Page 14 of Your Echo
“Are you ready to go up to the front?” Guita whispers, as the room buzzes with mumbled comments and Rohit clears his throat. “You don’t have to. I can do it if you want.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Sorry, I was just thinking.”
I get up and bring my chair with me to sit down next to Rohit, letting my eyes wander over to Ace for the first time. As usual, he’s staring right back at me.
Maudit connard.
He must know exactly what he’s doing.
Most of the crowd’s questions are asked in English, so I sit in my chair with not much to do for the next few minutes.
“All right, well it looks like that’s our last question, so—Oh, yes? You in the back?”
Ace has his hand up in the air. He clears his throat and starts to speak in perfectly enunciated French.
“You talked about the concept of ‘erasure’ in meditation,” he begins, “of obliterating the self in order to truly be led back to the self. I just want to know if you really think that’s possible. Do you think everyone can let go to that extent, or are there some facets of the human mind that refuse to be erased?”
He slides his attention from Rohit to me and for a moment, I wonder why his stare is so expectant. Then I remember that I’m supposed to be translating.
“S’il vous plait,” I ask, still blinking with shock over the fact that he was actually listening to the presentation, “could you repeat that?”
He grins at me. “I’ll try it in English.”
Ace repeats himself, and Rohit goes off on a tangent on how he thinks meditation is possible for everyone and that the only limits we’re defined by are the ones we set for ourselves—or something like that. Guita slips out and reappears with more Lebanese desserts before announcing that she’ll be ending the night with a session in the meditation room if anyone wants to join.
I attempt to follow her out, but Ace leans up against the wall beside the doorway. I pause.
“I’m beginning to think I haven’t made a great impression on you,” he drawls, crossing his arms over his chest.
I hesitate for a moment. “I’m just wondering what brought you here tonight.”
He nods towards the stack of Rohit’s books. “I’m a modern mind who wants to meditate. Isn’t that enough?”
“You’re a rock star,” I say flatly.
Right on cue, I spot one of the guests trying to covertly take a photo of Ace with her phone. He notices too and gives the woman a small wave, which makes her turn bright red and practically run over to pretend to look at one of the bookshelves.
“Do you have a ‘no rock star’ policy here?” Ace asks me.
Standing face to face like this, I realize he’s only got about two inches on me in height. I square my shoulders and decide to just deal with this splinter, right here, right now.
“Are you bullshitting me?” I demand.
He raises an eyebrow in answer.
“I need to know right now if you’re fucking with me, and if you are, you can leave. I have a lot of respect for these people and this place, and”—I pause to swallow—“and it means a lot to me. So if you came here for a laugh or to get your dick wet, you can walk out the front door right now and not come back.”
He raises his hands in surrender. “And here I thought this was a place of welcome and—”
“Ace,” I snap, the sound of his name turning my voice into a hiss.
Something in the air tightens, contracts—like the single syllable is a chord that’s just been strummed, the sound waves reverberating between both our bodies, echoing over and over against our chests. I realize right then that there’s an inevitable intimacy to calling someone by their name for the first time.
“I’m not fucking with you,” he says slowly, his voice lowering an octave and lingering on the word ‘fuck’ just long enough for me to question if he did it on purpose or not. “I didn’t come here to mess around with anyone. I genuinely wanted to hear this presentation.”
If he hadn’t asked Rohit that question at the end, I wouldn’t believe him at all. I’m still not convinced. Either there’s a trace of sincerity in him right now, or he’s doing a really good job of faking it.
“Well I hope you enjoyed it,” I tell him. “I’m going to join the meditation now.”
