Chapter 2

You are Ann. Your name means courage, strength, grace. But in some old name-book you once found another rendering: gracefulness, loveliness. All of that is in you — and more. There’s a kind of hidden power living inside you. I find myself thinking of an eggshell held up to the light, and inside it you can already make out the silhouette of a tyrannosaur.

You always felt the gods smiled on you and gave you more than they gave others. But never for free. The gods always give with one condition: multiply what you’ve been given, and return it to the world. And you did. Everyone who came into contact with you felt they’d brushed against a miracle.

Simply by being near you, you pull people out of their little domestic perception and remind them there is something larger. You teach an evolving practice that fuses yoga and meditation — you’ve built your own school. You give people — however corny it sounds — goodness and light. Often after meeting you, a person wears confusion on their face. Your very existence reminds people they’re living wrongly.

... But not everyone.

Meeting Omar, you met something rare — an anomaly. Your radiance didn’t work on him at all. The old man stayed on his own frequency beside you, as if he wore glasses that made him unable to see your inner beauty. And for you that became a kind of challenge. You fuss over the old man, teach him yoga, help him, and keep waiting: when will a tremor finally appear in his eyes – a tremor before your greatness, your splendor?

But Omar is a tough nut.

And now you lower your hands and show him your completely naked body (well — your leg-warmers are still on, but they don’t hide your beauty; they underline it). You suck in a frantic breath, flooded with an unprecedented awkwardness and shame. For the first seconds you can’t lift your eyes; you blush, your breathing losing its steady line. A draft runs over your nipples, testing their firmness.

Listen — why are they so hard?...

No answer? All right. Sorry.

You lift your eyes and look at the janitor.

So — has the tremor finally appeared in his eyes? The tremor of a man facing a goddess?!

Oh, yes. You feel the warm current of victory pour through your body. At last — you’ve beaten him. The janitor’s gaze ... that’s how a donkey looks at a dragoness he’s fallen in love with. In that gaze there’s awareness of his own insignificance, and awe at the scale of your heavenly beauty, and fear turning into reverence — into trembling. You had to strip naked in secret from your husband in front of this man just to see this puppyish rapture!