“Few things on your mind?”
“That might be an understatement. I have… issues.”
Sandy laughs, not unkindly. “Don’t we all?”
“Mine are diagnosed issues.”
He waves me off. “And what difference does that make?”
“I… huh. I don’t know. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to breathe.”
He nods. “One breath at a time, right?”
“I guess. Why do you want to meditate?”
“I’m stressed.”
“Aren’t we all?” I tease him.
“Cheeky little twinkie,” he says with a grin. “Being Helena is taxing, to say the least.”
“She slips through sometimes, huh?”
He grimaces. “You could say that. I don’t have the hold on her I used to. I’m not as young as I once was. It can be tiring.”
“What are you, twenty-six?”
“I might have to keep you around. You’re very good for my ego. I’m thirty-one.”
“Wow! I didn’t think you were that old.”
“Now I don’t want to keep you around at all,” he says with a scowl, Helena flashing behind his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I might auction you off tonight to the highest bidder, who’ll probably be a forty-year-old businessman from Des Moines staying at a Motel 6.”
I wince. “Sorry. My mouth tends to go before my brain does. It’s my brother’s fault. I learned it from him.”
His eyes soften, but I can see the drag queen still flitting around. “You remind me of Paul, a bit. He’s the same way.”
I shudder. “Then I feel sorry for you, having to be subjected to this all the time.”
“I’ve learned to deal,” Sandy says dramatically. “Now, you think you can help me?”
I think I can. Maybe. It can’t hurt to try, I guess. I sit down next to Sandy and cross my legs like his. “A guy named Eddie taught me this,” I tell him. “He’s supposed to be a psychiatrist, but I’m pretty sure he’s just some crazy guy who got mistaken for a therapist one day and ran with it.”
“That awesome?” Sandy asks.
“The best,” I agree. Because he really is. “I don’t know if I’d have made it without him.”
Sandy bumps my shoulder with his. “I think you’d have done just fine, baby doll.”
As the sun continues to rise, I try to teach Sandy the art of breathing. He takes to it better than I ever have. And for some reason, it helps me too.
I’VE BEEN warned, of course. About Paul. From Sandy and Corey (who comes down the stairs this morning as Kori). I’ve been told he can be a bit… much… to handle. I really thought they were exaggerating. After all, I was raised by the King of the Rambling Dramatic Overthinkers, so how bad could Paul Auster possibly be? I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be able to go toe-to-toe with Bear in that regard.
Dear Lord in Heaven, I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.
I’m in the kitchen with Sandy and Kori, helping prepare a vegetarian spring quiche (made in my honor, of course, though Kori still feels the need to find eggs in the fridge and shriek in an annoying imitation of me about how cruel it is finding the aborted fetuses of one of our animal companions, and how it’s a travesty against all mankind. I don’t think he’s funny at all).
Then he arrives.