The beginning of book 3, The Path According to Karena:
 
I had a sense of where it would end before it started but there was nothing I could do. The ending was bound to come and if I meddled, all I’d do would be to make it harder for Frank. He’d chosen his path. The hardships and impediments that had filled his life had prepared him. Now the time had come and all I could do was watch. I started coming to see him once in a while knowing not much was happening now, but knowing that was about to change, and I wanted to be around when it did.

Carol lived in the house with him, but not in the way they’d lived together in Venice. I’d met Carol briefly before their romance began. Frank had taken me to the restaurant where she worked. Now after the years their TV series had run and Carol’s success with a feature film I didn’t think she’d remember me, but she did.

Carol changed when she moved here with Frank. Frank said the change had come when she saw him come out of the tunnel at the end of his last journey. Seeing the bright light and seeing him come out through the arch and then seeing the arch and light fade until only the cinderblock wall remained convinced her all his journeys had been real. And believing that then convinced her he was someone special, chosen by the Gods for something special. That was when she gave up all she had going for her to serve him. Frank was grateful for her support but didn’t think she was justified in taking it as far as she had. I didn’t tell Frank, but I knew she was right about him. I knew he needed her help more than he understood and I knew he was afraid to believe what she believed. He was afraid she was right.

Carol’s lived in the house but Monk was transient. Frank had given him a room and he stayed there some nights after staying longer in the pool. He and Frank would hang out some evenings by the pool, but more often the three of them would have dinner together and then do their own things.

But then Frank started having me come upstairs with him to talk. We’d walk through his office with the two tables with the ever-changing stacks of books. Every time I came through, the books had been re-sorted into different stacks. I hadn’t picked up an awareness of their purpose and hadn’t taken the time to ask. We’d go out on the balcony that fronted his bedroom and office and he’d sit in a lawn chair on one side of the table and I’d sit in the lawn chair on the other side of the table. We started by talking about our lives. He talked about his life with Carol past and present and about the stoic existence he was presently living. I talked about being single again. He asked what had happened to my marriage and I said, “Jim kept doing more and more location shoots and fooling around more and more. But then he started fooling around with a wardrobe girl on a regular basis and I got fed up.” Frank said, “So much for ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’” I said, “Try ‘Absence makes the organ wander.’ That’s closer to the truth.”

But then Frank told me about Kate. She had to vacate her apartment in the name of progress. They’d been friends off and on for some time and he told me how much he liked her matter-of-factness and tolerant theology. He didn’t tell me he’d slept with her but he didn’t have to. I knew he had but I also knew that wasn’t the reason he was thinking of taking her in. The decision to take her in was Frank’s start down a path of magic and mayhem, but I knew even before he invited her to stay that it would be.

Some time later I was made aware the way I was always made aware of the big ones. I began floating through dimensions of hazy shapes and shades, forms that couldn’t be known and colors that couldn’t be named. Images spun through my head like a kaleidoscope of dreams. Then the haze slowly cleared and I was back in my life. I was back in my life but one if the dream truths was still in my head. The awareness this time was not specific but only that at that moment Frank was becoming something more, I went to see him as I knew I was meant to.

I got to his place before he and Carol and Kate reached home. The minute they walked through the door I knew something that mattered had happened. I asked Kate to tell the story of what had happened to help me connect with her. She waited for Monk to be there then told the story and then it was clear Carol was right. Frank was special.