Mind Games (15 page)

“Where are we going?”

“To visit Jarvis.”

“Who’s Jarvis?”

“You’ll see.”

   A half hour later, Carter’s rapping on the bright green door of a tiny townhouse that’s crunched shoulder to shoulder in an endless row of tiny townhouses out near the airport. I wait nervously, cold in my silver cover-up, cradling the pineapple we purchased on the way over. I’m definitely not glorying now.

The door is opened by a black woman in nurse’s scrubs.

“Mel,” Carter says. “We came to say hi to Jarv. And give him this …”

I hold up the pineapple.

She smiles. “Come on in. We’re just watching the news.”

Carter introduces her as Melanctha, Jarvis’s private nurse. We follow her to a living room. “Jarvis,” Melanctha says, “Carter and a friend to see you.”

Jarvis, an obese black man in a recliner chair, stares blankly at a giant TV. His hair is pure white, though he can’t be older than forty-five. Carter takes the pineapple from me and sets it gently in Jarvis’s lap, like it’s a baby. Jarvis lowers his gaze to it as Carter kneels next to him. “Jarv.” Carter grips Jarvis’s forearm, and Jarvis moves his eyes off the pineapple and locks onto Carter’s face.

Melanctha claps. “He recognizes you!”

“Hey, buddy!” Carter says. “Good to see you.” Jarvis continues to stare at Carter, though it looks more like a space-out than any kind of recognition. Carter shakes Jarvis’s arm. “Hey, Jarvis!”

A commercial with people singing about pickles comes on the TV. The song takes over the room.

“I’ve been steaming veggies for him this week, and boy, has it been helping with the blood pressure,” Melanctha says.

“I’m glad,” Carter says. “Hey, buddy, this is my friend, Justine.” Carter takes my hand and puts it on Jarvis’s fat, warm shoulder. “Jarvis can feel you, but it’s like he’s trapped in there. Go ahead, touch his energy dimension. It comforts him.”

I look over at Melanctha, who shrugs.

“It reminds him he’s not alone,” Carter adds.

I push out and stifle a gasp. His energy dimension is blank. Terrifyingly blank—like blank eyeballs. It’s horrible. “Good to meet you, Jarvis,” I say.

Carter and Melanctha watch Jarvis for a reaction, but he just stares at Carter. I wait nervously; I’m getting that Jarvis was a disillusionist. Slowly, I pull my awareness back, but I keep my hand on his shoulder out of politeness. There’s this awkward moment where none of us say anything.

The TV drones on. The news is back. Another brick attack. Victim in a coma. My heart calms when Chief Sanchez comes on and explains that the hoodlums have developed high-velocity catapults that can put spin on the bricks, his voice like a deep, plush blanket. “We’re making splendid progress in this case,” he says. Obviously he has to act like it’s not highcaps, but I’m sure he knows it is. I wonder again if he knows about Henji.

I squeeze Jarvis’s shoulder. “I’m really glad to meet you.”

Carter stands. “We can’t stay,” he tells Mel.

“Vesuvius and Shelby and a few of the others sat with him yesterday morning.”

“Good.”

I’m relieved when we get back on the road.

“Jarvis was angst,” Carter says. “He was a powerful disillusionist. Great guy. Funny as hell.”

“And he quit?”

“He couldn’t handle being the minion of a white man after a few months. Suddenly it just started getting to him. It’s not easy for anybody—we all get around minionhood in our own ways, but being black, it got to Jarvis a whole lot worse. Vesuvius struggles with it, too, but not like Jarvis. It was so maddening to see him go down and not be able to stop him. Did you feel his nothingness? That’s what’ll happen if you quit—or if you zing the wrong person and get blowback. It fries you blank. So …” There’s this silence when he looks at me tenderly. “Please.”

I slide my fingers along the smooth grain of my seat-belt, up and down, quietly mortified. Carter keeps looking over at me, and I know that he’d feel a whole lot better if I assured him I won’t be quitting or zinging random people, but I’m not in a generous mood. And honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Well, that’s not entirely true.

“You think you could drop me off at the restaurant?” I ask.

He nods energetically. “No problem.”

          Twelve

I
STORM UP
to the wooden face, grab a nostril, and fling the door open. Early dinner. A few tables occupied. Staff and diners stare as I stomp through. Outside of a glamorous poolside context, my Silver Widow outfit is bizarre.

I head back and find Packard’s booth empty. I retrace my steps through the dining room and into the kitchen, almost crashing into Morgan the cook, who’s busy with a knife and a pile of peppers. On the far end of the kitchen, I spy Packard, spoon in hand, lingering in front of a large pot. He smiles when he sees me, all innocence and tousled hair. “My goodness, Justine. You look ravishing.”

I grab an iron skillet off a nearby rack and fling it across the room at him, hitting a stack of bowls on the dishwasher. They crash onto the stainless-steel counter and down to the floor.

“Shit!” Morgan says.

Packard fits a lid over the pot. “Morgan, can you give us a moment?”

“I’m in the middle of two operations,” Morgan says.

“Take them elsewhere.”

Morgan picks up his chopping board and a bowl of peppers. “Don’t let the kebabs burn.” He storms out.

Packard turns to me. “You zinged her—”

“You craven parasite!” I grab another pan and stalk toward him. I’m not the hitting type, but I might be now. “How could you not warn me?” I lift the pan up and smash a tray of wineglasses fresh from the washer; glass flies everywhere. I want to take down the whole damn restaurant.

“You wouldn’t have joined.”

“Damn right I wouldn’t have joined!”

“You were on your way to institutionalization and death. I saved your life!”

“You didn’t save my life. You stole it!” I throw the skillet into the curry corner, shattering jars in an explosion of orange powder. “This was supposed to be temporary, and now I’m your minion, totally enslaved to you? That’s not what I would’ve chosen under any circumstance.”

“I know,” he says softly. “You wouldn’t have taken the save. Until it was too late.”

“That should’ve been my choice.” I grab the front of his white shirt. “All I ever wanted was to be cured. I thought, meeting you, that I had a chance. I thought I was closer, goddammit, but I’ve never been farther away.” I close my fingers around the fabric, twisting, half wishing it was his neck. “I thought we were together in all this. I thought we were allies and friends, and that there was honesty between us.”

“I never lied to you. And I saved you.”

“Stop acting like it’s a favor. You did it because you wanted to. Is this what you meant by allegiance? Your allegiance to whatever is so important that you had to steal my independence?”

This flush of heat comes over Packard’s face—a swell of emotion that seems to rise from a dangerous place inside him. “Yes,” he says with brutal resolve. “Yes.”

I tighten my grip. “So basically, you did the same thing to me that your nemesis did to you.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It’s exactly the same!”

“I create. My nemesis destroys.” His angry passion makes a radiant heat I can feel in my fists, my belly. “He destroys.”

I don’t know if I want to kill him or fuck him right there on the counter. I push him away. “I will never forgive you, Packard, and I promise I will get free of you. But not like Jarvis.”

He fixes a gemlike gaze on me.

I harden my resolve. “I’m telling you, I will never forgive you. I’ll continue on for now because Carter and Shelby and everyone else is counting on me, and obviously I have to anyway. But I am going to get free of you.”

He says nothing. Smoke leaks from the roaster oven.

I brush a plate off the counter as I leave. The crash is unsatisfying.

          Thirteen

S
HELBY DECORATES
the way she dresses. Her apartment is a mad cornucopia of paisleys, florals, Oriental rugs, and optical-illusion art that hurts your eyes.

She sits in a red-and-white zigzagged chair, teacup in hand, listening to me rant about how Packard fooled me and how I’ll never forgive him. Like Carter, she’s stunned Packard didn’t warn me that being a disillusionist was a permanent situation. She clearly had no idea that I didn’t know.

“When I joined, Justine, he was so very clear. He sat me down, he said, ‘Once you are in, you cannot leave, you cannot unjoin.’ He said this to all of us.”

“Not to me.”

She shakes her head, staring into the blackness of her tea. “When he does not have right mix of disillusionists, he simply does not take case. I have never heard of him, what do you say, hoodwinking some person as he has hoodwinked you.”

“I might go stronger than hoodwinked.”

“He tricked you.”

“But of course he says he saved my life.”

“If he says he did, perhaps he did.”

“Or perhaps he really really needed a hypochondriac to join up for the Silver Widow. What’s so important about rebooting the Silver Widow that he’d trick me?”

“Who is client on Silver Widow?”

“Packard won’t tell.”

“But we always know client.”

“This one’s secret.”

“I have never heard of that. Always we know client.”

“Something’s going on. Some larger evil. That’s what Jordan the therapist implied, and I kind of agree.”

“Oh, Jordan, no. Do not listen to Jordan.”

“Maybe this goes back to Henji. Either way, I’m getting out.” I wander over to the window. I can see my new used car, a Jetta, from here. I was pretty proud to be able to buy myself a car—until I learned what it really cost me. Beyond is a stunning view of the belly of the tangle—dozens of fat pillar legs rising up from a bed of tires and forgotten shopping carts under massive concrete curves. “You need curtains.”

“Why should I cover it?”

I sense a Shelby moment coming.

She joins me at the window. “People want view of beauty. Pfft. I say, do not give me lies. Always they try to fix it, but nothing will make it better. Same as life. You wish to be free, but there is no such thing as freedom. You can redecorate dungeon to give illusion of freedom, but you are still in dungeon.”

“I should’ve had the choice.”

“Choice is illusion, same as happiness and freedom. Yes, it is unthinkable indeed that he did not warn you,” she assures me. “But he is not wicked, Justine.”

“I’d say trapping me in a life of dependence is pretty wicked.”

“You are trapped in dependence upon oxygen and water. Is that wicked?”

“It’s not the same thing. But in a way, it serves me right. I rationalized being a vigilante when I knew it was wrong, and I wasn’t forthright about my plans to leave. Now I’m the minion of a mutant.” I glare out at the tangle.

When I’m honest with myself, I’m angry about more than my loss of freedom. Crazy as it sounds, I’m angry about the loss of us—me and Packard. He’s like nobody I ever met. He made me feel alive in a way no other man ever has. I wanted him, and in my heart, I was moving toward him. We were moving toward each other—I felt it. But he tricked me and stole my freedom. Taking a person’s freedom breaks some universal law of relationships; that’s all there is to it. It rules a man out utterly and completely. This is something that makes me angry, and very, very sad. Most of all, it hurts like hell.

“I have idea for you to feel better. You will like it.”

“What is it?”

“Something to help you see from better perspective. Later, not now. You will see.” She gazes out at the tangle’s underbelly with a pretty little Shelby smile.

          Fourteen