The Stairway to Heaven

The jail cell was terrible. It was cold and smelled bad, and there weren't enough room on the benches for everyone. A matron let each of us out long enough to put on an orange jumpsuit. They were hideous, but at least we weren't naked anymore. Briana and I wound up huddled together, sitting on the floor and crying. In addition to the other girls from the ashram, there were all sorts of unpleasant-looking women in there with us, and their stares were frightening.

The next morning the matron let us each make one phone call. When I dialed home, it went straight to voicemail, so I left Randy a pitiful message begging him to come and get me out.

It was mid-afternoon before he finally arrived. I rushed to the bars with Briana beside me. "Where have you been?" I shouted. "Why didn't you answer the phone?"

"Where have I been?" he yelled. "I've been hiding from our friends and neighbors. I've been ducking calls from every newspaper and tv station in the state. That's where I've been!"

We started bombarding him with questions, and he finally yelled "Shut up," in such a loud, hateful voice that we both fell silent. He turned to me and asked, "How in the hell did you ever get yourself involved working in a brothel?"

I was shocked. "We weren't in a brothel! We were at the ashram continuing our spiritual development."

"Oh, yeah?" he said. "Well that's not what the paper says." He held up the morning newspaper, and we could read the banner headline on the front page: "Vice Raid Nets Prostitution Bust." Underneath the headline was a picture of the policemen outside the ashram loading all of us into the police vans. Looking closely, I could even make out Briana and me.

"This is all a terrible mistake," I said anxiously. "You've got to make them understand. We were taking part in a class that was teaching us how to free our minds and unite our bodies."

He laughed harshly. "When I talked to the police this morning, they told me all about how you and those men were uniting your bodies!"

"But that was all part of our spiritual development, honey," I protested.

"You still don't get it," he said disgustedly. "The police told me the whole story. That wasn't some New Age class; those men had paid your 'master' for the opportunity to fuck a lot of fresh pussy. Come to think about it, he was really pretty clever. Not only did the johns pay him, but so did his prostitutes!"

I was stunned; I just couldn't believe my ears. Master Sativa would never do such a thing.

Briana had been watching and listening all this time. Suddenly she spoke up, "What happened to your eye, Randy?"

I looked closely at him, and sure enough he had a big black eye.

"You want to know what happened to my eye?" he snarled at Briana. "What happened was that first thing this morning, your husband came over and punched me because my wife had recruited you into this den of iniquity."

He turned to me. "Did you really do that?"

I hung my head.

"I can't believe it," Randy moaned. "You think you know your wife and then . . ."

Finally, I looked up at him. "When can I come home, Randy?"

"As far as I'm concerned," he said, "the answer is never. I've spent the last hour at an attorney's office getting started on a divorce."

"You can't do that, Randy, I love you!" I screamed. "I don't want a divorce." Then I realized how to fix things. "If you'll just talk to Master Sativa, he'll explain everything."

"Oh, yes, 'Master Sativa,'" he said. "I forgot to tell you about him. It turns out that Master Sativa's real name is Harold Gupta. His parents may have been born in India, but he was born in Brooklyn. He went to Long Island University, but after he ran afoul of the law, he dropped out. The police told me he's run this same little scam in a number of cities along the Eastern seaboard. Usually, he skips town before the police can crack down on him, but I guess he got a little greedy this time."

"The bottom line, Missy, is that your 'master' is no more real than aliens."

"No, you're wrong," I yelled. "Aliens are real. They have one captured out in Arizona. I saw it on Youtube."

He just shook his head. "When will you ever learn?" he said, and walked away.