Mind Games (4 page)

“Then, that’s what we’ll do.”

“For now, partner, let’s get you some grub.” Jen eyed the flowers. “I’m assuming those are for me?”

“Naw, I just brought those for me. Ain’t nothing like breakfast and the smell of fresh flowers. Ahhh.”

Jen turned towards the kitchen.

“Hey, wait!”

She swung her ponytail around. “Pick me up at six sharp.” She walked back to the kitchen to place an order for one boring omelet: a final jest. Jen loved to have the upper hand.

That evening, Cameron and Jen did indeed rent a bicycle built for two for their night on the town. Satisfied by the fresh cuisine of an Italian café, the pair caught a romantic comedy at a nearby drive-in theater. Cameron brought a thermos of hot chocolate and shared the sweet treat with his date.

After the movie, they returned the two-seat bicycle and started a long walk back to Jen’s apartment.

As they walked, Jen complained about the unrealistic situations in the rom-com. Before long, the couple discussed their favorite episodes of Law and Order. They both loved TV shows with intricate plots. Crime shows also appealed to their shared interest in the criminal justice system. They discussed the issues of lie detection, false confessions, and even eyewitness testimony. Since Jen understood the basic mechanics of the standard lie detector test – the circuitry and questioning methods – she boasted strong opinions about its troubling inaccuracies.

When they were only a block away from Jen’s apartment, she removed her shoes and carried them, stretching her toes out as they padded along the sidewalk.

“Gosh, that was a lot further than I thought.” She led Cameron up to the door and unlocked it, letting him into her world.

When she opened the door, Cameron soon discovered Jen also had an interest in photography. The main room in the one bedroom apartment displayed dozens of pictures of people sitting on benches and playing with their dogs in a park.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me you were into photography.”

Jennifer collapsed on her couch, putting her legs up and hugging a pillow. “I can’t give it all away at once. Where’s the mystery in that? Besides, it doesn’t really do it justice to talk about it. You’ve got to see it for yourself. That’s why it’s a visual medium.”

“Hey, I know what you mean. Who are these people?”

“Well, Mr. Sunset and Skyline, I like street photography. It might not be trees and grass, but the subjects in my photos are still part of nature. I capture them in their…natural habitat. City life, park life, whatever life they’re living.”

Cameron noticed one picture of a cross-legged woman eating a pretzel on a bus stop bench. “Nice pretzel lady.”

“Yeah, I’ve definitely seen some strange things out there. Colorado Springs has its psychopaths just like any city.”

“How do you figure that?” Cameron joined Jen on the couch.

“Come on. I bet there’s at least one major criminal in those pictures. But we’ll never know exactly which one it is.”

“I think you’ve been watching too much Law and Order.”

“I’m serious, Cameron. There could be a thief or a kid-knapper right in front of us and we wouldn’t even know it.”

“I guess, but that’s kind of a morbid lens to look through, don’t you think?”

“No. Not at all.” Jennifer leaned forward, don’t you ever meet people and just get the feeling there’s something wrong? Something...slightly off?”

“You mean people like you?”

“Hey, shut up! Anyways, you know what I’m talking about. Those people that seem to have a screw loose or a marble missing or whatever you want to call it. Those people that could snap at any moment…and do something absolutely insane!”

“What about them?”

“I don’t know. I just find it interesting. Sometimes, I wish my camera could see through walls.”

“Like X-Ray or something? Sounds weird.”

“Curiosity doesn’t have to be creepy. I’d just want to see what people do when no one’s around.”

“I don’t know…”

“Man, you’re too serious, Cameron. Just try to listen to what I’m saying. Take London for example. They have all kinds of security cameras everywhere, capturing a solid record of public events.” She gestured towards the wall of diverse photos. “It’s basically continual street photography – a steady stream of documented footage.”

“You’ve been to London? What, were you designing an escalator or something?”

“Hey now. It wasn’t an escalator. It was a Rube Goldberg mechanism that had to utilize both digital and analogue security devices. Motion sensors, timers, temperature-sensitive pads – stuff like that.”

“In London?”

“No, Cameron, I never actually went there. I just studied it to learn about their civil uses of electrical engineering. And in London, the crime rates have been drastically changed because of their infrastructure. It’s like they have a camera on every corner.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Where’s the privacy?”

Jennifer tossed the couch pillow aside and leaned closer to Cameron. “Privacy? Oh, they still have plenty of that.”

She was testing him. If Cameron were a man of action, a man of the moment, he would take the hint and kiss her right then and there. Jen waited a split second, then turned away, blushing only a glow, but Cameron leaned in and caught her soft lips in his own. He tasted the sweetness of her mouth and tucked a strand of hair around her ear. Gently running her hands over Cameron’s strong shoulders, Jen squeezed his toned arms, letting her center of gravity move closer to his. And as his jawline glided across her gentle face, Cameron took her hand, intertwining her fingers with his own.

Sparks flew.

Pure Chemistry.

Then suddenly, Jen pulled away and stood up. “You’re smooth when you want to be.”

“What are you doing?”

“I was just making sure you were serious about me.”

“And?”

“If you want to date me, Cameron. You’re going to have to wine and dine me. It’s not as easy as making out on my couch.”

Cameron continued to adore Jen, and over the course of several more dates, she began to let her guard down as she learned it was okay to trust him.

One of her classic tricks involved challenging Cameron to draw a maze she couldn’t solve. She won this game every time and solved all of the puzzles with impressive speed. Especially when she achieved record times, she was unstoppable.

As part of Jen’s hobby of street photography, she invited Cameron to one of her favorite parks on the west side of Colorado Springs. They’d sit in the park, her head on his shoulder, watching a young boy fly a kite and a middle-aged couple talk about politics.

For fun, Cameron and Jen spoke in hushed voices as they fabricated a backstory for each passerby.

On one occasion, an elderly woman walking a Yorkshire terrier overheard their embellishments and scolded, “Well, I never! You should be ashamed of yourselves!”

As the woman walked off, shaking her head in disgust, Jen joked they had just met a future version of her strong-willed, outspoken self; maybe post menopause.

Cameron laughed at first, but then considered the joke may hold a touch of potential truth.

The affection they had for each other brought out their silly sides as no one else had seen them before. Some afternoons, they folded newspapers into hats and wore them as they sat in an imaginary rowboat, paddling away in the middle of the park.

No more than a week later, th
e
sam
e
woman with th
e
sam
e
Yorkshire terrier as before shook her head in haughty disgust
.
How dare they have fun.

They rowed and rowed, scooting on their bums across the grass, singing as they went along.

But they didn’t sing in English.

They sang in a new language.

It was the language of romp.

One particular night, Cameron and Jen sprawled out on the grass in the park, staring up at the constellations of the night sky, projecting their questions not only to each other, but also to the heavens.

“You ever think love is just a mind game we construct?” Cameron pulled some grass out of the earth and twisted it into a knot.

“What do you mean?” Jen asked. “Like a puzzle or something?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“It’s hard to say.” She inhaled the cool night air and thought for a moment. She wasn’t stalling. Instead, she was weighing options. In her past relationships, Jen learned certain mazes led to painful dead ends.

“So, you’re asking if love is just a series of chemical reactions in the brain?”

“No.”

“Cameron, that’s what I’m hearing.”

“Let’s go back to the puzzle.”

“Not chemicals?”

“Not just chemicals. Like there’s a design to love.”

“Predestination?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t believe it’s random.”

“Yeah, you could have talked to any other girl at any other Denny’s.” Jen propped up her head with her folded arms, gazing to the stars.

“But I didn’t. I talked to you.”

A comfortable silence came, hung, and faded.

“Listen. Cameron. You know that thing I said about London – their foolproof camera systems and all that? Well, it’s not just something I studied for the heck of it.” Her voice became calmer.

“Look, it hasn’t been easy for me to do the whole college thing – working in the mornings and studying at night. I didn’t think I could handle it.”

Cameron felt she wasn’t telling him the whole story. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not like I can’t handle the homework. I just…I just needed to study something that would make sense. Something that has a real purpose.”

“Circuits and wires?”

“No, not just that. Cameron, it’s complicated. You see, ten years ago, I lost my brother. He…he was…someone shot him.” A trembling formed in her throat. “He didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t drugs or alcohol or anything. He just walked out of our house in L.A., and a red vehicle drove and shot two rounds…into his chest.”

Cameron took Jen’s hand. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I can’t be sorry anymore. I have to do something about it. My brother, Luke, he was only twenty years old. He didn’t even finish his college degree.” Tears formed in her eyes, and she let them stream down her face. “Luke wasn’t just my brother. I looked up to him. He was kind. Noble. I loved him – loved him more than anyone else. We had this trust. I could go to him and tell him anything,” Jen brushed the tears away with the back of her hand. “And he would actually listen. He had this strength, you know. Just an amazing…resilience. And it was all taken away from him. It was all snatched away like some kind of sick prank.”

“Jen…”

“And I know I’ll never be able to fix it or bring him back or anything, but I’ve just realized that I have to save all of the other Lukes out there. If I could just save all of the other…victims of these god-awful crimes, I would. I would do it for him. Luke had this…charisma about him. Whenever he came home, everybody wanted to talk to him – hear about his day – just be with him. See him. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like he had some kind of extra dose of hope. And on that day, when the car came by, the basketball just rolled from his hand into the street. And the worst thing was...I wasn’t even there. I never saw him take his last breath. I never got to say goodbye.”

“Jen, I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s what the police told me. And everyone from church and school. Look, I’m not as sad anymore as much as I’m angry. The police never found the car or the shooter or really anything. It was reported as a drive-by, and that’s where they left it. But those bullets didn’t kill Luke’s courage. No, he just passed it onto me. God, if there had just been a camera…any camera outside our house on that day it would have seen the shooter. No doubt, the crime would be encoded as a digital landmark...impossible to erase. If only there were more cameras in L.A., the police may have been able to find the vehicle and get justice for my brother. If only I would have been there to stop it. I swear, Cameron, I would have taken a bullet for Luke.”

It started to sprinkle. Then rain. Then downpour. But they didn’t care. Cameron and Jen continued to lie in the grass.

They let the rain cool their faces, and they raised their hands into the air catching the droplets in their mouths.

Jen secretly wished the water had the power to wash away some of the past.

It was the morning after Jen’s college graduation when Cameron popped the question.

She was solving a Sudoku puzzle on her favorite park bench, listening to the chirps of the May birds around her.

A fresh layer of dew had covered the bench in the morning, but once the sun reached its peak at midday, the collection of droplets had long-evaporated. Jen’s motivation to challenge herself with Sudoku was such that she tore the cheat sheets out of the back, using them as paper scraps for peeling vegetables. These were the moments, on the bench, where she could focus. With the ever-changing life of the park and those that inhabited it on walks and picnics, Jen found sanctuary in her solitude. And she was just about to finish the final set of numbers in the Sudoku puzzle when a broad shadow blocked the sun from her face.