Firewalk

"You're always so negative," she said.
 
"No I'm not," he replied.
 
"See. There you go again."
 
"What, just because I don't agree with you I'm negative?"

Polly pushed away from the kitchen table and huffed into the living room. She picked up a ping pong paddle and slapped her hand. "You just don't get it, do you?"
 
Cal followed her and sat in front of the coffee table. He picked up a deck of cards next to a stack of board games and shuffled them a few times. He dealt them into two piles.  "Yes I do. If I say anything you don't believe, that's negative."
 
She paced the room, not looking at him. "You always look at the down side of things. No matter what it is, something is wrong with it."
 
"No, I just lay it out like it happened. You're the one who tries to fit everything into some kind of perfect pattern."

She plopped down on the couch opposite him. "Like your job.You're always bitching that you don't get enough work, that the women get all the work."
 
 He picked up the cards he had dealt himself and arranged them."A perfect example. It's a simple fact. Most people at the spa request women for their massages. It's not being negative to state the truth, is it?"
 
Polly picked up the cards in front of her and looked them over. "It's not the truth. We create our own reality. If you would just think positively you'd get more clients."
 
 "Oh please. The facts are the facts, and no amount of positive thinking can change that."
 
"You're so wrong. What about those firewalkers? They don't get burned walking across those coals."
 
Cal picked up a card from the stack and discarded one face up next to it. "Matt says there's a scientific explanation for that.They wait until the coals have an ash coating, wet their feet, then they run across them, barely touching them at all. It's the same thing as wetting your finger and touching an iron for an instant."
 
She picked up his discard and put down a different card. "Aurora is right about you. You're hopeless."
 
"Aurora! That air head? She thinks she was Shirley McLaine in a previous life!" He picked from the stack again and discarded.
 
"Go ahead, be negative. That's all you know how to do." She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged her legs while surveying her cards. Her short cutoffs revealed the back of her legs and the edges of her buttocks.
 
Cal put his cards down and crawled over to her. "You know what that does to me when you sit like that. Polly want a penis?"
 
Polly sighed. "I hate you, you know that." She put her feet on his chest and lightly pushed in a mock kick.

He grabbed her ankles and wrapped them around his waist. Her cards fell around them. "Look who is being negative now."

*

"This is divine," Aurora said, pulling up the sleeves of her pearl, one-piece cotton jumpsuit. Her one carat diamond earrings glistened in the afternoon sun.
 
Polly and Aurora were standing together in the back yard near the pool, each with a plastic bottle of Evian. Several people were milling about, swimming, or involved in playing darts, water polo, ping pong or volleyball. Cal was laboring over his homemade brick barbecue wearing his Suns cap, the brim turned backwards. He flipped burgers, hot dogs and veggie burgers on the three separate sections for grilling. In a compartment underneath the coals, potatoes, corn on the cob and zucchini were baking.
 
 Polly pulled the bikini strap back up onto her shoulder. "I don't know what to do, Aurora. I love him, but he's so negative about everything."
 
 "He can't be completely negative or you wouldn't love him in the first place."
 
Polly looked askance at her. "Heh, whose side are you on, anyway?"
 
"I'm not on anyone's side, dear. The Universe is merely love, and we must find the ways we each block that love from manifesting through ourselves."
 
 "I know, but..."
 
 "No buts, dear. Open to love and see how you are interpreting the situation. You have the power to respond to things in the way of your own choosing. By doing so you can change the external reality."  
 
"But he said that firewalking was a hoax!"
 
Aurora was taking a swig of her Evian. She coughed and spit it out. "He said what?""
 
"Yeah, something about some kind of scientific explanation."
 
 Aurora turned her nose up and narrowed her eyes, looking over at Cal. "Perhaps he needs a demonstration, then."

*

"Who is that middle-aged babe talking to Polly?" Matt asked Cal at the grill.
 
"Believe me, you don't want to know. Get me another beer out of the cooler, would you?"
 
Matt handed him a Miller Genuine Draft and said: "She sure looks good for a woman her age. What's her name?"
 
Cal pronged out a potato, stuck a fork in it to see if it was done, then pushed it back into the grill's oven. "That's Polly's New Age guru, Aurora. You remember the one I was telling you about? The one who sells those firewalking seminars for $350."
 
 "Oh, the woo woo voodoo woman. Someone must be either incredibly naive or incredibly stupid to believe that obvious sleight of hand stuff." Matt guzzled the last of his can of Schlitz and shot it like a basketball into the large plastic garbage container next to the dart board. "Shazam! Long range Ainge for three!"

"Heh, watch it!" Cal bumped him with his shoulder. "Polly believes her and she's neither."
 
 "Sorry buddy. But you have to admit the stuff that Polly says is pretty off the wall."
 
 "Food's ready," Cal called out in a loud voice. People approached with paper plates and he forked out the hot victuals to the procession. "Yeah, I know. Sometimes I think it's just a fad with her. It'll pass. She's bright, she'll figure out it's bogus after a while."
 
 Matt elbowed Cal. "Here they come."
 
 Polly and Aurora were at the end of the food line. As they got to Cal, he said: "Hello Aurora. What'll ya have today?"
 
 "You know I don't eat the dead flesh of animals, Cal. May I have a veggie burger and some vegetables please?"
 
 Polly stuck her plate out, looking away from Cal. "Yeah, and the same for me too."
 
 "Excuse me for asking," Matt cut in, "but is there something wrong with eating 'the flesh of dead animals,' as you so eloquently put it?" A dry pine needle fell onto the coals. It made a loud crackle.
 
 Aurora picked up a piece of zucchini with her fingers and slurped it into her mouth. She licked her fingers sensuously. "And you simply must be Matt."
 
Matt whistled a few notes from Twilight Zone. "They didn't tell me you were psychic too."
 
"Matt's an electrical engineer out at Motorola," Polly interjected, trying to ward off an argument.
 
Cal filled his own plate. "Come on, let's all go sit at the table and eat." He ushered them away from the grill.  

The table was full. There were two seats left at each end.The men sat together at one end, the women at the other.
 
"I want her," Matt said.
 
Cal finished chewing a bite of beef. "Are you nuts? She obviously hates your guts."
 
"All women play that game, Cal. She wants me just as bad. I can tell."
 
"If you say so." Cal took another big bite and washed it down with a long swallow of beer.
 
Aurora and Polly walked over to the grill. Polly put on the oven mittens and removed the three grills. Aurora picked up the little grill shovel and started heaving the coals onto the lawn.Cal leaped up in one motion from the table and flew over to his prize barbecue.
 
"What the hell are you two doing?" He tried to grab the shovel from Aurora but Polly wrapped her arms around him from behind and pulled him away.
 
 "We're going to have a firewalk here in the yard," she said.
 
"You're what?" he said.
 
Aurora continued to shovel until the three grills were empty.She started to arrange the coals into a long rectangular shape, two feet by six. The table emptied and all the guests gathered around her in a circle, murmuring loudly. Matt pushed his way to the front. Cal reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders.
 
"They're going to do a firewalk in my yard! On my beautiful lawn!"  

Matt shook Cal's arms. "Easy buddy. This is the perfect opportunity to make a fool of this woman in front of Polly. We got her now."
 
Aurora nodded silently to Polly, who glided over to her as if in a trance. Aurora nodded again and Polly sat at the head of the coals in a lotus posture, her hands resting on her knees, the thumb and forefingers of each hand touching in a circle.
 
"Close your eyes and breathe deeply," Aurora intoned. "With each out breath feel all thoughts leave you. Each in breath imagine the pure, brilliant white light of God filling you. You are filled with God. You are God."

"Oh my God! Polly's going to fry on those coals," Cal whispered frantically to Matt. "How hot are they?"
 
"No way. Even though the coals at the interior are about 750 degrees, at the ash coating it is considerably cooler. Say, only about 250."
 
"Correct me if I'm wrong here, Matt, but that still seems hot enough to burn the shit out of skin."
 
"Relax. The way they just run across them the feet never make contact long enough to burn. Plus they always use some kind of wet pad to step on first to moisten the feet with a coating of water.The brief contact only actually touches the water, which insulates the skin from any harm. It's like..."
 
"I know, wetting your finger and touching an iron. You better be right."
 
As they talked, Aurora took a beach towel and dipped it in the pool. She then draped it on the ground at the head of the coals.
 
"See, what did I tell you," Matt smirked. "And to prove it, I'm going to walk across them too. Care to join me?"
 
"I don't know..."
 
"Come on. This is your chance to expose this crap to Polly. If we can do it without believing all that psycho babble, maybe she'll see it's all just hype."
 
 "Yeah, ok. Let's do it. You're sure now."

 "Absolutely."
 
 "The mind is a powerful tool," Aurora droned. "What we imagine changes the external world. The only thing that holds us back from immortality is our programmed thoughts. Change your mind, change your life. Arise!"

Polly stood, eyes still closed.
 
"Open your eyes to slits and look up and to the right," Aurora commanded. "Take one step forward."
 
Polly obeyed and stood with both feet on the towel.
 
"Say to yourself repeatedly, 'cool moss, cool moss.'" After a few moments Aurora continued. "Now, imagine you are stepping quickly across a stream, briefly touching the cool moss on the stones." Another short pause, then: "Now do it, run across that stream. Go!"
 
 Polly lurched forward quickly and ran across the coals. Sighs of amazement emitted from the crowd. Aurora looked over at Matt and Cal and smiled triumphantly. Her smile dropped to a frown and her eyes bugged out as Matt approached the coals.      
Matt stepped onto the towel and looked directly at the coals."Bullshit, bullshit," he chanted, and ran across the coals. Heavy murmurs from the audience. He immediately ran back around and did it again, continuing his irreverent refrain. After the third trip he called over to Cal. "See. Nothing to it. Your turn."
 
Polly was standing next to Aurora by the pool. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she looked at Cal. Cal looked first at her, then Matt, then the coals.
 
 "Do it!" Matt urged.
 
Cal ran over the coals without first wetting his feet on the towel. Half way over he cursed, picking up his feet in a mad dance.Before finishing, he jumped off the coals and ran toward the pool. He was in such a hurry to get relief for his burned feet that he ran between Aurora and Polly, knocking them off balance and toppling them into the pool with him. As the three surfaced, all of them were laughing.
 
 Matt stood over them at the edge. "You didn't wet your feet first, you boob."
 
Cal swam over to him and extended his hand. "Here, help me out." As Matt grabbed his hand, Cal pulled him in with a loud splash.
 
 Matt struggled to the surface gasping. He went under for a moment and thrashed back up. "I can't swim, help!"
 
Before the others could react, Aurora took two graceful, powerful strokes and circled Matt's head from behind. She pulled him to the shallow end where he lay on the steps coughing and sputtering. Polly swam to Cal and hugged him.
 
"I'm sorry, honey. I really thought there was something to this stuff."

Cal had his back to the edge of the pool, his arms hanging onto the side. He let go and the two submerged and kissed deeply.When they surfaced he said: "You know, I think there is something to all this stuff. I realized by changing our perspective we might not change the reality out there but.."

"It changes the way we interpret it," she finished for him.
 
He smiled. "Yeah. So instead of seeing us as being opposites, I choose to see us as complementary aspects of one unique whole, both necessary for the..."
 
 She cut him off with a kiss. They submerged again.

*
 
 By the time they got out of the pool everyone had left. Aurora had offered to give Matt a ride home, saying he shouldn't drive after such an ordeal. Cal leaned on Polly, limping to where the coals had been. There was a charred rectangular area where there had once been grass. It looked like a burial plot. They hugged side by side staring down into it.
 
"Now you'll have to plant new grass," she said.
 
"No, I think I'll leave it there as a reminder," he said.
 
She looked up at him with a sardonic grin. "You're getting positive on me, aren't you?"
 
"No I'm not."