Touched
The Reiki Triplets had used the proceeds of their mother's estate, combined with their own savings from the San Francisco practice, to buy a house out of foreclosure near Capitol Hill. The top floor was shared by Calcium (Cal) with Magnesium (Maggie), who was divorced and had a kid in college. The middle floor was for Sassafras (Sassy), her husband (a musician), and two young children. The bottom floor was for cooking and getting together.
And the basement was where the identical triplets had set up their reiki practice. Their first regular customer was Charles Wu, who had more natural chi than anybody on the planet, but was feeling quite off-kilter since the Chinese had hacked the federal government and made half his acquaintances distrustful of him. He would walk through the beaded inner doorway, smell the patchouli incense in the lavender and mint waiting room, sip green tea sweetened with mango juice, then go into one of the treatment areas. He would take most of his clothes off, which was not at all required but something he liked to do any chance he got. And then they would touch him. Though the triplets were middle-aged, he could still close his eyes and imagine how exciting it would have been for these identical beauties to have simultaneously touched him fifteen years ago.
And it was working! His self-confidence was coming back! The State Department's Assistant Deputy Administrator for Hope was not yet returning his calls, but C. Coe Phant was. He had handed former Senator Evermore Breadman a huge deal in China, so he was halfway back to being able to show his face at Prince and Prowling. It wouldn't be long before he was back on top!
One of the Reiki Triplets' newest clients was H Street “NoMa” lifestyle guru, Giuliana Sunstream. Giuliana--who shied away from anything controversial in her blog and wouldn't dream of using the word "New Age"--had recently posted that the experience was transcendent, uplifting, mind-clearing, and beautiful. From the magnetized mattress to the automatic misters spraying citrus-infused water every seven minutes, from the Clayoquot flute music to the live butterflies flying back and forth over the client bed to reach the butterfly bushes placed under grow lamps around the room--Giuliana did not have enough good things to say about the experience.
The Reiki Triplets' most distressed client was Justice Department attorney Atticus Hawk, who was back to living a drug-free life since his clandestinely doping girlfriend had been picked up by the FBI. Moved into the Attorney General's suite directly by Loretta Lynch herself, Hawk could not relax for a single minute in his office. Psychiatrist Ermann Esse had not been much help with the recurrent nightmares about getting water-boarded, bombed by Predator drones, locked up at Guantanamo as an Enemy Combatant, or--worst of all--visited by Lynch with an urgent assignment that she is about to deliver to him, but then she realizes he is wearing daisy-covered pajama bottoms and nothing else. Hawk was willing to try anything (other than quitting his job), and was soon booking lunch visits with the Reiki Triplets almost every day.
Unfortunately for Hawk, Giuliana Sunstream's blog post had caught the attention of ex-boyfriend Glenn Michael Beckmann, who believed the entire operation was a hippie front for laundering drug money--not that Beckmann was against drugs, since he loved drugs, but he knew that anybody who would put a Persian rug and and bags of pistachios in their waiting room was probably a Hezbollah agent laundering money from Iran. It was just logical! But what Beckmann learned after three days of stake-outs was that Atticus Hawk was the only repeat customer, so on Friday, Beckmann had followed Hawk out to see where he went after the appointment--and he went straight to the Justice Department! This could not be good, thought Beckmann, who had now been tailing Hawk ever since (pumped up on meth so he didn't have to sleep all weekend). Hawk, unaware that conspiracy theorist and militia leader Beckmann had been under federal surveillance since his “Serial Creditor – Serial Predator” blog post calling for the violent overthrow of the Federal Reserve Board, believed that Beckmann was an FBI agent tailing Hawk, and so the reiki visits were, quite ironically, increasing Hawk's paranoia and anxiety.
Out in the river, the chi-less demon Ardua of the Potomac slithered quickly under the 14th Street bridge, bracing for Dubious McGinty to urinate down on her from the bridgeman's quarters, as he always did. But today he wasn't even shaking his fist at her. Today he was staring at the Lincoln Memorial in the distance. Today he was thinking about a week that started with a white girl pretending to be black, and ended with a white boy calmly murdering black people in a Charleston church. Racism is a joke. Racism is entertaining. Racism is death. He felt the demon pass below him, and reflexively spit into the water. Do we feed the demons or do they feed us?
***********************************************************
COMING UP:
The Heurich Society reacts to Pope's encyclical on climate change!
And the basement was where the identical triplets had set up their reiki practice. Their first regular customer was Charles Wu, who had more natural chi than anybody on the planet, but was feeling quite off-kilter since the Chinese had hacked the federal government and made half his acquaintances distrustful of him. He would walk through the beaded inner doorway, smell the patchouli incense in the lavender and mint waiting room, sip green tea sweetened with mango juice, then go into one of the treatment areas. He would take most of his clothes off, which was not at all required but something he liked to do any chance he got. And then they would touch him. Though the triplets were middle-aged, he could still close his eyes and imagine how exciting it would have been for these identical beauties to have simultaneously touched him fifteen years ago.
And it was working! His self-confidence was coming back! The State Department's Assistant Deputy Administrator for Hope was not yet returning his calls, but C. Coe Phant was. He had handed former Senator Evermore Breadman a huge deal in China, so he was halfway back to being able to show his face at Prince and Prowling. It wouldn't be long before he was back on top!
One of the Reiki Triplets' newest clients was H Street “NoMa” lifestyle guru, Giuliana Sunstream. Giuliana--who shied away from anything controversial in her blog and wouldn't dream of using the word "New Age"--had recently posted that the experience was transcendent, uplifting, mind-clearing, and beautiful. From the magnetized mattress to the automatic misters spraying citrus-infused water every seven minutes, from the Clayoquot flute music to the live butterflies flying back and forth over the client bed to reach the butterfly bushes placed under grow lamps around the room--Giuliana did not have enough good things to say about the experience.
The Reiki Triplets' most distressed client was Justice Department attorney Atticus Hawk, who was back to living a drug-free life since his clandestinely doping girlfriend had been picked up by the FBI. Moved into the Attorney General's suite directly by Loretta Lynch herself, Hawk could not relax for a single minute in his office. Psychiatrist Ermann Esse had not been much help with the recurrent nightmares about getting water-boarded, bombed by Predator drones, locked up at Guantanamo as an Enemy Combatant, or--worst of all--visited by Lynch with an urgent assignment that she is about to deliver to him, but then she realizes he is wearing daisy-covered pajama bottoms and nothing else. Hawk was willing to try anything (other than quitting his job), and was soon booking lunch visits with the Reiki Triplets almost every day.
Unfortunately for Hawk, Giuliana Sunstream's blog post had caught the attention of ex-boyfriend Glenn Michael Beckmann, who believed the entire operation was a hippie front for laundering drug money--not that Beckmann was against drugs, since he loved drugs, but he knew that anybody who would put a Persian rug and and bags of pistachios in their waiting room was probably a Hezbollah agent laundering money from Iran. It was just logical! But what Beckmann learned after three days of stake-outs was that Atticus Hawk was the only repeat customer, so on Friday, Beckmann had followed Hawk out to see where he went after the appointment--and he went straight to the Justice Department! This could not be good, thought Beckmann, who had now been tailing Hawk ever since (pumped up on meth so he didn't have to sleep all weekend). Hawk, unaware that conspiracy theorist and militia leader Beckmann had been under federal surveillance since his “Serial Creditor – Serial Predator” blog post calling for the violent overthrow of the Federal Reserve Board, believed that Beckmann was an FBI agent tailing Hawk, and so the reiki visits were, quite ironically, increasing Hawk's paranoia and anxiety.
Out in the river, the chi-less demon Ardua of the Potomac slithered quickly under the 14th Street bridge, bracing for Dubious McGinty to urinate down on her from the bridgeman's quarters, as he always did. But today he wasn't even shaking his fist at her. Today he was staring at the Lincoln Memorial in the distance. Today he was thinking about a week that started with a white girl pretending to be black, and ended with a white boy calmly murdering black people in a Charleston church. Racism is a joke. Racism is entertaining. Racism is death. He felt the demon pass below him, and reflexively spit into the water. Do we feed the demons or do they feed us?
***********************************************************
COMING UP:
The Heurich Society reacts to Pope's encyclical on climate change!
posted by washingtonwaterwoman | 2:13 PM
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