Ever since he contracted arthritis, Stan had refused to wear anything but sportswear. Many of his friends also dressed as if they were about to take part in the Olympics, although they often had trouble getting out of a soft armchair. Walking Eagle was decked in silver and turquoise jewellery which set off his thick silver hair and his faded jean shirt in a way that Karen really appreciated. Karen herself was a pastel swirl, as if a watercolour study of candyfloss had been left out in the rain.
Stan and Karen’s home was very unique. All their friends had unique homes as well, but theirs was perhaps especially unique. The ceiling of the living room rose thirty-five feet in a ‘cathedral effect’, and if you included the patio area, there was a sixty-five-foot sweep of open space from the front door to the back wall of the garden. Somewhere further along the line Stan had gotten the idea that hospitality consisted of behaving as if you were trying to sell your house to a prospective buyer. After softening up his guests with some statistics, it was time to move on to his mental health.
‘I’ll be honest with you, Walking Eagle, I’ve been impotent for the last eight years,’ said Stan, flipping a steak expertly with a giant fork.
‘My people have a ceremony to help with that,’ said Walking Eagle gravely, over the sizzling sound made by the scorched meat.
‘They do?’
‘It’s a secret ceremony, but for a friend…’
‘Well, God, that would be a really unique privilege. We’re going to go with this Tantric thing first, but when we get back we’ll get right on to you about that.’
‘You’re such a caring person,’ said Karen, who couldn’t help thinking that Walking Eagle didn’t look as if he had any problems with impotence.
‘How long will you be away?’ said Walking Eagle, taking out his diary.
‘Well, we’re going to sort of a Gestalt thing first to get us mentally prepared,’ said Stan.
‘Mind, body and spirit,’ said Karen, ‘you can’t separate them.’
‘There are ways,’ hinted Walking Eagle.
Ding-dong went the doorbell. Walking Eagle offered to go, seeing how Karen had broken her ankle, and Stan was preoccupied with the steaks.
Karen had broken her ankle in one of the most unique car accidents — she preferred to call it a car destiny — that anybody could possibly imagine.
She had been on the corner of Hacienda and Aztec completely lost in the magic of Deepak Chopra’s Quantum Healing tape. Anything with healing in the title captured Karen’s curiosity, and who could resist ‘quantum’, surely one of the most mystically mysterious words in the English language? Wasn’t it Einstein who had said that God wouldn’t play dice with the universe? Even if God had wanted to play dice, Karen suddenly reflected, who would he have played with? She couldn’t bear the thought of anybody being lonely, but it was the uniquely sad thought of God’s utter loneliness which had paralysed Karen’s reflexes as she drifted into the side of a Jeep Cherokee.
Then an even more incredible thing happened. The young man in the Jeep got out and apologized. It turned out that he had been listening to a tape of Scott Peck’s unbelievable Further Along the Road Less Travelled (which happened to be one of Karen’s most unique tapes) and he felt responsible for the accident.
And that was the story of how she had met Robert, who was now walking through the exquisite pastel shades of her living room, with his arm in a sling.
‘Karen!’ he greeted her.
‘Robert! My meant-to-be-accident,’ said Karen, shaking her head at the wonder of the universe. ‘I guess you met Walking Eagle.’
‘Hey waka jo hada,’ said Robert.
‘Hey what?’ said Stan.
‘Hey waka jo hada,’ said Robert. ‘It means “May you walk in beauty” in the language of the Cherokee nation.’
‘Hey waka jo hada,’ said Walking Eagle.
‘Isn’t that…’ Words failed Karen. ‘I love the way you two have just — excuse my language — cut through the crap and gotten right to the heart of things. “May you walk in beauty”, oh, that’s, oh.’ She put her hand on her heart and caught her breath. ‘I can’t tell you what that does for me. I feel all tingly in my fingers … Can you write that down for me? You guys are just so amazing … Can you believe that, Stan?’
Stan put his hands on his hips and shook his head as if he’d completed a long run and was too breathless to speak.
Gradually Stan and Karen’s patio area filled up with as many unique people as anyone could reasonably hope to fit in one place at one time.
‘He’s not just some New Age Indian,’ said Stan in a loud whisper, indicating Walking Eagle with his giant fork, ‘he’s the real thing.’
Walking Eagle looked a little nervous, cornered by Robert who seemed to know a disturbing amount about Native American language and mythology.
‘A lot of the nations are worried about having their culture co-opted by white people,’ said Robert. ‘What d’ya think of that?’
‘I think that the white people need our wisdom,’ said Walking Eagle. ‘To walk in beauty means to give from the heart.’
‘That’s true,’ said Robert, ‘but the power mustn’t fall into the wrong hands.’
‘I try not to be political,’ said Walking Eagle. ‘So what kinda business are you in, Robert?’
‘Oh, I’m in the wilderness industry.’
‘Man’s an omnivore, right?’ said Stan, dangling a steak at Walking Eagle. ‘I like to tease the vegetarians. Many of our friends are vegetarian but I’m too old to change.’
‘We must accept the animal’s sacrifice,’ said Walking Eagle, holding out his plate.
‘That’s a nice attitude,’ said Stan.
‘It’s the animal that has to accept his own sacrifice,’ said Robert.
Stan moved over to another part of the patio where Karen was discussing Princess Dux, a local celebrity, with Gary, one of the most spiritual hairdressers in Santa Fe.
‘Whether she’s an ambassador from the court of Lemuria or not,’ Gary was saying, ‘she’s one powerful lady.’
‘I think she’s a phoney,’ said Stan. ‘I don’t believe she’s three hundred years old.’
‘Stan is still learning,’ said Karen, apologizing for her husband’s backwardness. ‘I believe that Princess Dux is here to show us the future of the human body.’
‘Obesity?’ asked Stan.
‘What is it that Chris Griscom says?’ Karen went on, slapping Stan on the forearm for being flippant. ‘Until you can bilocate, until you can levitate, until you can astral travel, don’t talk to me about the limitations of the human body?’
‘I’d be satisfied with a reliable erection,’ said Stan candidly.
Gary looked at him astonished, but Karen persevered.
‘I think that Princess Dux is here to prepare us for the Great Change. Evidently, we’re soon going to be capable of ten thousand simultaneous telepathic communications. I read a book which said that people who weren’t prepared were going to think they were going insane.’
‘I think I’m going insane already,’ said Stan. ‘Sometimes the old insurance broker comes out in me and I think, what kind of rating am I going to give a three-hundred-pound, three-hundred-year-old princess from an underground civilisation that most people think has been extinct for thousands of years?’
Stan still had one or two knots in his otherwise flawless learning curve.
‘I’m married to a conservative,’ Karen wailed affectionately. ‘Wasn’t it William Shakespeare who said that there are more things under heaven and earth than are dreamt of by philosophers? He believed in Lemuria.’