“Besides,” he said. “I am good. You know I’m good, don’t you?” He moved the hair off my face, and then reached down to pull it away from my neck too, grazing my skin with his fingertips. “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said, softening his tone. “But there’s something about her. She’s so tough, it really breaks your heart.”

“What about Serena?” I said.

“Serena and I have known each other for a long time,” he said.

“Since she was a little girl,” I said.

“Serena was never a little girl,” he said.

“Yes, she was.”

He bit his lip, exquisite. “None of the girls I’ve met here are exactly normal,” he said. “It’s a special place.”

“Do you love her?” I asked. I couldn’t move. I wished he would either kiss me or burst into flames.

“Look,” he said. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said.

“I know you are,” Luke said. He pulled on my earlobe and then traced his fingers down until he was pointing at my heart. “So you can’t understand, not really. You want, but the want is undefined. It doesn’t know itself.”

“What’s going to happen?” I said.

“Death comes without warning,” Luke said. “This body will be a corpse.” He nestled his large hand between my legs and pressed, hard, and I was shot through, and I’m ashamed to tell you that after everything, this, this was the closest I would ever in my life come to flight.

When my mother wanted to hurt my father, she’d bring up the sins of his teachers: the alcoholism, the drug use, the manipulation, the sleeping with students. The Buddhist leader who knew for years he was HIV-positive but continued to have unsafe sex with his students, men and women both, including at least one straight man who resisted his advances but was overcome, held down; including at least one who later died from AIDS. The Buddhist leader who trapped women at parties, forced himself into their mouths, who told them this was the only way toward the illumination they sought, who reminded them of the vow they’d taken, to believe in the absolute purity of the teacher, no matter what. Because yes, even in Buddhism, there has been scandal. There has been abuse. That old slog: men with power. Every community has some bad apples, my mother said, but these are the men who are leading by example. How can the reins not rot in their hands? How can you still follow them?

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” my father would say.

“Is what I’m saying not true?” my mother would say.

“You don’t understand it,” my father would say.