It was hard to know what to make of much of it, Peters says. But the microabrasion idea was real; Peters had introduced her to a local doctor, and the two were trying to develop a patent for the process. Other than the doctor, the couple didn't seem to have many friends locally. They kept to themselves, and Kauri did most of the talking. It was as if Pat was just drifting along; whatever Kauri wanted was fine with him.
"He was like a mama's boy," Peters says. "He didn't work. He just sat there while she worked. Finally, I thought I might as well teach him how to pierce. That way he could make some money, at least."
Tara Schinn, who had several tattoo sessions with Kauri, says her friend "did not want to die like this."
Kim Kosnar, who had "girl talks" with Kauri weeks before her death, says her friend gave no hint of being suicidal.
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A business card from the Joplin venture touts "world famous artist Kauri Williams, specializing in fractal, gemstone and physics conceptual art," as well as "body piercing by Patrick Williams." But the couple only stayed in Missouri a few months. By late 2002 they had moved back east, and they had changed their names again. Kauri had used the name Tiyme as a professional moniker on occasion — the unusual spelling calling attention not only to her obsession with time but the central question of mortality: "Why me?" She had her name legally changed to Kauri Tiyme. Pat changed his to Keenu Tiyme.
Tattoo artist Chris Conant found them working in a "not very good shop" in a small town in western Massachusetts. "Her talent was being wasted there," he says. He persuaded the Tiymes to move to Northampton, where Conant and others had put together a shop that was, at the moment, free of the usual internal drama that drives many tattoo studios into the ground. Conant admired Kauri's work, her professionalism and her endless stream of ideas.
One of the couple's goals at the time involved land they had purchased in Arizona, outside of Sedona. Kauri loved the natural beauty of the area, all the cross-currents of new-age and Indian lore, and hoped to build a solar-powered home there some day. "Her thing was, she always wanted to be off the grid," Conant recalls. "Some place where there was no need to rely on anybody else or leave a trail for the government. I guess you could say there was a certain amount of paranoia about it."
But Conant didn't see anything alarming in the way the Tiymes seemed to interact. Keenu struck him as quiet and thoughtful; Kauri was the extrovert who managed their finances and paid for Keenu's Lasik surgery so he could dispense with his thick glasses. "Kauri was definitely the leader," he says. "But they were a couple where you didn't really expect anything bad to happen."
He adds, "I'm having a hard time swallowing this joint-suicide thing. It doesn't add up. They told me they were part of a cryogenics program, that they were going to freeze themselves and be brought back at a later time."
After a few months in Massachusetts, Kauri was lured to California by a shot at the big time — an offer to work in a West Hollywood shop. She soon had creative and business differences with management, though, and found her way to Manakin Tattoo, then located in Bakersfield. Hibbard recalls that when he first heard her voice on the phone, he had the impression of a maternal, schoolteacher type.
"She was so sweet and calm, like she was talking to a child," he said. "Then I met her, and she was this tall, freaky-looking person with transdermal piercings."
Hibbard admired the sophistication and originality of Kauri's work. But he was also struck by how wrapped around each other she and Keenu seemed to be. "It seemed to me they had some connection only they could understand, something deeper than what most people get to experience," Hibbard says. "I think they took each other incredibly seriously. In a normal relationship, you fall in love, and if it doesn't work out, you find somebody else. They didn't have that. It was this kind of locked-in, weird, made-for-each-other, the-cosmos-brought-us-together soulmate thing."
The couple impressed Hibbard as almost theatrical in their self-involvement. After a few months, Kauri announced that she was once again pulling up stakes, a tearful scene Hibbard still remembers: "She seemed to be somewhat of an actress, you know what I'm saying? When she left the shop, it was such a big deal. She said Keenu's mom was sick, she was crying — it was a little dramatic. She could have just said, 'I'm not happy here, we're going to explore other options,' but it had to be a big production."
Two entries in a notebook that appear to date back to her time in California with Keenu hint at what the relationship must have meant to Kauri. They have an ecstatic, hysterical yet suffocating quality, placing the emotional need almost on par with the need for oxygen.
The first one reads: I don't know what to write when I'm around you only you. When I'm away from you I think of you. Tiyme is still unless I [am] with [you] then it is!
