Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. The fictional band Degenerate Matter, their albums Vagabondage, Ultrarelativistic, WIMPs and MACHOs, Frozen Stars, the song "Pulse as a Clock," and all the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).

CHAPTER 36
PULSE AS A CLOCK

January 8, 1995

Rochester Hills, Michigan

Orion Road
…

At only a quarter past five, the late-afternoon sky was a blend of orange and blue. No clouds for sunrays to stab pink, but hunger pierced Hyde's stomach. Fortunately, Jackie knew of a diner nearby, and they went down Orion Road, skipping like kids.

"Think the last time I skipped was when Betsy was six," he said, but the bouncing gate heated his muscles. "Keeps you warm, though. Clever."

"I know. I'd never do this in Foster City."

"Too hot there?"

"Too judgmental, at least the people I socialize with. Women in their thirties are expected to act like they're in their fifties."

"And how do women in their fifties act?" he said. They'd come to the Apple Hill Diner, and he held the door open for her. "Mrs. Forman's in her sixties, and she ain't stuffy."

"I mean upper-class, snobby fifty-year-olds. The ones who dried out before they'd reached twenty-five."

A waitress spotted them by the diner entrance. She grabbed two menus from the bar, and Hyde and Jackie were seated in a booth moments later. The banquets' cushions weren't lumpy or full of duct-taped holes. With any luck, the food would be the same.

"Yeah, you're gonna have to explain dried out." He didn't bother looking at the menu. Every diner served burgers and fries. "'Cause my mind's going to places you probably didn't intend."

Jackie slapped the back of his hand painlessly, playfully. "Not like that. Although, I wouldn't doubt if Ann-Marie weren't a little dry up there." She hid her face with the menu as a fit of giggles shook her shoulders. "Oh, my God. Do you know how dead I'd be if I said that out loud?"

"You just did."

"Back at home." She lowered the menu as her laughter faded. "If any of the Blonde Brigade heard me—"

"Blonde Brigade?"

"My friends. Refers to our hair color. It's stupid, but it's how I think of them."

Them, she'd said. Not us. Jackie saw herself as an outsider to her social group, yet she was part of it. That outsider-insider paradox seemed embedded in her. He'd observed it at the Formans' Christmas. She consistently acted on it with him, one-on-one, but she had access to a part of him no one else did. Not even Ro. The set of keys he'd given her were gathering dust, unused.

"So..." He put his question on hold when the waitress returned with two glasses of water. He and Jackie ordered their food, and then he said, "Do blondes have more fun?"

Jackie sipped her water. "Not in my experience."

"Then why..." He gestured to her hair.

"It's a membership requirement."

"Ever think of going back to brunette?"

Instead of answering, she produced a pen from her coat pocket and drew a grid of dots on her napkin.

"That question off-limits?" he said.

"Sometimes I want to shave all my hair off," she said and drew a line from one dot to its neighbor. "Sometimes I think about buying a brunette wig, just to remember how I used to look."

She pushed both the napkin and the pen toward him. "Boxes?" he said, and she nodded. "Haven't played this since—hell, since we were goin' out."

"Not even with Betsy?"

"Brooke always brought a bunch of toys to keep her entertained." He drew a line on the opposite side of the grid and slid the napkin and pen back to her. "You play this with the Blonde Brigade?"

She grinned like he'd spoken nonsense. "Please."

"Maybe you should introduce 'em to it."

"Hah!" She made her move. He made his, and they made many more until their food arrived. Neither of them had scored yet, though. "My friends don't play games," she said, "unless you count the manipulative kind."

She dug a fork into her chicken salad. She impaled a chunk of chicken and some lettuce, but she waved the fork around without eating. "Six months ago or so, they made a bet to see who could get me a boyfriend. I went on three horrific dates and one that should have ended differently."

"Oh, yeah?" He dipped his French fries into a glob of ketchup. He was trying to act casual, sound casual. Jackie was opening up, talking as if their friendship were natural rather than a cataclysmic internal struggle. "Differently how?"

"Different. I slept with him."

"You nailed him on the first date?" he said mid-chew. So much for casual.

Her fork jabbed more lettuce and a slice of tomato. "I've had one-night stands before, but this one was a mistake … that I repeated."

"On Halloween."

"Mm-hmm. I'm in a necessary celibacy phase, and that is far more information than you ever wanted to know."

"It's cool. The crap I told you about on Halloween—it's cool." But the conversation fell into awkwardness, punctuated by the clinks of her fork on her salad bowl. "You can tell me that stuff," he said after three bites of his hamburger. "Whatever your comfortable sharing, I can handle hearing."

"It's probably not appropriate for ex-lovers to talk about sex, Steven, and my therapist's really good with 'that stuff' anyway, so..." She speared a piece of chicken and stared at it. "I'm coming across like a stiff."

"You're puttin' up boundaries."

She laughed, hard enough to drop her fork in the salad bowl, and she leaned her forehead against her palm. "God, boundaries! 'My therapist' … you didn't need to know I'm seeing one."

"Sarah Tremonti," he said.

She sat up straight, both hands splayed on the table. "How do you know that?"

"Your purse. It fell off the counter at Izzy's birthday party. Everything spilled out, including your shrink's card. I read it—"

"You read it? What else did you see?"

He scratched the back of his neck, but telling her what he'd found was unavoidable. "Your pills, a few red markers ... and the engagement ring I gave you."

"Shit, Steven! No wonder you think I'm sick."

"That's not me," he said. "You might think that about yourself, but that's not me." He rolled up the left sleeve of his sweater, exposing Jackie's bracelet and his relatively new scar. "That is sick, what I let Ro do to me."

"Ro?" Her thumb brushed over the scar. "Ro," she whispered.

He rolled the sleeve back up. "We square now? 'Cause now you know somethin' I never intended to share with anyone."

"No, we're not even." She pulled her keychain from her coat pocket, the one with the diamond engagement ring attached. "Despite how we ended, this is my reminder that love exists in this universe. A beacon of light in the darkness, you might call it." She put the keychain back into her pocket. "Now we're even."

He looked at her, mute. After how he'd left her, when he'd left, she'd chosen to carry their relationship with her … what they might have been if he'd stayed.

"I'm also scared." She reached past her bowl of salad and grasped his hand. "You can't be in a relationship with someone who cuts you."

"I'm not. She was testing me, to see if I'd put up my boundaries."

Her grip tightened on his hand. "And you didn't."

"I fucked up, by letting somethin' fucked-up happen to me."

"She shouldn't have put you in that position."

He began to answer, but their waitress was back. "Everything okay here?" she said.

"Okay is a relative term," Jackie said, "but we're fine."

The waitress smiled, like she didn't know what to make of that response, and left for another booth.

Hyde returned Jackie's squeeze to his hand. "Told her never to pull another stunt like that again. She won't."

"She better not."

"I'll tell her you said that."

Jackie yanked her hand away. "Don't you dare. I don't want her coming after me next."

"Ro's not like that."

"I have no idea what she's like—and, I guess, what you're like, either."

She tore into the rest of her salad, devoured it as if the diner was about to be sucked into a tornado. He managed to eat a few French fries, but his appetite was shot.

"Whatever's between me and Ro's has nothin' to do with us," he said. "Just like it has nothin' to do with me and Betsy. Me and Forman. Ro's got friends all over the damn place, and I barely know half of them." He picked up his hamburger, considered taking a bite, and put it back down. "But if I've screwed us by—"

"You didn't." She breathed out a sound that was a mixture of sad and amused. "You've seen me freak out over orange juice. Over Eric touching my shoulder. Over things I haven't explained. I think..." That same amused sadness overtook her face. "I think you've just made yourself more real to me."

A different concierge was on duty at the Cherry Blossom Inn than in the early afternoon. She gave Hyde an extended stare as he and Jackie walked across the lobby. He sensed her gaze on his back while climbing the stairs, but maybe his paranoia was kicking up. He'd had an intense day, and it wasn't over.

The sky wasn't dark enough yet for stargazing. Jackie wanted to wait another hour before driving to the park. That would've given him time for a nap, but she suggested they finish their game of Boxes. "It'll cleanse the palate," she'd said at the diner. So instead of going to his room, he went to hers.

She put the napkin on a small table by the window. "This okay?"

"Yup." He sat at the table with her. Their coats were piled on the bed. "Who's turn is it?"

"Mine." She drew a mark on the grid of dots. "We're getting close to making boxes."

"Keep your eyes open." He made his own mark. "Room's decorated like a French cottage."

"Stop trying to distract me."

"Just commenting."

"Because you're afraid I'm going to win." She drew a line on the grid's outer perimeter. "See the metal case by the bed?"

He studied the napkin. The grid was packed with lines. If he put one down in the wrong place, she'd get a host of boxes. "I'll take your word for it that it's there."

"My telescope's in it," she said. "It's gold."

"Who's trying to distract who?"

She giggled, and that finally stole his focus. Her eyes were half closed. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and he clenched his jaw, afraid he'd blurt how her laughter warmed his insides.

"Sorry," she said. "I'll be quiet."

"Thanks," but he couldn't find a safe space to make a mark. He searched for the least perilous spot, one that wouldn't give her too many points. "Here goes nothin'," he said and drew a line.

"Oh, Steven. … Steven, Steven, Steven." She said his name each time she made a box. "That's four for me."

"And three for me." He formed his boxes, and she cackled. Freakin' cackled. He hadn't heard that kind of laughter from her in fifteen years. "What?"

She fluttered her eyelashes at him. "Don't you remember my tactics?" The pen became a blur in her hands. She marked off six boxes, seven ... eight. "I led you to slaughter."

"I'm not dead yet," though he was close to it. He gained only two more boxes his next turn, and she scored five. "You rigged this thing."

"Maybe I did." She drummed her fingers on the table. "Or I missed my calling as a professional Boxes player."

By the end of the game, he couldn't disagree with her. He'd scored sixteen boxes to her twenty-six. But despite his loss, he'd enjoyed himself in a way he rarely did. Obligations, time, regrets, they'd vanished. During the game, he'd existed fully in the moment.

That was a first for him He'd achieved similar states while alone, usually while working on music, but never with someone else. Ro kept fighting to get him there, but Jackie had done it effortlessly. With a simple game.

Jackie held her breath upon leaving the heat and safety of her rental car. The temperature would reach a low of minus-five degrees tonight. That meant very little chance of people camping in Truwood Park, but it also meant anyone wandering the grounds had to be crazy. The park didn't close until one a.m., even on the coldest nights.

"Want me to take that?" Steven pointed to her telescope's carrying case. She had it strapped onto a portable cart for luggage. Combined, her telescope and tripod weighed thirty pounds.

"No. You've already got your guitar, though I really think you should leave it in the car." She glanced around the parking lot. Hers was the only vehicle in it, but her body couldn't decide if that was safe or not. Anxiety pressed on her chest. "There's no way you'll manage to play it in this weather."

"Came prepared. Guitar's a laminate."

"That means nothing to me, but okay."

"It's weather-resistant."

"Are your fingers?"

"We'll find out," he said. "Doesn't feel as cold without the wind."

They left the parking lot and entered Truwood Park on a well-lit path. Her impulse was to cling to Steven's arm, not for warmth but protection. The last time she'd been here at nigh was with hired security. Her dad had spared no expense.

She begged herself to stay quiet, but she said, "You won't let anyone steal me from you, right?"

"Huh?"

"If someone comes up to us, acting all friendly, you won't let him take me."

"Jackie, what're you talkin' about?"

"Just promise me you won't let me out of your sight."

"I won't." He must've seen the terror on her face because he glided his arm around her shoulders. "No one's gonna hurt you out here—" His arm sprang off her. "Sorry. Didn't mean to—"

"Put it back," she said. "Please."

He did, and she pressed herself into his side. She'd been afraid of this, of flashing back to the nights where the sanctity of her body and mind had been violated. Her fingers curled around the luggage cart's handle. She focused her awareness there until he said, "So, where are we headed?"

"The darkest part of the park."

Several curving, rock-strewn paths led to a clearing. It was surrounded by a thicket of spiny shrubs, a perfect place for muggers and rapists and God knew who else. But it was also the best spot to stargaze. Jackie had brought a pair of Maglite flashlights with her, and Steven shone them as she set up her telescope. The quarter moon gave some light, but it wasn't nearly enough.

"The height's going to be a bit uncomfortable for you," she said. "I adjusted the tripod to the limit of my view."

"I've got no problem with hunching."

"Before you shut off the flashlights—" she tried to stop talking but couldn't—"would you let me grab onto your wrist? Then could you hold onto my left hand? I need to know you're here."

"Sure." He presented his right, wool-covered wrist to her. She grasped it, and he turned off the flashlights. "Man, it's pitch-black out here, huh?"

A frozen sea of darkness had swallowed them, but the sky was full of tiny lights. She found Polaris, the North Star, via the Big Dipper. Dubhe, a star in its ladle, had led her to it. "Look for the Big Dipper," she said. "It's high in the sky tonight."

"I see it. Way up there."

"The handle's center star is called Mizor, and right by it is a dim star." She had trouble seeing it, but she didn't want to use the telescope yet. "Alcor—yes, there it is!" She jostled Steven's hand around in her excitement. "Do you see it?"

"Hold on. You mean the one kinda blendin' into the brighter one?"

"Yeah! That's my dad's star."

"That one? Would've thought he'd go for something flashy like Polaris."

She was grinning so hard her cheeks hurt. She'd found her dad's star. "In olden days, people would test their eyesight using Alcor. If they could differentiate between it and Mizor, they supposedly had perfect sight." She brought Steven's hand to the center of her chest but only for a moment. "You were right when you said my dad had a star. He'd chosen Alcor for himself before I was even born. He liked the idea of being connected to history."

"That solves one mystery I'd always wondered about."

"What mystery?"

"What side of the family you got your depth from."

Her breath came out in in a warm huff. "Well, it certainly isn't my mom's side." She searched the sky for a W of stars, for the constellation Cassiopeia. "She introduced me to Anders, my stepfather, as her sister. Can you believe that?"

"She what?"

"Her sister. Everyone I've met in California, including my ex-husband, thinks Pam Burkhart is my sister. That my father is also her father—ah, I found you." The crown of Cassiopeia shone brightly in the clear night. The cold, dry air probably helped, too. "Go from the bottom right star of the Big Dipper's ladle in a south-east diagonal. You're looking for a W."

His fingers stiffened around her palm. "You let her get away with that crap?"

"I chose the lesser of two evils, and she's built her life up around that lie. I won't take her happiness away from her."

"Even though it's interfering in yours."

"Interfering, yes. Aggravating, yes, but she's done worse things. Have you found it yet?"

"What am I lookin' for again?

"Cassiopeia's crown, shaped like a W. South-east from the Big Dipper. Polaris is somewhere in between."

"I'm lookin'," he said, and she peered through the eyepiece of her telescope. Cepheus, Cassiopeia's husband, was much harder to see without technological help. "Got it," he said. "Think there's an H and a J up there, too?"

She altered the angle of the telescope. "Could be … and there's Cepheus. Not that exciting, but he's there." She stepped aside and used a flashlight to guide Steven to the telescope. "He looks like a garden gnome that's been toppled over. Basically, a square and a triangle."

"Hey, Cepheus," he said. "Who knocked ya over?"

"Cassiopeia, I'm sure."

"Kicked him in the shin?"

"It's an effective place to kick" She reasserted control of the telescope and searched for Andromeda. "If my mom threatens you in any way, interferes in your life or business, you have my full permission to blackmail her."

"And that'll send her straight to you." He clutched Jackie's hand against his hip. "You should be less tangled in her mess, not more."

"She took me in when she didn't have to. Helped me rebuild my life. I owe her."

He exhaled audibly. "She's your freakin' mom."

"Yes, she is," and maybe someday Jackie would move on from her, if an exit sign made itself apparent. "I'll take the risk of losing her to protect you," she said. "I owe you, too."

"You owe me shit, Jackie. You can't think of this—" he waved their combined hands between their bodies—"like that. It's not about debt."

"Andromeda didn't feel indebted to Perseus for saving her life. She simply loved him back." Andromeda's constellation was twinkling at her through the telescope. It consisted of a V of stars with two more forming a bent antenna. "It's not just your music that's been healing, but you."

Her hand received a warm squeeze in response. She led him to the telescope again, and after a moment he said, "The Chained Lady."

"You remember?"

"Stared at this one a lot since..." His voice faded, and he cleared his throat. "Stared at it a lot."

They moved onto lesser known—and less easily discernible—constellations, but Steven's interest never seemed to wane. The temperature was dangerously low, but he'd been right: without the wind it didn't feel nearly as sharp. She barely shivered with all the layers she had on, but she also didn't want to push it.

Her telescope was packed away after a half-hour. His guitar was out, strapped over his shoulder, and she moved the flashlights over his body like spotlights. "Presenting … Steven Hyde!"

His gloves were off, and he breathed onto his hands. "One song's what my fingers got in them," he said. "So request a good one."

"'Pulse as a Clock,'" she said.

"Pick another."

"You wrote that one."

"About me and Ro."

"So? It's beautiful. Sing it!" She applauded as best she could with the flashlights.

He answered by ripping into the song's opening riff. She raised her eyes toward the stars, allowing the music and his voice to penetrate through her barriers. When he reached the chorus, the song was pumping through her blood: "Heart ta-tick ta-tick ta-ticks my life away. Tried to speed it up, to come apart, but you slowed it down. Slowed it down."

She used to associate Steven with death as much as with love. Believed God sought to brand loss onto her heart, to tattoo her soul with unforgiving memories. Her dad was buried in St. Stephen's Cemetery. Every time she visited, thoughts of Steven were inevitable. Even if they were partially glimpsed.

Her dad's bones gave no comfort. And for too long his spirit had gone missing, but she felt it now as Alcor shone above her. As Steven continued to sing.

"Pulse runs through time like a clock. Runs through time." His voice became scratchy from the cold, his emotion scraped raw. "Tried to stop it, smash it apart, but you wound it back. Wound it back. Wound it back!"

She flinched at the last sentence. He'd changed it. On the album and in concert, Ro Skirving sang every wound as in the winding of a clock. He'd sung the last one as a synonym for injure.

Her full attention returned to him. She kept the flashlights away from his face, but their indirect light revealed that his eyes were closed. He was in pain, and the same pain bubbled in her chest. She couldn't guess what was hurting him. But she'd rediscovered today that he was as flawed as anyone else, a work-in-progress. Still vulnerable.

She considered stopping him, but she let him be. His face relaxed once he no longer had to sing. His eyes opened, and he smiled at her through the song's end.

She smiled back, from a place deep inside her. His renewed presence in her life was a gift, perhaps given by her dad. "Thank you," she said, hands clasped over her chest.

"Any time—" he pulled on his gloves and put his guitar in its case—"but maybe in a warmer climate, like Hawaii."

"I don't mean just for the song. I feel incredibly lucky to have this time alone with you. I know how busy you are."

He fastened the guitar case with a pair of loud clacks. "I am, but this day is important to you, and you're important to me, so..."

"I love you." The admission flew out of her, and she coughed afterward. Breathing the frigid air was affecting her lungs, but hearing those words hurled her through time, ricocheting her off every instance she'd said them to him. This one was different than all the others. It had nothing to do with romance or their past. It existed beyond time, beyond the cycle of birth and death, though it was catalyzed by the present. "I love you, Steven," she said again, more slowly, "and I want you in my life."

As her flashlight beamed near his face, his eyes glinted like stars. "Good to know."

Hyde half-sang, half-hummed along to Pearl Jam's "Corduroy" while Jackie drove them in her Miata. Their early dinner had left them starving by ten o'clock. Rochester Hills had no twenty-four hour drive-thrus, so Jackie suggested they drive the half-hour to Detroit. He was in no rush for the night to end, energized by how much she'd let him in. By her acceptance of his glaring imperfections.

Loving him was an act of bravery, regardless whether she recognized it. A condemned sign was nailed to their growing friendship, like it was to his relationships with Betsy and Brooke, but he'd delay the inevitable as long as possible.

"I can't believe it's still here." Jackie jabbed her thumb at her side window. The neon sign of Marco's 24-7 Deli was flashing through it. "My dad and I used to come to this place during midnight snack runs."

She drove to the back of the deli and parked in its small parking lot. Hyde braced himself for a temperature shock before leaving the car, and she hooked her arm around his once they were both outside. "Hurry," she said, leading him in a run. "It's below zero out here!"

"Don't have to tell me twice."

They bolted to the front of the deli, and he pushed open the door.

"Close the door, close it!" the cashier shouted, and Hyde shoved the door closed. "It's like a frozen hell outside."

"I'm breathing out icicles," Jackie said, and the cashier chuckled. "I'm gonna check the magazines." She disentangled herself from Hyde's arm and waved to a rack at the back. "Maybe get something for the flight home. I'll have a ham-and-cheese sandwich on a roll. Swiss cheese."

"Got it," Hyde said and told the cashier his and Jackie's order. The cashier repeated it in Spanish to a man behind the deli counter. Under its glass surface were a variety of dishes, including lemon chicken, tuna salad, and a pasta-corn-tomato mixture. On Hyde's other side, at a much smaller counter, was a feast of candy, cigarettes, and cough drops.

Midnight snack runs. Coping mechanisms. An addiction to sugar. If Jackie's dad had become obese, Jackie had probably gained weight herself. She appeared a healthy weight now, although she hid her body in clothes that were too big. Her clavicle didn't stick out, and her arms weren't bony, and her teeth weren't rotten. No obvious signs of a current eating disorder, just discomfort in her own skin.

"Oh, God, oh, my God!" Jackie shouted, but he couldn't see her past the deli's shelves. "Steven, get over here!"

He was already on his way, envisioning her in the middle of panic attack or having hurt herself.

"What's goin' on?" he said when he reached her, but she was pale and hugging a magazine to her chest. "Hey, talk to me."

"Look!" She thrust the magazine at him. It was Come On Magazine, the rock tabloid. Two people were on the cover who shouldn't have been: Ro and himself.

"'Ro Skirving's Rocker Beau Revealed,'" he read aloud. "'Hint: He's the son of Music Magnate William Barnett.'" He stared at the cover, not at the headline but at the blurry, blown-up picture. "Holy shit."

He knew that photo. It was the one he'd given to Betsy.