by Smith, Skye
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MAYA'S AURA - the Awakening by Skye Smith
Chapter 14 - In present day on highway 101 South of San Francisco
The shoot had finished. Maya wasn't needed in Hollywood anymore. She couldn't leave L.A. fast enough. As usua,l she booked one of the company's limos. She did not fly if there was any other viable alternative. Not because of the flying, or even the airplanes, but because of the airports. The beams of security x-rays, the hidden cameras, the anxious and stressed out crowds, the hurry up and wait atmosphere, all of it. The big city airports were the places least friendly to Maya's aura.
Since she was going only as far as San Francisco, the door-to-door limo service was probably faster than flying in any case. It was certainly faster than the train and more convenient than the bus, or a rental car.
As usual, when she was driven from L.A. to San Fran, she phoned up the local Buddhist Monk hotline and offered rides for up to four monks. When she did this, it meant that she had to ride shotgun with the driver, so her presence would not defile the monks in the back.
They picked them up at a big house just off the Sunset Strip in Beverly Hills. The rich family that owned the house allowed it to be used as a residence for visiting monks during the seasons when they did not use it themselves, which meant monks were always there.
The big house had the same "for sale" sign on the lawn as the last time. She thought the owners were hoping to sell it to Shanghai or Hong Kong money, which meant that having the monks in residence would help it to sell. The house would be free of evil spirits and carry very good joss.
The old caretaker monk, whose job it was to deal with the outside world on behalf of the others, came to the limo to chat to her while the driver loaded bags into the trunk and the front of the limo sections. The old monk was very polite. She always asked him about other monks they knew in common and he always had news.
"He is in Dharamsala again," he told her when she asked about the abbot. "The old woman who is the personal physician to the first lama is ill, and he has gone to visit with her."
Their short visits always ended in the same way. He would pass her some simple crystals strung on simple twine, including his own, and she would hang them over the rear view mirror and bless them, and then hand them back.
The old man bowed them out of the driveway, and they headed up Sunset and took the coastal highway. They stopped at Refugio Beach just before the number 1 dodged inland through a pass and connected to the 101.. She always had the driver stop at Refugio so that she and the monks could walk along the strand of sand under the palm trees and imagine they were back in Thailand or Burma or India or wherever else they came from.
This time her passengers were four young monks studying in the equivalent of monk's university. They were on a tour from Thailand, but only the ones dressed in saffron robes were from Thailand. The ones in ruddy robes were Burmese refugees living in Thailand.
The Burmese monks were chock-full of up-to-the-minute news about what was happening with the monk's rebellion in Rangoon. There was no good news, but they even made that sound like good news. The more that the vicious government trod heavily on the necks of monks, the more likely they were to be overthrown by the lay men or even by China and Thailand.
She had prepared a picnic for Refugio. It was in the cooler chest that Bruno, the driver she always asked for, was hauling to the picnic table under two tall palms. He would have Japanese barley tea with the monks as he was driving, whereas she would hit the small bottle of sake. The picnic was almost exclusively Japanese rice and sliced raw tuna.
The sushi restaurant had been about to charge her two hundred for that much tuna, but when they saw the monks in the limo they dropped the price to cost, and then the entire staff ran outside to the limo to personally drop tasty treats into the bowls of the monks.
Their next break wasn't until they were abreast of Monterey Bay at the old mission at San Juan Bautista. They all stretched their legs, and the monks stretched their minds around the life that the monks of this frontier mission must have lived.
They dropped the monks at an equivalent house in San Francisco, and they were replaced by three monks who were catching a ride south with Bruno on his return trip. Only then did he drop Maya at the house where she was staying. The monks were fidgeting by the time Bruno had paid his respects to his old employer inside the house.
Maya was shown to her usual room, but she knew she would rarely sleep there. The expectant mother would demand she share her king-size bed at night. During the day, she planned on spending her days re-exploring San Francisco.
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She had lived in Frisco for almost a year when she was fresh out of high school and proving to her mother that she could make it on her own. At the time she and another girl from Mendocino had shared a grungy basement studio. Really grungy, but it was all they could afford on coffee shop wages.
At the time it didn't bother her. Well, not much. Well, not much during the summer. She was a young girl from a small town and living in the big city. It was by sheer chance that their grungy life centered around a neighborhood with a large gay community. It wasn't until much later that both of them realized that in any other affordable neighborhood they would have probably lived through some grisly experiences.
It was an interesting time to be visiting Frisco. Not since the days of the hippies had there been so many student demonstrations. Along with demonstrations there were also ad hoc concerts and parties and interesting conversations in student coffee shops. It seemed to be building into the kind of scene that her mother always pretended she had belonged to in the late sixties, but of course, she had been just an infant at the time.
During the day she would escape the 'House of Pregnant Woman and Mother' and dress in grunge and wander the streets where things were supposed to be happening on that day. Whatever she found was never as good as it could be. There was no romance any more, and she didn't mean romance as in love. She meant romantic flair. There were no feminine hippie chicks in flowing skirts and beads, and no hippie guys with long hair and wearing Mexican peasant whites.
A couple of days dressed in grunge were enough to bum her out. She decided to try dressing in colorful feminine clothes, not too revealing, in hopes of starting a trend. On the very first day she discovered that the feminine clothes were a big hit, but not with the student women. It was the gay men that approved of her look and sought out her company.
On the days when the students were sitting in the middle of streets with ant- corruption placards, and just generally being in the way, she would be sitting in the closest coffee shop being bought chai tea by two or three charming gay men who were watching it all through the shop windows.
"I sort of feel guilty not joining them," she said to one of the guys one afternoon.
"There are many sides to a demonstration such as this," Chuck, the man who brought her chai, told her. "We need actual demonstrators, and we need police, and we need observers, and we need the press. We are the observers."
"So, we just sit here doing nothing?"
"No," he said, "we sit here waiting for something to happen, preferably a reaction."
"Huh."
Chuck held up his digital camera and his powerful smart phone. So did the rest of the men at the table. Some had digital video cameras. "If something happens, it is our duty to run out with our cameras and make sure that the police realize that everything they do will be captured on film. It tends to slow down the building of violence and gives saner heads more time to defuse the situations."
"Are we talking about the same police?" she asked incredulously. "I used to pour coffee for a lot of them a few years ago. They seemed pretty rednecked."
"Oh they are, ducky," said the man across from her. "That's why we don't join the demonstrators. They would just love to bash us about for different reasons than being against corruption."
She looked over at the TV on the wall. It was alwa
ys on in case there was news about the demonstrations. She recognized the politician that was shaking hands on the news. "What do you think of him, that Glover Walland?"
"He's very good-looking. I wouldn't kick him out of bed for small farts. Maybe for big ones," replied Chuck, just to make her laugh. She was so pretty when she laughed.
"No, seriously. Isn't he a contender?"
"He is bought and paid for by the military industrial complex and by big oil. He will be worse than Bush."
"Which Bush?" asked another man looking over his shoulder to see the TV.
"Does it matter, dear? Pick your Bush," Chuck murmured.
"Will he win, do you think?"
"If he wins the candidacy, then he will likely win the presidency. Only the Republicans can stop him now," said a man at the next table. "Once the media get behind him he will be unstoppable."
"Cynic," said his friend.
"Hey, we saw it in the Democratic convention when the obvious person to choose was Hilary. The Republicans had no real candidate. Their media moguls decide the only way to stop Hilary was at the convention. The right wing media pushed Obama and dissed Hilary all the way through the convention. They figured they could run a rabid dog and still win against a black man for president."
"But they didn't beat him. Obama won."
"Yeah, because the right wing media pushed him so hard to beat Hilary, that there wasn't time to turn around the momentum. The same media push that made him the candidate, made him the president. The GOP money and media is what put Obama into the White House."
Customers all over the shop began to argue with the man. Maya stood up and looked around at the angry faces. She was the only woman customer in the shop. "Hey guys, settle down. You're arguing about ancient history. It doesn't matter. What matters is that guy on TV."
"Well, that is a doom and gloom topic, isn't it? The future under Walland?" said Chuck. "I would rather argue ancient history."
She noticed that Chuck had trouble standing and walked with a limp. He left the cafe and started limping up the hill, carrying a large camera bag. She pushed her empty cup away from her, said farewell to the guys, and ran to catch up with him. She hooked into the arm on his bad leg side and walked with him slowly up the hill. She took the camera bag from him, and slung it over a shoulder.
"Thanks," he said, "I hate using my cane, but I really do need it to climb hills. By the way, you are the prettiest cane I have ever had."
She let go of his arm, skipped ahead a few steps and then did a twirl to let her full Indian cotton skirt swirl. "It's not me, it's the romantic look," she said and then ended her twirl by grabbing his arm again. "Do you live far?"
"Next corner and left. Not far. Do you live around here? I seem to remember your face from somewhere."
"I used to live about two blocks away, in a dungeon. You probably recognize me from the coffee shop a block over. I used to work there." She walked him home, and then helped him up the steps to the door of the small, rundown apartment building.
"I live on the ground floor, so you don't have to go any further if you don't want to." He opened the outside door with his key. "Want some miso soup?"
"I would love some," she said and followed him down a dark hallway that smelled of cabbage and spaniels. What am I doing, was the only thought in her mind.
She followed him into the apartment and took the tour with one glance. She was expecting gay colors and paintings, not walls covered in photos of tanks and companies of soldiers. She put the bag down.
He watched her look at them, and then said, "Someday I should redecorate." He took a big camera out of the bag and put it down on a shelf strewn with other camera equipment and a collection of folding knives. "That was my old life, before I got my balls shot off in Iraq. Literally."
She walked along the gallery until the end where there were a dozen portraits of soldiers. "This your company?"
"Just the ones that didn't make it. Improvised land mines got most of us. Hey, I shouldn't be standing around. I have soup to make."
"So you're not gay?"
"I'm not anything. I can either hang around and be depressed with other vets, or I can hang with my old high school crowd and absorb their sympathy. You know the word sympathy don't you? It's in the dictionary right between shit and syphilis." He caught her off guard with that, and she laughed. "Anyhow, I decided to fly with the gays in this neighborhood. At least they're colorful."
His only window faced a wall, so they sipped soup on the front steps where they could watch life's parade of people walk by on the street.
A pregnant woman walked by, and reminded her. "Thanks for the soup, Chuck. I should get home. I have a pregnant friend to take care of. See you tomorrow at the coffee shop."
"You live far?"
"She lives over in Sea Cliff, near China Beach."
"Oooh, nice." he said in a falsetto.
"Yeah, beats my old dungeon all to hell. See you."
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MAYA'S AURA - the Awakening by Skye Smith
Chapter 15 - Three years earlier in Kitsilano, Vancouver
Maya was right on time at Mister Li's shop. The bell above the door tinkled as she went in. It smelled heavily of incense and she saw some movement at the back, so she called out. Mister Li came out from behind some boxes and saw her. "Good time to come. Monk just cleansed shop of bad spirits. Please come to garden."
She stepped into the brightness of the odd garden and saw a monk dressed in red and gold robes sitting cross-legged on a straw mat. Mrs. Li was ladling food into his bowl. Mister Li hurried forward, bowing humbly and told the monk, "This the girl, eminence." The monk motioned her to come closer and to sit on another mat, and she did.
He spoke some Cantonese and Mister Li disappeared back into the shop, but Mrs. Li just shook her head and stayed still, watching them.
The monk spoke with a deep voice and a cultured English accent. "Grandmother will not leave us alone together, not with you wearing such a skimpy sun dress, but what we need to do requires privacy. Will you invite me into your home so I may cleanse it of evil spirits?"
"Yes, of course. It's just a short walk away."
Mrs. Li tutted at them as she followed them through the shop and out onto the street. When Maya looked back she was shaking her head and talking to her husband. "They do not trust you," she said, both as a statement and a question.
"They trust me, but not as much as their feeling of protection towards you. You have impressed them greatly. Beside, we monks are not supposed to seek the company of women."
They walked and talked all the way to the house. They mostly talked about the incident with the attempted kidnapping in the park. "Mister Li is still curious why you did not simply remove your gloves and zap the kidnapper. He is in awe of your powers."
"Do you believe I really have powers?" she asked.
"You are most careful to wear gloves even on a hot day. Let us say, I am openly curious."
Once they had arrived at the house and she had let them in, she took him directly upstairs to the common-cum-meditation room. He was more interested in the Bow flex muscle machine pushed back against the wall than the panoramic view. Eventually he sat on a yoga mat and assumed a meditational position facing the view, and invited her to sit facing him.
"Explain yourself," was all he said, and then he listened without moving or speaking for almost an hour while Maya told him of her discovery of her aura, and the experiments they had done with it.
"Do you mind giving me a demonstration?" he asked. "Would it be enough to be nude only from the waist up?" She nodded and loosened the straps of her sundress so that it fell away from her shoulders. The monk was amazed at the un-selfconcsious way she did this, and couldn't help but notice her fresh honey-coloured skin and pert breasts. He made a show of following suit , easing out of his own robes and making an effort not to stare. Maya in turn was impressed by his lean but muscular torso, and smooth tan skin. His close-cr
opped black hair accented fine Asian features and dark eyes. She made an effort not to stare.
They both began to prepare for meditation in their own ways. The room became very still as each cleared their minds.
She gasped. He had an aura. Not as strong as Erik's, but there. She felt her own aura immediately strengthen and whiteness filled her mind with floral scents. Then it started, what Erik called resonance. Her aura was building, stretching his. She could feel his getting stronger, drifting into her mind. A very light green and a smell, a smell of limes - no, apples - so faint - no, limes.
"Unripe mango," his deep voice came through to her. "Can you stop? That is enough for now."
She opened her eyes and stared at him. "That's the problem. I can't stop it, like, except for covering it, you know, blocking it."
"Then roll away from me, for I cannot move."
She did as she was asked and rolled all the way to the windows. She looked back at him. He was in a deep trance. She stood and keeping close to the walls, moved around to the stairs. She tiptoed down them to fetch a ski jacket.
He opened his eyes and they focused on the girl sitting in a meditational pose wearing a ski jacket and gloves. "That was most distracting, delightful but distracting. And disturbing. I begin to understand your problem." He took some small breaths and yawned to wake himself into consciousness. "Mister Li explained it well, although he was ignorant of the full extent." He shuffled and twisted back into his robes.
"Can you help me to, like, control it? It's making my life wonderful and horrible at the same time."
"You say that when you are asleep, it goes to sleep also?" the monk asked, deep in thought.
"And when it finds another aura it multiplies quickly, and when it finds no aura it tries to turn sexuality into an aura," she added. "And it seems to focus through my hands. Other parts too, weakly through my feet, noticeable through my breasts, elbows, knees, forehead. I haven't experimented with my sex. I've been afraid to."