Three Friends at the Bardo Cafe

Buddy was sitting at the table drinking an iced soy chai latte wearing white yoga pants and tunic when he heard the distinct roar of the Harley Davidson as its rider turned the corner and pulled up in front of the café. The sign above the front door that read “The Bardo” shook a little but didn’t seem to be in danger of falling. The windows rattled while Buddy’s friend revved the engine a couple of times. Buddy shook his head. He always likes to make an entrance, he thought. If he can’t have angels singing on high and shepherds kneeling by their flocks, he thinks he needs to do something to draw attention.

The bell on the doorknob jingled as Jess walked in, the heels of his boots leaving scuff marks on the linoleum. He was wearing a black leather jacket over a blue Grateful Dead t-shirt. His brown hair was damp from sweating under his helmet, but his ponytail hung dry down the middle of his back. His beard was braided into two matching tails. Worn black leather chaps carried a layer of dust that rose as he turned the chair around and straddled it. Resting his left arm over the top he waved at the barista at the counter. “I am parched. Just got back from another 40 days in the desert and could use something to wet my whistle.”

“Do want your usual?” the barista wiped off the nozzles on the milk steamer as she looked at the two men.

“Yep, but make it a double shot of expresso. I need to wake up a little. I know my friend here wants to chew me out and I need the energy,” Jess grinned and stuck a coffee stir stick between his teeth.

Buddy sighed. He was a man of patience but sometimes his rebel friend pushed him a little to his limit.

“Whazzup, my friend?” Jess asked. “Hey, by the way, thanks for calling me. I was visiting my mother and she was kvetching again about my relationship status. She keeps insisting that Mary Mag and I need to make it legal. She is tired of all the talk going around and says that a good Jewish boy would make an honest woman out of his girlfriend. Mary Mag tried to tell her that she is okay with all the rumors and really doesn’t give a shit, but my mother starts crying about wanting grandbabies and then Mary Mag starts talking about her career and then mother starts yelling and then….. well, Oy vey! You get my drift..”

Buddy shook his head. “Not really. “

Jess ignored him and got up to get his iced cappuccino from the barista. He winked at her as he added five packets of sugar. As he turned to go back to the table he saw a limousine pull up in front of the café and park between Buddy’s red Prius and his own Harley. When the limo door opened and he saw who was getting out he cursed, “Fuck, no!”

“Shut up and sit down,” Buddy said quietly. He was already starting to have second thoughts about setting up this meeting, but things were to the point that someone needed to do something.

Jess went back to the barista and told her to go ahead and start making up a triple shot of expresso. He knew Mo liked it straight. The three of them had spent many an hour in this very café drinking chai or expresso and discussing the problems of the world, but Mo and Jess had gotten into a tiff around the time of the Crusades and things hadn’t been the same between the two of them since.

As Mo walked through the door, Buddy noticed that his Italian suit was freshly pressed and his cufflinks shone bright in the mid-day sun. He stood up and extended his hand to Mo and gestured toward the third chair at the table. Jess came back to the table and placed the triple expresso on the table along with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. He picked one up and started to nibble as he gave Buddy a long look.

Mo looked over at Jess and smiled. “Still got that sweet tooth, I see. That’s what you get for having a fan club that insists on making all your holidays about candy canes and marshmallow chicks.”

Jess turned his chair around and stretched out his feet. “At least my fans eat on their holidays.”

“Mine eat,” Mo said. “They just wait until after sunset.”

Buddy pulled his chair closer to the table, placed in palms together and rested his chin on the tips of his thumbs and his fingers at his third eye. “I see the divine in you. I see the divine in you,” he muttered under his breath. His cell phone rang and he glanced at the screen. “Shit,” he said tersely as he got up to go outside to answer.

“Where the hell are you?” Buddy asked. “I wanted all of you together and now I have those two sitting at the same table making snarky remarks. “

Jess and Mo stopped talking and watched Buddy pace back and forth in front of the café window.

“He seems upset,” Jess said quietly.

“You think so. It’s always so hard to tell.” Mo took another sip of coffee.

“Yeah, he’s walking a little quicker than usual and there is a little sweat shining on the top of his bald head.” Jess grinned. “Should we play with him a little or go ahead and make nice? He sort of reminds me of Simon Peter. He gets all serious and then I have to do something to lighten him up.”

Before Mo had a chance to reply, Buddy came walking through the door. “That was Moses,” he said. “He can’t make it and I really wanted to talk to the three of you. Things are getting out of hand.”

“What do you mean?” Mo looked at Buddy with raised eyebrows.

Buddy took a deep breath and started. “You two, and Moses, are my best friends. Really. But your fan clubs are taking the world to hell in a handbasket. I wanted Moses to be here, too, but his sciatica is acting up and he is convinced that he has cancer again.”

Mo laughed. Moses’ hypochondria had been well hidden in the Torah but had somehow been passed down the ages to most of his progeny. It was a staple of Jewish humor in most of the comedy clubs in L.A. and Mo found it hilarious.

Jess took another cookie and dunked it into his cappuccino. As he bit into it, wet crumbs landed on his beard. Mo took a handkerchief out of his suit jacket’s inside pocket and slid it across the table toward Jess. Jess wiped the crumbs off his beard but they just ended up sprinkled across the faces of the bears marching across his t-shirt. Mo shook his head and Buddy closed his eyes trying to remain mindful of the situation he was trying to address.

“Again, let me try and get to the point. Your fan clubs, along with Moses’s, are getting ready to start shooting at each other with really big and nasty guns. This is disturbing and completely unnecessary.”

“Hey, dude!” Jess leaned on the table in exasperation. “I know. I have been trying to figure out where it all went wrong for at least 1800 years now. It’s as if no one was listening. I saw heads nodding when I was teaching next to the Sea of Galilee, but maybe they were falling asleep.”

“Well, someone was listening,” Mo said. “And they wrote everything down. But people are taking it out of context. You should have done what I did and write your own damn book.”

“A hell of a lot of good that did. Your folks are taking your words and making a mess out of things, too.” Jess started to massage his temples. “I just can’t believe how much they say they love me and then turn around and are hateful to each other. I am sure that I said “love one another.” I don’t remember saying ‘except for gays, immigrants’, etc. etc.”

Mo nodded. “You’re right. It seems that no matter what we said they have managed to interpret it all for their own agendas.”

Buddy leaned forward and took their hands. “So what can you do about it? Is there a way you can help people find the middle way and start to get along before they blow themselves up?”

“I did try.” Jess said quietly.

“I did, too.” Mo said just as quietly.

“You did?” Buddy sat up. “When? What happened?”

“I went back.” Jess started to tear up. “I tried to teach again.”

Mo nodded. “Me, too. It was awful. And when I saw what they did to Jess I was nervous about trying again.”

Jess wiped the tears from his eyes. “Actually, I went back quite a few times. Sometimes people just laughed at me. Another time I was living on the streets and traveling like I used to and a group of men beat me up with baseball bats and told me to get a job. I was assassinated three times. And a few times I never made it to adulthood because my parents were poor and there wasn’t enough to feed me. It was horrible. The last time I was there I was called a socialist and people refused to listen.”

Mo reached over and put his hand on Jess’s should. “And I tried to explain to people that jihad did not have to be violent. It can actually be accomplished by peaceful means, but everyone was so fired up and wanting to get to heaven they wouldn’t take the time out to find out what they could learn. It just seemed to get worse and worse.”

“History has not been kind to either of you. Am I to understand that all of those actions taken by your people have been without your approval?” Buddy said sincerely.

“You got it, man,” Jess said. “All that ‘God is on our side’ crap is totally bogus.”

“Same here.” Mo said sincerely. “And I talked to Moses last week and he agreed.”

“What do you think people would say if they knew the four of us spoke to each other and were trying to figure things out?” Buddy said.

“They wouldn’t believe it,” Mo and Jess said at the same time.

“Well, then. What can we do?” Buddy said quietly.

“Pray.” Mo said.

“Yep, and go to a movie. Have you guys see Dogma? It cracks me up every time.”

The three men stood, gave each other solid man-hugs, left generous tips, and made plans to meet for dinner the following week.