7

THE FIRST RAY OF SUN STRUCK MICKEY’S SLEEPING face, creating a rosy glow behind his eyelids. He sat up and looked around, yawning. He felt content, which surprised him; everything had been moving so fast. Now the air felt cool and still. He saw that the TV was still on mute, but he had no interest in the flickering images playing across the screen.

A light tap at the sliding glass door broke the stillness.

“Come out here. I have something to show you.”

It was Francisco. Mickey pulled on a shirt and pants and opened the door to the deck.

“What do you think?” Francisco asked.

He didn’t have to explain what he meant. Massive thunderheads had built up over the ocean. Mickey had never seen anything quite like it.

“Glorious,” he murmured. It wasn’t a word he’d ever used before.

“Turn around,” said Francisco.

Mickey did, and there were thunderheads behind them, too. As his gaze traveled around the sky, the same colossal cloud formations were everywhere.

“Strange, wouldn’t you say?” said Francisco.

Mickey was still groggy with sleep, but suddenly he knew what Francisco meant. The only spot that was sunny was where they stood. He walked to the railing of the deck and looked down. The darkness created by the clouds came right up to his house and stopped. He and Francisco were in an island of light.

“Did you do this?” Mickey asked.

“Have you ever heard of a person who could control the weather?”

Mickey shook his head. “No.”

“Then if I did this, I must not be a person.” Francisco laughed at Mickey’s reaction. “Here,” he said, holding out his hand.

“What is it?”

“A graduation present.”

Francisco opened his hand to reveal three small objects: a gold ring, a gold nugget, and a gold signet seal. They had been rubbed to a high polish and gleamed in the sunlight. Mickey felt uneasy. The three objects seemed like another riddle he couldn’t unravel. Francisco read his mind.

“They contain the secret of happiness,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything better.”

“Are you going to tell me the secret?”

“You’ll know. Go ahead, take them.”

Mickey did, reluctantly. “What if I’m not ready to graduate? It seems awfully soon.”

“No one’s forcing you,” said Francisco. “You can decide if you’re ready.”

The two began walking down the beach. Francisco’s eyes searched the horizon, but Mickey saw nothing out at sea, not even the usual pleasure boats and cavorting sea lions. They approached a small pile of flotsam that high tide had left behind. Francisco stooped and pulled a damp crooked stick from the tangled seaweed.

“Just what we need,” he said.

With the tip of the stick he drew a line in the sand. “We’ve come to your last lesson. The big one.”

“All right,” said Mickey uncertainly.

Francisco pointed to either side of the line he had drawn. “Over here is you and your world. Over here is God and God’s world. Ever since you were born, you haven’t crossed the boundary that separates them. Now you can.”

“Wouldn’t I have to die?”

Francisco shook his head. “God’s world opens when you know the difference between illusion and reality. As I told you before, you have bought into the illusion that you are a person searching for his soul. The reality is that you are a soul playing the role of a person. Once you truly get that, you won’t be a prisoner anymore. You’ll be free.”

Mickey hesitated. “Are you in God’s world right now?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it like, exactly? I really want to know.”

“There’s nothing to fear, nothing to lose, nothing to be attached to. You won’t recognize your old self anymore. You will get to be who you really are.”

“Excuse me, but that sounds a lot like dying.” Mickey meant this as a halfhearted joke. But Francisco suddenly kicked the sand, and the line was gone.

“What’s wrong?” Mickey said.

Francisco stared hard at him. “I wonder if you realize what I’m offering you. If you did, you would want it with every fiber of your being. Either that or you’d run away screaming, scared out of your skull.”

“Sorry.”

Francisco observed that Mickey’s chagrin was genuine, but made no comment. “It’s early. Let’s see what the day brings,” he said casually.

They continued down the beach. The opening in the cloud bank moved with them. Mickey didn’t feel contented anymore.

“You’re asking for a huge change. Maybe it’s too much for me,” he said. “I feel helpless.”

“Not helpless enough,” said Francisco.

“What does that mean?”

“You still think you’re in control. It comes back to ego. The ego never gives up trying to be in control. So it keeps doing more and more of what didn’t work in the first place.”

“That’s exactly what Larry told me. I saw him again,” said Mickey.

“He was right. You won’t change until your ego gives up. And it will only give up when you feel totally helpless. Then its game comes to an end. You face the unknown. It’s scary and dark. But that’s where you have to go.”

Mickey wanted more of an explanation, but Francisco’s mind was already elsewhere. “See that guy over there?” he asked.

Under a nearby lifeguard tower, Mickey could see a greenish pile of rags. It took a moment before he made out that it was a man curled up in a filthy army surplus coat.

“Yeah, I see him.”

“How much money do you have on you?” said Francisco.

Mickey always kept quite a bit. He opened his wallet and pulled out a wad of hundreds. “Okay,” said Francisco. “Take out two hundred dollars. Go over there and give it to him. Let’s see what happens. I’ll hold on to the rest.”

Mickey did as he was told. After a moment he came back.

“Well?” Francisco said.

“He was blown away. He was sleeping one off, so at first he thought I was going to bust him. When I put the money in his hands, he couldn’t believe it. He started to cry.”

They could both see the man. He had come out from under the lifeguard tower. His grizzled face wore a jubilant look, and he started waving madly at Mickey. Mickey waved back.

“That felt pretty good,” he said, watching the man walk away. Every few seconds he’d look back and wave again.

Mickey looked down. Francisco was crouched in the sand. He had crumpled the rest of the hundreds into a small pile and set them on fire.

“What are you doing?” Mickey cried. He kicked at the little mound of flames, but Francisco blocked his foot.

“Just watch,” he said.

“What do you mean, watch? That’s a thousand bucks, maybe more!” Mickey exclaimed.

When there was no chance of rescuing the money, Francisco said, “How do you feel now?”

“Lousy. What’s your point?” said Mickey sourly.

“I wanted you to see how predictable you are. When you gave your money away, you felt good. When you lost your money, you felt bad. That’s all the ego has to offer: feeling good and feeling bad. You’re like a rat in a lab experiment.”

“Expensive experiment,” said Mickey without enthusiasm.

“Have I made my point?”

“Tell me again.” Mickey wasn’t over the shock of seeing a pile of money reduced to ashes.

“You’re too resentful right this minute,” said Francisco. “You’ll laugh once you see the truth. How about a laugh right now? Do you have a joke for me?”

Mickey knew this was a flimsy ploy, but he needed a diversion right now.

“A man is walking on the beach,” he said. “And he finds a brass lamp buried in the sand. He rubs it, and out jumps a genie. ‘You’ve set me free,’ says the genie. ‘Instead of granting you three wishes, I’ll only grant you one, but it can be the biggest wish in the world.’

“The man thinks for a minute. ‘I’ve never been to Hawaii. Build me a bridge so I can go there anytime I want.’

“‘Are you crazy?’ cries the genie. ‘That’s half the Pacific Ocean. Nobody can build a bridge that far. Make another wish.’

“The man thinks again. ‘Okay, I want to know what women are really thinking.’

“‘How wide do you want the bridge, one lane or two?’ says the genie.”

Mickey was relieved when Francisco laughed. The tension between them was broken, and they sat down together on the sand by the water’s edge. After a minute a seagull circled overhead, searching for scraps. It piped shrilly and flew away disappointed.

“Why is that bird free and human beings aren’t?” asked Francisco.

“It doesn’t know any better?” Mickey guessed.

“Right, and it doesn’t need to know better. It was born in God’s world and has no reason to leave. So why do we? How did we come to believe that we must live on one side of the line while God lives on the other? When you think about it, it makes no sense. I don’t care what religion someone believes in. And it wouldn’t matter if God turns out to be he, she, or it. At the very least, God must be everywhere. Without that, God isn’t God.”

“So how do I get to everywhere?” Mickey asked.

Francisco smiled, but the next moment he became thoughtful. “I wanted to find God in the worst way when I was young,” he said. “Wherever he was, somehow I wasn’t. I struggled. I screamed, I cried. After I met my guide, he showed me something.”

Francisco jumped to his feet. He tugged Mickey’s arm, pulling him to the shore, and then knee-deep into the water. The cold sand sucked at their feet.

He asked, “How can you seek God if he’s already here? It’s like us standing in the ocean and crying out, ‘I want to get wet.’ You want to get over the line to God. It turns out he was always there.” Francisco’s eyes began to gleam. “Grace comes to those who stop struggling. When it really sinks in that there’s nothing you can do to find God, he suddenly appears. That’s the deepest mystery, the only one that counts.”

 

MICKEY’S GRADUATION DAY wasn’t spent entirely at the beach. Francisco declared that he was hungry and insisted on going to a specific place downtown. He wouldn’t say why, but Mickey assumed he had a reason.

On the way, Francisco said, “You asked a brilliant question back there.”

“I did?” said Mickey.

“Yes. You said, ‘How do I get everywhere?’ You and I are going to answer that. But if God is everywhere, the path to get there can’t be a straight line. I’ll show you what I mean.”

Since Francisco had nothing more to say for the rest of the ride downtown, Mickey had time to consider his remarkable guide. Francisco’s confidence was totally natural, yet as often as Mickey had observed it, he was still amazed. He wondered if it came with being free.

When downtown was in sight, Francisco came back to life. “We’ll grab a bite, and then we’re going back to where all the trouble began. The place where the connection was broken. Where human beings lost their innocence. Where God’s love was lost, turning to hate, or at best indifference.”

“You’re talking about the Garden of Eden,” said Mickey.

“Right. We need to go there. But not on an empty stomach.”

They parked in a lot, and Francisco found the place where he wanted to eat, a Greek diner full of good smells—moussaka, lamb souvlaki revolving on a spit, white wine aged with pine resin. The food was earthy, like the short Greek couple that worked behind the counter. Mickey knew it was futile to try to hurry Francisco to the Garden of Eden, but at least Mickey could do his thing.

“Nobody tells Adam and Eve jokes anymore,” he said. “I learned a lot of them as a kid.

“Why did God create Adam first? So he could have a chance to say something. That wouldn’t be funny anymore. Maybe that’s why those jokes went away. They were either blue or they put women down. Here’s one that worked the last time I used it.

“God comes to Adam and says, ‘I’ve got good news for you and bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?’

“‘The good news,’ says Adam.

“‘Okay. I’ve given you a brain and a penis.’

“Adam says, ‘That is good news. What’s the bad news?’

“‘I only gave you enough blood to run one at a time.’”

Even while he was talking, another part of Mickey’s mind was watching Francisco closely. This might be the last time he would ever see his guide. Was it possible that he had learned enough from him? Would he never know Francisco’s last name, or where he lived?

“I won’t keep you in suspense,” said Francisco, finishing the last of his gyro sandwich. He nodded at the building across the street. “That’s where we’re going.”

“The county courthouse?”

“Specifically, divorce court,” said Francisco. “It’s as close to Eden as we can get. Both places begin with love and togetherness and end with anger and separation. I want to remind you how that feels.”

The walk over to the courthouse was a short one. The interior halls were musty and dark. The second floor, where divorces were settled, felt sorrowful. Mickey saw people in pairs collecting around the doors before going into the courtrooms. The ones that looked like couples were actually lawyers and wives.

“They all look miserable,” said Mickey, who had been there. “Why do we need to see this?”

“We don’t,” said Francisco. “The Garden of Eden may be a myth, but what does it stand for? A bad divorce between human beings and God. Now, what happens in a divorce? Both sides come out of it thinking they are right. When you’re still married, there’s room for give and take. You fight, and then you make up. In your heart of hearts you may still think you’re right, but the two of you have to live together, and that means compromise.

“After the divorce it all changes. Your ex becomes totally wrong, and you are totally right. Those positions get frozen in place. Nobody budges, at least not for a long time.”

Mickey said, “Who won the divorce from God?”

“It looked like he did. Human beings lost their innocence. They felt sinful. They figured that since they got thrown out of Paradise, there had to be a reason.”

“Wasn’t there?”

Francisco shook his head. “The divorce never took place. You asked me how to get to everywhere. You’ll never get there if you think that you did something so bad that God decided to become your ex.”

Francisco turned on his heels and headed for the elevators. Mickey trailed behind. “You sound pretty cynical,” he said. “I don’t expect that from you.”

“I’m only being realistic. Love and togetherness does turn into anger and separation. Stand in these hallways and you’ll see it a hundred times a day. Whether they know it or not, all those couples are reenacting an ancient drama.”

Francisco punched the elevator button and waited. “I’d be cynical if I thought nothing could be done about it. But something can.”

A few minutes later they were walking outside in the sunshine. Mickey had been considering his divorce from Dolores. It wasn’t an accident that he had called her when he was upset. He was in the habit of intruding on her life, no matter how often she told him not to. At some level he knew why. He couldn’t believe he had lost her. His mind wouldn’t allow him to accept it.

“You still want to win,” said Francisco.

Mickey was startled. “What?”

“You were thinking about your marriage. You want Dolores back because it would make you a winner. Divorce puts you in the loser’s camp.”

“That’s kind of brutal,” Mickey complained.

“Not if you look at it another way. You are in the grip of a wish that love could last forever. You don’t want to believe it can turn to hatred. The same goes for the whole human race. Despite centuries of preaching about sin and the Fall of Man, people remember Paradise. They collect in churches to convince themselves that the divorce from God never took place.”

“You just told me it didn’t,” said Mickey.

“It did if you believe it did. That’s the power of illusion.”

The palm trees circling the courthouse were old giants, and Mickey couldn’t help imagining them as the same trees that provided shade in the Garden of Eden. A holdover from Sunday-school days and the Bible pictures shown to kids, perhaps.

“Divorce from God is a powerful illusion,” said Francisco. “But since it isn’t real, the way back is much simpler than it looks. What would it take for you to get back with your wife?” He didn’t wait for Mickey to reply. “Something got between you, so that something needs to be removed.”

“What is it?”

“You resisted each other. The give-and-take disappeared. By the end, one of you had to be right and the other wrong. See the point? To win her back, reverse the situation. Let her be right.”

“I wish I could,” said Mickey, shaking his head.

“You can,” said Francisco. “If not with her, then with God. He is right and always has been, because in reality God is only love. He wants the best for you and nothing for himself. The slightest move on your part will be met with open arms.”

Mickey took a deep breath. “Show me what to do, and I’ll do it,” he said.

“Deal,” said Francisco. He gave Mickey an approving nod and began to walk away.

“What’s going on?” Mickey exclaimed.

Francisco looked over his shoulder. “You just graduated. You made the right choice. Congratulations.”

“You mean it ends here?” said Mickey in dismay.

“Yes. And it begins here. That’s how these things work.”

Francisco kept walking and Mickey felt a tremendous urge to run after him. Then he had second thoughts. Every time Francisco had gone away, he had eventually come back. Mickey only had to be patient. Meanwhile, Mickey had a lot to absorb. This day had been the most intense since they had met. Once Mickey was ready, his guide would reappear.

These thoughts were reassuring. They were also totally wrong. But Mickey wouldn’t discover that for quite a while.

 

DAYS TURNED INTO weeks, and weeks into months. Mickey spent his private time doing strange things. He kept the television on night and day, just in case Larry had something to tell him. He spent an inordinate amount of time looking at himself in the mirror. His walks down the beach with Payback included at least one moment when Mickey thought he spotted a tall man with a goatee coming toward him in the distance.

Nobody knew about these odd behaviors. To the outside world he was the same old Mickey Fellows. Once he got back into the swing of things, Alicia found him more gigs than he could handle, plus a dozen movie scripts a week to consider. They gathered dust in a pile by his bed, untouched and unread.

Alicia was the one who came closest to sniffing him out. “You’re different,” she said one day on the phone.

“Different how?” said Mickey.

“I’m not sure. Like you were abducted by aliens, but they decided to be nice.”

As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Mickey wasn’t different at all. Hadn’t Francisco told him that nobody would notice?

Of all the things his guide had shown him, a single image stuck in Mickey’s mind: a line drawn in the sand. He began to think that Francisco must have crossed it forever. In any case, after three months Mickey woke up one morning with the realization that he was truly alone.

If God listens in on our thoughts, this must have been the one he was waiting for.

At first nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Mickey hopped out of his car in the Palisades to grab some Chinese takeout. The place was crazy busy, and someone walking out bumped into Mickey coming in. The guy was on his cell. He looked up and mumbled, “Sorry, bud,” then kept on walking.

Mickey stared at him. “Arnie?” he called.

The man turned around, his ear still glued to his phone. “Yeah? Do I know you?”

“Maybe not. My mistake.”

The guy nodded and went to his car. Mickey stood there, wondering. He knew Arnie. They had started out in the same clubs. They’d once been close, although in the past few years their paths hadn’t crossed.

How could Arnie not know him?

The little things began to pile up. Mickey noticed no nods on the street, no smiles from passing strangers. He wanted solitude, so the anonymity was welcome. Still, it seemed odd that three days could pass without an autograph seeker or a bashful handshake from a fan.

On the fourth day something bigger happened. Mickey went to an ATM in West Hollywood. He needed some cash so he pulled over at the first one he saw. The machine swallowed his card. Mickey pounded on it. Then he called the number on the screen for people who needed customer service.

A lady answered. Mickey read out his credit card number, which he had memorized.

“I’m sorry, sir. That’s not a valid number,” she said, kindly enough.

Mickey repeated it slowly. No go. He told her to look in the computer for his name. Nothing there, either. Frustrated, he swore under his breath. His banker would have to straighten this out on Monday. Mickey took out a backup card and inserted it. The machine ate this one, too.

“Sonofabitch.”

After that, the weirdness snowballed. He stopped off at a liquor store in Santa Monica to cash a check. The checkout clerk was a bored Arab watching ESPN on an overhead screen. Keeping his eyes glued to the game, he inserted Mickey’s check into the cash register, which spit it out.

“No good,” the clerk mumbled. He handed the check back.

“There’s money in the account. Try it again,” said Mickey.

The clerk didn’t look at him. “No good. You go away.”

Mickey sat in his car in the parking lot of the liquor store. Logic told him that things had moved past the point of coincidence. So what was the message? A flutter of panic rose in his chest, which was natural enough for someone who was on the verge of being erased. Then he remembered something Francisco had told him months ago.

The person you think you are is imaginary. He doesn’t exist.

Mickey hadn’t reacted when he first heard this. Now he felt himself beginning to shake, and his tremor came from a deep place. He was disappearing. His imagined self was blowing away like scraps of old newspapers in the street. There was no other explanation.

He decided to call Dolores. He waited while the phone rang, praying that he wouldn’t get the machine. What would he say? His mind raced through the possibilities, but there was no time to figure anything out. He would have to play it as it lays.

“Hello?”

“Baby, it’s me.”

Dolores didn’t reply.

On the day that Larry died, Mickey had learned how large the gap could yawn, wide as the Grand Canyon, between what you dread and what you hope for. Now he was experiencing it a second time.

Finally she said, “Who is this?”

Mickey held his breath. There was still a chance.

“It’s me, Mickey. You didn’t recognize my voice?”

Another pause, but this time he knew there was nothing to hope for. Dolores said, “I don’t know who you are, Mickey, but I don’t take calls from perverts, and I’m not your baby.”

Click.

Mickey felt cold sweat beading on his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and started the car. He spent the next hour driving around randomly. He could have gone to one of the joints where everybody knew him. He could have leaned out the window of his car and waved at everybody on the sidewalk. But Mickey did none of these things. And the reason was strange.

Why not disappear?

The dread of being erased was evaporating. He wasn’t in a screaming panic. Just the opposite. The possibility of shedding the skin he called Mickey Fellows was starting to feel like the right thing, as it might for a snake, or a luna moth emerging from its chrysalis. All at once, Mickey felt incredibly tired of his old self. It was a worn-out husk, nothing more.

Still, he had to make sure.

Alicia answered on the second ring.

“Hi, it’s Mickey. We need to talk.”

“Hold on. The music’s too loud.”

Alicia went away to turn it down. For a split second Mickey wondered if this was a last-minute reprieve. Maybe God was saying, “You sure you want to do this?”

Alicia came back on. “If this is about the intellectual property rights, we’re not going to get screwed on this deal. Call my attorney.”

Mickey took a deep breath. “No, it’s me, Mickey. I was working on a new routine. You want to hear the opening?”

“What? Who the hell—”

He hung up before she could finish the sentence. The connection was cut off by a soft click, but it sounded like a loud snap in Mickey’s ear, like a rope breaking. He’d gotten enough proof of his nonexistence. Welcome to the unknown. Now he had to figure out how to live with it.

Feelings can’t be rushed, so Mickey holed up for a week with the blinds drawn. Not watching TV, not strolling on the beach. He tried taking Payback for a walk one morning, but she growled and he stopped trying to hook her leash. Mickey crouched down beside her.

“Did you hear about the dyslexic who died and went to Hell?” he whispered in her ear. “The guy was in shock. ‘This is a mistake,’ he cried to the Devil. ‘I’ve been good all my life. What went wrong?’ And the Devil says, ‘Remember that time you sold your soul to Santa?’”

Payback looked at him dolefully, and put her head down on her paws.

When Mickey found some kids on the beach and gave the dog to them, they were thrilled. Mickey watched her being led away. She didn’t look back, and he felt nothing. It was as if he had never owned a dog.

As it turned out, that was the last milestone. Mickey didn’t try to sell the house. He had enough cash squirreled away to tide him over until something new happened. He didn’t expect to be erased forever.

It might seem, looking from the outside, that Mickey was being punished. He didn’t feel that way. The solitary man sitting at the end of Santa Monica pier wasn’t lonely. He looked out at the ocean and thought, I am the ocean. He looked up at the sky and thought, I am the sky. Wherever he looked he saw himself. It was like being let out of a cage into an eternity that extended in all directions.

This sublime existence was only marred by a tiny scrap of nostalgia. Mickey Fellows had been treated like royalty at the Bel-Air Hotel. He kept being tempted to go back, just to see what that felt like one more time.

One day Mickey gave in. But when he drove up, the valet who took his car gave him a blank look. The doorman glanced at him and went back to whistling for cabs. At the restaurant, the maitre d’ looked up, his face expressionless.

Then he smiled. “The gentleman is waiting for you,” he murmured.

A waiter in tails led Mickey to a table in the center of the room, where Francisco was sitting.

Mickey didn’t know what to say.

“You crossed the line,” said Francisco as he sat down.

Without hesitation Mickey said, “Yes, I did. Nobody recognizes me. I broke free.”

“Don’t abandon this world,” said Francisco. “It’s the right place to love God. Make the most of it.”

Mickey felt amazingly content, and when his order of steamed asparagus with hollandaise arrived, he burst out laughing.

“When I look at this, I am asparagus,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. I merge with everything. I’m thrilled with everything. I just wonder sometimes if somebody’s going to take it all away.”

“No, you don’t, not really,” said Francisco.

There wasn’t much else to say during the meal, but toward the end Francisco spoke up. “I came here to see how you were doing. Tell me.”

“Everything has become much simpler for me,” said Mickey. “I got where you wanted me to go.”

“Which was where?” Francisco asked.

“First, beyond fear. When I stopped being afraid, I was safe. Second, beyond ego. When I stopped listening to my ego, I had nothing to prove to anyone. Third, beyond addiction. When I stopped craving the next fix, I was no longer desperate inside.”

“So what’s next?” asked Francisco.

“I don’t know. I’m too new at this,” Mickey admitted. “Can you tell me?”

“What is simple now becomes simpler still,” said Francisco. “Before, what you experienced was personal happiness. It was based on having a reason to be happy and no reason to be sad. But happiness based on a reason can be snatched away from you at any moment. Now you are happy without a reason. That’s far more durable. With nothing to like or dislike, you can be happy within yourself. But there is a final stage to be reached, beyond even that.”

At this point Francisco stopped explaining. “I want you to know something that is almost impossible to put into words. Do you still have your graduation present?”

Mickey pulled a small velvet bag out of his pocket. He dumped its contents out on the tablecloth: a gold ring, a gold nugget, and a gold signet seal.

Francisco pointed to each. “I told you that this was the secret of happiness. The three objects belonged to a rich collector. When he was asleep, they argued all the time. The gold ring declared it was better than the other two because it was made for the finger of a rich bride. The gold nugget said it was better than the other two because miners had risked their lives to find it. The gold signet said it was better than the other two because it had sealed the messages of a king.

“They argued day and night, until the ring said, ‘Let’s ask God. He will decide which of us is the best.’ The other two agreed, and so they approached the Almighty. Each made its claim for being superior. God listened carefully, and when they were done, he said, ‘I can’t settle your dispute, I’m sorry.’

“The gold signet seal grew angry. ‘What do you mean, you can’t settle it? You’re God.’

“‘That’s the problem,’ said God. ‘I don’t see a ring, a nugget, and a seal. All I see is gold.’”

Francisco seemed to be very moved by his little parable. “Do you see?” he asked softly.

“Existence is pure gold. Nothing else is needed,” said Mickey. “What will it take for everyone to see that?”

The question hung in the air as they walked outside, then it floated away on the scent of jasmine and plumeria from the hotel’s lush garden.

Mickey and Francisco embraced and went their separate ways. Grace, traveling through the universe, had unerringly found its mark. It had sparked one person to new life. That doesn’t sound like much, given the billions of people on earth. On the other hand, the ancient sages say—and they must be right—that it takes only one spark to set a whole forest ablaze.