Electrical Impulses

“Electrical impulses!” Bruce declared as he slammed his glass down onto the side table with such force that Alicia was sure it would shatter. The glass gave a slight ring in protest, but held its form. Alicia winced nonetheless, both in nervous response to the strain on the glass and in defiance against Bruce’s definitive tone.

“That’s hardly a complete explanation” she retorted in what she deemed to be a collected and rational manner. Eloquent, she admitted to herself. Articulate enough to reward herself with another long sip of the 2013 Cab Sav in her own glass.

“Complete!” Bruce snorted back. “Complete to what? The current understanding of the universe? What made the black plague happen, in the words of those who lived it? Micro-organisms? Ha!” Bruce inhaled, exhaled, seemed to lose his train of thought, inhaled and continued. “Corrupt morals! Being on the wrong side of God! That was the cause during the life of the thing. The accepted answer. The complete explanation!”

The right corner of Alicia’s mouth moved towards her cheekbone in a self-satisfied smirk. ‘Poor fool’s drunk’ she concluded, awarding herself another sip. She contemplated the fragrant note of berries on pepper in the lingering effect the wine left on her tongue. She closed her eyes as the flavours slipped past her taste buds, enjoying the sweet taste of the moment. She was more sober, cleverer, and far more confident. Poor Bruce, the gentle fool.

“Electrical impulses would need a source to maintain them,” she countered as she opened her eyes again, looking at Bruce over the rim of her glass. “Electricity needs a source. Something to pulse it into the universe. A dead corpse is a dead corpse. How is it going to provide an ongoing source of electricity?”

Bruce glanced sidelong at Alicia a long moment. She was making the face that he knew she thought was sweetness in a bow, but he thought looked merely constipated. As a younger man he would have wanted to punch that face. As an older-than-young man, he knew punching smug chicks was not a formula for getting laid.

“Do you believe in rivers?” he asked her, his tone low and serious.

Alicia frowned a second, thrown.

“Well, of course,” she finally replied, an edge of caution giving a wobble to her words.

“Right” Bruce lifted his glass again, focusing on its contents. “And do you believe that in rivers, there are eddies?” He asked, eyes piercing into the burgundy of the wine.

Alicia felt her brow furrow slightly as she watched him peer into the contents of his glass. “What, you mean the spinning pools?” she queried, slightly unnerved.

“Exactly” Bruce continued, gaze fixed on the blood-red contents of his glass. “The water spins endlessly. Trapped. It’s not the last water that flowed past in the river. It’s just the water that stuck. That cannot get out again. It loops about. It repeats. Sometimes there’s a little twist to it. A new leaf that’s fallen on top of the pool and spins about for a bit.” In his hand, the glass rocked gently, creating a tiny vortex at the top of the crimson liquid. “And sometimes, the individual water molecules break free. Sometimes enough of them break away fast enough that they push the stick that was holding them there in the first place away and the whole eddy is gone. Just a memory.” The glass became still in his hand, the spinning contents first slowed, then stopped. He waited as the liquid came to a standstill, then brought the glass to his lips.

She watched, waiting, as he finished off the last third of the glass and set it gently on the table beside. She watched as his eyes left the glass and returned to the television, where the English had just scored the 6th run of the test match. She waited, earnest in her keenness to hear him finish his thought, until it became clear he though he already had.

“Are you really suggesting that ghosts are just electrical shadows caught in some back-pool of the universe?” her voice was too high and too keen as it asked the question. She felt her face flush and quickly drained her own glass in defence.

Bruce kept his eyes on the screen and said nothing a moment, relaxed in a gentle slouch against the orange sofa. The bowler pitched and the announcers commented and then the commercials filled the screen again.

For the first time during the conversation, Bruce looked at Alicia directly. He studied her green-grey eyes and held their pleading stare. Then he picked up the wine glass and cleared his throat gently, the edges of his lips turning upward into a smile.

“I don’t know that they are” he said, holding the glass she knew should be empty but was undeniably half-full. “But I don’t know that they aren’t either. And frankly, neither do you.”

He raised his glass to her, then drank from it. Deeply.