Mindbenders (13 page)

“Out? Isn’t that dangerous?”

He shrugged again. “Everything’s dangerous—it’s just a question of more or less. I don’t think they’ve found us yet.”

That sure didn’t sound very conclusive. I was hoping for something a whole lot stronger, but he didn’t seem to be offering. “Could they have traced the phone call?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” he said casually. “Fischel’s just a committee staffer—he’s not high on the food chain. If they were tapping him for some reason, it would take a minute to recognize this conversation as worth tracing. I bounced the call off two Soviet satellites that are still up there and I timed it—believe me, they’re not as fast as the movies.”

“That’s it? That’s all the reassurance the world’s best mindbender can offer?”

“If I wait for better than that,” he shrugged, “I never get to go out to dinner.”

The town downvalley was bigger than it looked—it had the remnants of a low-rent amusement park along with a reptile zoo, several hotels and restaurants clustered along the main roads leading out to the highway—there was also a
Your World
Center, which I gleefully pointed out to Max as we passed. We ended up in a shed-like place off the beaten track, with an electric sign bigger than the restaurant and a round dance floor in the middle of a raised circle of dinner tables. The signs hanging by the side of the door promised Kansas steak, local lake trout and 800 different beers from around the World. They had internet access—you could order dinner from Singapore, though it didn’t mention delivery. There were a crowd of customers, but mostly at the bar and dance floor. Max shook the maitre d’s hand and he stiffened and led us immediately to a table with a clear view of the entrance and easy access to the emergency exit.

The bar was filled with several clusters, milling and circulating and laughing a little too loudly, the general crowd trying a little too hard to have a good time, as opposed to the hard-core drunks at the small tables near the far end of the bar.

It’s funny how you can find the person you’re looking for in a crowd, even if you didn’t know you were looking.  A bright-eyed dark-haired girl standing with her blonde friend right at the center of everything, for example, watching faces and sharing confidences and trying to look carefree. At first I thought, maybe they’re more than friends—they were hanging close and you can’t tell these days. But when she turned around, her eyes said she was looking and not finding. And it just hit me hard, as soon as I saw those eyes full-on: I just knew who she was. I knew what she was feeling all too well. It wasn’t a memory, it was like I was
inside
that feeling, inside her, the hope and bitterness flashing through me all at once. There are other feelings I’d have chosen to revisit before that one.

Max nudged me. “Ask her to dance,” he said. “Go on.”

“Go away,” I said. “We’re incognito.”

“You’re a man out for dinner with his business partner. We’re on a business trip—we leave in the morning. A convenient cover story. Get used to having one.” He leaned into my ear. “She’ll like you,” he said.

“You know that for a fact?” I asked but he just sat back, staring at the ceiling, all innocent eyes. When the waiter brought us our two out of the 800 beers of the World, I asked him to bring her and her friend whatever they were drinking. Max said, “No—ask her to dance,” but this was how I knew to do it. And, as soon as they got the drinks, she smiled at me and I smiled back and three seconds later, the two of them were sitting down in the booth next to us.

“I’m Tess,” she said, holding out her hand. “This is Cindy. Thanks for the drinks.”

“I’m Greg,” I said “and this is Max.” I hadn’t thought twice about it but when I looked over at him now, he looked petrified, frozen in place. He sat straight as a ramrod with his eyes flashing, sharp, like he was surrounded by a vile of snakes. The girls somehow didn’t seem to notice, which was kind of amazing.

Cindy offered her hand. Max shook it,  jerky, out-of-synch. She didn’t seem to notice this either. Tess, meanwhile, was staring at me with eyes the size of flying saucers.

“You guys aren’t from around here,” she said.

“You know
everybody
around here?” I said and they both laughed, which was charitable—it wasn’t much of a joke.

“Actually, I do,” she answered. “I’m the county registrar. If you have a last name, I can tell you what you paid in taxes last year.” She nestled up next to me, our arms and legs touching—her skin was warm, nice muscle tone. She was actually pretty buff. “Assuming you filed.”

“Don’t tell her anything,” Cindy said and we laughed some more.

 “We pay no taxes in this area,” Max said, forcing himself to speak. “We’re just here overnight—our businesses are upriver. We have inspections to do tomorrow.” I kicked him under the table—
lighten up, dude
. He was treating them like the Board of Directors.

“I didn’t think there was anyplace around here people wanted to go,” Cindy said; I laughed at this too before realizing she was serious.

Every time I looked at Tess, the world calmed down. I didn’t feel like I had to do anything in particular to get her to like me. At the same time, Cindy was listening to Max go over the details of our profit projections, all moon-eyes, like it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. Max kept smiling really hard, which only made his face more frightening-looking.

“What do you do?” I asked Cindy, trying to keep the train from going completely off the tracks.

“I’m a trainer,” she said, with a little hesitation.

“Cindy’s a
Worldie
,” Tess said in a vague combination of envy and disdain.

“I’m a
third-level
,” Cindy burst now, with the zest of the true believer. “I train graduates and other trainers. We’ve got people who come back ten and fifteen times, to make sure they get it, to keep their hope level up. We’ve only been open a year here but we’ve already got a base of almost 200 just in this area.”

“If she keeps doing what she’d doing,” Tess added, “she’ll move up to state level.”

“It’s so
spiritual
!” Cindy exhaled. I saw Max shrinking into the corner of the booth but it was too late to stop myself—the words were already halfway out of my mouth.

“
Your World
? Y’know, Max actually used to know Jim Avery.”

If a look could strangle you across a table, I’d have been dead in a dumpster one second later.

“Omigod, you
know
him?” Cindy turned with a beatific look. “He changed my life—he taught me to
believe
in my dreams. Isn’t it—?”

“
Knew
him,” Max interrupted roughly. “
Knew
.
Years
ago. For a
very
short period of time.”

“When? What was he like?” Cindy sputtered. “What happened? Have you kept in contact? Would he know you if he saw you again?”

“You want to dance?” I asked Tess and we both jumped out of the booth. I felt the back of my head burning hot but I’d seen that one coming and just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

It was a slow song and I got to hold her pretty much beginning to end. I hadn’t held a woman in a long time. It was terrifyingly wonderful, though I don’t know why terrifying. I’d had women in my arms before. We talked all the way through the song but the words got less and less important as we went on.

‘You really aren’t staying around?” she said.

“Business,” I shrugged, genuinely unhappy about my fictional life, whose consequences were the same as my real one. Which is the merger, I guess, that makes a good cover story work.

“I never thought I’d meet someone like you in a place like this,” she said and that turned me around all of a sudden. We’d had one dance and I was a little light-headed too but I couldn’t get three words out of my mouth two or three days earlier, so I had an excuse. What was hers? Then she said, “You want to go to the car and fool around a little?” which put me over the limit. I dragged her off the floor and back to the table.

Renn was wedged into a corner of the booth, bending spoons without touching them while Cindy explained the world according to Jim Avery to him. He wasn’t even trying to hide his discomfort. Was he gay? I wondered and then rejected the thought. If he was gay, they’d be best friends and discussing window treatments. Maybe he was in the closet? Whatever the reason, he was ignoring her and she just kept yammering, oblivious, like she was getting paid by the word.

“Excuse us a second,” I interrupted and grabbed Renn by the shoulder. I might have pulled him out of his chair; I was kind of running on instinct. I’m not sure if he was shocked or relieved but he let me drag him a few feet away.

“What are
you
mad about?” he protested, shouting over the music.

“You’re making us wonderful,” I said, shouting back. “You’re forcing them to like us.”

“You’re getting lucky and I’m learning how believing in myself—and paying Jim Avery a monthly stipend—will make all my problems seem insignificant. I’m six minutes into a fifteen minute monologue, all of which I’ve already heard her rehearse twice in her head—so, again, what are
you
mad about?”

“Hey, most people pay $450 for the 2-hour
Your World
evening session. You’re getting it for free.”

“Free is too expensive,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not forcing them. I’m just making them receptive.”

I could feel my eyes narrow. “And the difference is—?”

“The difference is, I have some scruples. If she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t. If she sees something she likes in you, she doesn’t fight it.”

“That’s scruples? You’re still coercing her.”

“It’s easy to be black-and-white,” he shrugged, “when you have no power. I could easily force her to sleep with you and everyone in the room. The fact that I don’t doesn’t make me pure, but it
is
a form of scruples.”

“Well, knock it off,” I said. “Let me get there on my own.”

He sighed okay. We returned to the table, where the ladies were waiting, and I could see immediately that the light in their faces had faded. We weren’t so fascinating anymore. Now they seemed to be sizing us up a bit, checking to see if we were worth the effort. More like what I was used to.

“We’re working on this new thing—paraskiing,” Max stammered, taking furtive, nervous looks at both women. He’d been nervous when he had them firmly under control. Now he was a wreck. “You ski down a hill wearing a parasail…no…I mean, you ski down the hill and…deploy…the sail just after you go…over the edge—there has to be a cliff, of course…and you drift down…to wherever you land. Of course, you need a lot of cleared space down there…down below…for landing…because the sail tends to drift and…you don’t…want to come down in the trees. You could break something.”

He was dissolving quickly, like a standup comic who knows he’s bombing. I realized what must have happened—he’d searched (the room? The state?) for a mind with an edgy entrepreneurial idea and he’d found one—a really
stupid
idea, dangerous on every count. “But you wouldn’t believe the numbers,” he continued now, trying to cover himself, throwing good money after bad. “Parasails really don’t cost much and…the people who pay to take risks pay big money for it. In fact, if you don’t charge them
enough
, they get—” I grabbed him, held a hand up in front of the girls and dragged him away again. 

“What the hell is this about?” I demanded.

“I’m no good at this,” he answered. He was sweating like a pig.

“How good do you have to be? Idiots manage it every day.”

“Idiots have instinct,” he said without self-pity, as though this was something I should have known about him. “All I know is what’s in their minds. They want a man who does something extreme-ish though not too much and Cindy likes money, too.”

“That doesn’t mean you just start babbling every detail, dammit.”

“Well, how else is she going to know?”

“Let her figure it out! It’s a mystery—
you’re
a mystery. She’d rather guess you have money than be sure.” I couldn’t believe it. “You’re
naturally
mysterious when you’re not trying.”

“I’m—she’s pretty,” he stammered. “When the girl’s pretty, I’m just not natural,” he said unnecessarily and we retreated back to the table.

Tess was flashing looks at me now, with a sort of desperate hope in her eyes. Cindy was eyeing both entrances with an equally desperate hunger. I suddenly remembered what dating was like and understood how alluring it would be to just be able to control things.

 “We have several businesses,” Renn segued, trying to get himself under control. “Rafting, skydiving, extreme skiing, gliders—Greg’s big on gliders.”

All eyes were suddenly on me and I realized—shockingly—that I actually knew something about gliders. “Gliders are amazing,” I started and suddenly there were pictures in my head and a tingle in my voice because the memories were coming back to me in waves. “They tow you down the runway and it doesn’t feel fast enough and then the plane in front of you starts to lift off and you realize you’re already floating behind it and you didn’t even feel the takeoff.  And they pull you higher and higher and it’s noisy and buffety and then they release the cable and, all of a sudden, you’re just there, all alone, rock steady over everything. There’s this amazing moment when you realize it really is going to work, you’re not just going to plummet to the ground. You’re just a hiss through the air and everything gets slow and easy, like you’re suspended in time and space. You’re not going anywhere and you have all the time in the world to do it. And then you’re on the ground again, way too soon.”

I had no idea if this was a memory or a dream. But it felt real inside me. At some point, I’d had a moment of nutty daring and taken that risk, for no reason at all.

The girls were staring at me, eyes wide and bright. I’d put it over. I looked at Max and he was smiling and the look on his face said
You did it on your own, pal
. Except I hadn’t—he’d found my best memory to spark, for me to build on.