Reflected

Originally written Saturday, January 14, 2006

The five days I had to wait between speaking to Richard on Saturday and seeing him on Thursday were both calming from their lack of activity and tension-building from the same. I worked the boys through the curriculum over the weekend, and while I’d love to be able to enthuse about Patrick’s progress and Dennis’s excitement over the connections he’s learning to make between Grey Orchid and his major of physics (which he, in turn, has begun to explain to me), we’ll just leave those events as parenthetical occurrences in relation to more recent ones.

Richard is gone, and has been for over a week. He was gone when we spoke a week ago and when he came to my door late Thursday evening. The casual smoothness that I’d thought was merely a consequence of the telephone’s ability to obscure was fully present in his person. The seemingly perpetual yet subtle anxiety had been replaced by a quiet, mocking confidence. His eyes peered intensely into mine not in an effort to read my thoughts but to inform me of them, and if they were vocal, they might have included such phrases as the tables are turned and look who’s in the dark now.

As we sat across the dining room table from one another and I waited for him to begin, I felt as though I were looking into my own reflection: all the manipulation I’d been too distrustful to avoid with him was staring back at me in a stoic façade only blemished by the hint of a smirk. In a rare moment of capitulation, I broke down and spoke first, thereby affirming his awareness that I now needed him and his information more he needed me and mine. “Who’s Kay? What’ve you learned about the charms?”

“What, you don’t want to know how I’ve been? Living out of my office? C’mon, a little empathy here. I’ve had a rough week.”

“But you’re OK, right?”

“Do I look OK?” It was the sort of question that seemed to invite a negative and sympathetic response, but the truth was—

“Actually, you look better than you’ve been in a long time.”

—and interestingly, he took it not as a refusal to acknowledge his woes but as a compliment he’d been fishing for. “Thanks,” he said while arching a Hefnerish eyebrow. “Just wanted to hear you say it.”

“OK, fine. Now, is your ego sufficiently stroked for us to move on to the meat?”

“Sure. So here’s the beef. You’ve been lying to me.”

“A little. But you’ve been lying to me, too.”

“Can’t deny it. So this is kind of the point. Let’s get it all out in the open so we can work together and wrap this whole thing up already.”

“I can work with that. So let’s start with Kay. And the purpose of these things. What’ve you found out?”

This time both eyebrows curved into half-moons, forehead lines crinkling. “Hm. You seem so interested in Kay. And yet as far as I know, you’ve never learned about her except from me, last weekend. Could this be one of those areas of indiscretion we’ve just mentioned?”

“Perhaps.”

He smiled with his lips. “And what’s doubly interesting is that she seemed to mostly be interested in you, too. Heh. It’s like I don’t even exist in this little, uh, triumvirate.”

“What does she know about me?”

“Not a whole lot, as it turns out. And quite a bit.”

“All right, riddler. Will you just spill about something already? I get the point. Secrets. Lies. Aren’t we supposed to be moving on?”

The events of this day to be continued...