"Teach my child," the deep, resonant voice implores. "Let me give her into your care. She's searching. She needs your help."

"What's she searching for?" I ask.

"For the way," he says. "For HER way. She wants to study the occult sciences."

"She tells me she has a new hairdo. Shaved halfway up her head and dyed black. Does she have a nose ring?"

He laughs. "Well, she's trying to decide between a nose ring and a tattoo!"

Somehow I knew at the beginning of that telephone conversation that I would be shopping for nose rings on Saturday.

I haven't seen Erin since she was nine years old. Back then she was already beautiful, very blonde, vivacious, and focused. Showing definite signs of individuality. Her hair represented a statement to her even then. When we first met, she had just had it styled into a shoulder-length swingy bob on the right side, and white-walled high up above her ear on the left side. It gave her a completely unbalanced look. The kid and I related to one another right away.

Erin and her father, Tony, appeared in my life at exactly the right moment. In the beginning, Tony was a friend of Lightnin's. He was the maintenance supervisor at the apartment project where we lived. It was a cool place, built in the early '60s, situated right on the banks of beautiful Clear Lake, with nine-foot ceilings and fireplaces and wide-open architecture. Lots of floor-to-ceiling windows and beautiful vistas. Magnolia trees in full bloom.

The Bay House was the first apartment complex built in the area and had housed the very first rocket scientists and astronauts back in 1963, when Johnson Space Center was still a cow pasture and a blueprint. Legendary splashdown parties had occurred there. History had been made within its walls. And Tony had a job on his hands keeping it together.

Lightnin was always home during the day, which is how he and Tony came to know one another. Tony was a former musician who had hung up his guitar after the 3,574th Nightmare Gig, deciding enough was enough. He could talk Lightnin's language and so they bonded.

I knew Tony when I saw him but we'd never met. That changed after Lightnin left. He came by one Saturday in response to a service call, and for the first time we were face to face. He fixed the problem; don't even remember what it was now. Then he asked about Lightnin. I told him. He expressed his sorrow over the situation. Said he was on his way to the mall to pick up his daughter but they'd be back home by 1500 hours. He suggested I stop by for a beer and a chat. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Friendship is exactly what it was. Neither Tony or I wanted a romantic relationship. He was still smarting from his last encounter and I was completely devastated about Lightnin. But we had many common interests and we had a lot of fun together. We traded music, books, and imported beers; explored the neighborhood, tried out new restaurants. We spent hours and hours talking.

On a whim, I decided to cast natal horoscopes for Tony and Erin. The synergism was so great between us that it was almost spooky, and I wanted a look-see. Tony gave me the information I needed to make the calculations. The very first thing I noticed was that our Suns are all trine to one another, all three of them. Tony's Sun is in Capricorn, Erin's is in Virgo, and mine's in Taurus. We form a Grand Trine in earth. On top of that, all three of us have Aries moons. Now that probably doesn't mean diddley-squat to most of you, so I'm not going to fall off into some kind of weird astrological jargon here. Don't let your eyes glaze over yet.

Take a circle, 360 degrees. Mark it off in 30-degree increments. Name each one of the 30-degree increments something, like Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. In that order. Put a dot at 28 degrees of Taurus. Put another dot at 28 degrees of Capricorn. Put a dot at 28 degrees of Virgo. Draw lines between them and you get three 120-degree aspects that form a large triangle. This is called a Grand Trine. Energy flows easily within a trine. Roughly translated, it was a good omen.

Erin especially liked the idea of the Grand Trine. She didn't really understand what it meant, but she liked it. From that day forward, that was how she referred to us. The Grand Trine was a happy group. We did almost everything together, forming a strange kind of family unit, but a unit, nonetheless. I think I got a lot more than I gave in that threesome. When they found me, my life was in tatters. They picked me up and put me back together again, piece by piece. Humpty Dumpty should have been so lucky to have Tony and Erin. Their precious love and friendship mended me in ways I didn't even realize were broken.

Eventually Tony, by then known as Secret Agent Sterno due to a couple of pretty funny encounters with fire, received word that his mission was about to take him into uncharted territory. He was being transferred to another city. He and Erin waved goodbye one Saturday morning. I felt their loss all the way to my bones. It was lonesome without them. Sterno went deep undercover up north and there was no way to stay in touch. Poof! Simply overnight, they disappeared from my life as quickly as they had arrived.

Years passed with no word from them at all. Then I was driving down the street last Sunday morning, on my way to the Shell station to gas up the Dream, when Erin popped into my mind. I hadn't thought about her in forever, it seemed. You know how folks tend to disappear into a haze of yesterdays when you don't hear from them. But the haze lifted for a few minutes on Sunday, allowing Sterno and Erin to drift back into my consciousness. I laughed out loud remembering the day Sterno set himself on fire trying to refill some goofy combination wristwatch-cigarette lighter he'd found in an abandoned apartment. I wondered about the two of them and how their lives were going. I hoped they were having fun.

Three days later I am sitting at my desk, wrestling with a particularly tricky editing job. The phone rings.

"Muthah MacDac, Operations," I say.

"Youngblood?", a voice inquires.

"Yes, may I help you?"

"This is Erin," the voice says. "Do you remember me?"

Erin? Erin!?! Naaaah. Couldn't be. But I only knew one Erin.

"I only know one Erin," I say. "Is that you, child?"

It was. You coulda knocked me over with a feather. She sounds so grown up! She'll be fifteen in September. Once in a while when she'd giggle, I'd hear the little girl I remember so well. But other than that, the voice was a new one to my ears. After we jawed for a while we made arrangements to meet for dinner on Saturday. Then she turned me over to Sterno. It was so good to hear from them! I'm so touched that Erin remembers me. And thrilled that I'll be seeing her again. Sterno says she has saved every rock and leaf and dead bug I ever gave her.

Now, whaddayathink? Should I shop for silver ... or gold?