Mind Games (27 page)

He goes at a different corner, looking like a lanky cat burglar with his black shirt and black pants, black hair falling over his dark eyes. “Nice work on Aggie, by the way.” He runs his fingers around the board. “That’s some freaky skin condition, Nurse Jones.”

I feel a wave of shame for what I did to her. “I’m not proud of making her feel bad.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing compared to how bad the mister felt, watching ants carry off bits of his brain. The state executes people for that kind of thing, and we’re giving her a change of heart.”

“Where is she tonight?”

“Some dinner party with people I don’t know. She wanted me along, but what do I want with that? I made up an excuse, lucky for you.”

“Dinner party, huh?” Out of nowhere, I get this twinge of dread in my gut. But dread is only natural for the night I’m having.

“It won’t be long now—she’s already running out of funds,” he continues.

“Seriously, Simon, I don’t want to be Packard’s groveling minion, but I’ll take it over being a vegetable.”

“Oh, stop whining.” He moves to a door, running his fingers along the boards. Finally he picks up a hunk of concrete and smashes the knob. The door swings open.

He grabs the light from me and heads in. I wait for something to fly at him. Nothing. I follow. The inside looks more like a sad, cobwebby home than a gas station. The flashlight beam illuminates a couch, a cot, tin cans. I flip on a switch. Light.

“Yow. There we go.” Simon clicks off the flashlight. The place is even dingier in the brightness. “Looks like nobody’s been in here for years.”

My gaze falls on something white on the floor in the corner. “Simon!” I grab his sleeve and point. It’s a skull, along with bones—a disordered skeleton with fabric and leather melted and crusted onto its bones. The clothes the person wore at the time of death.

“Whoa.” We move closer as a unit. The corpse is male, I’m guessing, from the heavy, beat-up flight jacket. There’s an old plastic airline wings pin on its fur collar,
and a bright blue chain lies limply upon the wristbones. A bracelet. The bones aren’t bleached clean like you see in movies; they have stuff encrusted on them. And though the linoleum floor is a light color, almost white, the part under the skeleton is dark with stain.

“Simon, do you think he was murdered, or did he just die?”

“Who knows?”

“Who was this? Not the nemesis, I hope. Right? Because if the nemesis dies, Packard never leaves. Isn’t that how it goes?”

“Yup.” Simon kneels down and pulls at the hand bones.

“Simon! Stop.”

He twists something off—a finger joint.

“Oh my God!”

“Hold open the door, Justine.”

I give him a hard look. Doesn’t he care about anything? I clomp over and fling open the door. Simon whips the bone at the open doorway and it bounces back, like it hit an invisible shield.

I put my hand through the opening. Nothing stops me. “Wow,” I say.

Simon tosses it again, with the same results.

“Trapped. Just like Packard.” I put my hand through again, just to make sure I can, and then this cold horror washes over me when I realize what it means. “Simon, Packard’s not just trapped for life. He’s trapped forever. For all of eternity.”

“Ouch,” Simon says.

I gaze at the remains, wondering what it means on a metaphysical level—a heaven/hell/reincarnation level.

Simon says, “Sorry about the desecration, buddy.”

“That’s meaningful. Can we go?” I want Simon out of there.

“Wait.” Simon riffles through a stack of mildewy
magazines. He grabs another stack. “Don’t you think if you were trapped somewhere you’d keep a diary about how much you hate the person who trapped you?”

“I have to get back to Cubby.”

“The faster we look through this stuff, the faster we go.”

“Fine.” I check in cabinets and closets and find clothes, books, and a stereopticon, a weird contraption that shows old-fashioned 3-D pictures. I glance over at the skeleton. It’s so sad, this person dying alone, trapped like a neglected hamster in a cage in some family’s basement. Or maybe he was killed. Simon takes a few books. When we get outside, Simon points overhead—an illegal electric hookup. That’s why the lights are still on.

Finally we get on the road. I inspect the books. Lots of novels about the Old West and several books about World War II with lots of underlining and marginalia commentary, but nothing about a nemesis or a highcap. Or Henji.

“Do you think that’s how Packard will end up?” I ask. “A lonely skeleton in the corner of Mongolian Delites?”

“I wouldn’t underestimate Packard’s resourcefulness. But now I know the fingerprint. There are more of those faces out there, and I’m going to find them, and those faces will lead me to the nemesis, and that’ll be my ace up the sleeve.” Then he corrects himself.
“Our
ace.”

“Right.”

“You want me to drive you to your place so you can change?”

“Nah.” I give him Cubby’s address.

“That’s not the best dinner party outfit.”

Dinner party. Shit
. “What do you know about the dinner party Aggie’s going to?”

He shrugs. “It was two other couples.”

“Anything else? Was it near the Promenade?”

“Yeah.” He turns to me. “Fuck. Near the Promenade.”

My throat feels thick. “Cubby.”

“Fuck,” he says. “She’s been following you.”

“Hurry, Simon.”

He roars through parking lots and alleys to avoid lights. I wrestle off his jacket and direct him to the end of the next block. He squeals up and points across the street at a silver car. “Ag’s Jag. Need me to come up?”

I swing out the door. “I’ll wave if I need you. Otherwise I’ll send her down. And I need you to make her lose this condo and, you know …”

Simon gives me a look I recognize as absolute confidence. “I’ll handle her, sister.”

          Twenty-three

T
HE ELEVATOR
takes forever to get to the fifth floor. Cubby’s door’s unlocked—a bad sign. I fling it open and rush in, nearly colliding with the Silver Widow near the kitchen.

“Justine!” Water splashes out of the glass in her hand. “You missed the party.” She’s wearing Cubby’s blue robe—the one I like to wear. It looks great on her.

“Where is he?”

She smiles crookedly; she’s a whole lot loopier than when I last saw her. Even her head seems unsteady on her neck. Destabilized. She eyes my bloody, sexy nurse outfit. “Somebody’s been a busy bee.”

“Cubby!” I head into the living room past his table full of wine bottles and dirty plates. Aggie follows. I burst into the bedroom down the hall to find Cubby pulling on his boxers somewhat unsteadily. He’s tipsy.

“Well, look who finally decided to show up.” He grabs his maroon button-down shirt off the floor—a shirt I always tell him he looks good in. We call it his Mr. Beaujolais shirt. I feel sick.

Aggie stalks over and wraps her arm around his waist, practically melts into him. I expect Cubby to push her away, but he doesn’t.

“Cubby!”

“What?” he says. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“After you skip out of the dinner party—don’t worry, we ordered out pizza—and after I leave messages saying don’t bother to come, I don’t know why you’re here. That’s what.”

“My phone’s dead.”

Aggie clings on. How could I have unleashed her on him?

“Get out,” I say.

Cubby pulls her closer. “Aggie’s not the one who’s leaving.”

I pull her away from him.

“God, Justine!” She stumbles sideways, dopey smile. The tie comes undone and the robe falls open, revealing a sexy silver slip.

It’s all I can do not to shake her. “He’s off-limits,” I warn.

“Justine! She was just in a motorcycle accident, for Chrissake.”

“A motorcycle accident, huh.” I get in her face. “He’s off-limits.”

Aggie smiles. “Too late.”

I want to kill her. I can’t even look at Cubby. “Out.”

“But I live in the condo right upstairs, Justine.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I own it, though.”

We glare at each other. Or I glare at her while she regards me hazily. Destabilization has given her a helpless, kittenish quality—exactly the thing to bring out Cubby’s savior side.

He says, “You guys know each other?”

I let her go. “Yeah.”

He turns to the Silver Widow, focusing uncertainly. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Justine?”

Aggie ignores him. “It’s not fair, Justine. Poor Cubby has to share you with Simon and Carter, and this is how
you behave?” She folds her arms, addresses me scoldingly. “You’re not a very good sharer.”

“Come here.” I pull her to the window. Simon’s down there, leaning against her Jaguar, smoking a cigarette. “He’s waiting for you. He wants to see you.”

“Oooh, Simon’s amazing.” Aggie sheds her robe and walks across the floor in the sexy slip. Flesh-colored bandages from her “motorcycle accident” adorn her right arm and leg. She shimmies into a pale gray cashmere dress, getting tangled in the sleeves. How could Cubby have slept with her?

Cubby turns to me, focusing on my nurse’s outfit. “Who’s Simon?”

“Our other boyfriend,” Aggie says. “Simon’s got gall, but you got a lotta honey.” She looks to Cubby for a smile and gets a frown. Now he sees that she’s not right. It nauseates me that he didn’t see it before, and that he actually slept with her.

Or maybe he did see it. Maybe that’s what he saw in me—a screwed-up, wacky girl. While Cubby’s jumping into his pants, I grab Aggie’s hand and pull her out of the bedroom and across the condo. She stumbles along dopily. “God, Justine!”

“You will never,
ever
come back here,” I hiss, low enough so Cubby won’t hear.

“I won’t?”

I shove her against the front door with a thump, muscles taut with the urge to smash her head into it, again and again. I want to hurt her for toying with Cubby, for exposing him to the darkness and danger of my disillusionist world. I want to scare her, to stop her. I’m close enough to feel the warmth of her breath on my nose as I press my fingers onto her soft skin, alighting upon the bright edge of her energy dimension. Without even thinking, I call up a huge swath of fear, remembering how it was the first time with her. The exquisite
relief, and the way she crumpled under my power. I tremble with the desire to zing her now, zing all my darkness into her. Her skin is so soft, and she is such a perfectly analogous vessel. My darkness builds as she flattens herself back against the door, eyes wide with terror.

Her expression stops me. What does she see? Something in my face? I tighten my grip on her arm. What kind of monster have I become that I would zing her out of vengeance? That’s what I’m doing, I realize. Is this what I am now? Is this what Packard sees in me?

I hear Cubby come up behind us.

“You stay away,” I whisper. I pull her off the door with one hand, open it with the other, shove her out into the hall, and slam the door behind her. That’s when I spot a shopping bag full of my stuff under the coat rack.

Cubby stands behind me. “Who’s Simon?”

“A colleague.”

“You need to go, too.”

“You have to stay away from that woman.”

He crosses his arms. “If I feel like entertaining Aggie, I will. We had some rather uncomplicated fun.” He eyes my dress. “Costume party?”

I’m shocked at his bitter tone. Cubby’s never bitter. And right then this wave of calm comes over me. Cubby’s never bitter. But now, thanks to me, he is. I’ve done far more damage than Aggie has. It needs to end tonight, I think with a pang.

I push past him and head toward his office.

He follows close behind. “Justine, what are you up to?”

“You need to see this one thing and then I’ll go.” I sit down in front of his computer, eyes misting up so much I can barely see the screen. “Aggie’s extremely dangerous, and I need you to see that.” I search the
Midcity Eagle’s
archives of the summer before last. “She’s crazy
and a murderer, Cubby. She’s somebody I interacted with on the job, and obviously she followed me to your place. And believe me, I couldn’t feel more shitty about that.”

“I don’t need you to vet my dates.”

It’s hard keep my voice level when I think of him naked with her. “This one you do.”

He stands beside me, arms crossed. I find the article with the courthouse steps photo. He’s surprised she’s been in the paper. He’ll be a whole lot more surprised when he reads what for. I save the article onto his desktop.

“I don’t doubt she bought the condo up there,” I say. “She’s fabulously wealthy, and she has investments all over. She wasn’t in a motorcycle accident, though. She has a delusional skin condition. It’s not real, but she believes it is, and that it’s infectious. The woman has no conscience. Short version—she murdered her husband, a torture kill, but they didn’t have enough to convict. You can read the article and get the specifics. Not the best bedtime reading, regarding manner of death.”

He looks at me like he’s having trouble focusing. This is the look he gets when something lurks beyond polite comprehension. “My God,” he says.