Art of Facts
Disclaimer: I own no part of "Lie to Me." I make no profits. I do hope to make someone smile.
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Cal Lightman kept many things.
Many were in the storage room near his office; souvenirs from his youthful days as roving researcher. Others filled his house; memories of friends and family and Emily growing up. And then there were some that no one else ever saw. Stashed in the back of drawers, in the mystery box at the bottom of the stack, a slight extra thickness to books little read: these things collected would never make sense to anyone else but himself.
Artifacts, all, of a life.
The business card he held now had been marking place in an edition of the International Journal of Behavioral Development for 15 years. It was distinctly possibility that it was the last of its kind. Gillian had changed titles and offices many times since. Even her name was different now.
But that didn't erase the fact that there had been a day when a young doctoral candidate named Gillian Glass, of 22 Ames Street, Office 203, phone number 831-625-0238, had met Cal Lightman and given him her business card. This business card.
Bit of history, this was.
He hadn't thought of that day in years. Wouldn't have thought of it yet but that he had been doing some research for their latest case. Come across her card. A tangible connection to the past that couldn't lie. It was just a fact, a thing. From a time before they had been partners. Before they had been friends. Before they had ever had late lunches or lost touch, sent Christmas cards or academic articles. So many things happen in a life. So many years pass. So many choices and so much we forget.
But Cal remembered that first hour.
It all might have been simpler if their relationship had begun with a lazy afternoon in a sun-drenched bistro, rather than a harried cup of midmorning coffee amongst the collected dust and high-summer sweat of his Post-Doctorate office.
It was only the dust that was a problem. Sweat increased pheromones – and even then he'd been careful enough to notice the dilation of her pupils when he brushed past. The slight note of embarrassment when she had flushed under his gaze. And his office was most certainly not at fault. Towers of boxes hinting at a bevy of unique trinkets, each with a story. "Has National Geographic exploded?" she had asked faintly, glancing around. No, it was the dust. Impossible not to sneeze, or get flying debris in the eye, even if neither of them had allergies. No good subtly communicating as your eyes watered and nose itched.
He'd just got into the country, nothing was unpacked, and there were more possibilities on his plate than he had time to enumerate, much less accomplish.
It was the damn dust. The dust and their jobs, of course. Like as not the latter would have fussed it up even had they met in that clear-aired bistro.
They hadn't got on, you see.
She'd insulted his field and he'd bullied her into an admission she'd never have made regarding her shoe selection and by the time she'd flipped a dead insect at him and strode out they'd agreed to collaborate only, he'd long suspected, because of the intense desire of each to show the other up.
She'd had a mouth on her back then. Challenging everything, always wanting to see the proof before she'd be convinced.
Still, after she'd gone he found himself slouched on a box not sturdy enough for his weight. Hints of her perfume caught on particles in the air filtering through his senses. He had wanted to track her down, find a place they could sit and drink decent coffee and not talk about the study she had started and for which her advisor had told her to seek out Dr. Cal Lightman.
Because he'd been curious. What had stopped him?
He'd been engaged, Emily on the way. Odd how hard it was to remember that: a discovery of math, rather than memory.
And she'd been seeing some obnoxious fellow. A fireman. Not that he'd known that then. But he remembered the hat. Bit of a stumbling block there too.
They'd met for lunch the next week. Talked of work and research and started watching together the people that walked by. He'd started instructing her on what hidden worlds could be seen: she'd given him whys and hows and eaten her sandwich with enthusiastic hunger. But she hadn't blushed, the glint in her eye shew only challenge and pleasure. Even her perfume was different, there in the open air.
They'd both made concessions in the years since. They began to trust each other, learn from each other. They'd become friends. But never again was it like that first hour. Maybe it never had been.
Cal traced one finger along the ink of the name she once claimed. Perhaps his memory was lying. Creating art of facts swept aside from dozens of misplaced emotions and moments and thoughts. Like the impossible whiff of familiar perfume and dust, which could never have survived intact all those years.