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...