Page 15 of Your Echo
I meant that to be a goodbye, but I hear his footsteps following me down the hallway.
“I thought you said you weren’t messing with me,” I call back to him, refusing to turn around.
“Am I not allowed to meditate too?” he responds. “What are you, the Association de Méditation’s guard dog?”
We enter the room and I tap theSilence Pleasesign on the door. A few people have already joined Guita on the pillows, and Ace and I settle down too. My favourite sandalwood incense is burning, Guita’s rhythmic humming combining with the traces of smoke in the air to create an almost mystical atmosphere.
I start with tuning into my body, focusing on the fabric of the pillow brushing against my legs, on the ache settling into my muscles after teaching back-to-back contemporary classes at the studio today. I settle into the flow of my breathing, lengthening and elongating the pattern of exhales and inhales until I reach the point where I’m usually ready to slip into a deeper state.
Except I can’t.
Thoughts keep claiming my consciousness instead: the faces of people on the metro this morning, the flexed feet of one of the contemporary girls I kept trying to correct, the way Ace’s eyes darkened when I said his name...
I try to let the images go, to watch them float by like clouds the way I tell people to do in the park every Sunday, but they cling to me, spiraling like a cyclone instead of gliding out of sight.
With an exhale that’s more of a huff, I open my eyes.
I didn’t notice the lines in his face until they were gone, didn’t see the tension that kept his brow furrowed and his mouth tight even when he smiled, but the change in Ace Turner right now is almost too drastic to believe. He doesn’t look younger, just...lighter, like he had a burnt out bulb someone came along and replaced.
I make sure he’s going to keep his eyes shut, and then I let myself trace the angles of his face with my gaze. He might try to hide it with tattoos and tattered clothing, but he doesn’t have the face of a rock star. His features are too polished, his cheeks too hollow and his lips too full for him to have the same kind of rugged appeal as the other guys in his band. They’re all whiskey shots and beer bottles; Ace Turner has a face that was made to sip champagne.
Everything about him is trying to convince the world of the exact opposite, though. Dark ink covers the muscles of his arms, most of it etched in the shape of patterns and symbols whose meanings I can’t make out. There are a few less abstract images: skeleton hands holding bouquets of roses, twisted trees wrapping their branches around his forearms. His loose shirt reveals the feathered edges of a design beneath his collarbones, stretching down past where I can see.
A metal bar runs through the top of one of his ears, and I realize that the black piercings in both his earlobes are actually tiny gauges. I got over being into that kind of look a long time ago, but there’s something so arresting about the contrast between his clean-cut, almost aristocratic face and the flashing danger signs the rest of him puts on display.
Ting, ting.
Guita claps two tiny meditation cymbals together with her finger and thumb, signalling for everyone to start coming back to their surroundings. I drop my hands from my knees and pretend to be awakening just as slowly as everyone else.
“Thank you for joining us today,” Guita announces. “Feel free to take your time leaving the room. Please remember that this is still a silent space.”
Ace pushes himself to his feet beside me and walks away. I let out my first genuinely relaxed exhale and roll my neck back and forth, savouring the fading scent of the incense as everyone else shuffles out and I’m left on my own.
Sometimes I wish I could sleep here, recharge my batteries overnight instead of having to head home and let the stillness I find inside myself here slowly drain away until I’m desperate for another hit.
Can you get addicted to meditation?
I need to eat something other than baklava though, and I have a date with my foam roller tonight, so I head into the kitchen to see if Guita needs any more help before I leave.
She’s in there with Rohit and waves away my attempts to help. “Allons-y. You must be exhausted, and your friend is waiting for you by the door.”
My friend?
I must look as confused as I feel because Guita gives me a conspiratorial smile and says, “You don’t have to be shy about it, Stéphanie. He seems like a very smart man. I would ask you to introduce me, but I know you must want to get home.”
I pretend to know what she’s talking about and walk down the hallway to find a sandy-haired, black-clad figure lurking by the front door.
“This sort of feels like you fucking with me,” I call as I approach.
“Trust me,Stéphanie, if I was fucking with you, you’d feel it for sure.”
My breath hitches. It’s properly dark outside now and no one has turned the hallway light on, so we stand in the shadows, him leaning against one wall and me backing up against the other. He seems to loom over me, even though there isn’t much real difference between our heights.
“I actually wanted to thank you,” Ace says.
I blink. “Thank me?”
“Yeah. I did the, uh...” He clears his throat and stares at the floorboards. “I did that cloud thing you said. You know, with my thoughts? Honestly, I thought it was fucking stupid when you explained it in the park, but I did it today and...I don’t know how to describe it. It just worked.”
