Free Abandon by Pico Iyer

said, “Scholars ask, ‘What does this say about “gospel truth”?’”
    It was a two-column story, clearly buried in the back pages of the A section.

    He put the paper down again on the desk, and looked at it more closely, to see if there had been any greeting or further message erased, or written so faintly that it hadn’t come through. But there was nothing. He dialed the number printed at the top, but, as he feared, heard in response only the whine of another fax machine.
    A little later, work finished for the day, he poured himself a glass of wine and took a seat in his armchair: with the seminar behind him, he could treat himself to a small celebration. He’d been waiting for some time to take a look at the spiritual diary composed by Rumi’s father, the mystic whose visions, some said, had laid the groundwork for his famous son’s transformation. As he read through them— trying to recall what he’d read about how the word “desert” came from the Latin “deserere,” meaning “to abandon,” and then thinking back to John of the Cross’s fear that man had been abandoned by his God—he started as the phone on the desk began to ring.
    Reflexively, he checked his watch: eleven-forty-three.
    He picked the instrument up, bracing for late-night news, and heard nothing at the other end. “Hello,” he said again, and again there was nothing—or only what might have been the sound of someone trying to be quiet as he put the receiver down. He returned to the armchair, and picked the same book up. Then, as he settled into it, the phone began ringing again—eleven-forty-five—and he hurried to pick it up, as if to catch the phantom caller by surprise. Nothing once again: only the sound of muffled breath, as of someone trying not to be heard.
    When the phone rang once more—six minutes later, according to his watch—he let it ring and ring and took himself off to the living room so the machine could answer for him. He heard a click, his automated voice announcing he wasn’t there, and then, to his surprise, he heard another voice come on just after. “Hi. I’m really sorry to be calling so late. It’s just, I was thinking about our drive, and I guess I was wondering . . .”
    “Hello.” He was back in the study at the phone.
    “Hi. You’re there!”
    “I usually am, close to midnight.”
    “Great,” she said, as if she hadn’t caught the hint. “Because I’m going to be driving up north this weekend, and I guess, I was thinking, if you had the time . . .”
    “I probably have an hour or two,” he said, thinking that, if he didn’t say that, there’d be another call like this a week from now, next month. “But I’m feeling rather pressed at the moment, what with the deadline coming up.”
    “I understand,” she said solemnly, and then waited for him to say more.
    “I met your sister.”
    “Yes,” she said. “She told me. Thank you.”
    “Thank you” for what? Somehow she seemed always to be presuming a connection he wasn’t sure they’d made.
    “I didn’t know she was interested in Sufism.”
    “Sometimes, I guess.”
    “And you must be back in L.A. now.”
    “For now.” As if to tell him that the more he asked, the less she’d say.
    “So, if it would work for you, let’s meet at three p.m.—at Follow Your Heart.”
    “The health-food store?” she said, and then, when he said yes, said, “See you then.”
    He pulled into the small parking lot a few minutes before three o’clock the following Saturday, but the white tank he remembered from the driveway was nowhere to be seen. He imagined her steering through weekend traffic, pushing back a strand of hair as she looked down at the clock that wouldn’t be working, reaching in the glove compartment for a map that wouldn’t be there.
    The kind thing, clearly, would be to sit in his car as if he’d just arrived. He reached for the book of poems he’d brought along with him—just in case—and read the usual Sufi