The phone rang and Goldy answered it. She became involved in a conversation that looked as if it might be prolonged.
“Movement would help,” Karma said to him as she plucked dead leaves off the flowers in the vase. “To unblock your chakra, I mean.”
“Movement? Like walking? Talking? Riding a horse?”
“No, nothing like that. The kind of movement that frees up blocked emotions. You could join a yoga class.”
Slade shook his head to clear it. This didn’t eliminate his growing attraction to Karma, however, and he had to remind himself sternly that she wasn’t his type. This conversation was more than enough proof of that.
“What is yoga?” he asked. He had a vague idea that it was something that Hollywood types did when they came out of drug rehab.
“The word yoga means ‘yoke,”’ Karma said. “It’s a discipline that yokes the individual with the divine through practice that joins our mundane and spiritual lives.”
“Okay, so explain what a chakra is.”
“Chakra means ‘wheel’ or ‘disk.’ A chakra is the sphere of bioenergetic activity coming from major nerves in the spinal column. You have seven chakras stacked in a column of energy from the base of your spine to the top of your head.”
It was worse than he thought, this stuff, plus if there had been chakras wrapped around his spine, he was sure they would have been shaken off by all that rodeo riding he’d done.
Karma kept talking, and she might as well have been speaking a foreign language. “What goes on in the chakras influences our minds and bodies. Maybe Goldy can explain how your second chakra is blocked.”
Goldy rolled her eyes at them and pointed at the phone while mouthing the words, “New tenant.” Slade ran an impatient hand through his hair and wondered distractedly if he could get a takeout somewhere around here for dinner—a nice quiet dinner during which he could enjoy his own company.
“We could go to the delicatessen on the corner. I could explain more about your second chakra,” Karma said, looking him straight in the eye. This statement was a direct answer to his unasked question, and for a moment he thought she might be able to read his mind but immediately discarded the notion. He was letting all this New Age stuff get to him, which was ridiculous.
“You want to?” Karma gazed at him hopefully.
He hadn’t a moment ago, but it struck him that her eyes had green depths that he hadn’t noticed before, and her neck was extremely graceful, putting him in mind of a snowy egret’s. Plus, all else aside, he was hungry.
“I sure do,” he said, and he was rewarded by a megawatt smile.
“I’ll run upstairs and change clothes,” she said.
“Is that necessary? You look fine.”
“Well,” Karma said, glancing down at what she wore, “these clothes aren’t mine.”
She had already gone upstairs and come back down earlier wearing a pair of sandals on her previously bare feet, whose toenails were lacquered sugar-pea green with silver sparkles. He had an idea that if Karma disappeared into the mysterious upper levels of the Blue Moon Apartments, he would have a long wait before she reappeared. She would want to wash her hair, dry it, and slather on makeup. She would agonize over whether to wear the red outfit or the hot-pink outfit and decide after half an hour to wear the blue-and-green print one instead. In the meantime he would have to be polite to Goldy, who sounded like Minnie Mouse on helium. And that was presuming that she got off the phone; if she didn’t, he’d have to rock back on his heels and pretend to admire what appeared to be distressed panels of coat-hanger art on the wall.
“You’re gorgeous just the way you are,” he said, appropriating Karma’s arm and propelling her toward the door. He even waved goodbye to Goldy in a way that he hoped inspired trust and confidence.
“Shall we take the car?” He’d left his Chevy Suburban at a parking meter.
“Oh, let’s walk,” Karma said, and he swung into step beside her.
He realized before they had taken five steps that people noticed Karma. Men stopped and did a double take after they’d passed; some of them gave her a quick once-over as soon as they saw her. It must be because she was so all-fired tall. She’d dominate any group; she’d stand out in a crowd. He walked taller himself because he was walking beside her, and before he knew it, he was taking pride in being with her. He didn’t mind being envied by other men; in fact, he kind of liked it.
“You see, you have to release emotional energy to free the body from its grip,” Karma said, marching along to the beat of a steel-drum band playing reggae on the street corner.
“I don’t think my emotional energy needs to be released,” he ventured.
“That’s what people think. But we all have repressed emotions.”
“Do you?”
“I’m not so different from everyone else,” Karma said seriously, though this was a statement he could have refuted. There was no opportunity, though, because they had reached the delicatessen. He opened the door for her, and she sailed through, hair bouncing, breasts ditto. A guy on the way out gaped at her.
“Would you look at that,” the guy said to his friend. “Would you look at her!”
This was a compliment, but Slade was sure that Karma hadn’t heard it. Or if she had, she was playing it cool.
Once they were seated in the restaurant booth, Slade studied the menu. He was in the mood for a big broiled steak, but there wasn’t anything remotely resembling one on this menu. Instead there were things like a corned beef-with-chicken liver sandwich on pumpernickel, and cheese blintzes, and humongous desserts with names like Double Chocolate Disgrace. On the table were two bowls in a metal holder, one containing small whole pickled green tomatoes, the other containing sauerkraut.
The waiter returned, and Karma ordered a veggie-and-cream cheese sandwich.
“Are you ready to order, sir?” The waiter stood with his pencil poised.
“What do you recommend?” Slade said, throwing himself on the waiter’s mercy.
“We just made a batch of fresh chopped chicken livers. The chicken liver sandwich is very good.”
The idea of eating a whole sandwich made of chicken livers made Slade slightly sick to his stomach, so he glanced wildly at the menu and chose the first thing he saw, corned beef on rye.
When the waiter had left, Karma ladled sauerkraut into one of the small bowls stacked on the table. “Want some?” she asked.
Slade shook his head. “I never liked sauerkraut, and I can’t imagine eating green tomatoes.”
Karma pulled a face. “I can’t imagine not eating them. I’m a vegetarian, so maybe that’s why.”
“You don’t eat any meat?” He’d never known a vegetarian before; he’d always thought such a person must be slightly deranged. Not to scarf down a thick prime rib, drowned in natural gravy? Not to sink your teeth into a big juicy burger with all the trimmings? Never to know the joys of pork tenderloin cooked on a grill, or leg of lamb, or succulent spare ribs?
“Nope, no poultry, no mammals. I eat fish, though. I love fish.”
Fish. He’d been known to eat catfish in the Glades, and he liked a tuna sandwich now and then, but he couldn’t imagine fish as a steady diet.
“I’ve never eaten in this place,” he said,