The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century Read Free Page A

Or, if they had, they were obeying Rule One of life in New York: avoid eye contact.
    As he was scanning the crowd, he glanced across the street and froze in shock. For a terrible moment, he watched in horror as a little girl, perhaps five years old, broke the grip of her mother’s hand on the other side of the street and dashed into the crosswalk. A delivery truck roared down the street, intending to run through his green light full-bore.
    The girl’s mother screwed, people gasped, and Paul awoke from his trance. She’ll die if I don’t do something , he knew. Nobody was moving: the scene was eerily in slow motion. Looking at the child again, he swallowed and surged into the intersection.
    Three steps out, the voice in his head was now shouting, you’re gonna die , but he didn’t stop. Just five more steps and he could shove the little girl-now frozen in horror staring at the truck, whose brakes were screeching-hard enough to knock her out of the way. One step, then another, lunging forward, his hands stretched out in front of him, his mind racing as he calculated the odds that he could get there fast enough and shove the girl hard enough to knock her out of theway. If he succeeded, he would then, himself, be in front of the truck that he knew would take his life. But even if he wanted to turn back, he’d already gone too fast and too far.
    And then he was flying.
    Somebody must have pushed me really hard , he thought, as his motion through the air blurred. It almost felt as if strong arms had lifted him up under his chest and the tops of his legs, as if somebody were holding him the way he’d held kids in the summer camp pool where he’d taught swimming. And then he was rushing forward, his own hands outstretched like Superman, his feet no longer on the ground from the force of the shove. He grabbed the little girl and sailed with her on past the truck, feeling its bumper nick the heel of his right shoe.
    The momentum was gone, and he fell to the ground in a pile, his cheek and fingers skinned, as the screaming little girl landed on her feet and ran into her mother’s arms.
    â€œThat was one hell of a save!” a fiftyish man in a tan trench coat said, his voice filled with wonder, as he helped Paul to his feet. “Just like Mel Gibson, something in the movies!”
    Paul looked down at his scraped-up right hand and brushed the dirt from it, then shook out his coat. “Did you see who shoved me?” he said, catching his breath.
    Several people had stepped back from him, not willing or interested enough to get involved. The woman with her little girl, now sobbing softly, ran up to Paul and squeezed his arm, a thankful gesture, and said, “Thank you for saving my daughter’s life. You’re a good man.”
    â€œYou’re welcome,” Paul said. “But I think I had some help. Did you see who pushed me?’
    She shook her head. “All I could do was stare at my daughter and scream. You took such a chance for her.”
    â€œI’m glad I could help,’ Paul said.
    She pecked his cheek with a kiss and, embarrassed, turned and walked away with her daughter in tow.
    The light changed, the crowd flowed away like a river. The man in the tan coat, his hair combed up and over his baldness, shook his head and said, “That was one hell of a jump you made, to fly like that. You a professional athlete?”
    â€œI didn’t jump,’ Paul said. “Somebody shoved me.”
    The man shrugged and walked off, leaving Paul shivering in the cold wind.

Chapter Two
    Ready for the Rains?
    Paul Abler’s apartment was on the twenty-first (and top) floor of a brick apartment building near Madison Square Garden, in that part of Manhattan known as Chelsea. It was a co-op built by the Garment Worker’s Union in the late 1950s.
    Paul took his time, walking the mile-and-a-quarter from where he’d saved the child to his apartment, stopping