Mind Games (3 page)

Dad had health issues, too, though his tastes ran more to a widespread Ebola outbreak. We had a stash of level-four respirators, a year’s supply of food and water, and the weaponry to defend it. After Mom died, Dad got even more into protecting us. That’s where Shady Ben Foley and the land came in. Freshwater stream. Defensible elevation. After Foley was through with us, we were so poor we had to eat up all the food we’d hoarded.

Dad became reclusive after that. He worked as a programmer, rarely emerging from his bedroom. My older brother moved to Brazil, and as soon as I finished high school, I moved from our rural town to bustling Midcity. I bleached my dark hair blonde, got a job at fancy Le Toile, and started a new life on the sunny side of the street. I thought I’d be free from the family legacy of fear, but it followed me—my very own portable prison.

I try to convince myself that the restaurateur didn’t really see anything wrong with me—he read my fear of vein stars, that’s all. But what if he’s a medical intuitionist highcap? Is it possible my condition is graver than I thought? Now I really wish I knew what the guy was. On the websites you can find lists of what abilities the different highcaps have, from the common telekinetics to the rare dream invaders. The one thing they all have in common is that a mutation heightened their brain capacity in some strange way. And that most people pretend not to believe in them but secretly hate and fear them. Except for Cubby, who simply doesn’t believe in them.

“Are you okay, Justine? Did you have insomnia again?”

Marnie and Sally stare at me with concern—an unfortunately common occurrence. I need to get out of here.

I point across the floor. “I’m going home to do some paperwork. When I walk in here tomorrow, I want to see that mannequin wearing one of those scarves in a way that makes it look fabulous.”

The girls smile. They love mannequin challenges.

          Three

I
T’S NOON
when I get back to my sunny neighborhood of apartments, houses, and shops. It’s at the edge of the university area, the kind of neighborhood where people have dogs and marriages, but not yet children. I smile as I pass Mr. K., the Greek jeweler, smoking in front of his storefront; then I almost fall over when I see the couple from last night sitting on the stoop of my building. Ringlet girl and the blond guy.

How’d they find where I live? Did Foley send them? I continue my approach like I’m not worried.

The blond fellow stands and smiles. “I bet you didn’t expect to see us.” He puts out his hand. “I’m Carter.” The smattering of freckles across Carter’s wide, frank face stretches almost to his ears. He’s of medium height and build but wound up, compact. Everything about him says
contents under pressure
.

“Justine,” I say, taking his hand.

Ringlets stands and smiles, revealing a chipped front tooth, which gives her a strange, carnivorous beauty. “I’m Shelby.” Her outfit—a green flowered shirt and striped velvet pants—is a little crazy.

Carter says, “Our boss wants to talk with you.”

So Foley’s their boss? “You can tell Foley I don’t want anything to do with him. And by the way, Foley
is
his real name.”

Shelby curls her pouty lips into a sneer and enunciates his name with breathy, phlegmy disgust. “Foley.” She plops down on the stoop, as if her communication is now complete. She is beautiful and grim all at the same time.

“Foley’s not our boss,” Carter says. “He’s one of our targets.”

“Please,” Shelby says. “Do not speak to Foley again or you will ruin whole thing.” Her accent sounds Russian; she’s definitely one of the most un-Shelby-like people I have ever met. “Our boss told you he will help you and he will. He has offer you must hear. You will like it.”

“Hold on.” I begin to feel unaccountably hot. “Are you talking about that guy—” I gesture to my shoulder to indicate the restaurateur’s cinnamon curls, just a little too long. “He’s …” I’m thinking about his pale green eyes, thick rosy lips; his heft, his presence, the sense of excitement I felt around him. “He’s …” I pause, searching for the words.

“That is him, yes,” Shelby says. “Packard. He will prove he can help you.”

“Packard saved my life,” Carter says. “Packard saved both our lives. Just come to the restaurant and hear his offer.”

“How do I know you’re not working with Foley?”

Shelby crosses her arms. “Because Foley is buffoon. And we will destroy him.”

Sometimes truth really does have a ring. I hear it now. Which makes me wonder if these two are telling the truth about this Packard saving their lives.
Is
it possible he can help me? What’s his offer? Maybe it’s not so terribly Faustian after all.

Shelby points to a sporty black convertible. “We will drive you there.”

It’s crazy to take rides from strangers, crazy to hope
some guy in a Mongolian restaurant can do what medications and therapy never could. Crazy—unless you’re desperate. Packard was right about that.

“If you become frightened, you can throw yourself out of car,” she says.

Five minutes later I’m in the back of Carter’s convertible. I could at least hear this Packard’s offer and see his proof. That’s my thinking.

I ask about how Packard saved their lives, but they insist I have to wait to talk to him. Maybe he doesn’t like them telling people he’s a highcap. They say most highcaps try to pass as normal.

I’m surprised when Carter merges onto “the tangle”—a nightmarish curlicue of highways that’s the fastest, most unpleasant, and most treacherous way to move between neighborhoods. Everybody sane avoids the tangle, which has been blamed for everything from Midcity’s industrial decrepitude to, of course, the eight-year crime wave, in articles with titles like “A Dark Snarl at the Heart of Our Fair City.”

I hold tight as he weaves around cars and takes curves at high speeds. Who
are
these people?

Finally we’re dumped off into East Farley and creep through the industrial neighborhoods north of the river.

“Mongolian Delites is an unusual restaurant,” I observe, just to break the silence.

Carter shoots Shelby a glance, then addresses me in the rearview mirror. “Just a request. Don’t say anything derogatory about the restaurant to Packard.”

“So he owns it?”

Shelby nods. “Yes, but please understand. You must not speak of restaurant.”

Carter turns down a narrow, shady street hemmed in by blocky brick buildings. “You especially don’t want to comment on the decor.”

“Fine. Just tell me this—Packard’s a highcap, right?”

They exchange glances.

“Yes,” Carter says finally. “Packard sees people’s psychological structures.”

“That’s it?” I say. “He just sees psychology?”

Shelby frowns. “It is powerful highcap gift. Do not disparage it.”

I don’t know what I was hoping for. Some better power, ideally something curative. I sit back, resigned to a stupidly wasted afternoon.

Mongolian Delites is located in an up-and-coming area not quite near enough to the lake to be hot for condos. It occupies the first floor of a four-story building scooched up to the dirty sidewalk between an ad agency and a refurbished office space. The behemoth Bessler Box Company occupies nearly the entire block across the street, save for a tiny corner deli like a neon-flashing jewel in its flank.

Carter finds a meter right in front and we get out. The name
Mongolian Delites
is painted on the window in fat black brushstroke lettering; gold curtains behind conceal the interior. But the most striking feature of the place is its huge wooden door, which has a massive face carved into it, as if a friendly bearded giant with long, Renaissance-king-type curls is attempting to push his face out through the wood. The face is attractive and oddly comforting.

Carter grips the outer edge of the giant’s nose and heaves the door open, splitting the face down the middle.

I follow Shelby and Carter around the perimeter of the main dining room, now populated by lunchtime patrons, past the giant pagoda-shaped mirror that occupies a center spot in the place, and into a wide and deep back corridor I hadn’t noticed last night. One side of the corridor is lined with empty booths whose flickering
candles add an eerie gleam to the bright Asian paintings along the wall.

We stop at the very end and there he is, restaurateur Packard, sitting sideways in the booth, feet out, head leaned back against the wall. He gazes up at us coolly, a highcap prince in his back-booth throne.

“Justine,” he says, like he’s trying out my name. “Justine Jones.” He clambers out and clasps my hand in both of his. “Impressive.”

I mumble my thanks.

“I can’t say I’ve encountered anybody with your level of health anxiety outside of a straitjacket,” he continues.

I frown. “You know, maybe I am a bit of a hypochondriac, but when you have legitimate symptoms, it’s common sense to worry. Symptoms are the body’s way of telling you something. Because even hypochondriacs get terrible diseases—”

Packard laughs. “Oh, that is perfect. You are perfect.”

Carter wanders off.

“It’s not funny,” I say. “Look, I know you can see my psychology, but unless you can give me permanent immunity to vein star and all related diseases so that I never have to worry about them again, I don’t see you helping me.”

“Oh, I am most certainly going to help you.” Packard slides into the booth, and Shelby sits next to him, toying with a swizzle straw. He indicates the seat across from them. “Please—”

I sit near the edge.

“I know what it took to confront Foley last night. You have a strong interest in helping victims, just as many of us do. But your unnatural abundance of fear is ruining your life, and eventually it will drive you insane. Literally. But to us, your fear is a power.” I start to
protest, but Packard holds up a hand. “Imagine if you could channel all that fear out of yourself. Free yourself of it completely.”

I consider this a moment. “That could be helpful.”

“You would simply channel your fear into victimizers. You’d weaponize it.”

“Weaponize it? Like, attack people with it?”

“Yes.” He gazes brightly, like he’s a little bit on fire with his mad scheme. “You know how some people hire a hit man to kill an enemy? We’re like a squad of hitters, only we don’t kill people. We
disillusion
them. We’re a psychological hit squad. We’ve needed somebody in health anxieties for some time.”

I choke back a chortle. “I’m sorry; that is just so out of the realm of what I’d ever do.”

Carter returns and sets down a bread basket and a steaming plate of kebabs and disappears again.

Packard places a napkin on his lap. “Typically, crime victims or their families hire us. Please, help yourself.” He places a tomato wedge on a piece of French bread. “I use my psychological vision to assess the target. Then I put together a team to disillusion the target on emotional, mental, and other levels.” He seems like such a maniac at this moment, it’s hard to imagine parents ever caring for him, combing his hair, bandaging his knees.

“So somebody hired you to disillusion Foley?”

“Recent victims. And soon they will enjoy a feeling of resolution they simply can’t get from seeing Foley dead or in prison. They’ll get to see him broken down and repentant, and he’ll get to build back better. Disillusionment creates a profound change of heart.”

“Like rebooting computer.” Shelby inspects a zucchini slice. “Disillusionment crashes and reboots people.”

“That seems a bit …” I’m at a loss how to finish.

“It’s not Foley we need you for, of course,” Packard continues. “We need your help for other targets.”

“It doesn’t even make sense. A hypochondriac attack is unpleasant, but not disillusioning.”

Packard seems pleased with my question. “Do you know how they demolish a building?”

“Explosives.”

“Right. But they don’t toss bombs at it, do they? A demolition expert uses X-rays to find lines of weakness. The weak spots tell him where to put the dynamite. I look at a person as a demolition expert would. I see what they’re made of. Their strengths and weaknesses. I see how to bring them crashing down. And health anxiety is a tool I need in my toolbox.” He wipes his hands, eyes sparkling. I’ve never met a man so full of confidence and charisma. “You’re right that hypochondria attacks alone won’t crash a person, but they will weaken one in preparation for more powerful disillusionists. About ten percent of people have some exploitable anxiety about their health. Did you know that? One out of ten is a hypochondriac. Most manage to hide it.” Packard flicks a match and lights the candle on our table. “Of course, not everybody can be disillusioned—”

“Let me stop you right here,” I say. “This is all interesting, but getting rid of my fear by dumping it into other human beings … I’m not that kind of person. Even if the process could help me—”

“The process won’t merely help you; it’ll save you. From institutionalization and an early death. Deep down, you must know that’s where you’re headed.”

Our eyes meet. The candlelight adds rosy depth to the mannish angles of his face. “I know no such thing.”