Eyes For No Eyes

Originally written January 1, 2006

“One: you know that for sure? And two: you know for sure that makes a difference?”

“One: I’d be really surprised if she were. Two: seems like it.” We sat and thought to ourselves for a bit. The fear that Patrick’s hypothesis had evoked in me was abating, and I could regain my rationality. Gradually I realized there was no foregone tragedy of trust. Though his explanation held water for now, it was nonetheless easily tested. “Kiddo, you can test to see if you need to be an old soul to use the charms. You’re on Moshe patrol now. I’ll keep this one with me whenever I might see Jeanine from now on, to see if it vibrates around her or anyplace she might keep the third charm.”

“You’re putting me on Moshe patrol? You want me to use the charm like you do?”

Ooh. Bind. Medusa’s warning not to let a mortal get too wrapped up in the charm. But it could be that Jeanine is the one already doing that. If that’s true, then I may not have to worry about Patrick. In any case, I saw an opportunity for a living lesson. “With me around, if you want. I can keep you in check.”

“If I want?”

“Yeah, only if you want. I trust you. Go out on your own if you think you’ll be OK.”

“But I didn’t even trust…”

“I know. I don’t care. There’s no eye for an eye here.” He didn’t know how to respond. I watched as he tried to absorb it. “You let your anxiety go. That’s something you decide to do: all emotions are a mixture of choice and not-choice. They’re a product of how you interpret your world. If you choose to accept others’ agency, then there’s no reason for your anxiety to be there.”

What I saw in him was complex. I’d suspected he wanted to harness the charm’s power, and that was certainly in evidence now. But I could see he was so genuinely sorry for going over my head that perhaps he had decided in his own mind that he didn’t actually deserve the opportunity. I continued, explaining to him that using the charm at all, much less effectively, involved getting in touch with a part of his awareness he wasn’t used to using. I couldn’t describe it for him, since he would probably have to access it in a very different way from how I had. Eventually, he seemed to accept that the use of the coral charm would be not so much a privilege as a responsibility, but he also seemed much more comfortable with the idea that the responsibility could be his.

The new term starts on Tuesday. I have the misfortune of teaching only evening classes this quarter. During the fall or spring, that can be quite nice, but during the winter, going to and from class when it’s dark out has the potential to grow depressing and exhausting. Anyway, I’ll be seeing plenty of Jeanine, both on and off campus. I should be able to fulfill my part of the new plan quickly.

Although Patrick is now free to use the charm (even if it’s not as though I could or would have stopped him if he had before), we both realize it’s still not necessarily safe for him to hold onto it. He decided to return it to Trudy’s hideaway and only retrieve it when he needed it. We’ve continued to survey the areas in which Trudy has seen Moshe before and will keep going over as long as the weather is mild.

Miss Scarlet. Lead Pipe. Lounge.

Originally written January 1, 2006

“Probably that one.” Which would explain his response when I handed him the replica. “I thought it was supposed to…” he said. The end of the sentence was not going to be “be bigger,” as he’d invented at the time. He thought it was supposed to vibrate, as the real one had been in my purse only moments before. As the rose quartz one had probably been when I first sat down with him.

“Yeah. And another one around at the Crypt,” I conjectured.

“The woman who knocked you out later.”

“Uh huh. That’s the easy part. Now we get to figure out why Richard was holding out on me.”

“And who’s Pinky.”

“And how he accidentally sent the wrong charm back to me. Or why he decided to give one back at all. Even if he was trying to give back the fake one, it’s not like he had to.”

“True dat.” I heard nails scraping down a distant chalkboard when he said that, but I let it go. “Then he’s not the one collecting them.”

“Guess not, but he knows there’s something going on, and he’s still been around a bunch of times Moshe’s been under. Just possibly not in the tunnels with Trudy. And not at the Crypt.”

“Do you know that for sure? Just cuz he said he’d be leaving for U. of I. that night doesn’t mean he did.”

I felt a little ill at the idea of him being the one who’d molested me outside the restroom at the club as I waited for Jeanine. Recalling the moment now, the feel of him—the vibe of him—was definitely not present at the time. “Whether he was at the club or not, I’m not convinced it was just him.” I explained why.

“You’re sure you’re not just saying that cuz you want the person who felt you up to be a beautiful woman?”

“Was Miss Scarlet with the lead pipe in the lounge beautiful?” I knew I was ripping off Trudy's witticism. But what the heck? She steals mine all the time, usually not the politically correct ones.

“Hard to tell from far away, Professor Plum.”

“Anyway, I wouldn’t be horrified if it were a beautiful man, either. But Richard? That’s just kind of icky. He's like my brother. And you know it would be too much of a coincidence if it weren’t that woman.”

“Unless they’re working together.” We both thought about that for a moment. “Marya.”

“What?”

“Don’t get mad.”

“What?”

“I just have to suggest this.”

“What?”

“Does Jeanine have a pink wig?”

“What the fuck?”

“I’m serious. She wasn’t outside when you got hit. No one who knows her saw her up close. Only Moshe. And outside the ladies’ room? She could have manipulated you into making him kill. Marya, she was interested in the charm all night! She got you to wear it. And it was vibrating whenever she came closer to you!” He was building himself into a frenzy with his epiphany, coming close to shouting. “And at the restaurant. At lunch. She could have seen us with it when we were talking about it. Maybe that’s why she wanted to come out with us.”

My stomach churned. My head fell back onto the couch cushion behind me. I stared at the ceiling. It sounded so cliché, just barely a step above Trudy’s multiple personality disorder theory about Moshe. But too many pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit together to deny that it was a possibility. “It can’t be her.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe wishful thinking. I don’t know. Where would she have gotten a charm?”

“Where’d Richard get his?”

“Not a clue. She’s not an old soul, though.”

The events of this day to be continued...

Pulse and Impulse

Originally written January 1, 2006

The anger and shame returned, this time because he spoke first: I was the adult. I should be the one to show I was the bigger person. Even though I was planning on setting that issue aside for the moment.

“It’s OK. As long as you know why I was pissed about it. As long as you know what to learn from.”

“I do. And I shouldn’t have it anymore. It was safe for me to have it on the east coast but not here.”

“Then take it back to Trudy.”

“Because you think I was right?”

“No, kiddo, because I have another one now, and I have the feeling they shouldn’t both be in the same place, not with how excited they are to see each other. Not to say you weren’t right… jury’s still out on that. Right about me causing a death, that is. You weren’t right about taking it. No question. So… you OK with me hanging onto this?” He knew I wasn’t asking for permission but checking up on his feelings.

“Oh, man, it’s making me nervous. But I’ll deal.” Obviously, if he’d been planning on returning the coral one to me, he’d already been working on keeping the protectionist impulse in check.

“Gonna play watchdog again without letting the henhouse know?”

“Yeah. Gonna stop mixing metaphors?”

“No.”

As I think I’ve mentioned before, the root of his insecurity is clearly his distrust of me with respect to the charm(s). We’ll be working that into the curriculum in the weeks to come, since there’s probably the seed of a more general unwillingness to let go of control in there, even though he says it isn’t something he’s conscious of.

The atmosphere between us made me feel as though it was my turn to apologize about something so that we could hug and make up, but really, nothing I had done was a direct offense to him, and I certainly don’t make up faults to be remorseful about. The conversation left a sense of inequality in the air that was not altogether uncomfortable, since I am a sort of authority figure to him after all, but there was also something that felt emotionally dishonest about it. There was nothing left to do but move on.

He was a little unnerved about the quartz charm, suitably so. As I showed it to him, we made the obligatory comparisons of size, shape, and function. Although it was solid and couldn’t be made a pendant as easily as the coral, I had discovered that it fit around my wrist like a bangle. Now that Bella’s was back, I tried to do the same thing with it, but it wouldn’t quite squeeze on. It seemed like the quartz had some kind of give that the coral did not. Neither of them would fit onto Patrick’s, even though he’s a thin young man. At any rate, I showed him how I could twist it so that the open part was a window around the blood vessels: it would not be picking up my pulse when I didn’t want it to.

We went over the other times the coral charm had vibrated, all of them during the day and night of Friday the 16th. First was while I was at lunch with Richard and then later that evening at the Crypt. Things began to fall into place. I should tell Medusa.

“So unless they vibrate for any other reason, there was a second charm at my lunch with Richard—”

The events of this day to be continued...

Prodigal Son

Originally written January 1, 2006

Dennis has been back from Massachusetts all week, so I’ve actually been working with him on curriculum material alone. That has been interesting in a nice way, since we haven’t really gotten to know each other except through Patrick. I usually form a very strong connection with my Grey Orchid students, and I hadn’t noticed before this week how Patrick’s presence was functioning as a mediating factor between me and Dennis. He’s quiet, much quieter than Patrick, and I wonder if he sometimes feels as if he’s in his boyfriend’s shadow much of the time. I still don’t know if he’s cut out for the curriculum in the long run, but he certainly has an inner strength I hadn’t noticed before.

Speaking of the devil, Patrick himself returned on Friday. I had been able to put from my mind the possibility that I’d been responsible for that woman’s death throughout the week, but seeing him for the first time since I’d hung up on him caused the emotions to rush back in a hurry. I tried to focus on the anger that I’m certainly justified for feeling, for Patrick dismissing my ability to make responsible decisions, for believing he—little more than a child—can know what is in my best interest, for acting on his doubts instead of voicing them to me. But the shame kept creeping up and seeping in. Shame of knowing he could be right. And no, it doesn’t feel like he’s right, but he is a very intelligent young man, and his scenario is disturbingly plausible. The timing, as he’d said, was uncomfortably accurate. The power of the charm is so sensitive and unpredictable that I should have known I’d have to pay close attention to what I said and thought while wearing it. The anger wouldn’t come without the shame; it was an all or nothing deal. But much of that was sidelined when I felt him before I saw him.

I didn’t realize at first that I was feeling him. The quartz charm had begun to vibrate the way the coral one had done at seemingly random times on previous occasions. I was sitting at home, and it began out of nowhere. When it became especially frantic, I laid a hand on it to quell the quaking. Then there was a knock on the door.

I opened to find Patrick in the hallway with an overstuffed backpack clinging to his shoulders. He was holding the coral charm by the chain, also vibrating away at the end of its cord. Neither of us said a word; I released my grip on the quartz and moved nearer to him. Within moments, it started up again.

“Huh,” he said. “So that answers that question.”

He followed me inside, and I explained how I came across it, or it came across me. I took it that he hadn’t been keeping up with my journal in the past few days (insert inside-jokey smiley face here). He’d also come straight from the airport by taxi without stopping at home to see Dennis first. Thus, he’d stopped by not because he knew about the new charm but because we had a conflict to resolve. Our priorities now split, I thought it would be more important to discuss the implications of the vibration factor, but he seemed to disagree, returning me to the more volatile side of the scenario before I could vocalize it.

“We can get back to that, but I really came over because I wanted to give this back and to apologize for everything.”

The events of this day to be continued...

From Years to Hours

Originally written January 1, 2006

Lying in wait for Moshe has been easier said than done. I’ve spent the past few nights in the Applewood district, waiting for him to show up. I’ve wandered the very empty side streets for hours and bought more tea in one night than that diner probably serves in a week. Because I didn’t want the manager there to start questioning my sanity, I printed up Lost Cat fliers and asked him to keep an eye out.

More interesting is my New Year’s news.

It’s my favorite holiday, possibly because it’s the only one that’s remained constant over the course of my lifetime. Naturally, we celebrated it at a different time of year in China from in the Christian world, and the festivities have ranged from a simple acknowledgement and a prayer for healthy crops in the year to come to an all-out champagne bash in a hotel overlooking Times Square, but no matter how I’ve observed it, it becomes more and more special each year.

This year was fairly simple but nonetheless all I could ask for. It was largely a department celebration, the sushi-oke crowd to be precise. Drinking and mingling at a nearby wine bar. Low-key and content to be. Jeanine was there, of course, which made it one of the only occasional New Year’s Eves on which I’ve gotten a kiss at midnight and one of the very few that have led to more. Maybe someday I’ll share the details, but right now it would just feel exhibitionist and gratuitous.

I think I look forward to New Year’s for the same reason I enjoy my birthday (which, by the way, is in August, as far as I’ve been able to tell… we didn’t really keep close track of those things when I was a child, but every astrologer I’ve been to has told me early August). That is, it’s only partly cliché to say that time moves faster as you age. I can write down my little daily joys, sorrows, and excitements, but for me a yearly check-in feels more real. Focusing too closely on what happened today—what I wore, what I ate, who I spoke to—doesn’t always feel like a good indication of what’s important in the long run; perhaps paradoxically, that’s why I continue to do it: I don’t want to lose sight of how life is supposed to feel. My perception of what’s important may not be the best one. That, after all, is what has made historical studies what they now are.

However, I should also say that another reason time is supposed to feel faster with age has to do with one’s nearness or perceived nearness to death, and for me that perception has plateaued. Early on, my conceptualization of time still included death among its eventualities. Ordinary students of the Grey Orchid don’t live forever; they merely extend their lives, typically by a century or so. Only the Gifted attain amortality, and the experience of possessing the Gift took some getting used to, to say the least.

Trudy hasn’t been able to get to Moshe’s parents. She’s even been going to the services at their synagogue trying to run into them, but they haven’t appeared. Of course, she can only go in the evening, so if they go to the morning services, we’re out of luck there. However, she began dropping by their house, but it seems they’re on vacation or something, since they haven’t been answering the door. One night, she had nothing better to do and hung out on their porch, waiting for them to return. They never did.

The events of this day to be continued...

Best Guess

Originally written Wednesday, December 28, 2005

For instance, Trudy spent the first night of Hanukkah with him and his parents as planned, but being mind-muddled the whole time, the parents (who she says received her gracefully and seemingly in complete oblivion about their son’s now various transformations even without the magical influence) and the vampires passed through the evening as if trapped inside an issue of Better Homes and Gardens. In her words: “On the bright side, I probably left a much better impression on the ‘rents than I woulda if I was myself that night!” I don't doubt her.

Any time she attempted to make contact with him outside, the same thing happened. She saw him pass through Applewood a couple of times during what sounded like a protracted tour of espionage; the first time, she tried to speak with him, only to end up being small-talked away as quickly as he’d opened his mouth to respond. The second time, she attempted to track him from a distance, but as soon as he noticed her, he did the approaching. “If I follow from any farther away,” she concluded, “I’m not gonna be able to keep up with him!”

“Guess it’s time to test whether one charm can prevent distraction by another one,” I offered.

“When the kid gets back?” Patrick, that is. With Bella’s charm.

“Nope. I have another one.”

Her eyes bulged out in surprise the same way mine probably had. I’d already impressed upon her the rarity of the first, and Moshe’s not only distracted but now essentially unapproachable state suggested that the third was in the vicinity, probably in the possession of his captor. “Are you serious? Another charm out of the three? Where the hell did it come from?”

“Originally? Beats me. Richard’s intern brought it over and left it at my house while I was away. He says he got it from the archive, but I’m not buying it. And I’m also not entirely sure he meant for me to have it. But I do. Have it.”

“And you’re sure it does the same thing?”

“Guess we’ll be testing that, too.”

She explained when and where in the Applewood district she’d encountered Moshe. It sounded as though a good deal of patience was required, as his schedule was not regular. He seems to be staying there, although whether voluntarily or not is impossible to say. However, now that the weather is milder than it was the first time I surveyed the neighborhood, the project seems a bit more feasible. It’ll also be a good thing to get done before classes start again next week. At the moment, I can afford to adapt to a nocturnal schedule, but once the new term begins, I’ll have too much work to do. Another thought occurred to me:

“Did you get the chance to ask where he knows Kay from?”

“Course not. Never even thought of it.”

“I know we probably can’t do it as long as he’s under the spell, but do you think his parents would know?”

“Maybe.”

“Think you could ask them?”

She agreed to think of a way to run into them and ask them casually. Knocking on the door and saying, “Hey, who’s this weird pink-haired chick who kidnapped your son? Oh and by the way, he was still kidnapped when you saw him the other night,” wasn’t going to fly. At any rate, she had her assignment, and I had mine.

Down Low Update

Originally written Wednesday, December 28, 2005

“So… any idea where the third one is?” I asked. “If you found the rose one at the archive, then it’s possible that Moshe”—since Richard still believes he’s been directly or indirectly responsible, as far as I know, and there was no way I could tell him about the night at the Crypt—“or whoever he’s working for already has it. Or knows where it is. Right? In other words, they’re now all present and accounted for… sort of.”

“It’s possible. Yeah, I guess so.”

“Maybe it’s time we go on the offensive here, try to track him down for a change.” I realized I hadn’t even told him that Moshe and Trudy had been getting all buddy-buddy for a while. He has no idea of the extent of my own interaction with the vampire. I was mostly trolling for reactions from him.

That nervous tic, the head-rubbing, that he engaged in when we’d gone out to lunch a week and a half ago, made another appearance. “Yeah, definitely. But you know, I’d better get back to work now, so let’s both sleep on it and get back to each other. I’m getting a new phone soon, same number. Anyway, I’m really glad the charm got to you safely. I figured it would be safe inside your house. Not like the vampire can break in or anything, right? And like I said the other day—daytime delivery.”

Though he becomes harder to read by the day, his point seemed important. Moshe could have broken in if he wanted to and if he’d known there was a charm waiting for him. I thought about how this fit into what’s been going on while I headed back up to campus. I had another post-vacation stop to make.

The tunnels, appropriately enough, have a very strong wet earth smell when it’s been raining. While I’d been away, the outdoor temperature rose to a relatively comfortable forty to fifty degree range, and the precipitation rose along with it. There are a few entrances in various parts of campus, none of which I knew of until Patrick showed me one inside his dormitory last year. That, in turn, was the only one he knew of until he came across the strange woman dwelling deep within the corridors. Each time I seek Trudy out in her home turf, I gain more of an understanding of why she stays down there. Moshe has stayed in his apartment (or had until the night at the Crypt), which is probably cleaner and more comfortable, but it will also become fairly claustrophobic to him after a while. Trudy, on the other hand, has myriad hallways and storage rooms to explore during the daylight hours. Every college and university has urban myths about the underworld beneath the surface. I don’t know how true the legends are in other locales, but they certainly apply here.

She’d realized fairly quickly that the charm was missing from where she was guarding it. Unsurprisingly, she was curious about it and went in to check for it the very first night when Patrick and I were both out of town. There was little she could do about that, she realized.

What she could do was look for Moshe, and indeed she succeeded, in a way. That is, she took the small amount of information about his parents that I passed along from my onetime student and performed a bit of surveillance on all the families listed in the phone book with Moshe’s last name, as well as reconnoitering Applewood. To make a long story short, she did end up finding him, but she also learned to keep her distance. He has apparently been under the distraction spell pretty much full-time ever since his abduction, and the refracting effect he has, pulling anyone he speaks with into a similar state of half-conscious activity, is still in full operation.

The events of this day to be continued...

Fortuity

Originally written Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Rose.

A rose quartz crescent.

That’s what I found dropped just inside my door when I came home from the airport last night. A quartz crescent in a manila envelope. Precisely the same size as the coral one. And yes, to answer your next inevitable question, the piece pulsates and changes weight and temperature. It wasn’t rough-edged and full of holes like Bella’s, but solid and polished.

I didn’t understand: was this what Richard had delivered to me? And if so, why wouldn’t he have kept it for himself? Was it a trade? Was it for safety? Had he discovered that the black one was a replica? How did this fit into his strange behavior prior to leaving for his U. of I. trip?

This morning, I went straight to the museum to see him. He was all smiles and pleasantness when he came down to the lobby to meet me. I decided to skip the preliminaries.

“So you left me a gift.”

“Yeah, thanks for lending it to me. Sorry things didn’t go so well at the archive, but having it there sure helped the research. I just don’t know what to make of it now, not knowing where it came from.”

“Um… you’re welcome. You know I’m not talking about the black one, right?”

“The… I thought you were.”

“No. The black one wasn’t there when I got home last night. Just a lovely rose quartz one. Same size and all. Rick, I’ve got to know, is it one of the others? Where’d you find it?”

He paused for a moment as if unsure of how to respond. His eyes appeared to be reading me while he attempted to come up with an explanation for himself, much less one for me. Then he ran his hand across his head, breathed deeply, and said, “Yeah, I wanted to surprise you! The uh… trip was kind of successful after all. Like I said, the black one was helpful. Roger was able to find me that one. The quartz. Gee, for an amulet that isn’t supposed to be voodoo, it sure does make the West Indian rounds.” He chuckled.

“Oh, I’m surprised, all right! So it just fell into your hands? Just like that?”

“Uh, yeah! Just like that. I mean… from what I’ve been able to figure, there might be some kind of magnetism between the pieces. Like they want to be together. So I could have been drawn to the archive because something told me it would be there.”

I’d have been more likely to buy that if he had decided to go there before he’d been in possession of the black charm. The real one. The concept made sense, but overall, his logic was as holey as a chunk of coral. Nonetheless, I was ready to allow him to get away with these very lame excuses because I couldn’t have contested them without either exposing my deepening mistrust of him, revealing my own deception, or both.

“Wow, that’s really something,” was all I said in response. “So, did you still need the black one? Cuz you know I’d feel better if….”

“Huh. Oh, well, I thought we might switch off for a bit.”

“Switch off?”

“Yeah, so I can have more of a chance to work with the coral charm. You know… greater good.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. It sounded like he wasn’t ready to give up all of the control he seems to think he has. Which was a good reason not to contradict him. I played along, telling him it was fine with me if he wanted to hang onto the black one for a while but reminding him who its true owner was. I thanked him for passing the rose one along to me in the meantime. I felt a mixture of excitement and anxiety at having two out of three charms within reach, and I told him so (although I didn’t tell him he didn’t actually have one of them). In the meantime, there was one more critical question that tied into both that excitement and the anxiety, as well as the task at hand:

The events of this day to be continued...