by Smith, Skye
"You look stunning," Erik cooed looking at Alicia. Time for the olive branch. "I wouldn't have recognized you."
"I look just the same," complained Maya. "He, I mean she, gave me a trim, and some streaks, and wax, but the rest was training in various ways to wear my hair, and some five minute makeup techniques to make me look, like, more polished. Oh, and he sold me an 'as seen on TV ' strapless bra with a set of different sized pushup pads."
"Well I think you look fabulous," Erik coo'd "without your mousy hair and with your eyes high lighted."
"Yeh, yeh," Maya replied. "This is what may hair looked like after a summer of surfing in Mendocino when I was in high school. He just hurried the natural sun and sea process is all." She spread her photos out.
Erik looked at them carefully. With her blonde hair styled, and a minimum of makeup, she still looked younger than twenty, but ever so sophisticated. However, there was just enough of a glimpse of seduction in her eyes as she gazed into the camera to make Erik suddenly feel like a father with a nubile teenager in the house.
Maya pulled forward two of the photos. "Gerry took extra copies of these two to see if some talent agency or other is interested, you know, like for modeling or for being an extra in a movie. Why didn't you tell me that so many movies and, like, TV shows were made in Vancouver?"
Emma worked her way very close to Erik. She was trying to feel his aura. Whether she kept this look or not, she already felt more confident in her appearance. What Gerry had told her was mostly common sense, and she, a doctor, should have figured it out for herself. Using the leave-in conditioner, and not dyeing her hair was certainly going to save her time and money, never mind her hair.
Spending time with the two younger women and their younger bodies had also made her realize that she was going to have to get into a fitness regime that she enjoyed enough to stick with. Maybe Jazzercise, since she loved to dance. That and making smarter choices in her diet, like cutting out all the soft drinks. The last thing she needed at her age was get beyond the point of no return.
Erik was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, so Emma leaned into him and pressed her arm full length against his and closed her eyes. Hard to say if it was an aura. She could feel the warmth of his skin and the brush of his arm hair. Damn he was good-looking. Her age, too.
Maya was watching Emma. She put a hand over her eyes and sighed. Oh my, Emma didn't know. She had to do something. She pulled at Emma's other arm and signaled her to come. They walked out onto the deck, where the hum of the hot-tub motor would keep their words private. She gazed out over the lights of the city and took a deep breath. Not wanting to hurt her friend, she turned to her and said gently, "Emma, Erik is happily married."
Emma looked at her and her eyes widened. "Oh no, I didn't know. So where is his wife?"
"Well, the truth is, he IS the wife," Maya whispered and gave her a small smile.
"You, ... you don't mean."
"Flaming."
"Well, that explains how he had such pull to get us in to see Gerry on such short notice." Emma was flustered, and retreated behind the officious professora/bustling mode. She took a moment to regain her composure with the busyness of finding her phone in her totebag, and pulling it out to check the time. "I should get home to bed anyway. I have some interviews at the federal prison tomorrow. Parole applicants. Oh, umm, will you come? Please?"
"Why?"
"Just curiosity, I suppose. One of them is a known psychopath. I want to know if he gives you the same charred toast smell as that farmer the other day."
"I would have to touch him. Like shake his hand. Too dangerous," mumbled Maya, trying to find an excuse.
"I assure you that all these men will be on their best behavior. They are trying for parole."
* * * * *
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MAYA'S AURA - the Awakening by Skye Smith
Chapter 9 - In present day Laurel Canyon, Hollywood
They decided to finish the second bottle of sake on the deck looking out over the endless grid of the lights of LA. While Mike busied himself with warming and pouring it, Maya collected all the fishy garbage from the orders of sushi and took them directly outside to the garbage bin. They were allowed to use the house, but with the promise that they would keep it neat and presentable to be shown to possible buyers.
Maya started to giggle. The new real estate agent had put an automatic deodorizer gismo in the kitchen that let off the scent of baking bread. She had the naughty urge to rub some mackerel skin on it. She felt guilty at the thought and wiped the counters for a second time.
It was gently warm on the deck. That's one thing the south coast had over the north coast of California. In the north you could never go out in the evening without a jacket. Down town in Hollywood it had been sticky hot. All the cement seemed to hold heat. Up here in the hills it was a perfect temperature.
"So, two days of filming left for you, and then you, not me, can disappear until the promo tours start. Will you visit your mom up in Mendocino?"
"Maybe for a day. I don't get along with her new man. Besides, there is a baby due in San Fran, and I want to be there for the birthing."
"Oh, right. How's that going?"
"Better now that she got out of here and went to stay with her mother. It's amazing how fast mothers forgive a daughter once she is carrying. I sure hope she sells this house soon. That would solve a lot of problems for her." She looked at the sake bottle and licked her lips in anticipation. "One more good slug to put me to sleep."
"You still not feeling good?"
"I'll meditate before I go to bed. That always works."
"Meditate. You actresses and your yoga. Are you going for a run in the morning?"
"Depends on the air quality. If I go, do you want to come?"
"No, let me sleep."
She finished her drink and then climbed the stairs to her suite. This house had five bedroom suites built above a giant main floor room designed for having big Hollywood parties. To her knowledge, there had never been such a party held here. For one thing, there was nowhere on the street to park. It was such a narrow ridge road that it was posted no parking for its whole length.
She undressed and hung up her clothes, and decided it was warm enough to meditate in the nude. She pulled a yoga mat out of the closet, and rolled it out where she could see the view, then she sat in a lotus position and put her hands together as if to pray.
Her aura started to strengthen. She let it. It filled her mind with pure milk whiteness and she felt suddenly disconnected from the physical world around her. Now she was being wrapped in its floral scent. In all her travels through strange foreign lands, no matter how weird the place or how uncomfortable, she had always been able to retreat into her aura.
Her last thought caused her to pull her hands apart and open her eyes. She took a deep breath and stood up and walked to the door and locked it. It would be terrible if Mike walked into the room while she was in a deep trance. What if he touched her. That could be a tragedy.
She went to the mat and sat in the lotus position again. She re-clasped her hands and started meditating again. Now she could relax and allow her aura to build to its full strength.
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA'S AURA - the Awakening by Skye Smith
Chapter 10 - Three years earlier in Kitsilano, Vancouver
Erik had the recorder going and was taking brief notes as she spoke. "So the psycho trying to make parole did smell of charred toast."
"Yes. Emma the canny fox, like, wouldn't tell me which of the three was the psycho. Although she doesn't usually shake the hands of the men, this time she did to give me an excuse to also shake their hands. There was no doubt at all. Black. I saw black, and that smell of charred toast."
"I think that is very significant. I'm going to have to make a transcript of all your adventures with Emma and send her a copy."
"She'll probably ask you for it in any case. She like, dropped me off and then sc
reeched out of the driveway to go to the task force building. She wants to hurry the questioning of that farmer."
"So that is it. You're finished."
"Not quite. In the interview with the psycho, while Emma was asking him questions, I started showing a lot of leg, and dropping pens and things to give him a view of my cleavage." Erik could visualize the scene, and felt like the anxious father again.
"To get him horny so you could find his aura?"
"Yeah, but like, nothing."
"So your tease failed?"
"I'm pretty sure he had a boner, but like, there was nothing aura-wise to find."
"But that isn't unusual. Most people have lost whatever auras they had as children."
"Then why did it hit me so strongly when I touched him? I can't figure it out. Emma suggested that maybe it was because I was the opposite of a psycho, but to me that means there should have been like sparks flying. "
"Anything else?" he asked.
"Yeah, like Emma wants to hire me as a research assistant."
"You already have a job."
"I know. I told her that. And I also told her that I don't have, like, a social security number for Canada, so she would have to pay me under the table."
"What did she say?"
"She's going to talk to you. I think she just wanted an excuse to talk to you anyway. I think she is, like, sweet on you."
He gave a long low moan. "Just what I need. Being around you so much keeps me so horny that my ass is at risk. It will be a relief when the fall term starts."
"What about that? What am I supposed to do if you are at work all day, and Alicia is in class or up to her eyeballs in, like, papers and assignments."
"Wreck Beach is wonderful in September, with all the U.B.C. students back on campus," he said. He reached over and gave her a hug. Since she had learned to dampen her aura with frequent showers and hot tubs, he could actually be close to her without being overwhelmed by it. They could even touch, but just for a few seconds. Any longer tended to put them both into a meditational trance.
"Oh yeah," she said thoughtfully, enjoying the hug. "I forgot about all the students being back. That could be big fun so long as the warm weather holds."
"Or find out what Emma was planning for you. If she can figure out how to pay you under the table, then you would have extra money in your pocket."
"I don't really need the money, I mean, I hardly spend anything, not that you give me much above room and board. You know, if I still had a coffee shop job then room and board would take all of my pay and I wouldn't be living this well." She thought about this and then gave him another big hug. Without thinking she kissed him on the cheek. She pulled back from him quickly, fearing what she had done.
"Nothing," he said. "I can't believe it. All this time we have been staying away from the head, and that kiss did nothing. Touch my cheek with your hand." He waited for her to touch his face.
"First another kiss," she said and kissed him gently and fully on the lips, then leaned in and deepened the kiss, long and hard, like teenagers in the back of a Chevy. She pulled away. "I've been waiting weeks to do that," she said breathlessly. "Did that have an effect?"
"Yes, the normal one," he smiled at her, "now the hand."
He regained consciousness after about five minutes. For five minutes all he saw was a milk white light. All he smelled was some flower scent he didn't recognize. All he heard seemed far, far away. He looked around, still a bit dazed. She was sitting in his chair reading his notes on his computer.
He shook his head and said, "Well, I feel refreshed. You are really going to have to figure out how to control the focus in your hands. Give it some priority. What if you accidentally touch my face while I am driving?"
"I'll work on it with Alicia tomorrow. We are going clothes-shopping with Emma, and hopefully to the beach afterwards. It's all so confusing. A month ago I had never felt an aura, then that first week with you it was like I was riding a rocket to, like, the moon." She spun the chair to face him. "Why is it that other people's auras grow so slowly, while with me it's, like, whiz-bang an atom bomb?"
"Maybe 'cause we are both generators. I don't know. During that week while yours was increasing so much, mine was too. I'm glad Alicia is going to help. I need to practice focusing my hand like you do."
"If she'll let you. You be polite to her."
"I will, I will. I got your point before."
"Oh, and she got her results from the clinic. She's clean," Maya stuck her tongue out at him. "We should have ours when? Tomorrow or the next day?" She smirked at him and winked.
"Not even in jest, Maya," he winced, "that would cause all sorts of problems between Karl and me. Besides, you would probably turn my mind into a splatter of marmalade."
"Mmm," she licked her lips saucily, "marmalade."
"Here, look." He got up and swung her chair back around to face the computer. He reached around her and took over the mouse. With a few clicks he was showing an engineering diagram of a woman's shape.
"Ya know, there is better porn than that on any web site," she giggled, "besides, you've made my breasts too large."
"Shhh, this took me hours and hours even though it runs for just a minute. Watch the changes." He clicked a 'play' button. "See the areas that grow red? Those are the zones where I estimate your aura is being generated. Most of it comes from your skin. It may be triggered inside you, but it is generated by and flows from your skin. That makes sense because your skin is by far your largest organ."
"So the reddest zone is the one around my chest, shoulders and upper arms. You're kidding. Tell me you made my breasts bright red for a joke. Oh and there is another red zone around my bum and thighs and ... and ... well that explains why sometimes it is so sexual."
"And my theory is that your skin organizes the aura to be focused outward from the closest point of the skin to whatever it is sensing. In many cases that would be along your arm and to your hand."
"And the feet?" She crossed one leg over the other knee and wiggled her toes. "They should be able to focus, too."
"I don't know. We've haven't finished experimenting with the hands yet, so let's leave the feet for now. Karl’s theory has always been that your feet work the other way. That they pull at the earth's aura and channel it up into your body." He started clicking the mouse again. "I've never believed that about the feet. When I was in India, I used to feel auras while I swung in my hammock, without standing on the ground."
"Another graph?"
"The effect of cayenne chocolate," he said, "from that dinner a week ago." Last Friday they had forced Karl to take a night off from his endless work and enjoy himself. Desert that night was cayenne chocolate that Maya had made using Alicia's recipe. Actually Maya had come very close to being the desert herself, but then some friends dropped in unexpectedly.
"What am I looking at?" she said. His graphs only made sense to other engineers.
"Well, basically, after eating the chocolate your aura increases in range. My theory is that the dark chocolate makes you feel good and gets your blood flowing. The cayenne causes all the tiniest of arteries to expand, thereby carrying more blood near to the surface of your skin. More blood into the extremities of your brain too."
"It's a Mayan recipe," she said, "That’s where the world got chocolate from. Those Mayans were pretty smart. I wonder if they knew about auras."
He coughed, swallowing his words. "Umm, you know of course that Karl started writing a book about how ancient and wild men used auras to help them survive, and that modern civilization made auras unnecessary so we lost the power."
"That's interesting." She was tired of the computer and reached forward and turned the screen off. "Alicia has a religious painting in her room. It's of the Virgin Mary, cause she is Catholic, and it's from the Yucatan. You know how the Virgin is, like, painted with a golden halo around her head? In Alicia's picture the halo is around her whole body, and the halo is green, not gold. I call her the great gr
een goddess, which makes Alicia cross her heart."
"I have a book somewhere that shows Indian paintings of all sorts of auras," he said turning the screen back on so he could do a shutdown.
"I've seen that book already. It has pictures of carvings of men and women. Very lifelike. Sexy carvings. Like every sex position imaginable."
"Oh, that's a different book. The other one may be in the same pile, though." He spun her chair around and pulled her to her feet by her arm, not her hand.
She smiled at him and said, "Join me in the hot tub so I can touch you without you going into a trance."
On the way to the tub, he poured Prosecco into some tub-friendly plastic stemware. He always let her get in first before he disrobed. It was safer that way. They wanted to talk and watch the stars and enjoy the peace, so he didn't turn on the noisy bubbles. As soon as he settled into the still and hot waters she moved onto his lap and kissed him gently on the lips.
"Maya." How to start? "Maya, you think you are in love with me. I've told you before, it is the auras. Karl and I made the same assumption. We thought it must be love because we felt so physically one when we cuddled."
"You're still together, after what, like fourteen years."
"By the time we realized it was the auras, we were best friends, constant companions, sharing experiences. In other words, we were a couple. We were both taking long vacations before the home stretch to our degrees. We had tons in common. Even more now."
"That's what I want," she said softly.
"Oh Maya, I don't want to hurt your feelings. You have become very precious to me. To us. I meant to us. Karl feels the same way. How can I explain. Ummm. Okay. Because all of us have been bathed in your aura, we are all feeling lovey-dovey. Soft and open. You aren't the only new woman in my life who I fear may be falling in aura love with me. I think both Alicia and Emma are as well."
"Oh, I know that," she kissed him again. "But that is just the aura thing, this is differe...., Oh, Ohhh."
