by Smith, Skye
"Well, what was your limo doing blocking the driveway?" came Emma's voice.
"Why don't you get a real Bimmer instead of driving an imitation? That way I will expect you to be rude and impatient." The snarky answer sounded like Karen.
"Hey, come on in and close the door," she called, but of course Emma needed no invitation, and Karen was not to be left standing in a doorway, so they reached the kitchen neck in neck. They were still snarking at each other so she leaned forward and pushed chocolate drops into both of their mouths simultaneously.
The bitching was silenced by munching, and then by moaning. "Ohmigod. Ohhh. That is so good."
"Emma Shonfeld," Maya did a minimal introduction, "Karen Marshall." They nodded to each other reluctantly.
"I brought back the robe," Karen said handing over a robe that looked just like Karl’s.
Emma's face froze as she looked at the robe. She looked up at the woman and then her eyes went wide. "THE Karen Marshall. Like from the vampire TV show?" Emma announced loudly. "Your show was what kept me sane in my last year of Med school."
"Med school. So are you a doctor?" asked Karen. "Great, then I don't have to wait until you leave before I tell Maya my news." She grabbed Maya by the arm and swung her around. "My Beverly Hills doctor can find nothing wrong. It was a real period. He is amazed and I am so happy."
Emma twigged. "You are the dentist abortion."
"Maya, you told someone? You told someone!" Karen was instantly in flames. "How dare you?"
"Anonymously," said Maya suddenly defensive, "and only to Emma. I was asking her for a professional opinion, you know, if it was even possible. "
"Your secret is safe with me," Emma assured her as she picked out another chocolate and greedily popped it into her mouth. "Tell you what," she said, licking the Cayenne burn off her chocolate brown lips. "Tit-for-tat, I'll tell my confidential news. I just got the results of my pre-op before my surgery. My cysts have disappeared. Gone. As in, I don't need an operation and I can go off the pill. I am so relieved."
Karen thought about it. "Damn. I should have asked my doc for a pill prescription. There is no way I want to get pregnant by the jerk I'm living with. Well, I guess that decides it. He is out the door real quick, and that's for damn sure."
Karen had loosened her coat, and Emma saw glimpses of the schoolgirl outfit she was wearing underneath. A thought came to her. "Maya, did you do the aura thing with Karen like you did with me?"
"Uh huh, duh," Maya replied. Karen and Emma looked at each other and both started talking at the same time, comparing experiences.
"Blah, blah, blah," Maya whispered to herself as she grabbed a handful of chocolate drops and walked away into the living room. She rolled over the back of the couch and landed in a nest of cushions and then pulled one to her chest while she reached for the TV clicker and found the cartoon channel. It was squirrel and moose.
Whenever she muted the annoying cereal commercials, really annoying because she didn't have any, she could hear Emma and Karen still jawing. They sounded like teenage girls in a coffee shop. 'and then he said, and then I said, and then she said and then I said' Boring. It didn't matter who the 'he' was, it was all his fault.
The door bell rang. She didn't move. It would be Karen's driver telling her they had to get back to the set. "Get the door!" she howled. God, had she just sounded like her mother? She took the TV off mute because the fairy tale cartoon was starting and she liked the soft deep voice of the narrator.
"It's your monk," Emma yelled over the TV volume. Maya hit the power button and sat up and looked towards the front door. She rolled over the back of the sofa and checked to make sure she hadn't fallen out of her halter top, and then skipped towards the door.
The limo driver was standing behind the monk, almost hidden by the robes. Karen looked at her driver who was holding his watch up and pointing to it, and then to the monk, and then to Maya, and then to this marvelous woman psychiatrist whom she had just met, and then back to the monk, and thought to herself, 'why can I never have a party this interesting, even with an professional planner?' She called to her driver, "I'll phone in and tell them you have two flat tires and to reschedule my shoots. Meanwhile, you can go and get some big trays of sushi. The kind with a minimum of rice, you know, like mostly slabs of fish."
Maya yelled after him, "And please buy me a box of Honey Nut Oatios. A big box, and a big jug of two-percent milk."
After the introductions, Sarthani waved his cloaked arm towards Emma and Karen, who were standing to one side looking at him. "I was hoping to have some time with you alone, in private," he told Maya.
"Mrs. Li warned me never be alone with a monk. It's not proper. Besides, Emma is my psychiatrist, and Karen is my idol. She kills vampires for a living." She noticed that Karen had done up her coat again, perhaps to cover her skimpy outfit in the presence of the monk.
The monk looked at the other two women. "I did not know you were under psychiatric care."
"You don't think any sane person would have an aura do you?" She watched his face to see which way he would take her comment.
He looked away to hide his face from her, and instead looked at Karen. "And are there many vampires in Vancouver?" he asked.
"Do you mean the common money-sucking variety like real estate agents and stock brokers, or do you mean the less obnoxious blood-sucking kind?" Karen answered glibly. She had answered every imaginable question about vampires on every talk show on TV.
The monk responded to her answer with a twist of his head and a small bow and a slight smile.
"Sarthani has been instructing me in how to control my aura," Maya told Karen. "I suppose that's why he is here today. Where should we go to talk?"
"I think upstairs would be better," said Sarthani looking up the stairs and thinking the other two women would be polite enough NOT to follow them up. He was wrong.
"Maya told me that you put her into a hypnotic state the last time you were here," Emma said in her professional voice. "I will sit and monitor this time."
"I'll stay down here until the sushi arrives," volunteered Karen. She had some quick calls to make in any case. About thirty minutes later she climbed the stairs with the sushi, and then made a second trip to bring up the case of Japanese beer and a roll of paper towels. She grumbled to herself about how much she paid for assistants and yet they were never around to wait on her.
Emma was sitting in a chair to one side and motioned her to sit with her and put her finger to her lips to interrupt what Karen was about to say.
* * *
Maya was sitting still after coming out of hypnosis. She felt very relaxed, and yet not sleepy. She checked the clock. Almost a half an hour had passed and she couldn't remember any of it. Sarthani had told her that this time she would go deeper and faster, not just because it was her second time, but mostly because Emma's presence would make her feel more secure.
There was happy banter at the other end of the common room, where the other three were attacking the sushi, and guzzling beer. The stronger midday sun had pushed the fog away and she could see the water, and Stanley Park, and the occasional high mountain peak. She was so relaxed that she didn't want to move, but if she didn't move soon she knew all the raw tuna would disappear.
Karen handed her an open beer as she came close to the sushi trays. She thought about getting glasses for her guests, but she saw that there were only two slices of the tuna left so instead she grabbed both of them. Besides, she had a ready excuse for bad manners, for Japanese beer sometimes had a slightly skunky smell which got worse when you poured it into a glass.
When even the last California roll had been devoured, Sarthani stood and moved a potted hibiscus into the center of the room and then arranged yoga mats around it. He sat the three women in a triangle around the plant. His own mat was close behind Maya's, but he did not sit there yet.
"I made a terrible mistake the other day in the garden behind the shop," he began. "I was too eager to have y
ou charge those five crystals. I should have waited until I had shown you how to focus your aura so that it doesn't leap out in all directions. I should also have insisted that you do the crystals one at a time." He took the long thin crystal from around his own neck and hung it on the hibiscus on the branch that was closest to Maya.
"When you send your aura out in all directions, it takes much out of you. Have you been listless, energyless, sleepy, and depressed since then? Yes?"
"That about sums it up," she replied.
"Yes, I am sorry for that. Sometimes you can get so depressed that you become self-destructive. What I taught your subconscious mind today is not something it did not already know. I just strengthened its awareness. We are now going to practice it, so that your body remembers it automatically. These are two methods of collecting your aura from all sides and pushing them along the skin of your arms and then towards your hands."
He showed her the physical positions for the two methods. First, he made the prayer pose, holding his arms slightly further away from his body than was normal, and then he opened all ten fingers wide apart while keeping the heels of his hands still together. "This is the lotus flower opening. When you do this, your aura will collect in the skin of your breast and shoulders and then move down the skin of each arm to the hands and then move outwards from the inside of your fingers. Try it without your aura."
Maya clasped her elbows and calmed her aura, and then did the lotus flower opening. Despite her aura being calmed, she could feel it moving along her arms and could feel the ends of her fingers tingling.
"Do my arms have to be bare to do this?" she asked.
"It is better, much stronger with bare arms, and with bare shoulders."
"And my breasts," Maya said as she reached behind her neck to undo the straps of her halter top.
"No," Emma objected, "that is professionally improper."
"It would be much better," said the monk trying not to watch the two straps fall down from her shoulders. "Your breasts are a source of much power. You are the first woman I have ever taught, and none of the men I have taught have so much power sourced there. Whether your breasts are bare or not, you should crush them inwards with the inside of your upper arms, so that breast and arm are more connected."
As he spoke, she freed her breasts and then pushed them in with her arms and did the lotus flower opening again. "Oh, yes, that is much stronger. I can feel my fingers almost vibrating."
He had to look away and fight the carnal lust that was rising in his body. He noticed that the other two women were also practicing the lotus flower opening, but thankfully fully clothed. He told them all to continue practicing while he excused himself and walked sideways away from them and to the bathroom.
When he returned, much relieved, and not just of the beer, he asked Maya to use the lotus flower to charge his crystal. He then sat behind her in order to sense how much of her aura still escaped backwards rather than being drawn to her shoulders and towards her hands. He dropped his robes from his shoulders and sat bare-chested facing her back, closed his eyes and meditated.
Karen stared at him. She had thought him just a bit older than she was herself. He had gray hairs on his chest. He was much older than she.
This time, Maya prayed to raise her aura and then opened the flower so that the crystal hung between her fingers. It started to glow white, and then suddenly flashed in brilliance, and she could hear him yelling, "Enough!"
He pulled his robe up, and then stood and moved to where he could see Maya's face. "You see now," he said, "why what happened in the garden when you charged five at once was so upsetting. You did not just charge the crystals, you sent the same brilliance all around you. Luckily, you were wearing a blend of linen and silk so the full brilliance did not overcome the Li family. They were bathed, not drowned."
Immediately she wanted to know what he meant by that last remark, but he motioned her to keep quiet.
"What do you use the crystal for?" asked Karen.
The monk turned to her. It was a valid question. "It holds the feeling of the aura for some days. When you meditate with it on your chest, it helps you to find and bring forth your own aura. Almost all auras are colored and therefore impure and weak. The darker the color, the weaker. Black means that the aura has become what Maya's engineer friends would probably call anti-aura."
He pointed towards Maya. "She has the only pure white aura I have ever known. If you meditate with a crystal charged by her, then not only will you find your own aura more easily, but the crystal may lighten its color, and perhaps make it stronger."
"I'd love to know more about these aura things," cooed Karen. "Do you ever get to L.A? Next time you come, I would welcome you to stay with me." She blushed a little. "I mean, visit me, like, I have a great big house in the Hollywood Hills with a view over Beverly Hills. You could have your own entire suite."
"I thank you for your generous offer." He bowed humbly. "As it happens, my time with Maya has made clear my own ignorance. There is an extensive collection of Sanskrit documents in a library in Las Angeles. Your invitation would make it more possible for me to visit it and do some research, if I can ever justify the airfare."
"No worries, love," she continued to coo. She grabbed her purse and shook out some things and grabbed a card. She wrote something on the back. "This is the name and number of my personal assistant. On the back I wrote my current password. Just tell her that password and she will take you seriously. The movie company charters a plane that goes to L.A on Friday nights and comes back on Sunday nights. If you need more than a weekend, then just return the next Sunday. Give her a call and she will arrange for a seat. I tend to be on it one weekend out of two."
"That is very kind of you," he said, taking the card, "but won't your movie company object?"
"Object," she laughed and covered her mouth with a hand. "A movie company object to their star taking their guru along? Hah, if that were true Mel would never go on location."
"But I am not a guru, I am a m..., oh, I see what you mean. Americanisms. I must learn more of them."
"So, what is the other method?" Maya interrupted, feeling a bit slighted. Karen had never invited her to L.A..
"Ah, it is a similar technique but like this. And always use your left hand." He pushed his left arm forward, with the elbow bent, and the fingers up and bent forward and the palm forward. Then he crossed his right arm over his breast and grabbed the left upper arm with his right hand. "Again, try to cover your breasts with your arm and squeeze them together at the same time."
Emma was nodding. She had seen him teach both of the methods to Maya when she was deep under hypnosis. She approved of his method of teaching the subconscious first, and then teaching the conscious mind. Now, immediate practice would glue the suggestion in place with the subject's own positive feedback. She would have to research the technique more fully and perhaps incorporate it into her own work.
"With this method," he continued, "you should be able gather and project the aura in a concentration in any direction your palm is pointed. Of course you must adjust your aura's strength and therefore, range, accordingly. The range around your sides and back will be reduced and stay close to your skin, but the range in front of the palm may be ten times greater than the range at your back has been reduced by. Erik will doubtless have a mathematical formula for that."
The monk sat behind her again and let his robe fall down around his waist. This time he wore his crystal. He was going to monitor the weakness of her back aura to see how well the method was working.
"How will we know the range in front?" asked Maya.
"Do either of these women feel your aura?" he asked.
"Yes, both of them. They both like the feeling."
"Then ask for a volunteer."
"I will," they both said immediately. Emma was in one of her business skirts and jackets and was kneeling instead of sitting cross-legged. Karen was sitting cross-legged, showing much leg from under her coat, whi
ch was still snugged around her.
"Umm," said Maya, "which of you doesn't mind undressing a bit so you are more sensitive?"
"Ahh, of course," said the monk and he turned around and faced his back to Maya's back and therefore to the other women as well.
Emma was already wriggling out of her jacket, blouse, and skirt down to her bra and half- slip. "Me first," she said as she went back to kneeling.
Maya started to pray, and the monk looked up from his own clasped hands and warned. "Just gently at first. This may be tempestuous while you learn to adjust it." He noticed that he could see all of the women reflected in a wall mirror over by the folded-up bowflex. The actress was removing her coat and her schoolgirl outfit was very visible. His thoughts were not worthy of him, and he forced himself to look down again.
Maya's palm was out and Emma readied herself to feel the aura. She felt it almost immediately. It moved through her and made her skin tingle as if she were being massaged with feathers. "Oh bugger it," she whispered and reached around to her back and unhooked her bra and let it drop to the floor. Immediately she felt the aura caressing her breasts. She closed her eyes and felt it wrap her in the scent of Lily of the Valley. She moaned softly. She pressed her knees together involuntarily. She took a long, slow, deep breath and gasped at how good she felt all over, but especially her breasts and beneath her waist.
"No more," Emma gasped, "I'll embarrass my self, oh, oh my, aaahhh, oh thank you, thank you, thank you!" She could feel the aura still but it was lighter, not so insistent, not so, so, so sexual. Then it was gone. She wanted to hurry and cover her nakedness before the monk turned around but she didn't want to move and break the feeling. Instead she closed her eyes so she wouldn't see the monk.
"My turn," said Karen. After watching what happened to Emma, she was eagerly shucking all of her clothes. If the monk peaked, then his corruption would be his own undoing. She decided to lay down so that if she swooned she wouldn't risk bruising herself from the fall. The cameras were heartless.
