“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I hemmed and hawed, decided after talking with Rob that I really didn’t want to do any shows at all, so I wrote one letter so informing Prentice. In the meantime I was impatiently waiting Frank Longwell who promised the Tuesday earlier that he’d be here before Sunday with the final plans for extending the living room. He never came.

Peg told me he was in his forties; he told her he’d written me but probably left before I could answer the letter. I felt defensive and guilty; he was trying emotional blackmail, and I didn’t want to see him. But I thought of him, a stranger, in the newspaper office of a strange town....

“Hello,” I said when he came to the phone, and his voice was dull and flat, full of self pity; he was sure I wouldn’t see him. And instead of rousing sympathy in me his downcast mood had the opposite effect; I don’t care if you came from Timbuktu by refugee ship, I thought. His call reminded me finally of his letter and my response that I wouldn’t be able to see him during his trip. I said some usual polite things in a usual polite voice and that was that. The next day I learned from Peg that he’d come by bus, had to stay the night, didn’t have much money—his reality, I reminded myself firmly, not mine. Still, vaguely uneasy I called off a half-planned evening of company with friends—luckily before I’d actually invited them, and we had a Seth session instead, still another in an effort to get me out of my own physical problems. This one was at Rob’s suggestion.