Part 8

“Yes. I know. And you practice that meditation, your brain rewires, and the light behind those moments is so bright and clear you can almost touch it.”

“Yes.” Andy sat up on their bed.

“And the wisdom just pours into you, and you are so sure the God is there, waiting to give you what you ask if you are pure, and if your imagination is true, and if your soul is aligned with your karma and the universe. A pure soul can conjure anything.”

“Yes. It’s so exciting. They say you can conjure anything, affect people, be the master of the universe. You study, too?”

Lee smiled. “Everyone’s studied, Andy. We all want what you want – power, control, fortune, glory.”

“So, you have it?” asked Andy in excitement.

“No, Andy.” Lee smiled softly. “It doesn’t work, Andy. There is a point in meditation beyond which there is no upside. You can do harm to yourself if you are not careful.”

“But the point is to go beyond. Of course, it works. So many people swear by it. So many practice. These books, this knowledge survived millennia because they are true. And how can God do harm?”

“Not God. The practice does, the deep unguided meditations. You can damage your mind, your memory, suffer learning impairments, concentration issues, things like that.”

“That can’t be true.”

“You can research it on your blogs.”

“So, you don’t believe in God?”

“God who never interferes is no God at all.”

“Of course God interferes. You just don’t know they do.”

“Well, if the universe is preordained then what I do is of no consequence because it’s been preordained.”

“What?”

“It is of no consequence whether we believe or not because fate is God’s will. And it is of no consequence whether there is God, if the God does not interfere. God who doesn’t interfere is of no consequence to life. It’s like God and us are two strangers on a train who should fall in love, but they misunderstand one another’s signals and in the end pass like ships in the night.”

“That’s stupid. Atheism is stupid. God is there.”

“It’s just my opinion, Andy. You don’t have to agree. My son and my wife are dead, and I spent a lot of time seeking and calling that God, and he did not answer the phone.” Lee smiled and looked back toward the steeple.

Andy slowly got up, walked to Lee and put their arms around him.

“I’m sorry, Lee.”

“Thank you, Andy,” said Lee, and tears started to pour from Lee’s eyes, because the last person to touch him was Harper. And the last time Harper was able to raise her hands around him was on Valentine’s Day – he brought flowers and chocolates for her and many more for the whole floor of patients and staff to cheer up the patients and in hope to sway karma. Since then, he was the one touching others, but no one touched him. “You are a good kid, Andy.”

Thursday, March 30

The custodian walked by Lee’s side solemnly. Lee’s lead legs moved his disembodied mind forward. The emerald tiles stretched across the floor, ran forward seemingly to infinity of the dim, cold, and damp hallway that led toward that room. In that room Harper waited. At the door the custodian stopped and showed Lee into the room.

Sun streamed over the cardboard casket and moisture condensed inside the transparent plastic coffin lid. His eyes raised slowly. He saw the edge of the violet dress first, and then slowly up, and back down, and then upward still when he saw the violet cuff with gold buttons and then hands folded one over another and covered in the wrong shade of makeup, darker than her skin was, and nails purple around the edges; and then up over the golden buttons over the breast and then her, Harper, peaceful, still, eyes shut, and more makeup. At the edge of the black wig above the temple were protruding scars and stitches that never fully healed covered in more makeup, jaw loose and lips slightly open and between gums a red stitch.

Lee turned away and spat out a guttural giggle from the wound inside.