Mind Games (18 page)

Strangely, though, the more I study his dull eyes, the harder it is to stay mad. Foley is just so unlike his old self. At one point I have to remind myself of what he did to us back then, and his words at Mongolian Delites that night—
Forgot what a perfect mark your pop was
—in order to stop feeling sorry for him. Now I’m glad for my disguise.

Suddenly Foley speaks. “I know what I did to your son.” He pauses, as if to meditate on it, then whispers
urgently, “I know better than you what I did to your son.” I have this sense that he’s being sincere, that I’m seeing the sincere Ben Foley for the first time ever. His words have that ring. More than that: it’s like the truth of it is alive in him, ripping holes in his soul.

“You think you can squirm out of it?” Mr. Mandler demands, though it’s pretty clear to me that Foley’s not trying to squirm out of anything.

“You have no reason to accept an apology,” Foley says. “Just know that … what I did … I know.” He continues to peer out at the space in front of his small nose with this expression like he’s smelling something terrible, even though there’s no smell. After a long silence he begins a new thought. “Nothing … nothing …”

We wait. Again, I think back to the Foley I saw at Mongolian Delites, the way he insulted Dad, so close and threatening with his onion breath. I can’t believe it’s the same man.

Foley stares at the Mandlers, face open and soft. “I don’t know what you want. I don’t know. …”

The Mandlers look baffled. They don’t know either, now that he’s disillusioned. I sure don’t know what I want from him; it’s like something inside me has evaporated. Instead of being an enemy, Foley just makes me uncomfortable clear to the bone. I pull down my cap.

A voice behind us. “Everything all right here?” Foley shrinks and I turn to see a young coffee shop employee. His name tag says
TED, ASSISTANT MANAGER
, and he points at Foley. “Hey! You know the rule.”

Strongarm Francis presses a twenty-dollar bill into Ted’s hand. “Want to give us a minute?” Ted walks off. Francis turns to the Mandlers. “My assistant and I will wait out at the car.” The Mandlers look bewildered. They don’t want to be left alone with Foley.

I follow Francis out. “I never thought I’d feel bad for Foley. …”

“That’s natural.”

“But why would we need guns?”

“Look and learn, little missy.” He leads me back out into the drizzly night and around the side of the building, coming to a stop just a few yards away from the window next to Foley’s table. The Mandlers are still talking with Foley. It seems like they should see us, but of course they’re in a bright place and we’re out in the dark.

I cross my arms over my chest. “It seems wrong.”

“It’s far from wrong. Disillusionment is a state of truth. We stripped away his illusions, his rationalizations, and his creature comforts. Now he sees things clearly.”

“That was clarity?”

“Part of what you’re witnessing is the excellent finishing work of the Monk. He’s got some spiel about the need to destroy hope because hope destroys the present moment, something like—hey!” Francis points to the window. “In there. Look look look.”

Mrs. Mandler is walking away from the table.

“Is she coming out to find us?”

Francis says nothing as she goes up to the counter. “There it is,” Francis says. “There it is.”

“What? That she’s getting a cup of coffee?”

He nods. “We’re almost through.”

After a few minutes, Mrs. Mandler leaves the front counter with a tray of food—sandwiches, chips, maybe a cookie or two from what I can tell.

“No way. They’re feeding him?”

“The client is free to help the target out. We don’t take a position on that.”

“But they paid to have him disillusioned.”

“Buyer’s remorse. Very common. The clients are good people who went down the road of vengeance. They now recognize the target’s humanity. Nobody thinks they’ll
recognize the humanity in an enemy until the moment they do, and it most always changes everything.”

He goes right up to the window and knocks. The Mandlers look angry when they discern Francis. Francis points to his wrist.

“The Monk couldn’t do that kind of excellent work without the target being thoroughly destabilized first. Like the fine work you do to remove a target’s security of health and mental well-being.” He flips out his phone as we walk back to the cars. “What kind of pizzas you want?”

“What?”

“You and the boyfriend. Pizzas.”

“I don’t know.” I can’t imagine eating at this point. Francis orders one pizza with cheese and one pizza with everything.

Eventually the Mandlers emerge from the coffee shop, walking briskly toward us, sans umbrella, even though it’s still drizzling. “This is not what we signed on for,” Mr. Mandler says when they reach us. “This is not disillusionment. This is financial and personal ruin of a man. I don’t know what you did, but this is not what we signed on for.”

“Au contraire, mon frère,”
Francis says. “That’s disillusionment as I presented it at all meetings. A lack of illusion. Your Mr. Hermann now lacks illusion.”

“He lacks everything. He doesn’t have a home.”

“Shelter frequently plays a central role in the maintenance of illusions, and I saw fit to cause him to lose it.”

“I suppose it went to you.”

“Firstly, you were told up front that financial ruin might be part of the process, and you and Mrs. Mandler couldn’t have been more pleased. You were in formed of this, incidentally, during a recorded transaction. Secondly, Mr. Hermann’s own choices led to this. And lastly, let’s be honest, Mr. Mandler—you’re not
uncomfortable with the financial ruin. You’re uncomfortable with the results of the disillusionment you ordered. And that was something you were warned about. Naturally, you are free to assist Mr. Hermann—”

“Damn right I will.”

“But you will pay my fee.”

“Why don’t you sue me for it?”

In one angry, fluid move, Francis grabs the man’s collar and throws him up against the side of his vehicle; then he pulls out his gun and presses it to the man’s cheek.

“Stop!” the woman cries.

“Don’t doubt my power or my scope, Mr. Mandler,” Francis says. “Have your wife hand my assistant the cash, or there’ll be trouble. Break any one of our agreements and there’ll be trouble.”

Mr. Mandler stares at Francis through his nonsquished eye as Mrs. Mandler takes the case out of their trunk and hands it to me. Francis tells me to check it and I comply. Lots of large bills in packs.

“Okay,” I say.

Francis lets Mr. Mandler go.

Like two statues, Mr. and Mrs. Mandler watch us drive off.

“My God,” I say.

“We don’t tend to have happy clients. We destroyed some important illusions for these two. They thought they’d heal seeing the Bon Vivant suffer. That was an illusion. But Foley will bounce back good now.”

“It all seems a bit much.”

“Incarceration and execution are a bit much, too. It’s all a bit much.”

“Will we take the Silver Widow’s stuff?”

“Simon’s on that one. She’ll gamble it all away. Preferable for the target to lose their assets on their own steam.”

We ride in silence. I stay in the car while Francis goes in to get the pizzas. They fill the car with a warming, comforting scent.

“Looks like you’ll be a little late,” Francis says. “I tried. Yell at Shelby if there’s fallout with the boyfriend.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s the one who insisted I take you on this close.”

   Cubby lets me in, clearly unhappy. I’m a half hour late. “How was the unexpected eventuality?”

“I would’ve so much rather been here with you.” I head into the kitchen with the two pizzas, wishing I could wipe everything away and have this evening be normal. The first pizza we ordered is there, open and cold. “You only ate one piece. You must be starving!”

“I don’t want us to sit down to a fresh, piping-hot pizza when I’m not hungry and you are. It’s only fun if we’re in on it together.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, touching his shirt. “Thank you.”

We start up the movie—a big action-adventure spy thriller—and dig in. Cubby’s mood lifts once the pizza hits his stomach. He declares Francis’s pizzeria to be better than our usual one, and he even copies down the number off the box. He’s also excited about the movie because it has time travel in it, and he loves time-travel stuff. I try to taste the pizza, try to follow the movie, try to enjoy Cubby’s safe and good world, but there’s something weirdly insubstantial about it. Like it doesn’t matter.

Halfway through, Cubby pauses the movie and comes back with cookie dough ice cream and spoons. “Surprise!”

I try to feel excited. “Yum!”

He sits and hands me a spoon. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Your secret mission got you down?”

“You’ve been really nice to not ask,” I say.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah. That and more. Just life, I guess.”

He smiles. “Life? What’s wrong with life?”

“I don’t know …” I stare at the floor. “How does a person tell if they’re doing the right thing?”

Cubby barks out a laugh. “What? With your security job?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you protecting people?”

“I don’t know. You could look at it in so many different ways.”

“Oh, Justine! You think too much.” He works his spoon into the container and pulls up a spoonful that’s half doughy nugget. “You always care about making things better and helping other people. You’ll know in the end.” He makes an airplane noise as he moves the spoon toward my mouth.

“Stop it, Cubby!”

He keeps it inching to my lips. I open up and chew on the yummy doughy chunk and push everything out of my mind.

I grab the remote and flick the movie back on. Clues add up. Another car chase. The handsome good guy kicks ass. I lean into Cubby’s chest, sort of burrow in, appreciating him more than ever.

“Hey, you trying to dig to China?”

“No, I’m trying to dig into you,” I say.

“Stop. It tickles.”

“I can’t stop.”

So he turns his attention to me and starts tickling my stomach. I retract into a little ball, like a spider, but he’s on me, tickling, and I tickle him back, and then he has my wrists in one hand.

He puts his lips to my ear, my cheek, and I loosen
away from myself and wind around him there on the couch. We burrow into each other, and it’s wonderful.

That night I lie awake as Cubby sleeps. I used to be upset when I couldn’t fall asleep, but tonight I get something out of watching him there—just watching him sleep, peaceful as a lily pad in a hidden pond.

          Sixteen

T
HE GOOD FEELING
dissipates the next morning. I’m with the Silver Widow, who is more obsessed than ever with her multimedia skin-charting project. We also spend time discussing the cocktail party she’s planning. She’s been trying to get me to promise to bring my dangerous boyfriend, a promise I obviously can’t make. As usual, I have this sense she wants me to stay at her house indefinitely, like I’m her big doll. I have my stun gun on me, and when she offers me a drink, I refuse. This upsets her greatly, which makes me very suspicious and worried. I zing her and get the hell out of there.

I ride off glory hour by rollerblading twenty miles with my iPod cranked, but I can’t stop thinking about Foley, broken and alone. Will he really bounce back good now like everyone says? And will Aggie? Who hired us to disillusion her? And why is this client such a secret?

I spend the latter part of the day buying pretty things with my new money: dark velvety curtains, bright pillows, a green rug, and an old Japanese painting of a bird on a branch—all things too big to be teleported out the window. No way am I keeping my windows closed in this heat. I hate that people would have to do that. And like other kooks who believe in highcaps, I’ve taken to keeping my purse and laptop and other valuables in closets and drawers so the telekinetics can’t access them.

I run into Shelby a week later. I’m on my way into Mongolian Delites for a meeting about our next target, the Alchemist, and she’s on her way out. She grabs my hands there in front of the carved door face. “Your hair is color of chocolate. Very beautiful for you, I think.”

I mumble my thanks. I’d forgotten about the hair.

“You do not return my calls. Did you not see him? Foley?”

“You should’ve warned me, Shelby. I would’ve liked to prepare.” I don’t know why I say this; it’s not why I’m mad. The truth is, I don’t know why I’m mad.

“I thought you’d like it.”

“I didn’t. It was terrible!”

“Pfft. If you believe life is only for happiness and butterflies, then yes, disillusionment is terrible. Francis told me that the Mandlers fed your Foley. Did that not cheer you? Is transformative action. The Mandlers pitied him, and their hatred was transformed. They will not go through rest of life bitter and angry. It was happy ending, and I thought you liked happy endings.”

“That was a happy ending?”

“You did not think it so?”

“No.” I sigh and touch the giant’s carved cheek. It’s such a nice face. You just want to touch it.