“Is something wrong?”

  “Should I take my clothes off?” asked Graham, stopped on the third button.

  “That….won’t be necessary.”

  She didn’t make him feel any sillier than he already felt.

  “Take a breath,” she said. “A real breath; not the kind of which you are accustomed. Start in your belly, let it expand until it can bear no more, then open your and your chest, and then, when it too cannot budge, open your throat and take one last delicious gulp.”

  Graham did as she said, feeling every part of his body swell.

  “Now let it free,” she said. “But do not force it. Simply allow the air to be free and feel it as it leaves your body. Notice it, in the release of your throat, the sinking of your chest, and in the final purge from your belly. Feel too, the garments of which your ego is garbed – the fears, the anxieties, the obligations, the insecurities – feel them all be swept off your ego, swept away by your escaping breath like cobwebs blown away in a tremendous breeze.”

  Graham did as she said. With his eyes closed and laying on a bed of soft cushions and petals, he imagined himself detached from his body and existing on the crest of his breath, riding it from the depth of his gut to the very tip of his nose, and as he did so, just as she said, he felt removed of the fear and indecision which, for the life of him, he had thought was, in fact, the colour of his skin and not a layer of dust that he could wipe clean with such ridiculous ease.

  “Who ARE you?”

  “I am Graham.”

  “No. You are not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You are NOT,” she said, resting her index and middle finger against his forehead whilst contorting her other hand into strange alien-like symbols, holding them over specific points on his body. “Who ARE you?” she said again.

  “Like I said, I’m Graham. I’m a scientist. I’m a father. I’m married. I’m overweight. And uh….I don’t really know what else to tell you.”

  “To be or not to be, yes?”

  “Yes?” said Graham, assuming he was both right and wrong.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” said The Empath, in a way that was arguably true.

  “Ok.”

  “Who is Graham?”

  The whole while, she was tapping his forehead, his chin, his chest, and even the soles of his feet; lifting his arm up and down as if she were pumping water from a well.

  “Who is Graham to your children? Who is Graham to your wife? Who is Graham to your family, your colleagues, and your friends? Which of these Grahams are you? Who are YOU?” she said again as if this time it would be abundantly clear. “Oh this is interesting,” she said, resting her bent hand on his heart chakra. “Were you ever left alone as a child?”

  “I…don’t know….”

  “Yes,” she said as if she were shining a torch into the darkest recesses of his memories. “That’s very interesting. Your large intestine energy is quite swollen. The large intestine, of course, having to do with grief, guilt, and regret.”

  She whisked around the table as if he were the ingredients for a cake.

  “Now I’m just going to check the teres major muscle which is your governing meridian and here we can get a peek at your unconscious mind which, when I….”

  Her face contorted with worry.

  “Well that definitely shouldn’t be like that,” she said.

  Now it was Graham who felt concerned.

  “Yeah, you see your governing meridian is all out of whack. Stress will do that; that and diet. Have you been eating poorly?”

  If his stomach wasn’t a dead giveaway then his silence was.

  “Sometimes living a life always on the go will do that. We just don’t have time to sit down and have a proper meal. It’s a go-go world out there. Now, I’m sensing something in your governing meridian; not the source of all this stress, but maybe some unresolved conflict. I’m feeling the letter J. Do you have anyone in your life at the moment with the letter J. It might be a Jacob or a Jonathon or a Joanne. It could be a man or a woman. It doesn’t even have to be a person. It could be a pet.”

  She wowed herself with that realisation.

  “It could, couldn’t it? The universe is funny like that.”

  If she gave him a week to think it still wouldn’t be enough. Graham was terrible at guessing games and even worse at remembering people’s names.

  “What we are connecting to here goes deeper than corporal; it’s more conscious energy. Because you know, consciously, we are neither man nor woman, so it could be a Justine or it could be a Justin. It’s defiantly a J, though.”

  “I can’t think of anyone,” said Graham.

  “Hmmm,” said The Empath, stumped.

  She flicked her fingers around his belly and tapped the bottom of his feet.

  “What about an I then? It could just as easily be an I or a K. So you know a Kate or a Keith, or maybe even an Ian?”

  “My daughter is called Isabel.”

  “That’s it! Hoorah. That makes absolute sense then. The father daughter relationship, of course!”

  She smiled at him as if he had made the discovery himself.

  “Being a father is not easy, is it? All that stress and worry – not to mention the little ones can be a bit of a handful when they want to be, am I right?”

  “There’s Isaac too.”

  Suddenly, Graham felt empowered.

  “Oh, ok. So who’s Isaac then?”

  “We work together.”

  “Ah, you see? Family and work, right there at the centre of everything. Have you been feeling tired?”

  “I have,” said Graham.

  “And do you get weak if you don’t eat.”

  “I do,” said Graham, now convinced of her wizardry.

  “Well, that’s definitely a symptom that your governing meridian is overloaded. And what about anxiety? Have you been feeling anxious at all?”

  “I’m anxious about everything.”

  “Interesting. So typical work and family stuff or?”

  “I’ve been having these panic attacks recently. It’s nothing serious though.”

  “There’s no such thing as an unserious attack of any kind. So what have they been about?”

  “Death,” said Graham.

  “That’s the big one. Is there someone in your family who’s sick?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s me.”

  “Are you sick?” she said, tapping his hip and his elbows.

  “I don’t know. Every now and then I think I have cancer.”

  “Is there a history of cancer in your family?”

  “No. Nobody. But there has to be a first, right? I know it sounds nuts but there’s just sometimes I’m absolutely sure I have cancer and that it’s terminal and that I’m gonna die real soon.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “Well no. Not yet. I mean, I might.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “They’d just think I was crazy. Either that or I’d do a test and they’d tell me I had six weeks left to live. That’s how it works, you know. The second you look for it, you’re a goner.”

  “The Gotchya Principle.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Quantum physics,” she said. “I studied it, you know.”

  She paused as if waiting for a round of applause.

  “I could never get my head around that,” said Graham.

  “Oh, it’s easy once you understand the ebb and flow of the universe. I use quantum physics a lot in my kinesiology. They two go together like chalk and cheese.”

  This was her chance to prove how smart she was.

  “We’re all made of atoms, you see,” she said, pointing to a poster on the wall. “And at the quantum level, that’s all there is. We’re not people anymore. We’re not bodies. Even things are no longer things. Everything is atoms. And we’re all touching. And we’re all connected in this…inter-network…or web of….connection and connectivity where all things are one. Like, if an atom here in this room moves one way, an atom on the other side of the universe will move another. We are all….”

  Her thinking face was shaped like a puckering fish.

  “Connected,” she said, almost triumphantly. “Amazing, right?”

  Graham just liked listening to her speak; it tickled his mind.

  “It is,” he said as if it did no harm to agree.

  “And the most amazing thing, which is almost proof that the physical world is just a construct of the metaphysical mind….”

  She took a second or two to brace herself – so excited was she; for so magnificent was the thing that she was about to say. Were this a movie, it would call for an intermission; were it a book, it would garner a whole other chapter.

  “The Gotchya Principle,” she said, the sheer drama impossible to overlook. “Did you know that in the past, people thought that electrons were like planets and sort of orbited a proton like the Earth orbits the sun – always in one place. But it’s not true. We,” she said as if she were a part of the discovery. “We know now that electrons are here, there, and everywhere at the same time. Isn’t that crazy? And it’s not until you look at it that it sits in one place. So the world, it doesn’t really exist or, you know, it’s here, there, and everywhere, until you turn around and you look at it – then it’s solid and it’s stationary, and it’s real. That’s how amazing quantum physics is. So it’s proof that everything is connected and your cancer is just like that. If you go and look for it, it will either be there or not but if you don’t look for it, there’s a bigger chance that it will be somewhere else. Like, maybe cancer moves around the whole universe because we are all connected, like a spider in a web. And it’s not until we look for it that, almost like musical chairs, the cancer sits still in one place. And it could be a person on this side of the world, or it could be on some alien world trillions of miles away or even another universe altogether because that’s another thing; every time you make a decision or a choice of any kind, you make a whole new universe.”

  She smiled proudly as if her universe was always the right one.

  “There’s no reason to be scared of death,” she said.

  “I’m not,” said Graham.

  “Well then why the anxiety?”

  “I’m scared of dying too soon,” he said. “My kids are both so young. They can’t be without a dad. That freaks me out, the thought of ever having an accident and them having to grow up without me.”

  “You think about that a lot?”

  “I wake up every night in a sweat thinking about it. I spend all day at work thinking about it. It’s all that goes through my head. I think that’s the hardest part of being a parent - the fact that you can’t die.”

  “You want to die? Are you depressed?”

  “Depressed? No, of course not. I don’t have the time. But I think being able to die is freedom. You don’t have to worry so much. You can relax more. That’s really what I want, is for them to be old enough so I don’t have to worry about dying anymore.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Then there’s the fact I’m pretty sure they both hate me.”

  It was as if every time she tweaked his arm or leg, he was compelled to speak.

  “I remember when I was their age; I thought my dad was the most amazing man in the universe, even if half the time you were scared to death of him. In my house, though, it’s all about unicorns and Ironman. I just want them to like me. I want them to think I’m cool. It’s half the reason why I’m doing this karate – so they can see that their dad is strong and tough. Like a superhero. Like Pedro’s dad.”

  “Who’s Pedro?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I feel like a fraud half the time. Especially as a parent. Everyone thinks I have all the answers but I don’t have a clue. I’m winging it every day. I mean, there had to have been a point after Moses dragged everyone out to the desert where he thought; “Shit, we’re lost.” Maybe year seventeen or something. And when I think about my dad, I assume he always had a map; that he always knew what he was doing. He was a dad, dads knew everything. My kids look at me the same way I looked at my dad except I feel like a bloody imposter. And it just feels like at some point everybody’s gonna find out.”

  “We all feel like that. Heck, if people’s thoughts played like radios we’d hear how completely bonkers and insecure the whole world really is. Thoughts are just thoughts, they’re not you.”

  “Well then who am I?”

  It was now that he properly grasped the question.

  “Let’s ignore the verb to be. Let the writer describe a sunny day, and let the reader call it just that. What do you do?” she said.

  “I’m a research scientist.”

  “But what do you do? I much prefer verbs. I am not a mother. I raise four awesome little human beings. I’m not a good friend. I spend quality time with the people I cherish and listen to them as much as they listen to me. A life of verbs is one of action. It’s not up to me to say who I am or what I am. That’s for you and everyone I meet. It’s you who can judge. It’s you who can say ‘She is wise. She is noble. She is mystical. She is extraordinaire.’ Not to be, Mr. Shakespeare; not to be. So what does a research scientist do?”

  “I study the brain,” said Graham. “To be more precise, I study consciousness.”

  “That sounds really exciting. So I suppose you know a lot about what I’m talking about here then – corporal meridians and how they affect not just the organs, but also the conscious and unconscious minds.”

  “No,” said Graham, trying not to make her magic sound like quackery. “This is all new.”

  “Really? Well, now I do feel special. Universities in the West really are centuries behind what was always conceived as common practice medicine in the East. And not just medicine either, but common knowledge. We are catching up, though. We’ll be doing your chakra balance in a bit. I think that’ll really blow your trumpet.”

  Graham had, in a way, submitted. He neither accepted nor denied what she had to say. He did, though, act as if she firmly believed it. So, just as a child might trust a physician, he too wholeheartedly believed that she believed in what she said and what she was doing and that alone - like a father saying ‘It’ll all be ok’ - felt warm and comforting.

  “So your anxiety is high, is it?”

  “It is,” he said, in profound declaration. “Always.”

  “And what about at home? How is your relationship with your wife?”

  “It’s fine,” said Graham.

  “Fine?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing is fine. Fine is a throw-away word. Fine and good and well and ok; they’re fickle expressions. They’re common. What’s the word? U-bic? U-bac?”

  “Ubiquitous?”

  “That’s the one. If words were cutlery, fine and good would be plastic sporks. Nobody is ever fine. Nothing is ever fine. Fine is like that toilet paper you get in public bathrooms. You know the one I’m talking about? You could grease a cake pan with it. That there is the word fine and good. When you tell someone, ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m good’ what you’re really saying is, ‘You’re not important enough for quality; you’re not important enough for me to tell you how I really feel’. Nothing is ever fine, especially if you think it is.”

  “No, it’s not fine. Or it is, I don’t know.”

  “Do you fight a lot?”

  “No, that’s the thing. We haven’t fought in years. Not directly anyway.”

  “Proxy fighting?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You get mad at the kids when you really want to get mad at each other. You take your anger and frustration out on them. You’re both Russia and America, and your kids are The Middle East.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Completely normal. When was the last time you actually fought with each other?”

  “Years ago I think. We used to fight all the time, then we just stopped.”

  “Well, you need to start that backup – and lickety-split. If a relationship is worth fighting for, it’s worth having. You should be fighting. Nothing mean, but healthy fighting is necessary. It means there’s still passion there.”

  “Yeah, we kind of became like roommates.”

  “So no sex, I suppose.”

  She had her right hand pressed just above his pelvic bone.

  “Like all marriages.”

  “Doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, as you get older your body calms down a bit but…My hubby and I have been doing it twice a day for thirty-five years; sometimes more on public holidays. How often would you and your wife practice love?”

  He should have been embarrassed to say but this felt entirely clinical.

  “The last time was maybe eight months ago.”

  “Interesting. And when you do have sex, do you dress up, do you swing, do you invert roles?”

  She had no shame whatsoever.

  “No, it’s just ordinary sex. Nothing kinky.”

  “So was it always like this?”

  “Not at first. But, you know, we had kids. We got older. We both got fat, so…”

  “What you look like has nothing to do with desire.”

  “True,” said Graham, though he couldn’t grasp how. “I guess at some point we just stopped trying.”

  “There, you see. Life is a constant state of practice. It’s verbs. It’s doing. The second you state, ‘I am’, you stop doing and just assume that it will last forever. Some things are infinite sure. Life is infinite.”

  “I’m atheist so…”

  “I’m not talking about Heaven. One never knows that they die. You will die, I will die, we will all die, yes. But you will never know when. And when you do, you will never be aware so you just stop existing, but up until that point, it had always been an eternity. Eternal life is very much here and now. You don’t believe in Heaven?”

  “Well, if there is a Heaven,” said Graham. “Then there must be gazillions of them, one heaven for each person. Because everyone thinks that they will see their old dog, their grandma, and their long lost loves – just as they had last seen them. If this were true, then either grandma is getting a raw deal having to spend eternity in her nineties barely able to wipe her own butt. Will grandma be how her grandson remembered her, how her daughter remembered her, or how she remembered herself? So if it’s a fair Heaven, then there is a Heaven for each person, one where grandma is ninety and your dog still has glaucoma. But if this is Heaven, then none of those people are actually there. Heaven is just an eternity in your memories. It seems like an awful lot of Heavens and if it is the latter, considering all those people are just imagined, it sounds awful lonely too.”