by Eli Easton
God, that made him sound like an ass. Brent rephrased. “What I mean is, if I’m working with a partner, and we share a vision, that’s different. That’s not like compromising. That’s like….” He struggled to find the right word.
“Harmonizing,” River supplied.
Brent smiled. “That’s it. Harmonizing. I like working with someone like that. But I wouldn’t want to work for a client, having to implement their vision. God. Never mind. I sound like an asshole. I’m not trying to say my vision is superior.”
“Brent.” River’s tone was serious. “People assume because I take my spiritual path seriously that I’m Gandhi or something. Believe me, I’m not. I have negative thoughts and do stupid things, just like everyone else. I’m not going to judge you.”
Brent swallowed. “You just seem so….”
River cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, do go on.”
Brent laughed. “So together, I guess. Like you never get angry or frustrated, you’d never say something cruel because you’re tired or impatient. You’re not selfish.”
River seemed to consider this as he drank some of his iced tea. “I get angry and frustrated. Get my feelings hurt. Feel too much pride. Impatience. Want things that I shouldn’t. I try to recognize my emotions from the outside rather than dwelling in them. But sometimes that’s easier said than done. Meditation helps.”
He put an arm over the back of his chair, turning to face Brent a little more. “As for not being selfish, some might say following a spiritual path is the most selfish thing you can do. I go where I feel I need to go, when I need to go there. I do whatever I need to do whether that’s taking a new class or joining an ashram or… or working as a tantric healer. It can be lonely, you know? Because chances are, no one else is on the exact same journey as you.”
Yes. That did sound sad to Brent. Did River ever let anyone close? For how long?
Brent wiped his mouth with a napkin. “That reminds me of an interview I read once. This guy was the first person ever to walk both the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail in the same year. Crazy, right? That’s almost five thousand miles. Do you know what he said was the hardest part? Not the sore muscles. Not roughing it. Not bad weather. He said the hardest thing was the loneliness. He couldn’t walk with anyone else, because no one could keep up with his pace.
“It made me wonder. So he set this record, which was great. But maybe, in that year of his life, which will never come again, he might have been happier forgetting about the record and just walking with someone he loved.”
River gave him a funny look. “You’re an enigma, Brent McKay.”
Brent huffed. “I’m really not. I’m pretty basic.”
“You project that on the outside. But you’re not actually basic at all.”
Brent met River’s gaze and held. He stared into those beautiful stormy blue eyes long enough to recall their tantric sessions, long enough for his appetite to vanish completely and his pulse to flutter.
Jesus. This feeling, this connection between them…. It couldn’t only be there on his side, surely.
The waiter came to refill their iced tea.
“What you said about harmonizing. I like that. Our kombucha cafe is sort of a harmony. A combination. Global food but grounded in Seattle. Healthy but also comfort food.” Brent hesitated. “You and me.”
River tilted his head. “Harmony. Harmony Cafe.”
Delight sparked in Brent. “I love it. Might be too common though.” He picked up his phone and googled. “Yeah. There are quite a few ‘Harmony Cafes.’”
River looked disappointed. “Harmony… something. Harmony Moon?”
Brent’s eyes flickered to a mural of a tree painted on the restaurant’s wall. It was an amateur effort, with clunky green leaves and stick-figure birds. But he could imagine such a mural done in a modern, elegant style. “Harmony Tree. Harmony Tree Cafe.”
River’s face lit up. “Brent, that’s perfect! The tree is a symbol of spirituality, with all its roots and branches, the way it offers shelter and provides a home for so many creatures. It even produces oxygen, the breath of life.”
Brent felt a surge of rightness so strong it was almost too big to contain. “Christ. That’s it. And what you just said… you just wrote our About page too.”
They smiled at each other until it got a bit creepy. Brent picked up his phone again and fired off an email to his lawyer asking him to do a legal search on the name and file paperwork if it was available
River sat up straighter. “So we’re done shopping, right? We could go to the harbor and find a spot in the shade.”
Brent laughed. “Wow, you’re really not a fan of shopping. Kathy wasn’t either. When I went antiquing in Snohomish, she’d hang out in a little bookstore and read.”
It felt good to mention her, as if Brent was showing himself, and her, that he hadn’t forgotten. But it also hurt, to think about how he’d once taken for granted that Kathy was just down the street, waiting for him at a coffee shop. As if she’d always be there.
Now he was losing his mind over a beautiful young man. Christ.
River reached across the table and squeezed Brent’s arm. “You’re right about me and shopping. I would absolutely have been hanging out in that bookstore with Kathy.”
“Yeah,” Brent said, his voice rough. “You would have been.”
He could picture it. Kathy and River sitting in adjacent overstuffed chairs in that little bookshop in Snohomish, reading. In this vision, rain pelted against the bookshop window—as it often did in Snohomish, but the two of them were cozy inside. The scene was oddly comforting.
“Yup. And we would have been gossiping about you, of course.”
“I’m sure. Allllll my deep dark secrets.”
“I would love to hear those,” River said, his eyes warm. “They’d give me some leverage.”
“You already have leverage,” Brent pointed out—referring, of course, to their tantric sessions.
River raised one eyebrow. “I guess I do. Too bad I’d never use it. Anyway. We’re sort of flying through our agenda. We’ve a list of restaurants to hit, but we’ve got plenty of time left. I can dig it.”
“Good. That means we’ll have lots of time to sightsee.”
River licked his lips. “You wouldn’t want to go home early?”
“Hell no! I plan to make the most of this trip. See everything. Do everything. I won’t get this chance again.”
And weirdly, that felt like flirting too. But if River caught that vibe, he didn’t show it. He simply signaled for the check.
Chapter 19
River
On their fourth day in Mumbai, they took a break from restaurant hopping and toured the local temples. The Sri Sri Radha Gopinath Temple had fantastic paintings of the Krishna and Radha saga as well as a garden on the grounds and numerous animals that were protected within its walls. The Swaminarayan Temple, dedicated to Lord Krishna, had impressive architecture with a many-domed roof. The Mumba Devi temple, the oldest in the city, had a thick vibe of sacredness about it. It was dedicated to the goddess Mumba, with her black hair and orange face.
Although it was a sightseeing excursion, River spent some time in prayer and meditation at the Mumba Devi temple, while Brent walked around at a leisurely pace, taking everything in. After a while, Brent knelt next to River at the railing.
“Is there a specific deity you believe in?” Brent asked. “I mean, that statue—”
“Goddess Mumba.”
“Right. I never heard of her before. Is that who you worshipped at the ashram?”
Brent was being very careful, his tone respectful. But the idea that he might think River worshipped an ancient goddess statue with an orange face made River smile. “No, Brent. I don’t worship any specific deity. I believe in a divine force, but it’s more an all-encompassing energy.”
Brent looked thoughtful. “Cool. I guess that’s more or less my idea of God too.”
“You have an idea
of God?” River feigned innocent surprise.
Brent narrowed his eyes. “Are you calling me a heathen?”
“Sorry. Just teasing you.”
The more comfortable River got with Brent, the more his acerbic sense of humor made itself known. Fortunately, Brent didn’t seem to mind.
He nudged River with his arm. “You wound me. Seriously, though, Hinduism does worship specific gods, right? Even Buddhism.”
“Well, some Buddhist sects do worship Buddha as a god. But others see him as an enlightened teacher.”
They got up and started strolling out of the temple. River went on. “I think most people need to have something specific they can visualize and pray to, to give God a face and a name. But usually a specific deity just represents one aspect or interpretation of the universal God.”
“Like the blind men and the elephant,” Brent said.
They stepped out into the bright Indian sun. River looked at Brent quizzically.
“Dr. Halloran reminded me of that old parable. You know, the one where a group of blind men try to figure out what an elephant is by touching it, but since one feels the ear, one the trunk, one the side, and so on, they all reach different opinions about what an elephant is.”
River nodded. “That’s a great analogy. Sometimes I think a deity says more about the worshipper than God. For example, there’s a whole tradition in Hinduism that worships Bala Krishna, basically Krishna when he was a baby. In that tradition, the worshipper is like the mother, and they see God as an infant they love and protect. So you could say those worshippers are most able to access their spiritual side through their mothering instincts.”
“Even for men?”
“Sure. We all have yin and yang aspects inside us.”
The temple was in the middle of the city, and the streets were busy. They took a seat to the side of the temple steps to stay out of the fray. There was no rush to get anywhere and that was lovely in itself.
“So who do you pray to when you pray? Or meditate.” Brent grimaced. “You must get sick of me hammering you with questions.”
“Not at all. Your curiosity is beautiful.” River had an urge to kiss Brent’s cheek, so he did.
Brent’s cheeks went a mottled pink. “Um. T-thanks. It’s just— I was raised agnostic, so all of this is new to me and really fascinating. You make it fascinating.” He looked out over the scenery. “There have been times where I believed in God, in some kind of higher power, and I thought of it like you said, as more of an energy or grand design or something.”
River nodded.
“I guess I lost even that much faith after Kathy got sick. It’s hard to believe there’s a purpose to things. To suffering.” He hesitated. “I wish I could believe we don’t just disappear. At the end.”
His expression grew tense and haunted. Brent had never shared any details about his wife’s illness, but River had the impression it had been terrible.
“I absolutely believe there’s a part of us, our soul, that survives death.”
Brent looked at him sharply, gazing into River’s eyes with a slight frown, as if wanting to see if River meant it. “But how do you know? It’s hard to believe without proof, and that’s impossible.”
River smiled.
“What?” Brent asked.
“I just figured out where we’re going after lunch.”
The University of Mumbai was a beautiful place to walk. It was particularly lush, with palm trees and vast green lawns. The magnificent stone buildings had traditional Western elements, like archways and the rose window on the chapel, that made you feel you were at an Ivy League school—someplace like Harvard or Princeton. But then you’d encounter a twisted tower or dome that was very much Indian.
River led Brent into the Jehangier building and down several flights of stairs from the ground level. He’d visited this place when he’d previously been in Mumbai, and he hoped it was still there.
It was. One or more passionate professors had set up a small museum of reincarnation. It was currently empty except for a young woman, obviously a student, who sat at a small desk inside the door.
She greeted them in English, had them sign a guest ledger, and invited them to look around.
The entire museum was housed in just one large basement room, but there were at least a hundred displays, each one a case study. Most had a text plaque in several languages, photographs, signed affidavits, even some with physical mementos.
Brent looked at River with both eyebrows raised. “Really?”
River gave him a well you asked smile. “You have questions. Maybe this room has answers. Maybe not. That’s for you to decide.”
The most famous and well-documented cases of reincarnation in India were examined here. Hindu scholars had taken the concept seriously for thousands of years and had applied as much scientific method to the topic as they could. There were incidents of young children who remembered the names of their previous families or villages, and researchers had tracked them down, testing if the child recognized relatives or had memories that those in their past life could verify. There were cases of unusual birthmarks that coincided with wounds from previous lifetimes, the ability to speak dialects the children had never been taught, or irrational phobias that could be traced back to previous lives or traumatic deaths.
One case, that of Shanti Devi, had even been investigated by Mahatma Gandhi himself and proclaimed to be genuine.
River knew there were cases in the US as well, but because reincarnation wasn’t a mainstream belief there, they typically weren’t investigated as rigorously.
Brent went from display to display. The room seemed to beg for silence, like a library or a shrine, so they didn’t talk until they left an hour or so later.
They walked across campus under the shade of palm trees, enjoying a light breeze. Finally, Brent spoke. “Thank you for showing me that. I had no idea reincarnation was such a well-documented phenomena.”
“It’s a big part of the culture here. The idea of karma, for instance, that what we do in this life will be rewarded or punished in our future lives.”
“Do you believe it?” Brent stopped at a short stone wall in the shade and sat down.
River sat next to him. “I do, yeah. What do you think? Reincarnation…?” He held his thumb up, then down, making an exaggerated questioning expression.
Brent smiled. He tilted his head and looked up at the palm fronds. “The evidence in there was pretty convincing. I want to believe.”
“Well you’re in luck, because belief is a choice. That’s why they call it a leap of faith.”
Brent turned his head sharply to look at River with surprise. At first, River thought he was going to ask why River didn’t think faith was an absolute. But then Brent chuckled. “Huh. I never thought of it that way. It sounds a lot like marriage.”
“Does it? I wouldn’t know.”
“Mmm. If reincarnation is real, I have a feeling I lived in India once. I feel… I dunno. It feels familiar to me here. Like part of me is home. And I’m so interested in tantra and chakras and doshas and all of that. But maybe that’s just because you make it interesting.”
“Me?”
Brent visibly swallowed. “You explain things in a way that I just get. And you kind of… radiate a confidence and goodness that I envy. It’s like that line from When Harry Met Sally—I’ll have what you’re having.”
Heat bloomed in River’s heart chakra. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thanks, Brent.”
Brent smiled shyly and looked away.
They sat there for a while. Students moved around the campus, mostly young Indians in jeans and T-shirts and hoodies. A guy rode by on a bike wearing neon green Nikes.
East meets West. Like him. Maybe like Brent too. It was curious that Brent said he might have had a past life here. Shri Agontha at the ashram had said much the same to River when they met, that he was Western now, but his soul was Indian.
Perhaps he and Br
ent had known each other then. Brent had come into his life for a reason, River was certain of that. Maybe he owed Brent some karmic debt. Maybe they’d even been lovers once.
They’d had an unusual connection from the start. And now that they were here, in India, it felt deeper, truer, than any connection River had felt in a long time. Maybe ever. He had no idea what to do with that. Except try to enjoy it for what it was and not ask for more.
Chapter 20
Brent
Sanjay Gandhi National Park was on the northern outskirts of Mumbai. They spent their fifth day there, wanting a respite from the crowds.
They visited the Gandhi memorial and took the big-cat tram tour where they saw lions, leopards, jaguars, and monkeys. After lunch at the park cafe, they set out to hike the Upper Kanheri Trail.
The path wandered uphill through a lush green forest. There’d been rain that morning while they were on the tram, and the damp green of the woods was practically effervescent. Brent enjoyed the chance to stretch his legs on the trail, and he and River kept up a fast pace.
River wore a navy hooded rain jacket that had probably been around the world and back again. His hair was up in a careless knot in that completely unselfconscious way of his that only someone as good-looking as River could get away with. His eyes shone with the joy of being here—in India, in this gorgeous park—as if it made him come alive to the next level. His smile was constant.
And Brent was really, most certainly, in trouble.
The trail opened onto a broad plateau where a stone cliff held the Kanheri caves. They were impressive—one large temple-like structure with columns, and dozens of other cave rooms along the cliff wall, from vast to teeny-tiny.
“These were Buddhist caves,” River explained, as they explored the small rooms along one long ledge. “They were built starting in the first century BC. This place was occupied for a thousand years. These little rooms were monks’ cells, and the bigger ones were used for cooking, worship, or study.”