Mind Games (16 page)

T
HE DAY AFTER
the next, I arrive at Aggie’s place wearing a dowdy T-shirt and khaki pants, hair in a ponytail. That was Shelby’s advice:
Dowdy and weaker friend is powerful disillusionist position
.

“Oh, Justine, thank heavens you’re here!” Aggie grabs my arm and pulls me in the door. She’s wearing a layered beige outfit, sort of a sexy desert traveler look. She introduces me to a pair of women sitting in the living room, both wearing white medical jackets. Sasha and Elaine. “We’ll be a few minutes.” With that, she rushes me upstairs.

The white medical jackets have me worried.

She slams the office door and strips off her outer layer, a loose linen shirt. My stomach jumps when I see the gauze patch taped onto her upper arm.

“Are those two women nurses?”

“No, you’re the nurse,” she says. “They’re the beauticians. They used to work in LA, too, so they know what they’re doing. I’ve had it with Midwestern corn-fed hairstyles. You know?
Uh!”
She rubs her arms. “I slept horribly last night, because whatever skin wasn’t pressing on the sheet—” She gyrates her shoulders.

“Uh!”

I’m shocked at how fast and hard she’s fallen. That’s the goal, though—to get the target rolling, as they say.
Nevertheless, I feel this burst of compassion. I force myself to remember her husband—buried, helpless, ants streaming in and out of his ears.

She grabs a Tupperware off the desk and hands it to me. “A cellulose filament I picked out of my arm is in there.”

A tiny white filament rests on the bottom. Supposedly the filaments are the excrement of the Osiris parasite, though this one looks suspiciously similar to the carpet.

“I need you to examine it.” She leads me over to the corner, where she has a microscope set up. “You have to check it for me.”

I stare at the microscope. I’ve never used one in my life.

“What’s wrong?” she demands.

“Nothing. I’m just thinking.”

“Something’s going on.”

I straighten up. “I need tweezers. And latex gloves.”

“’Cause you don’t want to contaminate
yourself?”

“It’s procedure.”

Aggie’s eyes are small and shiny; even her face looks smaller. “I’ll ask the girls. Next time, bring your own shit.” She pulls on her outer layer and leaves.

The microscope bristles with knobs and trays and slots. I can’t even turn the thing on. I collapse in the chair in front of it, feeling deeply weary. Why is crashing this woman so goddamn important that Packard would entrap me as he did? Is there a larger purpose? Something with Henji? And how do I get free? Because there has to be a way. There’s always a way. As I twist knobs and push buttons, I find myself desperately missing Cubby. With all this craziness, I just want to be with him.

“Everything okay?” Aggie’s standing there, holding gloves and tweezers. How long was she watching me?

“No,” I say. “This microscope isn’t powerful enough.”

“It’s the most powerful one a person can buy.”

“But not the most powerful one a medical professional can get. And it doesn’t have the ultraviolet settings I need. Let me take the filament to the lab at school where I can perform the tests.”

“Can we go there now?”

“Students only. I’ll go tomorrow morning. I’m sorry, Aggie, that you had to spend all that money on a microscope.”

“What do I care about money? Hell, I’m flying first class to Florence,
Italy
, next month to see this one doctor who treats it. Charges up the wazoo.”

“Wow.” Visit to foreign specialists. Aggie enjoys a level of hypochondriac opportunity I’d barely dreamed of. We discuss more medical stuff. If anybody was listening in, they’d think we were two doctors, except for the fact that Aggie frequently repeats herself, then screws up her face and says, “Did I already say that?”

My fashion magazine, rolled up in my purse, calls to me like an evil beacon. Here she is, obsessed with an imaginary disease all from one zing, and I’m yearning to do it again.

“You want a drink?”

“I’d love one,” I say. “But are you sure you should mix alcohol with your prescriptions?”

“It’s fine if I balance it with something speedy.” She grabs my arm. “Don’t tell Elaine and Sasha about the virus. I don’t want them to not work on us out of fear for infection.” Philosophically, she adds, “Infection is a risk they always take, so they’re used to it. It’s their fault if I infect them.”

I assure her that I won’t tell, and soon we’re downstairs, sipping champagne in her spa-like bathroom as Elaine and Sasha set up their mobile beauty parlor. There’s a plasma-screen TV embedded right into the sparkly wall. The sound is off, but the picture’s on. A
local celebrity newscaster shows off his shower, which is constructed as a waterfall.

“Ugly,” Aggie says.

Sasha, who has purple glasses and unnaturally red hair, shows me a book that has brown hair color swatches pasted to its pages. I compliment the collection, unsure why she’s showing it to me.

“You didn’t change your mind, did you?” Aggie says.

“About what?”

“Your new hair color. I shoulda told you to bring the magazine.”

“Oh. I did bring it.”

“What, you carry it around?”

“Yeah, actually.” I get out the magazine and turn to the photo, a dozen pages or so after the article.

I feel Aggie’s eyes on me. She finds it suspicious that I carry it around with me.

“Chestnut,” Sasha says.

Suddenly I really like the idea of getting my old hair back.

Aggie holds a swatch to my cheek. “Finally the drapes will match the carpeting.”

“Too dark,” says Elaine, who has a boy’s haircut and dangly silver earrings. She seems to be the boss.

After some debate, followed by harsh mockery of the model’s chunky 1990s’ boots, it’s decided Sasha will cover my head in foils, alternating shades of brown for
dark dimensionality
. That’s the term they use. We go to. Elaine soaks and scrapes Aggie’s nails—without wearing gloves—and Sasha puts foil strips into my hair, and they’re both half watching their show.

“Oooh, Chief Otto Sanchez,” Sasha says to the TV screen at one point, “you can detect and inspect me any day of the week.”

I look up to see Sanchez gazing down at me. He shows a brick to the camera, grave expression in his big
brown eyes. It’s the same footage from two days ago at Jarvis’s.

“I bet he’s bald under that beret,” Aggie says. “That’s why he wears it all the time. And the hair’s a wig.”

“I just wish he’d catch that bricker,” Elaine says sternly. “One of the victims was my neighbor. She was so nice, and she had this little poodle—God, they can’t catch him fast enough.”

“Sanchez’ll get him,” I say.

Sasha says, “I got this little chain thing where you clip your wallet to your purse so the highcaps can’t suck it out with their freak powers. Like the cowards they are.”

Elaine shakes a nail polish bottle angrily. “Sanchez needs to get cracking.”

“He doubled case clearances over the last year,” I say.

“Too bad crime tripled,” Sasha snaps. “Sanchez doesn’t need more cops. What he needs is to round up all the highcaps and just shoot ’em. He should find a way to identify them, like genetics or something, and just take ’em out.”

I feel cold. “That wouldn’t be right, and he would never do that.”

“He
should,”
Sasha says.

“I don’t like talk like that,” I say. “That’s a horrible thought on every level.”

“I agree,” Elaine says.

“Regular humans are responsible for crimes, too,” I add. “Should Sanchez shoot all of us?”

Sasha frowns. I’m thinking it would’ve been smarter to have this discussion after she was finished coloring my hair.

Aggie pipes up. “All I can say is why would Sanchez wear that beret and that wig if he wasn’t bald as a baby? And that’s final.”

Eventually Sasha has my whole head covered in foils, which gives me the look of a space-age lion.

“So,” Aggie says. “How do you think your new hair will go over with you-know-who?”

I flash on Packard. I want to punch myself in the face.

“You don’t think Carter’ll like it?”

“Oh,” I shrug. “I wasn’t even thinking of him.”

Aggie raises her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “Who were you thinking of?”

I sigh, hating myself on about five different levels. “Somebody I don’t want to be thinking of.”

“Ooooh! Another man!” Aggie exclaims.

Elaine has moved to bathing Aggie’s toes. Aggie sees me staring and gives me a warning look. If she really had the parasite, Elaine would be infected. I shudder inwardly.

“Compare and contrast,” Aggie demands.

“There’s no comparison,” I tell Aggie via the mirror. “I just have to get hold of myself.”

Aggie makes her goofy face again. “That’s no fun.”

I slam the rest of my champagne, and Sasha refills my glass.

Aggie shakes her blonde curls, a marvel of generosity and cruelty. “Details, sister.”

I study the tile pattern around the mirror. The whole world seems to slow and hush whenever I think about that kiss; then I think about how Packard betrayed me, and I go seasick with anger. “It’s just some guy who I should never have gotten involved with, and he screwed up my whole life.”

“Mmm!” Aggie says brightly.

“It’s like he’s consuming my mind. I kissed him once—twice if you count one where we were interrupted right away. But it’ll never happen again. Because he is a destructive and dangerous person.” Sasha turns my chair and checks under some foils. “But I can’t stop thinking about kissing him. It just keeps replaying in my mind, over and over. And since I’ve met this guy, I’ve done
things I would’ve never imagined doing a few months ago.”

“Really!” Aggie rubs her hands. “Gimme the details of the kiss. Set the stage.”

“Oh, I was upset about something I’d heard.” I can’t believe I’m telling her, and I can’t stop; it feels too good. “We were at this place where we hang around. It was one of those kisses that lights up every molecule in your body, you know?” Suddenly I’m trotting out every little tidbit—the position of his fingers, the way he tasted.

“Does Carter know?”

“It’s not Carter I’m worried about. I have a regular boyfriend who’s the one for me, and I betrayed him. I have a great life with him, and he makes me a better person.”

“Hold the presses. So you have three boyfriends.” She counts off on her fingers. “One, this regular boyfriend. Two, the destructive one. Three, your brother. Right?”

“Yeah.”

Sasha smirks.

Aggie scratches discreetly at her arm. “I say go with the hot destructive one.”

“No way. I need to get free of him.”

“Since you don’t want him, I want to meet him.”

“I don’t think that would work.”

Aggie frowns. “You want to get free of him, but I can’t have him?”

“It’s complicated.”

“If he likes
you
, I’m sure he’d like me. That came out wrong, but you know what I mean.” She scratches her arm vigorously. “Bring him over.”

“It’s impossible.” I hate the focus I’ve put on Packard. Thankfully, Sasha wants to put me under a dryer, then wash my hair.

Twenty minutes later I’m a brunette, all dark
dime nsionality with a deep side part and waves down past my shoulders.

Aggie closes one eye and then another, like she’s having focus trouble. “You like?”

“I love it.” We discuss my hair—everybody agrees my new color is prettier—and I wonder now what Cubby will think. Tomorrow’s Friday, our standing date night. I cancelled the last two with excuses involving my new job, but if I’m honest with myself, I didn’t want to face him after the kiss. Now I’ll come in with this new hair. Will he feel like I’m pulling away? Am I?

Aggie grabs the magazine and finds the page with the brunette model for comparison. Suddenly the napkin marking the vein star page floats down to the floor. Aggie picks it up. “Mongolian Delites. That’s the restaurant with that big face on the door, right?”

“Uh …” Somebody would’ve brought her so Packard could see her psychological structure. He can do his thing through photos, but he prefers to see the targets in person.

“Yeah,” Aggie says. “It is.”

I extend my hand for the napkin. It makes me nervous that she has it.

“Testy.”

“I need it to mark a page.”

She holds it away from me. “Mongolian Delites,” she says.

I freeze.

She makes a big show of inspecting the napkin. “Mongolian Delites.” She lets her syllables flow musically.
“Mongolian Deelites.”
Full of medications, destabilized by me, and still she zeroes in on my anxiety about the napkin, like a shark smelling blood. “What’s wrong, Nurse Jones? You don’t want me to know you go to
Mongolian Deelites?
I think something’s up with
Mongolian Deelites.”

“Nothing’s up with it.”

“Oh, I know when something’s up. Maybe this is where you and your destructive boyfriend hang around. I should check it out.”

I practically fall out of my chair. She could wreck the whole operation! I grab the napkin out of her hand. “The problem, Aggie, is that the napkin was marking this article.” I open it up to the vein star syndrome page. “But it’s such a disturbing article, I didn’t want you to see it.”

“Oh yeah?” She takes the magazine and reads as Sasha and Elaine pack up their beauty tools.

“I’m writing a paper on it for nursing school.” I read along, stoking my fear; then I rest my hand on Aggie’s shoulder and push out to the surface of her energy dimension.

“When you’re in nursing school, you see the full horror of what can go wrong with the body, and how medicine hasn’t changed from the dark ages. You know what today’s most important surgical instrument is? The saw. Sometimes it’s tiny, like a scalpel, and sometimes it’s giant, like for a knee operation. And then after that you have scrapers and needle and thread.” I’m starting to burn the hole. I look at us in the mirror, my dark dimensionality hovering over Aggie’s brightness. “Throw in some drugs, which are just mashed-up plants … God, the battle against disease is so hopeless.”

Aggie’s face changes completely as my fear surges into her—she gets this exaggerated expression, like a Greek tragedy mask. “That’s one of the most disturbing things I ever heard!”