When Charlie grew up and left the house he moved to one of those California towns that had legislated against meats, trans fats, and synthetic materials. No rubber, he thought, no balloons.

He organized his whole life—abandoned his whole life—to kill memory.

She told me this in the dark of the Frick’s screening room, as an educational reel was rolling. There was no one else in the room—it was two p.m. on a Tuesday—and I could see her eyes slick with threatening tears. I could smell the salt and water. I could detect her respiration catch, her heart rate accelerate. I almost reached out and touched her bare shoulder.

I was this close.

Instead I told her about my own family grief.

When I was a kid my parents and my brother, Tobias, were killed in a botched robbery of our house in Connecticut while I was on a sleepover at a friend’s. I told her what I remembered about my family—my mother playing the guitar on the porch, my father’s fridge in the basement with Pabst Blue Ribbons stacked like bars of gold in a vault, Toby’s corduroy pillow that made his face corrugated with wrinkles for half an hour every day when he woke up. But I did not tell her that this was one of the reasons why I wanted to become a pulse: to stop people taking what didn’t belong to them, whether it’s a Jasper Johns or sensitive government documents or the lives of the people you love.

I also didn’t tell her that at age eleven I discovered my gift when, miserable and depressed and living in my third foster home in five years, I tried to end it all by downing a bottle of Somnipro Plus with a fifth-of-bourbon chaser only to wake up six hours later, a little foggy but very well rested.

Something else undisclosed: for the first time in my adult life I was interested in something other than an eight-figure MacGuffin. I wanted to pulse Charlie herself. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to be her personal pulse.

When she asked me what I did that allowed me to escape to the Frick on a weekday it just came out. “I’m a talent scout for the Mets.” And for the last twelve months I’ve had to stick to that story. It makes me feel bad to lie to Charlie, but it also makes me feel a little James Bondy. Dangerous. And what choice do I have?

If I had a second chance, though, I would tell her everything.

It’s a small museum: it had to end.

We walked out onto the sidewalk. Her body tugged south down Fifth; mine lurched north. I had a job uptown—one of my first jobs after the Frankie Nickels bust, eight-figs of Neo-Classicists in a private collector’s facility—and I was going to be late. So I was fretting over that. Additionally unnerving was the valedictory moment itself. I was once again arrested by a powerful paralyzing force—it was like my first major Pavulon hit—and I heard myself mumbling something about it being nice to meet you and good luck with classes and may all your pop-tops be fizzy. Then, with a crabbed, flipperlike wave of resignation I turned and started limping away.