Happy Birthday, Marshall

Brant

Marshall is regaling a small group of attractive middle-age housewives with stories of That Celebrity Life. They all seem extremely taken with the handsome, eccentric man in the Buddhist prayer beads.

Leonard

Jocasta strolls over, flipping her hair back. She roots around for something in her purse. "Ladies," she says during a lull in the conversation. "Sorry to be a bother, but if I might borrow the doctor for just a moment, I'll have him back in your company before you know it." She beckons Marshall over to a corner near the garage, just a few feet away, with a curl of her finger.

Brant

Marshall walks over and smiles. "Yes?"

Leonard

"You probably thought I forgot, didn't you?", Jocasta says in a low voice. She quickly reaches out to grasp Marshall's hands -- it's not quite a lunge, but it's very abrupt. She isn't wearing her gloves.

But instead of warm skin and the tiny psychic jolt that comes with a psychometric reading, he feels something hard and cold and weighty, accompanied by a whisper of a spicy, earthy scent. She draws her hands back and leaves him holding a very old, very beautiful, and very worn set of prayer beads.

"They're japamalas, she says. "Made from agarwood. They belonged to our guide back in Vietnam. Happy birthday, Marshall."

Brant

Marshall flinches and his eyes go wide for a flash of a second -- the reaction of man who he's thinks he's about to get stabbed, as Jocasta knows from her long experience in the field. But then that effortless, relaxed charm descends across his face again like a curtain. He looks down at the beads. "Ah ... that is," he pauses like he's searching for a word, "incredibly kind of you, Jocasta. Thank you." He wraps the beads around his wrist a few times, gives Jocasta a joking half-salute, and rejoins the house wives.