Guardians of Joy

Holding it in my hands, it looked small but felt enormous; like a boulder shrunk to the size of teacup

Wondering how ridiculous the thought of finding this thing in the middle of the walkway could be, I wondered about that split second when I was about to walk past this little heart-shaped galaxy until I saw the chain.

It was just this simple looking locket, but the hex on the front and the triple chain holding its clasp was interesting and different, like something my grandmother would have worn.

I swirled my drink; whiskey with a splash of coconut chocolate milk over ice.

‘Who would leave this behind?’ I thought as I turned it over in my hands.

Nothing special about the the lock other than that it was a very Romanesque cross that adjoined the middle. Inside was a picture of a nondescript and plain looking woman holding a very burdened child on the left but then an enormous and painful equation on the right.

I had barely gotten past algebra in school, so the squiggles of computation looked as confusticating as my first girlfriend-- Jenny; a wild and wondrous creature that made me wonder why people did anything else besides dance horizontally.

I could feel the whiskey taking advantage of me and like a small island screaming out into an I endless sea of absurdity I made it a point to forget the odd occurrences of a very difficult day.

I work as a janitor in a hospital, and the stress of cleaning up all the entrailed excrements that continuously litter the floors, often makes me want to drown my sorrow in as large of a bottle of alcohol as I can find…

“Is this seat taken?” says a very beautiful and impeccably dressed woman who I had not noticed standing beside me.

She looks to be about 35, her brown hair shimmering like a glowing ember, and I look at the very empty bartop wondering if I was awake.

“No, it’s not,” I manage to splutter into my drink.

“Good,” she says with a casual air while sweeping herself into the stool next to me.

“What are you drinking?” she asks.

I am crestfallen to see an impossibly large diamond shining from her left ring finger. “Whiskey and coconut chocolate milk,” I manage to stutter.

“That sounds fantastic,” she says before motioning to the bartender that she would like one of the same.

She leans flirtatiously close and asks, “What’s your name?”

“Marko.”

“I’ve seen you here before, Marko.” Then she smiles and picks up the drink that the bartender has deposited in front of her tilting it slightly toward me. “Toast?” she says with coy confidence.

“Sure.”

“I like drinking to wisdom and power,” she says as though I were an old friend.

Wishing she would have said that she liked drinking to love, I managed to nod and lift my glass appropriately and almost managed to turn my grimace into a smile as the tink of the glasses touching resonated for a brief moment.

“Do you know why people touch glasses to toast?” She asks with a charming and increasingly mischievous smile.

Whiskey swirling my mind, I chuckle inwardly thinking that I was experiencing the most terrible miracle the first girl I can remember having a conversation with in months happens to be absolutely stunning and by happenstance also married. “No, I don’t know,” I say. “Why do people touch glasses to toast?”

“Well there are two reasons that I know of...do you want to hear the romantic or the brutal version first?” She said with incandescent glee.

“Uh, end on the romantic, I guess,” I said with a sincere laugh.

“Ok, so the brutal version is that there were families that held control of Europe by killing and removing their opponents and one of their favorite ways to kill people was to put poison on the rim of their drinking glasses; so, by touching glasses, just like a handshake-- there was a disarming gesture of benevolence that basically meant, ‘I am coming without harm to you that wouldn’t be harmful to me as well,’ so like giving someone reassurance that breaking bread and sharing drink was completely on the up and up.”

“Ok,” I said, “and what was the romantic version then?”

“Well,” she almost whispered as she leaned in toward me in a conspiratorial gesture, “the glass can be seen, felt, smelled, and tasted, but can’t be heard; so by touching glasses the senses were all given their due regard and completed.” She leaned back after her last word with a smug and almost mocking tone.

“I definitely like the second version better,” I said without glancing up from my drink.

“I thought you would,” she said laughing with real mirth before asking abruptly, “What happened to you today?”

“I found a locket.” The words came out before I could even think about what I was saying.

“Show it to me.”

I pulled the locket out and handed it to her and as I did so her entire being shook as her face washed into a glossy seriousness the minute she opened and saw the contents.

“This is the Harper-Bolsin equation.”

“What?” I asked.

“This is the equation that has been missing from the genetic research that Grizer Hermanente has been working on,” she said in an almost gasp. “Do you know what you have here?”

“No.”

“Where did you find this?”

“At work.”

“You’re lying, you stole this from the Grizer lab.” She said with an air that had suddenly become very unfriendly and stern.

“No. I found it at work.”

“They’ll kill you for this, don’t you know that?”

I was about to respond when the G-men blasted through the wall. I knew it was going to be...