The Simpatico Series Box Set (3 books in 1)

by Dermot Davis

  As Andrew turned his head on the pillow and smiled at the thought that Fiona would soon be rushing back into his arms with her smiling face, and a desperate yearning in her heart, he became aware of pain on the inside of his left arm. Had he scraped himself or was he coming down with some kind of skin rash?

  When Andrew pulled his arm free from his now creased, white shirt, he raised his arm to take a look at the area that hurt. It was a tattoo; a fresh tattoo that was raw, red, and inflamed around the edges, and it hurt. He didn’t remember ever getting a tattoo; he never much believed in them. He must have had it done when he was unconscious. The tattoo looked like a dragon, or perhaps a snake, with large wings. The serpent was curved around in a circle and it was eating its own tail. How odd, he thought to himself as he slowly lost consciousness and fell into a deep, dark sleep.

  Chapter 12

  Fiona pretty much cried to herself, tears streaming down her face, all the way out of Los Angeles and into the peach and taupe earth desert community of Twentynine Palms. Without Andrew by her side, she felt like she was only half a person or maybe a full person that had some kind of huge hole in her heart. Despite the fact that it hurt so much to be separated, she knew that what she was doing was right. Being right didn’t make it hurt any less, however.

  Even playing her favorite music, at close to full volume, didn’t make her feel any better. For the first time ever, thinking about Andrew didn’t help; in fact, thinking about him felt like she would be better off twisting a knife into her chest, over and over. The beauty, solitude, and peace of the desert did nothing to soothe her.

  Not knowing exactly where she was going didn’t help matters, either. She was acting purely on a hunch, following her intuition, and trusting that it would all work out. She alternately felt trust and slight terror. Apart from driving in the general direction of Twentynine Palms, she had no way of finding Arjuna directly. She would not be able to mentally retrace her steps to where they visited him in his trailer in the wilderness.

  She had decided that she would drive to the coffee shop in the village and either wait for him to show up at some point or, better still, hopefully find someone that precisely knew his whereabouts. As the day grew longer and warmer, the more that she thought about her mad dash to the desert, the more ridiculous it began to appear. The man was not expecting her and she didn’t even know if he would take her under his wing or had wisdom that could help her.

  From what she gathered from her internet research, a proper vision quest took several days to complete and required the supervision of an outsider. Having someone ride shotgun came in pretty handy, just in case it all went wrong; like the person undergoing it got eaten by a bobcat or bitten by a snake or something equally horrible.

  According to her internet research, a person could lose their mind on a vision quest. They might find themselves, their soul, lost in the spiritual realms and unable to navigate reality and return to their body. She didn’t really know all of the specifics yet it was clear that there were potential emotional, physical and spiritual consequences to an unsupervised, or even a supervised, vision quest.

  Well, worst case scenario, the guy could not be found or if she did find him, he might turn her away. Even if it didn’t work out, she told herself, at least she would have tried. Following her inner guidance, in what seemed like such a harebrained way, was a first for her. Why she should have felt so strong as to follow her intuition at this stage of her life was unclear to her. Was it, perhaps, because the stakes were much higher than they’d ever been?

  Ever since meeting Andrew, it had seemed like she needed to grow up at an accelerated pace. The decisions that she’d had to make, since meeting her beloved and intertwining her soul path with his, seemed much more serious than ever before. The consequences of making wrong choices all seemed so much more devastating to her now. Of course, it was all part of growing up and becoming a woman finally but, still, she sometimes would prefer not to have to make such critical decisions.

  What if Andrew had taken her advice to leave the job and they actually let him? Suppose then he went back to prison and had to spend years and years behind bars? He would have to stay until they let him out and he might be an old man. What then? He might have blamed her for the rest of their lives and she couldn’t much have blamed him. She would have blamed herself, most probably, and likely would have regretted her influence upon him for the rest of her lonely, loveless days.

  Then again, she couldn’t bear the thought of him becoming like her father, a man whose primary passions were money and power. She could not stomach the thought of him having joined the secret group and then having to watch his soul gradually rot, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, until it eventually turned jet black, shriveled up and died. What kind of life would either of them have had then? Yes, they would be together but at what cost?

  To witness someone else’s soul turn dark and eventually die had a similar effect upon the observer, except now, considering the bonding of their souls, it would be even worse. Both their souls would surely and inexorably slowly rot and wither, day by day, and slowly cease to exist. They would both turn dark if Andrew’s soul was in constant contact with souls obsessed with money, power, and privilege. She and Andrew would both live purely for the pleasures of the flesh and would require more and more physical gratification in an attempt to satisfy their unquenchable material desires. Desires that could only be fulfilled by the enlightenment of their souls, of which they would have none; having sold them off or abandoned them a long time previously to try and obtain monetary wealth or some other fleeting riches.

  Resisting the urge to call Andrew, and plead with him not to follow the course that her father had set out for him, was terribly hard. It was made easier by the fact that she had no phone signal and couldn’t call anybody, even if she so desired.

  The village was quiet when she arrived but then again she had no way of knowing if it ever got busier or if quiet was its natural state of being. At least she had no trouble finding a parking space directly outside of the coffee shop. Checking out the hours of opening, listed on the front glass door, she computed that she had three hours to find the guru or secure enough information to track him down. Should she fail, then perhaps it was not meant to be.

  As Fiona pushed the coffee shop door open, she stopped as if she heard someone call her name. It didn’t sound like someone called her name; it just felt like someone did so. Turning to where she sensed the request had come from, she failed to see a living soul. There was nobody on that side of the street. Rather than fob the experience off as a false alarm, she looked harder. Something about a red pickup truck parked across the street called for her attention. It looked oddly familiar and she felt a kind of energy ping at the sight of the vehicle.

  Fiona smiled and released her hold on the coffee shop door. Remembering where she had seen the truck before, she walked into the street and crossed the road. It was Arjuna’s truck, parked outside of a hardware store. Fiona walked to the front window of the shop to look inside. Cupping her hands to the sides of her face, to shield out the light, she couldn’t see if there was anybody in the store. “Looking for someone, young lady?” a voice said from behind.

  Calming herself from her sudden shock, utterly surprised by the unexpected appearance of someone behind her, she turned around and had to move her body so that the stranger’s head shielded her from the blinding sun. Arjuna stood before her, two paper bags full of supplies and groceries clutched between his arms. “Yes,” Fiona replied with a smile. “I was looking for you, as a matter of fact.”

  “Is that so?” Arjuna said with a smile, a toothpick sticking out from the corner of his mouth. “Why would that be?”

  “You invited me to undertake a vision quest,” she said boldly. “I decided to take you up on your offer.”

  “Is that so?” he said again, looking down the street as if he was thinking about it. “Where’s that boyfriend of yours?” he asked. “He figuring o
n taking me up on my offer as well?”

  “No,” Fiona said sadly. “It’s just me.”

  “Just you, huh?” Arjuna said, sizing her up as if wondering if her slight frame was up for such an intense ordeal.

  “I’m tougher than I look,” she said as if reading the guru’s thoughts.

  “Are you, indeed?” he asked, still thinking.

  “I most certainly am,” she said, propping herself up and standing more erect.

  “You want to drive me home?” he then asked.

  “Only if you wait for me to pull my car behind yours,” she said with a knowing grin.

  “You got it,” Arjuna said as he opened the door of his unlocked truck.

  Even though Fiona had almost immediately found the person that she had driven such a long distance to locate, she could not shake off the waves of panic and anxiety that threatened to place a stranglehold upon her body as she drove her SUV behind the beat up pickup truck of a man she barely knew. She had told her father that she was spending a few days by herself, in nearby Palm Springs, in order to “think things through” while Andrew underwent his initiation into his secret group.

  Her father had seemed pleased that she was behaving as if she were estranged from or about to part with Andrew. So, he didn’t ask for more information, as he normally would have if she’d decided to go away by herself. Only Andrew knew vaguely about where she had planned to be and he had seemed much more preoccupied with his own business and so didn’t ask too many questions about hers.

  As Fiona drove deeper into the wilderness of the Mojave Desert, her anxiety greatly increased. The more she drove away from her home, the more she felt very, very alone. Just as she was seriously considering turning her car around and making her way back to the freeway, and driving to the safety of all with which she was familiar with, Arjuna parked. Catching her by surprise, she had to brake hard to avoid a rear-end collision with his vehicle. As the tires on her ride locked up, the SUV skidded and kicked up a sizable cloud of dust.

  “You still have time to change your mind, little girl,” Arjuna said when he walked to her open window. He smiled down at her. Her heart pounded with fear yet she felt increasingly irritated that he continued to treat her like a child.

  “I’m not a little girl,” Fiona said defiantly as she opened her door with force.

  Arjuna secretly smiled to himself as he carried his bags of provisions into his trailer. “We’ll soon see about that,” he said, as if he had a plan to test her reserve. “Why don’t you come on in and make us some tea while I put away these provisions and supplies?”

  Despite the fact that Fiona didn’t know what she was doing in making hot tea using what appeared to be twigs and dried leaves, which she had spooned out from a mason jar marked “Tea,” Arjuna acted like the hot beverage was delicious. Sitting in the opposite seat to the one that he had sat in before, the man relaxed his body and looked admiringly out the window and into the distance. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  “No,” Fiona answered, straining her ears and failing to hear whatever noise to which he might have been referring.

  “Exactly,” he then said with a broad grin. “There are very few places left on earth where you would be unable to hear any sound whatsoever,” he said with pride. “This is one of them.”

  “Yes,” Fiona said, taking a deep breath, trying but failing to adequately relax. Taking a sip from the tea that she had made, she couldn’t but fail to make a face filled with disgust. “What is this tea, exactly?” she asked.

  “Oh, this isn’t tea,” Arjuna said, taking another sip from his cup. “That mason jar is where I used to keep my tea but it got that it wasn’t big enough anymore.”

  “So, what’s in it now?” she asked with a veiled sense of horror. “No, you know what?” she immediately said, figuring that she was actually better off not knowing. “I don’t want to know.”

  “My fault for not telling you where the good tea is kept,” he said. “But don’t worry, it ain’t poison. You’re drinking some very medicinal herbs.”

  “Medicinal for what?” she asked, looking into her tea cup at the greenish-looking concoction.

  “These are herbs for snake bite,” he said comfortingly.

  “Oh,” Fiona said, thinking that maybe that wasn’t so bad. It could be helpful if she went on the vision quest and got bitten by a snake.

  “Cept, the herbs should be used topically, as a poultice, not to be made into a tea for drinking.”

  “Oh,” Fiona said, wondering if she should finish or maybe push the tea aside.

  “Pretty good, though,” he said, taking another pleasurable sip. “The best inventions have come from accidents,” he said, thinking of possible examples. “Penicillin, insulin… radium.”

  “Post-it notes,” Fiona added. “That was an accident.”

  “Post-it notes,” Arjuna agreed with a grin. “I’m sure the list is very long.”

  “I really don’t know what I’m doing,” Fiona said, as if she forgot to censor her most recent thought. “I drove out all this way,” she said, looking around at such an alien dwelling and the equally alien landscape beyond the tiny trailer. “What am I doing here?” she asked with a serious expression.

  “You tell me,” Arjuna said, a look of confusion on his face, for a change. “I don’t even remember inviting you here,” he said, struggling to remember their previous meeting. “I seem to remember that your boyfriend was doing all the talking. In fact, I remember thinking to myself that you never said a word during the whole conversation.”

  “That’s not helping,” Fiona said looking agitated. “Somebody’s got to have some answers,” she said, looking around helplessly.

  “Don’t mind me asking,” Arjuna said delicately. “Where’s your boyfriend at? That was your boyfriend, right?”

  “Yeah,” Fiona said wearily. “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “We’re kinda going through a lot, right now,” she said, like she didn’t want to think about it. “Our paths are like, you know,” she said, finishing her sentence with a gesture of her hands to suggest separate directions.

  “Yeah, that happens,” Arjuna said, like he’s been there. “Life,” he then said, like the word itself was its own explanation.

  “Yeah,” Fiona agreed, like she was an old timer. “Life.”

  “So… you didn’t come out here to do a vision quest, did you?” he asked in an attempt to figure her out.

  “Oh, no, yeah, I did,” she said with conviction. “I do, I mean did come here for that.”

  “Oh,” Arjuna said with a veiled look of surprise.

  “Totally.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, placing her cup on the table as if she was ready to begin, there and then.

  “You can start tomorrow, how’s about that?” he asked, looking out at the darkening sky. “Tonight you should fast.”

  “Okay,” Fiona agreed, like she could go either way. “I wasn’t too hungry anyhow.”

  “Oh, you will be,” he said with certainty. “Three days in the desert and you’ll be crying out for your momma.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Fiona said boldly. “Considering my momma’s been dead all my life.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Arjuna said, still trying to figure this young woman out. “I was talking figuratively. Like calling out for mommy, as a metaphor.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” she said brashly. “Still not going to happen.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Arjuna said as if he felt like she needed the encouragement.

  “Maybe I should just go on home,” she said, placing her half-empty cup in the sink as she checked out the desert landscape outside: could she really survive three days by herself, with no food or anything else, in such an inhospitable environment? “This is too weird,” she said, looking back inside at the stranger stretched out on a bunk in the trailer. “No offence.”

  “None tak
en, miss,” Arjuna said politely. “If you’re having doubts, you should definitely go back home. Soul work ain’t for the weak and puny, that’s for darn sure.”

  “And what’s with you, exactly?” she asked, looking at him with questioning eyes.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your talk in the coffee shop was like you were, I don’t know, you acted like you were Yoda from Star Wars, all evolved and everything, talking like you knew the answers to everything. Soon as you get back to your… filthy, lame-ass trailer, pardon my French but it really is disgusting…”

  “No offence,” Arjuna said, looking around at his stuff and realizing that she wasn’t wrong.

  “With your accent and the toothpick and those cowboy boots and all of a sudden it’s like you were some redneck hick from Texas or some place.” she said as if to suggest that she was exposing him as the phony that he was.

  “Well, matter of fact, I am just a redneck hick from Texas, so you got that bit right,” he said with a grin. “Cromwell, Texas to be precise. You probably never heard of the place and it ain’t anywhere you’d be wishing to be spending any amount of time. Personally I couldn’t wait to leave the place so, soon as I was ‘bout old enough, I enlisted myself in the navy. You’re probably thinking, what’s a kid from Texas doing in the navy instead of joining the army like any other self-respecting Texan would? Well, been land-locked all my life, I’d never been to the sea, never seen the ocean. I guess it always had a fascination for me, you know?”

  “Yes,” Fiona agreed, feeling more relaxed the more that he spoke.

  “When I’m in the energy,” he then said, his whole demeanor immediately transformed, his face exuded light as he became more peaceful and soft, “when I’m in that space, you know? Being with Spirit?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s like I do have all the answers. It’s like I’m connected, I mean connected, and dwelling in the Kingdom of the Lord, as my grandma used to say. ‘Cept, she and I never went to the same church and she probably wouldn’t approve of me saying that the desert is my church. The sky above me is my church, the little stage and the stool they put out for me in the coffee shop is my church; right here, right now, this is all my church… I think you know what it is that I’m saying,” he said with such a love and a gentleness in his eyes that Fiona felt instantly trustful.