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was almost a look of pity. “Oh, Otto. There is no security, sweetie. Didn’t the way Mom and Pop moved on, didn’t that make you see?”
    “All right then, relative security,” I said. “And the term is died, not moved on . What I mean is, something more secure than waiting for the next ten-dollar customer to ring the front doorbell and ask for a tarot reading.”
    “Don’t mock, please, Otto. The monks in Buddha’s time stood out in the road with a rice bowl. If someone put food in the bowl, they ate. If not, they didn’t. If you live in good faith like that, with an open heart, God provides.”
    “This isn’t Buddha’s time, for God’s sake.”
    “ Of course it is! That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you, but you won’t let me.”
    I couldn’t stand it anymore—the smiling eyes, the joyful condescension, the absolute certainty in the face of contrary facts—I’d seen it five hundred times. To keep from yelling at her I had to get up and pace the kitchen and clamp my teeth together. Outside, the mooing continued unabated.“Look,” I said at last, “you’re a grown woman. If you want to throw away your half of the inheritance, I can’t stop you. But spare me, could you? I came here to take you to see the house and the land before we sell it, not some monk, some guru, some . . . oddball.”
    “You don’t see who he is, do you.”
    “No, I do not. But now it’s you who isn’t listening: I came here to take you to North Dakota, not some guy I’ve never—”
    “I can’t go, I have a regression going on with this old client and we’re at a very key juncture and if I left her now it would be just horrible.”
    “Fine, regress her all you want, then. . . . How about this? How about I give Rinpoche airfare and he can meet me out there and we can get a signed document from you as to what you wish to do with your half of the property, and we’ll sort out the details that way? I’ll race out there—it’ll only take me two or three days. I’m kind of excited about seeing the countryside, on my own, you know?”
    “Can’t,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    “Rinpoche doesn’t fly. He says it’s unnatural. A stress on the spirit.”
    “How did he get here from Europe, then?”
    “Boat.”
    “Fine. I’ll pay his train fare.”
    “He’d get lost, Otto. The way I did. He doesn’t know America at all. You have to take him, show him the ropes.”
    “I don’t have to anything,” I said, and when she smiled somewhat sadly I realized she’d spoken the same words only a few minutes earlier.

    “Otto, my dear brother, please! I know you don’t believe in what I do, but everything in your aura says you could be liberated in this life. Do you realize what a blessing that is? I had a dream about you with Rinpoche, just two nights ago. That’s why I arranged it this way.”
    “Arranged, nothing, Seese. You tricked me. The word is tricked, not arranged. The correct term is died, not moved on. I can tolerate a lot of things but I really won’t sit by and let the language be corrupted. I—”
    “Otto, please. I’ve never asked you one favor in our whole adult lives, and now I’m asking. Once. Just please take Rinpoche out there with you and show him America, get him used to America. The country needs help, spiritual help.”
    “You’ve got that part right.”
    “And Rinpoche has been chosen to provide it. That’s all I can tell you right now. He’ll change your life, too, if you just let him.”
    “Why would I want to change my life, Seese? Think about it?”
    “Your interior life. Your soul’s arc through the various—”
    I held up a hand, traffic cop on the spiritual highway. “I am a Christian, Cecelia. Not a particularly good one, not a particularly avid practitioner, but a Christian all the same. Good, sensible, Protestant stock, same as you. We don’t shave our heads and walk around in bathrobes, and we don’t seek spiritual counsel from those who do.”
    She tucked her