Mind Games (9 page)

“Why doesn’t Packard kill him? Not that I’d condone it, but …”

“If nemesis dies, Packard is trapped for good. As long as nemesis lives, there is chance he will change mind.”

“We have to help free him.”

“He cannot be free, Justine. Even Packard accepts this. And you must, too.”

   It’s well after midnight when I’m banging on Mongolian Delites’ window. The restaurant closed over an hour ago. The staff would’ve just gone home.

He opens the door wearing a black T-shirt and holey jeans. An outfit for lounging at home. Because this is his home.

“When were you going to tell me?” Seeing him now, I feel this immense sorrow for him. “I thought we were friends.”

He gets this strange look—eyes bright, and not in a happy way. “I wasn’t aware I was beholden to give you every fact of my existence.”

“Every fact?” I push past him and walk in. “How
about the single most important, unthinkable, and outrageous fact of your existence?” I hear the door shut. I turn. “God, Packard!”

He strolls over to a table by the curtained window where a lone candle burns over a magazine and a coffee cup. He flips the magazine closed and turns to me, more composed now, though his green eyes still shine—with pain, I think. “It’s hardly the most important fact of my existence,” he says. “Unthinkable and outrageous, though—I’ll give you that.”

“We have to get you out of here.”

“Leave it.”

“I won’t. There’s always a way.”

“I’ve been in here eight years.
Eight years.”
It sinks in even deeper when he says it. “I know every detail of the strength and limits of this prison. Every excruciating detail.”

“So you just give up? Like a man helpless to change his circumstances?” I don’t know whether I’m madder at his nemesis or at him for accepting it.

“Leave it.”

“I won’t leave it. It’s wrong. And surely you haven’t tried everything. I’m new, maybe I have new ideas. It’s not right that we wouldn’t keep working on it. Doesn’t every villain have an Achilles’ heel? What about disillusioning this guy? Attack him and crash him?”

“If you knew my nemesis, you wouldn’t say that so lightly. You might not even say it out loud.” His voice sounds gravelly. “You certainly wouldn’t consider trying to disillusion him.” He looks at the door. “I won’t discuss it further.”

My eyes go to the magazine on the table where he’d been sitting, one of his many travel magazines about tropical beaches. He moves in front of it. “Now that you know this is my prison, maybe you could respect the pathetically small amount of solitude I have?”

And it hits me like a punch in the gut: the magazine he’s hiding is
a travel magazine about tropical beaches
. He was fantasizing. He’ll never smell that salty air. He’ll never wiggle his toes in the warm soft sand. He never even feels the sunshine on his skin! “I’m so sorry.”

He snorts. “Oh, please. Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Be sorry you’re trapped for life?”

“That would be a start. I’m fine.”

“Fine?” I reach around him for the magazine. “This is fine?”

“Don’t!” He grabs my wrist and I let go; the magazine slaps onto the floor. The wild way he looks at me—I understand him completely in this moment. He doesn’t want me feeling all sad and sorry for him.

“Shit,” I say. “I didn’t mean to look at you all pitying and—”

He holds my wrist tight between us, searching my face. My blood races; I’m seeing inside him for the first time.

I say, “That’s not how I’m looking at you.”

The world around us seems to have fallen silent, save for the sounds of tires on wet pavement outside, and my ragged breathing. And his ragged breathing.

He tightens his grip. I turn my hand and press it to his chest, feel his heart thumping through his warm, soft T-shirt.

He says, “It’s certainly not how I’m looking at you right now.”

This strange calm descends over me as he moves his hand over mine, trapping it to his heart. I’m about to cross some line, and I don’t care. Frankly, I’m trembling to cross it. Or maybe I’m just trembling.

He slides his hand off mine, and I close my fist over his T-shirt, grabbing fabric, pulling him toward me as he runs light fingertips over my shoulders, the sides of my neck. He brushes his lips over mine, soft and warm, a feathery kiss at the top of my lips, the bottom, pulling
me closer. I relax and mold to him, enjoying the shivery goodness of the way he kisses me.

I sigh, like all the harshness is going out of me and there’s just the pure pleasure of Packard. And right there I feel this change come over him, a quickening in his whole body, and he shifts his hands to my back and pulls me to him hard, chest to chest, lips soft and moist.

He pushes my lips open with his, and we sink into each other. It’s crazy and wonderful; every part of me is melty with desire. It’s all just breath and body between us.

“Oh, God,” he says into my lips, cupping the back of my head, kissing me harder. I grab the back of his shirt and pull him closer. I want to eat him up!

“I have been waiting so long,” he says. “And waiting. And waiting.” His breathy kisses intoxicate me and send waves down between my legs.

“I have, too.” I realize it only as I say it, and it’s like I can’t get enough of him, and I fall deeper into the thrilling hardness of his erection between my legs. I slide up on him, and then down, and the feel of him magically penetrates to the deepest places inside me. Even so, I can’t get enough of him.

He curls his hands down around my bottom and pulls me to him firmly; then he slides his hands lower and knits his fingers under me, actually lifts me up. I wrap my legs around him and it’s the most natural feel in the world, being mashed together, straining into each other. I grab his curls, lost in the sensation of his cock and the rub of his whiskers on my cheek. The room whirls around and suddenly I’m sitting on the table and he’s kissing me—soft, short kisses. He kisses up my neck, lingering tantalizingly over my ear, doing warm breathy things that feel illicit, especially once his tongue gets involved. Then he bites down on my earlobe, hot and sharp, and a swoon moves through me, like unexpected sunshine on my stomach.

Time slows. I touch his chest, relax into this new delicious thing, and he trails his fingertips along my shins, my knees, my thighs. I like a man to touch my legs—knowledge Cubby frequently exploits.

A wave of panic. “Shit,” I say. “What am I doing?” He feels me freeze and slows. I slide off the table in a daze. “This cannot, will not—oh, man,” I say. “What am I doing? I have a boyfriend.” Though I showed up at his place in the middle of the night. That is not boyfriend-having behavior.

He watches me warily, skin flushed with passion.

“I’m sorry, this cannot …” I turn away, finger a salt shaker on a nearby table. “I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have let this happen. Cubby means everything to me.”

“Right.” …

I turn around. “What’s that tone? Are you being sarcastic?”

Packard waits. Like I’m supposed to figure it out.

“Come on, let’s hear it. You don’t think Cubby means everything to me?”

“I should let you come to it on your own,” he says.

“No, do tell. I bet it’ll be amusing.”

“Fine.” Packard crosses his arms. “The
idea
of Cubby means everything to you, but the man himself means nothing. You barely know him. It’s as if you’re shopping for the life and the safety he represents. You’re mesmerized by men who are stable and secure—men admired by society—but that’s just you groping for the safety and security you don’t feel. Because you’ve always been a misfit. Fearful. Rejected by others.”

The insult of this cuts so deep, I’m speechless.

“And Cubby’s one of these high achievers who don’t feel deeply,” he continues. “Life doesn’t touch him, which is why he likes to have you around. You make him feel something. Your chaos. Your instability.”

“I can’t believe you used your stupid mutant powers to analyze us like that. And got it wrong, by the way.”

“I got it right, Justine. Feel into it. Your sense of being a misfit blinds you to what your heart really wants. When you get around solid, upstanding men, you’re like a bird with tinfoil. It makes you incoherent on a romantic level.”

“My affection is incoherent unless it’s for you? That’s the line you’re giving me here?”

“This is real.” He points out the door. “That isn’t.”

“I think you’re the biggest manipulator I’ve ever met.”

“I am.” He lowers himself onto the table. “I’m the biggest manipulator you’ll ever meet. But not at this moment.”

“Yeah, you’re just a guy boiling me down to empty psychological tendencies.”

“You came here in the middle of the night. You wanted to know.”

“Right, I did. It was really poor behavior for somebody in a relationship.” I grab my purse. It’s time to leave. “But here’s the thing—Cubby and I have a great relationship. Which proves that you only see what you want to see. Your beloved mental power isn’t infallible.”

“Oh, my mental power is infallible,” he says. “But I never said I loved it.”

          Eight

O
VER THE NEXT FEW DAYS
, the kiss haunts me, floating through doors, turning up in quiet corners with a
whoosh
of sensation. I avoid Cubby because I feel like he’ll be able to look at me and tell. But I finally catch up with Shelby one hot afternoon. We take iced coffees to a bench on the lakeshore, watching kids play in the sand by the water’s edge—all of them wearing helmets. Some even wear protective gear on their chests, like little hockey players. It’s enraging that children at the beach would have to dress that way because of some psycho.

Shelby points to a couple stretched out on a picnic blanket next to a basket, a bottle of wine, and a rifle. “They think rifle will ward off Brick Slinger?”

I stir my coffee. “The Slinger needs to be slung.” We watch the kids a little more, and finally I muster up the courage to tell her about kissing Packard, begging her not to tell the others. I finally belong, and I don’t want to be different or set apart. She understands. If there’s one thing disillusionists understand, it’s the desperate desire to belong.

“The kiss was a mistake,” I say. “A stupid mistake.”

She inspects my eyes for signs that it wasn’t.

“He’s wrong that I’m with Cubby out of being a
misfit.” I look away. “I hate keeping all these secrets from him. I have to come clean.”

“You cannot! He would want you to quit.”

“Yeah.”

She looks at me like I’m crazy. “You do not plan to repeat kiss?”

“Definitely not.”

“You must not tell Cubby, then.”

We walk to the pier for Shelby to feed the seagulls, analyzing Cubby, Packard, and the kiss as only girlfriends can.

“I still can’t believe he’s trapped and none of you know why, or who this nemesis even is,” I say.

“None of us know anything, yes.” Shelby pauses with a saucy look. “Except I know one small thing.”

“What?”

“I said I would not tell.”

“Did you give your word of honor?” The disillusionists take their words of honor seriously. Like blood oaths.

“No, I did not give word of honor.” She snaps the lid over her coffee. “And it is not telling if I show you.”

   Fifteen minutes later, we’re in a cab bumping north down deserted, garbage-strewn streets, past fortress multihousing. People watch us from darkened doorways.

Shelby directs the driver to a tall concrete apartment building that’s composed of massive rectangular blocks stacked willy-nilly, like a giant baby made it. Random blocks are painted blue. The rest are concrete gray.

Shelby gets out. “Wait for us, please,” she says to the cabbie.

I join her on the sidewalk across the street from the building. The air is stifling this far from the lake, and it smells like rotten eggs and curry.

She turns to me. “Do you give your word you will say nothing of what I show you?”

“I give my word,” I say, hoping I won’t regret it.

She points upward. “Look at blue square on end of fourth floor. What do you notice?”

“It has more peeling paint than the others?”

“Look better.”

And then I see it: large eyes, elegant curve to the nose, the beard with the upturned curl at the end. “Whoa! It’s the same face as the Mongolian Delites door.”

Shelby smiles.

“Same expression, same … everything.” Except this face isn’t wood; it seems to have been formed by an artist scratching away blue paint to reveal gray.

“Two years ago I saw this and told Packard. He said that I am like woman who sees face of Jesus in two-headed calf. He never wants to speak of this face or that face or any face ever again. He says I must never come here again.” Shelby crosses her arms. “I have reflected on it. When Packard keeps secret, it is always about nemesis and his old life. Everything else, he does not care. So when he keeps secrets, I know it is this. I believe bearded face to be logo for highcap nemesis, type of fingerprint, I think. Like face of little girl on box of brownie mix, or skull face on canister of pepper spray.”

“Where did you get that idea?”