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...