Head Rush (7 page)

“Those aren’t lookouts; they’re snipers,” he says. “It’s handled.”

“Jesus!”

“You’ve been revised. Can’t you feel it? Just a little?” he pleads.

“You killed a man. You don’t get to undo that by messing with my mind.”

“I’m not the one—”

“God, would you just stop? How many times have you tricked me? How gullible do you think I am? Plus, I happen to know that if you really thought I was revised, you wouldn’t be here. Because according to you, a revision is permanent. Remember telling me that? You’re obviously here to
convince
me I was revised. It won’t work.”

He seems about to say something, still watching me with that searching gaze. I remember thinking once that if I became blind, his would be an easy face to recognize by touch—rough-hewn nose and lips. The way his cheekbones jut out too harshly. It’s a strong, crudely-made face.

But when he smiles, there’s this lightness to him, like when you crack a rock and a gem shines out.

Now he just looks lost.

And he shot Avery. I close my eyes as the sound of the shot rings in my head.

“I saw you shoot him.” Rage wells up in me as I see Avery lying wrong and broken on the shoreline. Dying. “I’m in love with Otto too,” I tell him. “I love him.” Saying I love Otto still feels like a lie. Even that is Packard’s fault—he made me second guess everything, even my own feelings.

The pressure in my head builds. “Uh!” I press the heel of my palm to my forehead.

“It’s the revise,” he says. “It’s too deep an internal contradiction. Zing me. You’ll feel better.”

“
That’s
why you’re here? To get me to zing?” I pull my hand from my head, shocked. “Do you know how hard I’ve struggled with it? And you come here to upset me, then offer to let me zing you?”

“No!”

“Stop lying!” I push him with all my might, and he stumbles back this time. “When will you stop messing with me? You think I’m so stupid!”

“You’ve been revised.”

“And you yourself said that when a person is revised, the one who would
know
the truth is gone. Or was I revised to imagine that conversation, too?”

“We had that conversation.”

“Then why are you here?”

He looks at me wildly, eyes shining, face flushed.

“Why?” I demand.

“I
know
nobody comes back from a revise,” he says. “I know it’s impossible. Of course I know that.” This, like he’s talking to some part of himself. “You can’t remember. The
you
who knows the truth is dead. Yes, Justine, I couldn’t be more aware of these things!” He clutches the thick, soggy lapels of his long black coat. “Of course you can’t remember.”

He comes nearer, gaze intense.

I back up.

“You asked me if I think you’re stupid. No, Justine, I don’t think you’re stupid at all.” Lapels in hand, he pounds his fists to his chest, once. Hard. The sound of the pound reverberates through my own chest. “
I’m
stupid. Me.
I’m
stupid,” he says. “I know it’s impossible to come back from a revise, but I want you to come back anyway. I want you to remember what really happened. I want you to know I could never kill a man. I want you to remember us.”

I watch him through the haze of pain. He seems so genuine. But he always has.

His voice softens, like the air is going out of him a little. “I
need
you to remember us…”

“Stop it.” Still I don’t call out for Max. Where is this urge to protect him coming from? 

“I was stupid to lie to you. Stupid to betray you and to use you. I was stupid to believe you when you said Otto made you happy. To send you to him, to think he might have a shred of decency where your free will is concerned. I was
stupid
to let you out of my sight that last day. I regret so much of what I did. And I keep hoping things will be right again. It’s stupid, of course I know that. And I’ll keep being stupid, Justine. I’ll keep being stupid because I love you.”

I back away with a sob trapped in my chest. “You love me? How could you say that?” It’s so twisted that he’d say that
now
, after all that he’s done. For the first time I wonder if he might be going crazy. I picture his face when he shot Avery…the pain in my head sharpens, and I get this lurch of fear—I think it might consume me. “Just get out.”

He doesn’t move. Is this what a vein-star blowout feels like? Even zinging can’t cure a ruptured vein.

“In one second I’ll yell. I mean it.”

“I love you. I won’t stop waiting—”

“I mean it. I shouldn’t even warn you.”

I hold the back of the couch and lower myself to the floor, sitting cross-legged. I close my eyes. He’s saying something, but I barely hear him. I feel like I might pass out from the pain. Things go dim—a very bad sign! I warn him again to get out. And, though it goes against every fiber of my being, I push through my urge to protect him. Because I have to protect myself. “Max!” I yell.

Banging, screeches, footsteps. I regret it instantly as I sink deeper into the pain. What have I done? I feel like I’ve betrayed him. More sounds.

“Miss Jones?”

Is it a second later? Two minutes later? I look up.

Max rests a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay? What’s going on?” Norman’s behind him. Max asks again: “Are you okay?”

“No—yes.” I feel like I don’t understand the question. “Call Otto. Tell him to get over here. Hurry. Please.”

He pulls out his phone. Only then do I look over at the curtain. It’s still. Was he even here? But foot-sized puddles are drying on the floor.

I feel sick that the killer of Avery said he loves me; it feels like a perversion of something good and true. I should tell them Packard was here. Point out the puddles. They could still catch him. I keep silent. 

The old Justine always knew what to do. Well, most of the time.

I reach up and Max gives me the phone. “I really think it’s something,” I say to Otto.

A door squeaks on Otto’s end of the line. “I’m on my way,” he says.

Elevator bell. He’s on the move. Luckily, the government center is just a block away.

“It’s too much,” I whisper. “It’s different this time. A surge of stress—”

“Relax your face. Try that.”

“I can’t.”

“Breathe. Can you do that?” He launches into the reminding technique, where we remind each other how past episodes turned out to be nothing. Max and Norman retreat to give me privacy. Otto asks me to relate my symptoms. We always do that because if you pass out and you’re taken to the hospital unconscious, it helps with the diagnosis. I relate them with total precision.

If I’d been revised, I’m sure I’d know it. Simon and Shelby don’t believe it either, or surely they’d say something.

Another wave of pain. “This feels wrong,” I say. “Even with ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, the wolf came at the end.”

“I know,” Otto says. “Just wait.” It sounds like he’s running. “I’m already halfway down the block. Breathe.”

I lie down on the floor and breathe. It’s all very ignoble.

“Slow, deep breaths. You need your autonomic nervous system to slow down.”

“That’s my line,” I say weakly.

The
thunk
of the elevator doors through the phone. He’s already downstairs?

“I’m scared,” I say, the only true thing I can think of.

Another
thunk
. Eventually I feel the vibrations of his footsteps on the floor beneath my head. “That was fast,” I whisper as his shadow darkens the world beyond my closed eyes.

He sits on the floor, shifts me gently to cradle my head on his lap.

Unbidden, I picture Avery’s eyes. Again I feel the fear. A wave of rage roars through me. “Packard was here,” I blurt out. “Goddamn him. Why does he keep—”

“Packard? What?”

“He came in the window. To tell me I’m revised. Ahh!” I cry as the pain turns pinpoint.

Otto’s muttering something into his phone. I barely realized he made a call. Again I’m seasick with this regret, deep in my gut, as though I betrayed Packard. Why should I have allegiance to Avery’s killer? Am I going crazy?

“You should’ve told me earlier,” Otto says. “We’ll never find him now.”

“I called out to Max,” I protest. “Excuse me if I got blindsided by pain! It’s gone pinpoint!”

“Pinpoint? You’re sure?”

“Of course!”

“Just breathe. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“It’s the tension that’s worsening it.”

“There’s nothing for you to worry about.” But I can tell he’s worried.

He says the calming things we usually say to each other. I latch onto his voice, rich and deep, like a song.

I look up. “Too bad we don’t have our own CT scanner,” I say. We often say this.

He nods, and I have this thought that maybe he’s installing one in the condo below. Maybe that’s the wedding surprise. It makes me feel strange.

Sad.

“Close your eyes.” He brushes his fingertips over my forehead. “Try to soften here.”

I close my eyes, so grateful he’s come.

“Soften. Breathe. Let me take care of you.”

It feels good to put myself in his hands, because he understands. I make my thoughts simple. Just him. A feathery touch to the side of my forehead. The light changes as he leans his face nearer, touches his lips to mine.

I open my eyes. Is it better? I don’t know, but I feel less alone in my misery now that he’s here.

He smiles. Sooty curls frame his face. “It’s better. I can tell.”

“You can’t tell.”

“Yes I can. And the fact that it’s even a little better proves it’s a tension phenomenon unrelated to internal physicality, therefore benign.”

I smile wanly. We always try to sound like we know what we’re talking about. “That was pretty good.”

He strokes my forehead. “I’ll keep you safe,” he says. “You’re not alone.”

Chapter Five

I wander out of our bedroom the following evening, all set for my bridesmaids to arrive for our grand dinner. Miss Erma Saunders, the woman who married the mayor of Midcity back in 1943, held a bridesmaids’ dinner instead of a bachelorette party too. And with the ten o’clock curfew, it’s not as if my friends and I can go out dancing. Our party will break up well after ten, but Otto has arranged for police officers to drive my guests home.

My dress is a red-and-black satin affair with red-jewel sparkles, and my shoes are black satin with black sparkles. I think I look good, but I feel completely off balance. One moment I feel angry at myself for not sending Max straight after Packard—doesn’t Avery deserve justice?—and the next, I feel like a cretin for turning Packard in at all, half-assed as it was.

I head down another hall and spy Otto in the kitchen with Kenzakuro, his new personal chef. Kenzo has a shaved head—he looks like a Sumo wrestler, and probably was one once too, considering that everyone working around here seems to have extreme pugilistic abilities. Kenzo also runs a gay-themed cooking show on a cable access channel that he thinks nobody ever watches.

Otto gives me a rosy-cheeked smile from behind the steamer. One of the things I love about Otto is that I never doubt how he feels about me. With all the men I’ve ever dated, I was always the one who loved the most, fretted the most, and got dumped. But not Otto. We fit like that.

With a flourish, he puts a pinch of spice into the large pot on the stove.

Kenzo glances up from his chopping. “You look good enough to eat.”

“Don’t tell that to Stu’s sleepwalkers,” I say.

Otto casts a dark look into the pot.

Kenzakuro’s cheeks fatten with a smile as he tips the cutting board piled with peppers into a silver bowl.

The stony set to Otto’s face tells me he’s struggling to hold his prisoners in today. We often worry that the way he’s using his force fields to hold Midcity’s worst criminals in secret locations around town might be weakening his head’s vascular structure…and making him more vulnerable to vein star. Their will to be free creates an awful pressure on his brain.

But what’s the alternative? Letting them all loose would endanger the city even more.

Otto sniffs the steam and adds another pinch of spice. “Does it seem unusually dark in here?” he asks.

Kenzo shakes his head.

Uh oh. We recently watched a sad Bette Davis movie where her vision went dark right before she died of some horrible head problem. It gave us both the dangerous idea that vision issues precipitate cranial issues.

I flip on a lamp. “Does this help?”

Otto squints, seemingly unsure. He’s definitely feeling his prisoners.

Kenzo and I exchange glances; Kenzo knows too. He heads around to my side of the room and pulls a bottle from the refrigerator. “Champagne?”

I nod, grateful for this distraction.

“Georges Fancher ’73,” Kenzo says, filling the glasses. The champagne sparkles as if it has its very own light source. He hands me a glass and goes around to give Otto his. “To both you nuts.”

I sip. “So, so wonderful.”

Otto puts the glass to his generous lips and, gazing at me from under thick dark lashes, he takes a sip. Probably his last sip, because the alcohol will dilate his blood vessels—very bad for vein star.

“Thank you. Both of you. For all this,” I say. “For helping to make my dinner perfect.” I go over and put my hand on Otto’s arm, remembering what it was like to zing all my fear into him, and the sense of peace afterwards. I wish Otto could feel that glorious relief right now. Not that Otto could ever zing; he doesn’t generate the volume of fear I do. But I wish I could give him the feeling of it as a gift.

Chimes. Someone’s coming up in the elevator.

Otto raises his dusky brows.

I smile and take off down the hall and to the foyer, startled for a split second at the red roses bursting from the vase on the marble table. So many! A surprise from Otto. I breathe in their scent and flip on the monitor that shows who’s in the elevator.

Norman’s in there, as usual, along with my best friend, Shelby.

Shelby’s disillusionist specialty is a grim outlook on life—she thinks there’s no such thing as happiness, and she’s really good at convincing people of that.