Phone Pete

You can’t let this box remain with you. You have to tell the university. Your conscience won’t let you do anything else but tell Pete.

You find his number on your phone and ring it. It rings for a while before he picks it up.

“John, hey how’s it going? I hope you’re not having second thoughts about that job interview?”

“No, no, Pete, they phoned this morning. I’ve arranged an interview.”

“Fantastic, that’s great to here. Look, you’ll do great at the interview. Just be yourself. Justin, stop that.” The last sentence is shouted away from his phone. You know Justin is one of Pete’s two children. You can’t remember how old they are, pretty young.

“Pete, I need to…”

“Look, I can’t talk now. We’re at the airport. But don’t worry about the interview. You’ll do great, and you’re a great teacher. You’ll do good at the job. Must go, before my children bring this airport to a grinding halt. Justin.”

And then the phone goes dead. He’s dialled off, and you didn’t get a chance to tell him about the box. You stare at the phone, horrified and overwhelmed. Should you phone him again? No. You can’t phone him again. It’ll just be more of the same.

You look over at the box. What should you do? To put off action you order a large Chinese takeaway and take your suit out of the wardrobe to check it’s ok. As you eat your takeaway your gaze drifts back to the box. Which box is it? All you’d ascertained was that it was part of the Snetterton Collection, nothing else. You can’t resist looking inside.

At the top of the contents is the small notebook associated with the box. The antiquarian had written his notebooks based on themes, and you’d arraigned the boxes based on the notebooks. You dip into this notebook, with its familiar, barely legible writing. Oh, this is the weirdest box of the lot. It’s the box that contains the sex magic. The antiquarian’s speculations about it contents read like bad erotica.

You look deeper.

Beneath the notebook are two bronze bracelets. 5cm in diameter. Rims 1cm wide. They are embossed with strange abstract symbols, clearly of Celtic origin, possibly writing, although there is no evidence of Celtic writing, ultimately untranslatable. But the feeling there was meaning in the symbols had always tantalised you. Is that meant to be a phallus? That almost suggests two figures copulating. No, look harder and the clarity disappears. They’re just abstract symbols.

You remember discovering the antiquarian’s take on these bracelets. He called them the Bands of Cernunnos, and claimed they would transform the wearer into a sex god.

A ludicrous idea that had circulated the department, until people would visit to see them. And everyone who had seen them had slipped them over their wrists and laughingly had proclaimed themselves a sex god. They’d wiggle their hips and twirl their arms and nothing would happen. Except sometimes the bands fell off.

Yet you’d never tried them. You hadn’t seen the point. You had been embarrassed by the whole idea. If you tried would people believe you wanted to become a sex god? Would they mock you for believing in magic? Others could joke around. You didn’t.

Maybe you should now?