It both delighted and pained Drew that she had become the honey in the flower of the peaceful ritualists he lived among. His dedication to the colony of observers seeking a haven in the buoyant light required adherence in replacing physical pleasure with the stimulation of, for what the mind had a capacity to manifest for the benefit of universal peace. He believed, as did the others, that mere concentration on an idea could modify world thinking. This was the only thing saving him from personal doom. It wasn’t a requirement to be celibate but rather he adopted it because he thought it would preserve him from becoming a victim to his passions. From inside of this private all knowing world he thought he could avoid having to confront the need for balance.
The impulse now driving him put rhythm into his steps and scuffed the soles of his shoes as he quickly ascended the three flights of cement treads. He was using the nun’s secret stairway at the back of the former Catholic Hospital that was undergoing renovation by the Ayurvedic Sidhes and Purushas that he lived among. He knew that this stairway, located near his room in the hallway shaped like a cross was the easiest access to the top floor. And, after what he’d just observed in the lobby he felt as if he was on a mission.
Before he arrived he’d been out for the day helping at one of the soup kitchens in town. He’d stayed after the kitchen had closed for the evening and helped with cleanup and he was just then returning. He’d threaded his way through the long dining room on the freeway side of the building and as he walked up the long hall, he unbuttoned the collar of his light blue long-sleeved shirt. The preemergent heat had returned here in this early March in the desert southwest. It was already ninety degrees out during the day and eighty in the evening. As he strolled toward the lobby the first thing he glimpsed was the elevator doors sliding shut and between them was a slice of Athena’s hunched shoulders, downcast eyes and narrow straight nose. But that’s not what made him vigilant in his flight up the stairs now—it was the second thing he saw—it was Klaus.
Klaus was one of the meditation teachers, a Purusha, sent over from his native Germany by the Maharishi Vedic University World Office in India to employ his excellent skills in the United States. He would give of those skills as he interpreted the meditation techniques to his students who were interested in joining the growing worldwide participants responsible for inserting peace into the universe—because—from manifestation within the soul of the universe all things were made possible. Klaus didn’t have the best command over the English language and when Athena came to stay she made it easier for him to explain his loftier concepts to the other brothers because she spoke his language too.
Klaus in his great gaunt height had been towering over Bernard, the director of the community. They were standing outside of the main office in the maize colored lobby. The dark hair above Klaus’s long face was falling into his dark brown, insanely bright, hawk-like eyes. He was indicating and indenting, with his finger, a line on a sheaf of papers that the Bernard was presenting for him to look at. The overbite of his easy smile was inviting and his head wagged in animation at the director’s interpretation of the figures they were both examining. A swoosh sounded, they both looked up as they heard the front door slide open. They knew it was Athena.
Ever since the fraternity had taken her in that winter, every Friday night they always left the front entrance door open about two inches for her, otherwise it remained locked because of the declining neighborhood.
Athena came to the massive old red brick building with its cracked tarmac parking lot that choked on weeds because someone told her it would be a place that she could stay. A, someone she met at a church she’d only attended once, but, having nowhere else to go she decided to take the risk. It was on a Saturday morning that the Bernard had admitted her so that she wouldn’t have to pay money to stay at a car park anymore. The apex of pursuit, she would no longer have to fend off the drunks every weekend and she wouldn’t have to sleep in the cold, in the back of a covered pickup. But it was only after he took her in that he discovered she was the woman of the prophecy.
