I stared, open mouthed.
“Your thoughts led you to viewing the cause and effect of your feelings about yourself, but
you couldn’t make the connection because they contradicted years of hiding the truth. Your inner
awareness knew that I could explain things to you when you were ready, but only you could
make yourself ready, which is what walking the corridors was all about. Good job.” She grinned
like the proverbial cat.
Her tension breaking effort was too little and too late, not to mention too spooky for me. I
stood to leave; her fucking inner awareness could explain that.
“You always come back,” she said as I turned to walk away, “because I answer the
questions you have been surreptitiously asking yourself for years. Your Silent Knowledge also
tells you that I'm correct. I can see the look a moment before your ego registers my words as a
threat.”
I pivoted to face her. “I come back because I am seriously attracted to you,” I blurted out.
“Why else would I do this—for a fucking fairy tale?”
“You have no control over what I think of you,” she said, patting the bench beside her, “and
you come back every day to argue about fiction? I think not.” She patted the bench again.
Feeling used and drained, I sat down; if I was going to feel like an ass either way, I might
as well be comfortable.
“Two things you need to take away from this conversation: in a matter of a day or two, you
went through denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and finally acceptance of your own
experiences, which means you have grieved the loss of some core illusions. You need to fill
those voids with an assessment of events to stop the crappy ramifications from coming back, so
this is a grand opportunity to picture those disturbing memories as pieces of a puzzle that form a
quest. At the least, you'll discover the lifeline that will allow you to tackle challenges that go
beyond writing a book or a screenplay.”
“If the lifeline is faith,” I said, “you can’t eat that.”
“Let’s put the issue of faith to rest: it is not logical to believe in yourself beyond the point
of hubris when even you admit that you shouldn’t have survived God-only-knows how many
incidents that would have killed a normal person. All I’m asking is that you grant me a little
piece of that trust and have faith in the search for a life purpose that will lead you to the certain
knowledge that you have one.” Bonnie stood up. “Brunch is on me,” she said, turning to walk
toward the commercial of core of West Vancouver.
“Apparently the egg is one me,” I quipped.
Doubly so when Bonnie ignored the comment.
The next morning, I worked on my book until eight-thirty before I showered while steeling
myself for a push to the payoff scene I suspected she had not written, but needed to confirm so I
could get on with my life; Bonnie had been dead right when she said I couldn’t live in between
pivotal events, and I had written a decent grant proposal that was without a suitable ending.
Drying off, I realized the fifty-fifty split for work she had originally claimed only needed
tweaking wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, and it was time for that or the fifty-
fifty would become something else. Her choices would be to give up her plot or try to distract
me. My position would be that there is no reason not to start the application process, now that we
