Page 79 - Just Deserts

Swami Adavasi

Guru Vanaspati, director of Help Yourself’s North America and
Greenland region, sat in his private quarters in Camp Help It
surveying the mound of cash and personal checks heaped upon his
desk. It would be another late night of paperwork. He sighed, a
frown furrowing his pockmarked brow. He could not entrust the
deposit slips and ledgers to anyone else; that would not be helping
himself at all. Thank God for electronic calculators! he muttered, one
of the most fervent of his infrequent prayers.
Toward ten o’clock he heard a knock on the door giving access to
the outer hall from his study. It was repeated, an odd tattoo the guru
recognized as a code he had given one of his informants within the
palace itself. Most of the day’s take had already been tallied and
bundled in rubber bands, so it was simple enough to sweep what was
left into a desk drawer. He first checked the floor around him for
loose helpings, then stood up stiffly, arranging his custom-tailored
orange robes around his portly frame.
“Coming!” he barked. The door was double-locked, requiring him
to extract a set of keys from a pouch he wore around his neck and
under his garments. After a bit of fumbling the guru opened the door
and admitted a young woman attired in the tight-fitting jump suit of
the swami’s all-female domestic staff.
“Anyone see you come up here?” he asked, after peering down the
hallway.
“No way,” said Phyllis Stein, barely repressing a smirk. “The old
man is asleep, and not with me. This place is as dead as a cemetery.”
Vanaspati returned to his desk and sat down heavily. “All right,
but don’t be so damned smug. He’s not as helpless as he appears.
Did you find out anything today?”
Ms. Stein draped herself provocatively on a small sofa beneath a
large photo mural of Swami Adavasi. “I certainly did! I even have
some documentary evidence you would no doubt love to see.”
The guru grimaced. “Well, then, let me see it.”
“Not so fast, guru-ji. I’ve been playing the devoted servant in this
household for more than six months, dodging that old fool’s greedy
fingers and working my own to the bone in the kitchen and laundry.
I never want to see another piece of orange cloth! So, before I help

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