Mind Games (2 page)

“Greedy, stupid, and paranoid, with two suitcases full of undocumented cash,” he hisses. “Forgot what a perfect mark your pop was. Probably my easiest ever.”

I stare, shocked, as he exhales oniony breath. Then he slides his fat tongue up over his lip, revealing its slimy underbelly, adding grossness to insult.

My heart races, and my head tingles dangerously. But I straighten up and smile, like he’s this buffoon. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s hiding fear and horror. I spend my whole life hiding fear and horror.

“There were ten suitcases of cash,” I lie. “You didn’t know because you’re an idiot.”

The deadish way he peers at me gives me chills; I want desperately to escape. The bartender starts placing drinks on a tray.

I smile and continue. “We hardly even missed the two.” Another lie. The truth is that Foley’s scam helped to destroy what was left of our family.

A hand on Foley’s shoulder; it’s the handsome restaurateur. “Those drinks for you?” He doesn’t wait for Foley’s answer. “I’ll have Chuck bring them out to your table. On the house. Sorry about all this.” He gestures toward me. Me!

With an oily smile, Foley pushes off the bar.

“I wasn’t bothering him,” I protest. “He came up to me.”

“I know,” the restaurateur says, watching Foley cross the large, dim dining room. “I know.” Some men are handsome in a sculptural, symmetrical way, but the restaurateur’s good looks come from imperfection:
bumpy, maybe once-broken nose, crudely shaped lips, a sort of rough-and-tumble allure you can feel sure as gravity. “Forget him.” He draws closer, and I become acutely aware of my pulse pounding. “I want to talk about what I can do for you, and what you can do for me.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” I say. “My boyfriend and I are just finishing up.”

“You’re fine?” He looks at me hard—looks into me, it seems. “What about the vein star problem?”

How does he know?
“What about it?” I ask.

He smiles, all radiant self-possession. “I’m the one who can cure you.”

“Cure me of what? Anxiety or vein star syndrome?”

“Both. I can give you your life back.”

I regard him carefully. He has to be a highcap. My guess is he read my thoughts back there and wants to con me. Still, I have to ask. “What’s the something I do for you?”

“You’d work for me.”

“Doing what?”

“Does it matter? Is there anything you wouldn’t do to be free?”

I know a Faustian proposition when I hear one. “A lot of things. I’m not that desperate.”

“You were desperate ten minutes ago. You’ll be desperate again.” He fixes on my eyes. Slow smile. He’s like this handsome maniac.

“I’m used to desperate, buddy. Desperate’s my factory default. But thanks anyway.”

I return to our table to find Cubby digging into dessert. He protests about my paying, of course.

I say, “You paid for the last ten meals and I can’t buy you one congratulatory dinner?”

He tilts his head. “Thanks, Justine.”

“Well, congratulations to you, Cubby.” I don’t tell him about the drama up at the bar; it’ll just remind him
how messed up I am. I glare over at Foley and his victims.

“It was kind of you to stick your neck out when it wasn’t even your problem.”

Crime is everybody’s problem; that’s what I’m thinking. I spear a nutty, gooey cluster with my fondue fork and dip it into the melted chocolate. “Mongolian Fondue,” I say. “Very authentic.”

Cubby beams at me like I said something clever. He always thinks I’m cleverer than I am.

          Two

W
E’RE STUCK IN TRAFFIC
soon after we turn onto the lakefront. Up ahead you can see the Midcity police walking between cars, checking in windows. Flashlight beams flit like bright bugs over the boulders piled along the shore.

“Jailbreak,” Cubby says. “I bet you anything. They’ll never find him here.”

I nod. Lake Michigan on one side, warehouse ruins and half-built condos on the other. It’s a wonderland of hiding places.

“You don’t hear about constant jailbreaks in other major metropolitan areas,” he says. “No wonder crime’s out of control. If they can’t even keep the perps locked up …” He points at me. “And don’t say it’s all because of the highcaps.”

“Okay.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Lots of people are thinking it.”

Cubby looks away. He’s one of the few people left in Midcity—besides the authorities, of course—who still maintain that believing in highcaps is like believing in UFOs and Elvis sightings. “Even physics professors are susceptible to mass hysteria,” he says.

“Did you hear me mention the physics professors?”

“No. But you were about to mention them.”

He’s right—I was. Two physics professors witnessed last month’s brick attack, and they’ve been going on all the news shows saying that the brick’s zigzag trajectory defied the laws of physics, and that there’s no way it was propelled by a high-powered slingshot like the authorities claim. They didn’t come out and say it was high-caps, but that was the implication.

The crime wave makes me sad and angry, and every year it gets worse. Now, thanks to our new serial killer, the Brick Slinger, the playgrounds and ballparks are empty even though it’s the height of summer, and people scurry from cars to houses to cars, many of them wearing helmets and hardhats, even when it’s ninety degrees. Midcity used to be a happy city. And in spite of our decaying industry and schools, we managed to stay average in most every measure—people were really proud of that. Now they live in fear.

I know all about fear. And nobody deserves to live that way.

“Chief Otto Sanchez is going to turn this around,” I say.

“You put way too much faith in that man.”

“Just wait, you’ll see. He different and he
cares
. You can tell.”

Cubby lowers our windows. “He’s the same as the rest.” The warm breeze off the lake smells faintly of rotting fish.

I give an annoyed little grunt. It’s not like I know Otto Sanchez personally, but I have this deep trust in his goodness, his arrow-straight strength. Even seeing photos of him makes me feel warm inside. He’s the man who will turn this city around—I’m sure of it. From time to time he also stars in various fantasies of mine, though these have little to do with law and order.

I turn to smile at the officer who comes up to my
window. He swings his flashlight beam around on Cubby’s backseat.

The Brick Slinger is a telekinetic, of course—the most common kind of highcap. Telekinetics are believed to be responsible for a lot of the burglaries and pickpocketings, though highcap telepaths and precogs reportedly cause their share of mayhem. Some people blame the highcap mutations on the sludgy Midcity River. That’s a little comic-booky for me, but who knows?

As soon as the cops turn to the car behind us, Cubby rolls the windows back up. “We’ll be here forever,” he says. And he looks over at me with a suggestive smile.

“Right here? I’m not so sure, Cub.” I’m still off-balance from the restaurant situation.

“I understand,” he says. He reaches over and places a heavy hand on my knee.

“Cubby—”

He creeps it up teasingly. His hand is smooth except where the weightlifting calluses scratch my tender skin. His hand makes my whole thigh feel alive. I inhale softly.

He says, “Are you sure?”

I’m feeling a lot less sure as his fingers slide up under the hem of my skirt.

“Because if you’re not
really
sure …”

I give him a saucy look. “That’s a winning salesperson’s pitch?
If you’re not really sure?”

He moves his hand again: a squeeze, a shift. “I’m just setting the stage for my pitch.” The hungry way he looks at me makes my blood race. He moves his hand closer. I find I’m feeling better. He leans over and kisses me, tasting like Mongolian barbeque, pressing his fingers to my panties in the perfect spot. I inhale sharply. He is a connoisseur of perfect spots, and I am a connoisseur of him and his perfect life.

“Let’s do it right here,” he says.

“Cuthbert Montgomery!” I scold. “We’re in a traffic jam!”

“The windows are shaded.”

“Not
that
shaded.”

“Come on,” he cajoles.

“Car sex in public? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“You are such a square.”

He’s close. I’m
trying
to be a square.

Saved by the honks. The line is finally creeping.

“Patience is a virtue,” I say, adjusting my skirt. He puts the car into gear and I sit back.

I was always the kid who followed the rules, cut perfectly in the lines—not because I was normal, but because I came from the town’s weird family. People who grew up normal think it’s something to be rejected. They’re wrong. Normal is a precious kind of freedom, and if you don’t have it, it’s all you ever want.

   Two hours later we’re sitting across from each other in Cubby’s luxurious whirlpool bath, accommodating each other’s shins and feet and discussing the merits of standing sex, which we just had. I liked it, though my standing leg got tired. Cubby had to bend his knees a bit, but it gave his quads quite a workout. We’d moved to the couch partway through.

“You know what this whole thing means, of course.”

“The standing?” I ask.

“Winning the top salesperson. The trip. It means we’re going to Belize in December.”

“You’re asking me to go?” I’m stunned. It’s seven months away. I can’t believe he’s asking me something so far in the future.

“Yeah, I’m asking.”

“Then I’d love to go with you. I would love that.”

“Clear your calendar.”

“God, how exciting. I’ve only ever been to Canada.”

“Belize is no Canada, baby.”

“I bet.” I rest my head on Cubby’s knee, trying not to picture dirt-floor clinics and bright tropical bugs darting across rusty surgical instruments. “I bet.”

   I wake up alone in Cubby’s king-size bed after a nearly sleepless night. A note on his pillow:
Off at b-ball
. His Saturday game. Out the window, the sky is a brilliant blue over the smokestacks and less fancy neighborhoods north of the river. Mongolian Delites is over there somewhere. And I know that if I were to clamber over the bedside table and press my cheek to the window, I’d see a slice of Lake Michigan. We joke that that qualifies Cubby’s condo as lake view.

I plop my head back down. I’d woken in the middle of the night, panicked that the extreme anxiety I experienced at the restaurant might have triggered a slow leak. Anxiety worsens vein star syndrome, so you get anxiety about anxiety. I sneaked into Cubby’s home office and went online and discovered the following horrible news on veinstar.org: a new MD forum posting refers to “persistent” tingling. My tingling is persistent—persistently intermittent. That’s a kind of persistence. After that I’d just crept around the dark condo in various states of panic.

This morning, of course, I’m fine. It’s easy to see, in hindsight, that you were being a crazed hypochondriac, but when you’re in it, it seems so real.

I pull the covers over me, wondering what it would be like to be Cubby. Cubby has faith in life the way you might have faith in a five-star hotel: it’s a world of sunny swimming pools, plush towels, and capable people at the front desk, and your happiness is the number-one priority. I want more than anything to live in Cubby’s safe hotel. To go through one day without health fears. One day.

An hour later I’m all ready for work in a pink tank top and nubby white skirt I’d stashed at Cubby’s, and I’m down on the river promenade buying a tall, extra-strong coffee from an elderly vendor. The city paid all kinds of money to make the promenade pretty, but thanks to the rumors about telekinetic pickpockets and mind-control muggers, it’s deserted. And, of course, the Brick Slinger doesn’t help. I don’t care; I refuse to let the crime wave dictate my movements. Though I do keep my cash pinned to the inside of my purse.

I arrive at Le Toile Boutique, the fancy dress store I manage, right on time. Marnie and Sally, my favorite underlings, are unpacking scarves from China. The scarves have tiny, angry-looking faces on them, and the girls joke about Le Toile’s owner being drunk when she ordered them. I lean on the glass counter watching the upscale shoppers rifle through the racks of dresses. A few of them wear steel-reinforced safari hats in pink or beige, the latest in protective headwear. We tend to get a lot of the horsey set in from suburbs like Ellsworth Heights, though I don’t know where they got “heights,” since the land here is flat for miles.

My thoughts keep going back to the restaurateur. How could he tell about the vein star? Surely he was just a highcap telepath, reading my health anxiety. That’s all.

I sigh. I can still picture my mother at the kitchen table in front of her medicines and vitamins.
Never take aspirin for a pinprick headache
, she’d tell my brother and me,
because that’s an indicator of vein star syndrome, and the anticoagulant effects of aspirin will only speed the bleedout
.

The doctors and most everybody else thought she was an alarmist—until she died of a ruptured vein star. I was thirteen. I went through the years after that in a haze. I get this pang, thinking back on it, wishing I could have
been there for her. I can only imagine how alone and scared she felt.