Now, totally dried out from hours of crying, she feels calmer, and ready to take the blame. What had she been thinking?
How could she have been so stupid, gullible? Verishna lived in a trailer camp, for Christmas sake. Any fool would have realized that a true love potion would have netted the psychic a penthouse apartment in the Trump Towers. Now, the man Jenna loved, lived for, would be a vegetable, or something worse — dead.
A man in hospital greens pushes through the swinging door. “Ms. Wheeler?”
“Yes?” she mutters.
“We have good news. Mr. Hartnett is conscious now. Other than having a very bad headache, his vitals are fine.”
“Thank God.” Relief she has never known sweeps through her. “When can I see him?”
Leonard is in a small room by himself. The head of the hospital bed is cranked up and he’s sitting with a breakfast tray in front of him. A nurse busies herself in the corner.
“Hey, Jenna.”
She rushes to him and kisses his cheek.
He smiles brightly. “What’s that for?”
Jenna laughs nervously. How ridiculous that neither of them can remember what happened, but there’d be more memories to make once everything returned to normal. “Just happy to see you.”
His dark eyes are luminous, and he, like herself earlier in the day, has a rosy glow.
The nurse comes over to bed. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
Leonard’s glance passes beyond Jenna. “Thanks, Maria. But don’t go far.”
Jenna turns and glares at the woman. Sheis young, with poreless skin and deep almond eyes. Her long eyelashes flutter as a blush, crimson red, spreads across her cheeks.
Jenna pivots abruptly and studies Leonard.
His eyes remain tangled up in the nurse’s gaze. “Was Maria here when you woke up?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
Jenna doesn’t answer. Verishna’s words echo in her ears. “It is only after a deep sleep, and after the eyes meet, that the final connection, the everlasting communion, is made.”
Jenna steps back, stung by the two radiant faces.
“EE O NAA,” she wails and collapses to the floor.
From the same author on Feedbooks
55 Ways to Meditate (2010) 55 Ways to Meditate: Discover Your True Self is a primer to illuminate the landscapes within and beyond. Easily explained and specific, 55 Ways to Meditate, supplies a wide selection of processing and imagery meditations to make meditative practice life-affirming, insightful and fun. Whether to explore metaphysical questions, experience higher awareness, or come to terms with the mystery within, meditation serves.
You’d like 55 Ways to Meditate if you…
* want to be less stressed out
* wish to explore holistic healing
* feel there is a greater purpose
* are open to self discovery
* have a curious nature
* want to learn how to meditate
* wish to understand yourself better
*
Dark Eyes (2010) Who wins in love affairs? My dear, no one. Bodies are strewn everywhere, before, during and after. Someone is always targeted by the moving end of the barrel. We trade positions, hand off the gun, aim and shoot. But that’s not the worst of it. The true dilemma festers inside each of us, the doubts, the jealousies, the ramblings to ourselves when driving. Let’s be frank. Three’s an odd number impossible to balance for any length of time.
*
A Father’s Love (2010) My earliest memory was at the kitchen table, in the morning, while I made Rice Krispies. I had to stand on the chair to pour the milk (partly missing the bowl) and when I sat back down, puddles of milk and cereal dotted the table from the overflow. Between mouthfuls, I blew on the scattered rice that looked like little boats sailing away. And with my finger, I connected the puddles, making rivers, and when the spilt milk was too thin to spread I’d spoon some extra from my bowl.
Out of nowhere came Dad. At first, I thought, he was going to holler, but he grinned and lifted me high off the chair. “How’s my little queenie,” he said. He then carried me to the living room and sat me on his lap. He kissed my forehead, scratching my cheek with his face, and it tickled. But after a while I wanted to get up. Daisy was crying in another room. He didn’t seem to notice, and with his arms locked around me, he said, “Daddy’s got to sleep.”
*
DMV (2010) Nothing was going to ruin Jaimie’s afternoon, not the rain, not the long line she was standing in at the DMV. The wall clock read 12:15. Paul expected dinner at six. Figure two hours for the sauce, add in the shopping, prep, and there was plenty of time. Hell, time to burn. Relax. What a dingbat.
In the line she shifted her weight and considered the menu, his favorite, Chicken Parmesan – fresh chicken, not frozen, vine-grown tomatoes, not hot house, and of course grated cheese, none of that powdered stuff like last time. Oh, she almost forgot. Opening her purse, she pulled out a pen and slip of paper. Grater she wrote in a jittery script.
*
Dear Dr. Rice (2010) For a brief moment during his lunch hour, Myron felt relieved from the threat of terrorism. It occurred while eating a cheese and pepperoni hot pocket. Condoleezza Rice was on television. Her name was spelled beneath her talking head. He thought it was overextended, not the talking head, but the name, and definitively convoluted. Condoleezza herself was another anomaly, not only a woman and black and Republican but curiously cute and somewhat childlike only with a razor-sharp brain and powerful voice. The woman, he decided between sips of Dr. Pepper, was capable, but could she be trusted? He then wondered where she’d been on September 11th. Most likely in the same bunker with the old boy network. In a flash, he discounted her and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. And by the time the noon news moved onto the weather, Myron returned to thinking about terrorism and how he could possibly survive it.
*
Luck (2010) Some people were simply charmed with an overabundance of luck, serendipity. Who could explain it? Georgina Mars was one such person. Whether it was finding a ten-dollar bill along a curb, or getting her name picked out of a raffle box, she often found herself in the right place, at the right time for no particular reason.
*
Socks (2010) When my husband started wearing socks other than his usual white tubes and plain black knits, I began to wonder. Then when the socks went from discrete patterns to knee-high pastel argyles, I stressed out.
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