“What do you believe happens when we die?”

  “It doesn’t bother me to be honest. If I am at a restaurant enjoying a meal, I’m not arguing about what might or might not be on TV when I get home. I much prefer to just enjoy the meal. I still enjoy surprises.”

  “What about this? What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  And he didn’t. A year ago he would never have done something like this. He would have laughed it off as absurd, and he would have mocked it and ridiculed it, using reason to reduce it to nothing more than pure charlatanism. He would have scoffed at the idea of even hearing her out.

  Were this a movie, this would be the turning point.

  “Are you glad you came?”

  “Yes,” said Graham.

  Because he was.

  “You chose to be here.”

  “I did,” he said.

  “We’re preparing you to live,” she said. “This body of yours is not you. You borrow it. In the same way, if we were at a restaurant, the seat you were sitting on wouldn’t be you. It, like your body, would be how you go about having your experience. And if the seat were wobbly or if it squeaked, we would treat it exactly how we are treating your body now – fixing it so that you can get out there and have a far better experience. You are not your body,” she said. “You have a body. You are not fat. You have fat. There is a difference. It is much easier to lose something that you have than to lose something that you are. You are not your thoughts and emotions. If there was a radio playing, would you say that you are the song? You aren’t even the anxiety. You just experience these things. You are an experience and you become experienced. But you are consciousness, that’s it.”

  He was like the preacher, taking lessons from the choir.

  “Consciousness is in all things,” she said. “The Earth, The Moon, and all the far away stars; they are all conscious too. It is the same consciousness that emanates in them which emanates in us only it doesn’t say, ‘I am a planet’ or ‘I’m just a crummy old rock drifting through space’; it doesn’t declare what it is, it just is. Did you know there are trillions of little microorganisms living inside you right now? Do you think The Earth knows there are seven billion conscious humans making a home inside its belly right now? We’d be like a universe for them – each of us. Seven billion universes all walking about besides each other and all those little micro-fellas can’t, for the life of them, see or tell – and it doesn’t matter in a way. But getting back on point,” she said as if all of that speech had been entirely for her; just another of her spectacular and constant third eye awakening realisations. “You’re not fat. You’re not lazy. You’re not tired. You’re not uncool. You’re not anything. It’s just all about the ‘doing’. Everything is practice. Life is practice. Nobody’s a bloody expert and if they say they are, they’re definitely not. All these bloody twenty-year-old life coaches these days telling you obvious things they read in a book with nary a scratch on their knees. Love is practiced. It should be practiced every day.”

  “We used to. Back in the day. Now we’re just pleasant to be around. Sex is weird now, I suppose. It’s awkward.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Yeah, of course. We say it all the time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “A lot of things are true but you don’t go around declaring them, now do you? What you do declare are experiences that you feel and succumb to. How often do you succumb to love with your wife?”

  “You mean when I really felt love?”

  “Yes.”

  “The first time I held her hand. My heart was beating so loud I thought everyone could hear it. It was like that time I stole a packet of water balloons when I was a kid. I remember standing in the store for twenty minutes, scared to death, thinking everybody knew what I was about to do.”

  “But you did it?”

  “Steal the balloons?”

  “No, touch her hand.”

  “Oh yeah. Of course.”

  “And how did it feel?”

  “Incredible. I was so scared. But then, when I felt her fingers fold over mine, I had never felt so safe and secure in my life. And it was the same for the first kiss, the first time we made love, and then when I told her I loved her. The fear was gut-wrenching all of those times, but what came after was like an explosion, it’s hard to explain. But, after all these years, that fizzles. You don’t feel that way again. I’d like to, though. To love her, not as a fact, but…”

  “As an act.”

  “Exactly. Will I ever feel that again? That fear? I miss it.”

  “Yes, but you have to understand where the fear originates. It’s not a fear of love or a fear of kissing her; it’s the fear of being vulnerable. Everyone has their impenetrable wall to protect them from the world. They dress tough, talk tough, and act tough but inside, they’re all the same little jelly bean. The whole point of declaring love is to be brave enough to tear down those walls for a second as if to say; ‘You’re the only one I will ever show my jelly bean to’. That’s why it’s so damn scary. And that’s why it means so much. But you can feel that again with her a thousand times over.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Be honest. Honesty is an aphrodisiac. What are her fantasies?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she has any.”

  “Everyone has fantasies, especially your wife. You should ask her, and when she tells you, you should listen, and you shouldn’t judge. What made all those first steps so profound was the vulnerability. You as a strong alpha male exposed your tenderness – your jelly bean - and as a result, became vulnerable. To show your care and compassion, you had to expose your weakness, and when she took her hand, kissed you back, and told you she loved you too, you became stronger again. Love, though, is the trust between you that she knows all of your weakness and for that, you can be weak in front of her, whereas you have to be the constant titan to the rest of the world. If you want to reignite that passion – that flame – you need to be vulnerable with her once more,” she said, casually lifting and pulling his arms onto all sorts of angles, asking him to hold as she pushed against his force. “Do you masturbate?” she asked.

  If Graham’s silence were a colour, it would be tomato red.

  “Geeze we humans are a weird bunch, aren’t we? So strung up on natural things like sex and masturbation and even small things, like flatulating. Makes us go all uneasy. It shouldn’t, though. Do you masturbate enough?”

  “Enough?”

  “Oh yeah. Me, for example, I can’t go and do the shopping unless I have a quick wank. If I do, my head’s all a flush and I end up buying so many useless things for the house. A quick prod downstairs and I’m thinking crystal clear and able to make better decisions. This should be taught in schools. Would have saved me a tonne of bother in life if I’d only know to, pardon the French, rub one out as my hubby says, before any major decision.”

  “Really?”

  “The brain, you see, is hard-wired for sexual reproduction. It’s really the only thing that’s going on downstairs. And consciously, this makes you delusional half the time. I remember math class in ninth grade. I had this teacher, Mr. Fabulous. We called him that. His real name was Mr. Fabula. But he was so damn handsome. Anyway, the second he starts writing on the board, I’d see his butt in those tight jeans and that was it, until I got home that night I couldn’t think about anything else. If I had known then what I know now, I would probably be an astronaut today. To this day I still can’t get my head around fractions. How often do you masturbate? Once, twice, three times per day?”

  “I..uh…per day?”

  “Now, I recommend sex before coffee, but if that’s not possible, then at the very least you should masturbate before you face traffic in the morning. And anytime during the day. If you have an important meeting or a phone call to make you say, ‘Excuse me, I’ll be back in five minutes.’ Then you nip off to the bathrooms and quickly rub one out. I mean that’s what bathrooms are for, right?”

  Her tapping accelerated on the top of Graham’s head. Her rhythm was fast and expounding; she didn’t so much tap as she did poke and prod.

  “Family is difficult,” she said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I can feel that here,” she said, tapping the sole of his feet. “Kids can be a challenge. You know, there is this proverb that people say, ‘When the student is ready, the teacher arrives’. I always thought that meant because I didn’t have any teachers around me, that in some way I was never really ready for anything. But you know what? I learned being a mum that – and it’s the same for dads too by the way – as a parent, you are both the student and the teacher. You’re doing your best to teach them left from right from the pick of your own experiences, and at the same time, you’re learning what it’s like to be a parent because every day they change – they get older and more independent and a heck of a lot moodier. You know, by the time you figure out who they were yesterday, they bloody well change again. So you’re always learning. You’re always practicing. Once again, nobody’s a bloody expert.”

  “I don’t know if I’m supposed to smother them in love and have them grow up happy, or be strict like my old man and have them grow up emotionally broken, but successful.”

  “It’s somewhere in between. Kids need challenges. They need playgrounds that have space for danger. They need to be allowed to be free enough to climb things and fall and get hurt. Kids build their games around danger. That becomes the game – to spot danger, get close to it, but avoid it; so that when they get older they can see danger in the real world, and avoid it just the same. It’s different these days, though. Now, it’s not popular to say this these days but there is a reason mums and dads are the way they are. Mums, you see, are full of love. Their love, though with the best of intentions, will make a child scared and weak if it’s all the child experiences. You see mums are scared of everything, so when they say, ‘have fun and be safe’ what they really mean is, ‘Don’t you dare die because I’d never be able to go on without you and every second you’re out of my sight I’m sure that something terrible is about to happen’. Dads, on the other hand, have other things on their minds and are far too liberal. A mother always lies and a father rarely pays attention. Let’s say you drew a circle, but you meant to draw a square, probably you’re mum will tell you, ‘Wow, what an awesome square’. Because that’s what mums do. Whereas your dad will take one glance and say, ‘Nice circle, son’ completely breaking your heart and making sure you never toy with geometric shapes again. Somewhere in between mum and dad is the truth. We only really see the effect of our parenting when they are around thirty.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “For one, I hope that when they are in therapy, their therapist says, ‘None of this is your mother’s fault’.”

  She laughed; a roaring belly laugh that ended with a snort.

  “I’m joking, though,” she said. “Truth is, all you can do is to try and do your best to clear all the obstacles out of their way or, if they’re bored and restless, introduce an obstacle here or there. Life can be tricky and they have to learn that. Plus it’ll make em stronger. A tree is known by its fruit, right? Their successes will be your reward. It’s like at curling, everybody gets a medal, but nobody remembers that names of…”

  “Hold on, what’s curling?”

  “You haven’t played it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I love it. I’m a big winter sports fan. Love the Winter Olympics. Anything on ice really – skating, hockey, cream.”

  And then she laughed again.

  “You’ve never seen curling?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Oh, I love it. If anything, it’s a metaphor for life – for being a parent.”

  “What is it, like soccer or something?”

  “No. It’s like lawn bowls, but on ice. You have one person who pushes the rock – that’s what they call the big metal ball – delivers it down the ice. Then it’s the job of the other players to sweep the ice to make the rock go faster or to stop sweeping to slow it down. And the goal is to get your rocks close enough to the centre rings.”

  “Alright? So what does curling have to do with raising kids?”

  “It’s the same thing. I much prefer to sweep. I like to get in there and give a good hand. And this is the job of the mother and father; to tirelessly remove or introduce obstacles to help your child reach their goals – while they are screaming at you what they expect you to do. Here’s the thing, everybody gets a medal, but nobody gives two hoots about the people holding the brushes. They only care about the person throwing the stone. That is, in every right, unconditional love. You give all your damn heart, all your blood and guts to make sure they get the best start possible. And it’s enough, seeing them get that medal – seeing the smiles on their faces and listening to people chant their name. It’s bloody wonderful being a parent.”

  “You sound like an expert.”

  “And you’d be right to doubt me. It’s one thing to be able to see the forest for the trees,” she said. “It’s another to go and take a dump far from your campsite and not get lost. Now,” she said, tapping on the side of his body. “What about your work?”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  “A lot of stress?”

  “There’s a lot of pressure from all sides. Our research has started badly. Honestly, I think the whole experiment is cursed. I just have this feeling. And I don’t know what’ll happen if we don’t get published. I haven’t had an article published in God knows how long, and… I dunno, I think maybe they might get rid of me. I just have this feeling. I always have this feeling. That and, the money is terrible. My wife is working two jobs and having to look after the kids all the time. I think I chose wrong. Academia.”

  “Why did you choose it?”

  “I didn’t really. I just didn’t choose anything else. I kept studying. I wasn’t ready, maybe. It was always easier to keep doing more postdocs. Then I got associate professor, then professor, and I suppose tenure is next. But I never chose it. I definitely don’t want my kids to end up in it. The money is terrible. The egos are worse. And this constant pressure to publish. I just wanna quit.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t know how.”

  Through the flicker of candles he could just make out her silhouette hovering over him, smiling with such great magnitude as she waved her arms around like the branches of a tree; sweeping up and down his body, pinching and pulling on the invisible threads of his aura and dropping them in a small bin beneath the table.

  “So,” said The Empath, pressing down on Graham’s chest. “Touching your central meridian like this, it’s clear that in your past life you were a warrior of some kind.”

  Then she twisted his wrist, lifted his arm up and dropped it back on the table.

  “Yes, you see here, in your spleen, I can see that you were maybe a Viking or a Celtic warrior. Do you have Irish heritage?”

  She asked him so gingerly. There was not a drop of doubt in her voice whatsoever. She might as well have been examining his stool sample and asking if he’d had cantaloupe for breakfast.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Maybe. The Irish kind of went everywhere, didn’t they? Isn’t everyone a bit Irish?”

  “Your left kidney is telling me you probably do. Nordic Irish,” she said so absolute. “Most of the time, when we’re not sure of our heritage, it’s because we actually are, but we are suppressing our higher selves – maybe so that we can rediscover that higher self in this new life cycle that we are living. Do you like Viking TV shows? Do you watch them?”

  “I might have seen one, I’m not sure.”

  “Well, there you go. You see, the spleen never lies. More than likely you a leader and probably you would have had a name like Ragnor or Hercules. And if you think about it, I mean, how far off is the name Graham? Just a couple of letters really. Now, I’ll just get to your corpus callosum and we can unlock the warrior mind.”

  She whisked up and down the table, bending her fingers into alien symbols and shapes, touching him here, there, and everywhere in-between; only lightly, though, as if he were an instrument that she was playing.

  “Hmmm,” she said, bending his arm back into a V. “Now that’s interesting.”

  She was compelling. Were she a movie, he wouldn’t be able to look away. There was not an inch of irony in the way she spoke. It was as if with each discovery, she surprised even herself; and this alone made the experience all the more believable.

  “The next circuit I’m seeing here is the hippocampus, and this relates to your primal self, which, if it is blocked, makes absolute sense that your warrior mind should be repressed.”

  She massaged the top of his head roughly before pushing down with as much force as she could muster on his forehead – so much so that even Graham wondered if, at any second, she might push all the way through.

  “I can see it,” she shouted. “I can see it pushing out.”

  She was jubilant; full of God-fearing praise.

  “Something is stopping it,” she said. “I can’t get a grip.”

  But she wouldn’t let go; she wouldn’t give up. She shut her eyes and spread her fingers across his entire face and squeezed will all of her might, looking for a way in.

  “Breathe,” she shouted. “Like a hurricane.”

  Graham did as she asked; heaving every breath as if it might be his very last.

  “Don’t stop,” she said. “I nearly have it. Don’t you give in.”