"You are a complete bastard!" She said.
"So I've been told," he replied coldly while exhaling on his cigar. The venom-laden smoke burned her eyes exactly as it was supposed to.
"We're not asking for a miracle here only an extension of the loan," she pulled her blond hair out of her face, fixing it neatly back into the ponytail she had entered the room with. "I'm sorry about the outburst, but all we need is a little more time. We know our grant funding will come through if we just have a little more time." She looked deeply at him with her soulful hazel eyes, punctuating her apology.
"Ms. Devonshaw, you are in fact asking for a miracle." He leaned back into the grained leather of his power chair thinking how it was to get this off of his chest. "You never will get the carrot you just offered me. I know your grant is being rejected as we speak. A man in my position has friends and..."
"You're bluffing!" She blurted out jumping instinctively towards his desk.
"Ms. Devonshaw, I don't have to bluff. I'm holding all the cards here, hell I've got the whole deck in my pocket." He stubbed out his cigar like a naughty child crushing a pill bug.
"Reverend Williams, just recently told how much his church appreciates my company's generosity. Her normally rosy complexion turned to cremation dust, as she knew he had the whole deck.
"I can see that you finally grasp the seriousness of your situation. Your pagan group is as much a faith based group as my bank is a nonprofit organization." His words tore into her like a cold knife. For years she had worked to bring help into the darkest parts of the city. Meditation, free clinics, and the community gardens had finally come together to form a true community center where anyone could come and pray, study, and make the city a better place.
"But we've done so much good. Surely that's counts for something." She said knowing her words fell on deaf ears.
"I'll grant you, that you've been successful. Your gardens have changed the city. They've attracted people, people who want to live down town, people who need housing down town." He slid a piece of paper across the desk to her. "Those two figures," he said pointing "are the value of the notes on your community center, and the value of your building if I turn it into condominiums. You see I can't give you more time with this deal in front of me." He retracted his paper from her. "Besides even if the money wasn't there, I don't like your kind."
His words didn't enrage her this time; she had become numb to him. "What kind am I Mr. Prestcott? I'll tell you what kind of person I am. The kind who doesn't just sit back and watch other people suffer. We saw the entire country self-destructing, people who really needed help, who really needed hope. We gave them that hope and we taught them how to see the world differently, how to live their lives differently. And then they learned that we didn't teach them anything, that they had always had the power inside themselves."
She pointed towards the office window. "Look out there and see for yourself, ten years ago all you'd have seen was morgue, now it's alive, alive with people who understand the true balance sheets. The balance sheets where we are all equal; where the universe, if we ask, protects us all. The one's where money doesn't matter anymore than air. It's free to anyone who cherishes and nurtures it." He chuckled at the absurdity of her words.
"Look if you want to help those people, teach them how to work. Teach them how to get off their butts and work for a living." He stood up gesturing her towards the door. "Filling their heads with mediation, and magic, is not only wasting their time but it will cost them their souls." As she crossed the threshold of the door he finished his thought. "You should think about this Ms. Devonshaw are you really saving their lives if what you teaching is damning their souls?" With that he shut the door on her.
Several days had passed since her meeting with Mr. Prestcott and still she couldn't get over what the meeting had meant. The center she and Tia had worked so hard for was going to close in just twenty-two days. Jess had tried to meditate for guidance and even tried a few cleansing spells but nothing seemed to relieve the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She thought maybe when Tia returned home from Colorado, begging at Tara Mandela, for money, she'd feel better. Surely the Buddhist nuns there could see the value of what they were doing. Even if they couldn't, just having Tia's warmth in bed should help her center herself.
The welcome home dinner candles had long since burned themselves out; Tia had lit special celebration candles, but had found that there was nothing to celebrate. The sandalwood and vanilla aroma had begun to leave a sour scent in the air.
"I'm sure something else will turn up." Tia was always the optimist. "I mean the universe supports everything as much as it needs." Jess looked at the burned out candles she knew Tia was right everything had its purpose; flowers only bloom where they are supposed to. She stood up and began straightening the dinner dishes.
"Your right," she sighed, "but it's so hard to detach from this. We built our lives here, we were married here, and we were going to raise the baby here." She began running water over the dishes. "If we lose the center and the gardens I don't know if I can do any of that here."
Tia sat the last of the dishes on the counter next to the sink and placed her consoling arms around Jess. "If were not meant to be here we'll move on like we always have."
That was why she loved Tia so much; she always managed to keep a universal eye on things. She turned and gazed into Jess's eyes, and with one glance said all the words she didn't have to.
Tia placed the prayer rug gracefully on the floor while Jess gathered the candles and incense from the teak chest her grandfather had carved for her when she was little girl.
They sat in the stillness for a few moments each praying for guidance and then in unison began chanting the prayer of Saint Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is darkness, light...
The golden autumn of the candles' light danced across the wood floor of the room as the spirit moved through the air working real magic:
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive:
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal light.
The silken drapes fluttered in the cool night air and the whispered breeze blew across the candles causing their flames to reach out caressing it. Jess sat quietly as Tia guided the rest of the prayer.
Divine will, of love, give us the guidance to follow Saint Francis and show us all how to better understand the way." In the center of the circle of candles there were two, which had not been lit. Tia used the flame from the center candle to light its dormant sisters. "The first flame burns for us, that we may fully understand, and the second is for David Prestcott that he may see his way to learn the guidance of the universe's one song." She closed her eyes and they both sat quietly for while concentrating on their internal voices looking for the truth.
The only guidance David Prestcott wanted was how to grow his fortune, and maybe take a few strokes off of his golf game. What he certainly didn't want was guidance from this still wet behind the ears PR. guy.
"You can't give them the packing plant as new community center the place is practically a toxic waste dump." The younger man held up the environmental impact study of the land in question.
"You convinced me that simply foreclosing on the mortgage would actualy wind up costing me too much in city contracts. So here is the new location they can have." He point at the packing plant's paper work.
"If the media ever gets the EPA report, they'll have a field day." He replied.
"If the media ever gets the report they'll tell the city exactly what I want them to. What's the point of having all of this money if I can't buy coverage when I need it?" The young man began to shuffle his hands as if he were about to respond. Mr. Prestcott continued. "Look if you would like to have a job, oh say five minutes then you'll stop this, say thank you Mr. Prestcott, and do what the hell I tell you."
He looked down and softly said, "thank you Mr. Prestcott," and left the room.
David Prestcott was fanatical about many things religion, money, politics, and his own appearance was probably the greatest of his obsessions. Every day he would run for three miles safely tucked inside his gated community, so that he could stay slim. Today was no different he returned home from work changed into his designer sweats, and custom made running shoes and hit the road.
The subtle sound of his sneakers on the paved lulled him into an almost trance like state, images of his child hood crept up from the long forgotten parts of his memory.
"How stupid are you boy?" His father would shout while diving into his evening twelve pack. "You C's ain't going to get you into college. And I got more important things to do then pay for some free loaders educations."
"Yes sir," David would stammer, "I know dad you got big dreams."
Beer erupted angrily from the can. "Damn right I got big dreams and if it weren't for you and your momma I'd be living them right now." By his eighth beer more of it usually fell on his face than into his mouth. Most nights would continue this way until either his father passed out or things got worse, but no matter what happened they always ended with the lawsuit.
"One of these days I'm going to find myself a good lawyer, and sue Trojan. If they made a rubber that worked, I wouldn't be in this situation." He swigged hard on his beer. 'I bet any court any the country would give me millions for pain and suffering if I just showed them the two of you." David drifted out of his memories realizing he had hit the half way mark and it was time to start home.
Ted couldn't allow himself the luxury of reminiscing, he had a hundred grand in student loan debt to repay, and a pizza that had five minutes left to get there or it came out of his salary. " Goddamned security guards," He muttered to himself, "I think they get a cut or something of the free pizza, hell there's probably no one even at the address, just the gate guards waiting for the thirty minutes to run out." He looked down at the delivery slip to see where the guards were waiting to ambush his pizza. David looked up just in time to a see a dirty blue Bronco run straight into him. Ted looked up to see jogger's face pressed against his windshield. He slammed on his breaks as hard as he could, and jumped out of the vehicle as soon as it stopped "Somebody call 911! Somebody call 911! You're going to be okay, really okay." He began to check David for a pulse.
"I'm going to be okay," David, said, "I'm going to be okay." That may be the nicest thing anyone had said to him in his whole life he thought as everything went black.
He could hear the doctors and nurses hurrying around him, and every so often he make out a word or two"severe cerebral trauma," he thought he heard them say a few times. He was coming in and out of consciousness half dazed from the injury and half from the meds. The dizziness made it very hard to concentrate on what they were saying and almost impossible to speak.
"What happened?" he asked.
No one answered him. He knew they were around he could here them he thought; he could feel them for sure.
"What happened?" Ha asked again.
No one answered him. Maybe he wasn't asking loud enough.
"God Damn it, what happened to me!" He shouted.
"You're going to be okay David." He heard a calming voice answer. It was at that point he realized he hadn't seen anyone since his father talking about the lawsuit.
"What's going on, I can't see a thing? Who are you?" He struggled to make his voice work as the medications took over.
The voice answered, "The blindness is only temporary, you see clearly in a little while. Relax and everything can be better soon." He couldn't feel them operating on him anymore, he had obviously been moved to a recovery room.
"Relax," he thought that was easy to say, a deranged pizza boy hadn't just run down the nurse. He could feel the soothing meds numb his body. Sleep, god how he needed sleep.
Several weeks had passed since Jess and Tia had heard the good news that although they were loosing the center the Prestcott Corporation had agreed to give them another building with much smaller mortgage. They also could keep the community gardens intact since it would help attract people to Prestcott court, the city's newest luxury condo complex. They had a long road ahead of them renovating the new building was taking a lot more time and money than they had initially thought. Just cleaning up the site had taken two weeks. A lot of people from the local community had turned out for the clean up, but even more people stayed a way. The Prestcott Corporation had given them a really great deal on the building and then the Reverend Williams lead a pulpit-thumping crusade against the " witches," making sure they'd never get a large grant ever.
So like most times in their young lives they started doing the work themselves knowing that the universe would work things out in the end.
"I don't know if I can do this Jess." Tia said.
"I know it's not our dream building but we can make this work." She put down her paint roller to take a break. "Are you sure your okay I mean, you've been out of sorts lately?"
"I'm just tired you know, probably the stress of everything that's been going on." She smiled at Jess, thinking sometimes you just need to keep things quiet for a while. "Besides Jess I can't stand the smell of the paint anymore."
Patr two is coming soon.
