harold.

He worked his mouth around like he was chewing a wad of tobacco, which he wasn't. At last he said, "If yew like, I kin imitate a pearrfect brogue. Would that warm yer hearts? Wood yew like to heer a Highlands tune? Am I to dew a jig? Wear a kilt and blow the pipes? Wood that be yir proof?"

Julia and I were speechless.

"Ah doot a fellah," he continued, "kin nai mair forgit 'is past than divine 'is future."

"But how—"

"There's no mystery," he said, reverting to highbrow English. "All my Scottish mentors had superior English accents and so do I. After all, I could scarcely have survived my studies in England rolling my R's. Anyone sounding like a Scot was liable to be bludgeoned for it. There was a Civil War, you know! The Jacobites rose up against the English in—oh, the year means little to you—1745."

He slapped the palm of his hand against the arm rest. "I'm a pragmatist, not a fool, so I adapted. I became inconspicuous by speaking the mother tongue that ruled, and why not? The Scottish of my day was a corrupted language. How could there be scientific progress in that mishmash of idioms?"

Smith mused for a moment, then said, "You might even like to know, I got my start in life as a teacher of rhetoric—yes, and even literature. That's when I was unemployed, a few years out of graduate school, and living at home with my mother. A friend suggested I go to Edinburgh and give public classes. It didn't hurt my fees, having that Oxbridge accent, quite the opposite. Those lectures helped me earn a faculty position at Glasgow a few years later."

I looked at Julia.

"'Oxbridge' is short for Oxford and Cambridge," she said. "It's the caviar of education, an intellectual gentleman's posh polish."

I scrunched my eyebrows. This was hardly what I imagined channeling to be. If Harold found this voice and these words by some sort of lunacy, he was pulling off a pretty good trick. Yet I thought the real Adam Smith, if he were to channel anything at all, would commiserate with me about high taxes and the intrusion of government in our lives. Instead, I felt I was being interrogated on a graduate school oral exam.

"If I may say so," he went on, "a key problem in rhetorical communication is that the listener may hear something different from what the speaker intended. Alas that is the very problem I face today: modern economists, even when they listen, don't understand me."

"Can we go back to your point, something about wick and wax?" I asked. "What have economists missed about society?"

He raised a finger for emphasis: "The vital interplay betwixt human beings that makes it a society, the 'fellow-feeling' that is the foundation for moral conduct."

"Betwixt?" I winked at Julia. "Dr. Smith," I said, stressing the title, "in this day and age clinical psychologists deal with emotions, sociologists worry about society, and philosophers debate morality; economists stay away from all that by studying markets. It's called 'division of labor', something you endorsed, unless I'm mistaken."

He pointed at me. "I also said too much division of labor could make one stupid—and the nobler parts of a man's character obliterated and extinguished. Don't be cute, young man. I know what I wrote a trifle better than you."

I surrendered. "What's your point?"

Smith glowered: "A market can't exist in isolation from people. People are the glue and the reason. An impersonal market force does not mean we become impersonal people!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The big picture is that feelings matter. Even if the market mechanism is disinterested, I as a person cannot be, must not be."

"What does this have to do with business, for God's sake?"

"You're an impatient fellow, aren't you?" Smith said.

Julia interrupted. "Take a break you two."

"And if you're Adam Smith," I said, rising, "why channel through Harold? What do you want from me?"

"Enough! We're taking a time out," Julia insisted.

Julia and I marched to the back yard. "What do you think?" she asked.

"Is he nuts?" I threw my hands up in the air. "I don't know what to think. He's got a plausible explanation for that English accent; that's a feat considering Harold's twisted Romanian. Still, I can't really see what this has to do with the Adam Smith I know."

"Can you stop attacking, and start listening—really listening? It's risky enough for Harold as it is."

"Riskier for me; I might lose my sanity."

"I'm serious," she said. "Edgar Cayce healed thousands of patients with psychic readings, just down the road in Virginia Beach. The exertion killed him. Channelers can't rest, can't sleep, can't think until the message is delivered. Harold is bursting."

"Then take him to a shrink. Get him a real doctor."

Julia glared. "Harold's not psychotic or schizophrenic, he's channeling. You can tell the difference."

"If he's a mechanic," I said, "why isn't he spouting Henry Ford? Look, I'm trained to be skeptical. This isn't exactly science."

Julia was annoyed. "Is that so?" She ran her fingers through her hair, not worried about how the strands fell back into place. "What about A Course in Miracles, channeled by two psych professors at Columbia. Is that acceptable pedigree?"

"I hope they had tenure."

Julia lifted her hair into a bun, a charmingly unconscious gesture that suddenly stirred memories of our brief relationship.

"They spent seven years transcribing that voice," she said. "Their books sold a million copies and changed thousands of lives."

"Then why isn't Smith channeling through me?"

"Rich, you can't choose these things. It's possible Harold and this spirit share an alignment, a meeting of spirits. You'll never know if it's the real Adam Smith. But surely you can tell something by what he says, can't you?"

It was at that moment, her back pressed against the door with the sun shining on her face, a slight shadow cast by her nose and eyebrows, that the thought flashed in my mind a second time in as many days: Julia was every bit as lovely as I'd remembered. It was not just surface beauty, but an inner quality. Her spirit seemed to bubble and disarm my objections.

She seemed to read my mind. "Rich, I'm here for Harold. Promise me you'll help him?"

* * *

The voice filled the room as we entered.

"Let me answer your query: why did I pick Harold? You might as well ask, why did Harold pick me?

Julia and I looked at each other.

"You think this is the first time I've channeled through someone? Pfff!—not at all. I've whispered in many young minds, trying to awaken the consciousness of my teaching. I've had successes, here and there. It takes more than a few." He smiled at me. "I succeeded with you, for awhile."

"Me?"

"In high school, early college, you listened. But by graduate school you began denying your intuitions. You began parroting your professors, assuming they must know everything. It's a tragedy, young minds set so quickly, and older minds are like rusted iron fortresses."

I rose. No words came out, and he put a hand to my shoulder. "Sorry to upset you."

I drew away and he said softly, "You'll admit to being happier in those care-free days, before abandoning your values?"

"I abandoned nothing."

"Where is your heart?"

"In my own body at least."

The man rose and went to the kitchen counter. He picked up a lime and rolled it pensively. "Why did I choose Harold? Because we share a resonance, not in an intellectual sense, of course. He's a good man, a simple man. But he's troubled and melancholy. It's easier when we need each other."

"Apparently he doesn't agree," I said.

"Wait 'til you have the facts."

"Why do you need me?"

He shrugged. "You may need me, more than I do you. You must promise to write down what I say. See that it's published."

"No promises," I said. "For Julia's sake I'll listen, that's all."

* * *

Down by the river is a modest French bistro where Julia and I met for dinner that night, at my suggestion. The linguine with clam à la Bordelaise and bottle of light Frescati was beyond my budget, but the occasion demanded it. I felt in a groove of time and moment, and I didn't want it to stop. Was I trying to impress Julia? Of course!

We kept the conversation light. Her laughter was infectious as she recounted experiences from her graduate school days in anthropology. She'd eventually decided to abandon academic work: too much pretentious writing, she said. Painting was more gratifying, and the public response was quicker, more rewarding.

"Buyers aren't shy about what they like," she said. "I know what sells, and doing a few of those gives me the time to do what I love." Fortunately, the public was learning, Julia said, to appreciate her better works. Her paintings rarely hung for long at the gallery.

The mood of the evening snapped when Julia beat me to the check, "It's my treat."

"I invited you," I said.

"It's a well-deserved thank you for your help with Harold," she said softly. She wanted to keep it strictly business, and I felt my cheeks flush.

Together we walked back to the parking lot. I helped her to her car and she turned to look up at me, a sweet smile on her face. Then she was gone.

I aimlessly put my boot into a clump of gravel, spreading it where it should have been, feeling satisfaction from having controlled some small part of my world.