Minders (22 page)

The rope.
She’d seen James coiling it earlier, but he wasn’t holding it when they were standing at the icehouse.

“What did you do with the rope?” she asked when she caught up with him.

“Dropped it,” he said with a shrug. He was staring intently into the distance. Sadie followed his gaze and somehow without moving they were standing back at the edge of the hall of mirrors.

“Shift change,” James announced. “End of a dream.” As he said it they watched the crowd part hastily, and an ambulance with the word HARMACY stenciled on it came barreling through, driven by a tiger in a cowboy hat. The doors opened, and twin versions of Cali wearing ER scrubs climbed out.

James said, “It’s time. He’s ready for the message. You have to get it to him.”

“What message?” Sadie asked.

“Something’s wrong with the rooster,” he said, like he was talking to himself.

Sadie looked for a rooster but didn’t see one. She turned back to ask James where it was, but he’d vanished. Instead, she found she was standing near Plum again, still on the couch with her candies, hand out, chanting the same refrain, “Show Momma you love her just like your brother.”

Sadie had been so focused on the “like your brother” part of the chant that she hadn’t really paid attention to the first half. But looking at Plum with her hand out, as though waiting to be kissed, Sadie had an idea. What if the advice Plum had given Ford about his mother, to tell her that she was valuable to him, was actually just what Plum wanted? Maybe all it would take to get her to tell Serenity Services that James never did drugs was to play her game. Kiss her hand.

She had to take Plum with her into Ford’s conscious mind and make him realize this. Ford wanted James’s case reopened, and Plum—the girlfriend wanted for questioning—was the best hope. If he was sweet to Plum, she’d be sweet to him.

Sadie said to her, “Can you come with me?”

Before she could get an answer, there was a rumble like an earthquake. Ford’s subconscious bucked once and vanished as he opened his eyes. Sadie found herself in a slightly hazy version of Ford’s mind, staring up through his lashes at the living room ceiling.

Had she caused that? Did something in her conversation with Plum wake him?

His mind came into clearer focus. He grunted and stretched to reach his phone. The screen said six A.M., half an hour before his alarm.

Dropping his phone on his chest, he closed his eyes and sank back into the cushions.

And then sat up abruptly.
Sugar momma
, Sadie heard him think.
If I’m sweet to Plum, she’ll be sweet to me. Serenity Services will have to listen to her.

Sadie’s head whirled with astonishment and excitement. Had her conversation with Plum moved from his subconscious to conscious mind? Or had she just been channeling a conclusion he had already reached? She felt like every part of her was tingling.

Apparently the discovery excited him too because his hand strayed down his stomach and slid beneath the waistband of his boxers. Sadie’s breath caught as with a clash of cymbals, a jazz band reached for its instruments and began grinding to life in his head. They started off separate, each instrument playing its own wave of sensation, tickling Sadie in different, unfamiliar places, then picking up speed as they began to knit together into a powerful, pulsing sound.

Ribbons of color streaked across his mind, shimmering and dissolving as others took their place.
This is nothing like shallow stasis
, Sadie thought, her pulse quickening faster than his, her mind trilling with the vibrations of a French horn leading the other instruments as it twisted its joyful throaty sound upward through a virtuoso series of chords. This was—
oh god!
—not like anything—
open your eyes, Ford
—she’d ever—
please, I want to see, I want
—experienced or even—

She moaned aloud and over the noise of the band heard his stifled grunt in her ear as his body pitched and hers convulsed, sending golden shock waves of sensation bouncing from her to him then back again—

—dreamed.

Ford lay on his back breathing hard, and now he did look down, but all Sadie saw was the wet place on the front of his shorts. She was dizzy from the spinning in his head and the thoughts in hers, wanting it never to end, wanting to do it again, wondering how long he’d have to wait until he was ready—

Absolutely not
, she told herself.
There would be no repeat. Are you out of your mind?

Yes, in fact, I am
, she answered, stifling a laugh at her own bad joke.

There was nothing funny about it, she knew. Her behavior had been unscientific, unobjective, inappropriate. Given what she’d just done, the Committee had been right to doubt her suitability as a Minder. What had she been thinking, letting herself go that way? Acting so—

Passionate
, she thought.
I, Sadie Ames, was passionate.

“Wow,” Ford said aloud.

Sadie tried, but she couldn’t contain the bubble of laughter that burst from her then. It rubbed against her self-reproach, taking the edge off, making her recognize that she’d made a mistake, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Her objectivity had only been momentarily compromised.

Still, she felt shy facing him in the mirror that morning as he brushed his teeth.

It won’t happen again
, she resolved. She could control herself. Would control herself.

But now she knew what everyone else felt. And she’d felt it too.

Thank you, Ford
, she whispered, completely forgetting to be annoyed when he left the toilet seat up.

CHAPTER 17

T
iny prickles of impatience teased Ford all day at work.

He’d texted Plum that morning—“I CAN’T GET YOU OFF MY MIND. I’M SORRY I WAS A DISAPPOINTMENT. WILL YOU GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE?”—and had been checking his phone all day for a reply that didn’t materialize, but Sadie knew his anticipation was really due to his excitement about his date with Cali that night.

He stopped at the tree house on his way home from work, and as he put out candles and set the table he hummed to himself, his mind almost as playful as it was when he was with Lulu. He hung a mirror he’d found at a job site on one wall, and grinned when he unwrapped a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream he’d skipped lunch for three days to afford because it was Cali’s favorite.

Watching him go through the preparations, Sadie was envious of Cali. Not because of Ford, of course. Because of the hours he’d spent planning to make the night a success. He’d built a whole tree house just for her.

He rushed home to get dressed, and he’d been tucking in a surprisingly unwrinkled dress shirt when his mother came out of her room and said, “We need to talk, Ford.”

“No we don’t,” he told her, his mind filling with matte dots, as though ready to repel anything that might try to penetrate it.

“We do.”

“Well, I can’t right now.”

“Soon,” she insisted.

He shrugged, already pushing the conversation to the farthest corner of his mind, determined not to let anything spoil the night. “Fine, tomorrow after work.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding to herself. “Okay.” Disappearing back into the gloom of her bedroom.

• • •

He rode his bike the two miles to Cali’s house, a yellow one-story with its own yard and a front porch. Leaving the picnic basket on the porch, he rang the bell then walked through the unlocked screen door.

A man in a tank top and work pants sat on the couch, his face lit by the television.

“Hello, Mr. Moss,” Ford said.

“Hello, Ford,” Cali’s father answered without taking his eyes from the television. “Have a seat.”

Ford sat and watched a show about making fondue for ten minutes while his mind buzzed impatiently with different imagined versions of Cali saying, “Ford, no way!” for each surprise she discovered in the tree house. Cali came out wearing a tight dress and high heels with her hair pinned up.

Ford’s mind played a drum flourish. Sadie thought she looked pretty, and there was no denying that she had boobs.

“You look—” Ford began, searching for words. “Better than dinner.”

“Must not be much of a place you’ve picked out then.” Cali smiled at him.

“Oh, it is. It is.” Their fingers twined together, and Sadie felt his heartbeat pick up.

Cali said goodbye to her dad, and they stepped out onto the porch into the warm night. Ford bent to grab the picnic basket, and Cali tugged her hand from his. “No,” she said emphatically. “No, no,
no
.”

What was going on?
Sadie wondered as Ford’s mind filled with even lines of dark circles hovering in protective formation. “Cali?” he asked.

She shook her head, her cheeks flushed, arms crossed over her chest. “Not again,” she told him. “You said we were going somewhere new. Somewhere special.”

“We are,” Ford assured her.

You totally are
, Sadie agreed.

“Then what is that?” She pointed a long, harlequin-painted nail at the picnic basket.

“Dinner?” Ford said.

“I am not spending another one of those nights climbing over people’s discarded crap to one of your ‘special’ places in some old building with no working bathroom.”

Sadie hadn’t thought about the bathroom part.

“Look at me,” Cali said, running her hand down herself like a TV presenter. “I’m the kind of woman who should be taken out and shown off. Not the kind who should be sitting on the floor eating off paper plates in some moldy house no one else wants to be in either.”

Sadie was shocked. She’d expected Cali to be so excited, thrilled. Because Ford had expected her to be excited, she realized.

And because I would be.

Now Ford’s mind hummed with anxiety. He set the basket down. “I thought you liked that. You said you liked it when I found secret spots to take you. They’re way more special than that place we went for dinner on Friday.”

“Really?” Cali said, raising an eyebrow. “Because I think toilets are special.”

Sadie started to feel annoyed with Cali.
If she’s going to be that way, she doesn’t deserve to see the tree house
, she told Ford.

But he didn’t agree.
Fix this, fix this, fix this
, his mind chanted. “Please, Cali? Please will you come? I think you’ll really like it.”

Cali teetered back on her heels. “No. I can’t. If I go you’ll be funny and we’ll have sex and nothing will ever change.” She let out a long ragged breath. “I think it’s time for this to be over.”

Her words caught Ford completely off guard. For a moment his mind froze, every sound gone, every dot stuck, suspended in place. “Over?” he repeated, and Sadie felt how tight his vocal cords were. “You and me? Because of a picnic?” He kicked the basket. “Forget the picnic. Fine, let’s go to a restaurant.”

“It’s not the picnic. It’s everything.”

Points of color flared agonizingly and Ford’s head filled with noise, as if Cali saying “it’s time for this to be over” were a magnet for other voices—“piece of crap,” “puppy,” “I miss him,” “drop it,” “let go,” “get out of here”—lashing him, causing real, physical pain.

Sadie felt the stickiness of humiliation, the heat of his anger, scented the bleach of betrayal, the raw hurt of having worked so hard and been rejected. He did the only thing he knew how to do, the thing he always did. In a harsh, cold voice he said, “Are you sleeping with your boss already?”

“You asshole.” Cali turned to go back into the house.

“Cali, wait, I’m sorry.” He reached for her arm. Sadie was impressed with him, impressed with his accepting responsibility and being willing to admit he was wrong. “That was a terrible thing to say. I didn’t mean it. It’s just—you said everything was wrong. But I thought we were fine. We went out with your friends the other night, and it was great. I loved George and Cotton.” Ford’s vision dimmed, and Sadie felt him recoil from the lie but sensed his hopelessness, his desperation. “I always just assumed it was you and me together forever. That’s what we said. And now we have some little disagreement and you say everything is over.”

Cali looked at his hand on her arm. “It’s Georg
ia
and
Clin
ton. And you didn’t like them. You hated them. You pretended to, but you were bluffing.”

Ford blinked, and Sadie felt a rising sense of vertigo, as though he had no idea where he was or which way was up. “That’s not—”

Cali stopped his protest. “You were so busy this weekend, I had a lot of time to think. And the more I did, the more it became clear.”

Something in her tone made Ford let go of her arm. The feeling of vertigo stayed with him. “What?”

“You—you’re all about the past. Old houses, old friends. City Center. Things staying how they are. But I’m not. I want to move forward. I’m tired of picnics, and crawling through rafters to see some great view of the city, which is just the same dirty city no matter how you look at it. I like eating off plates with silverware at a table with chairs. I adore restaurants and new homes in new developments with new furniture and new carpets. I want to live somewhere with a bathtub no one has ever used and a refrigerator that makes ice. Like Georgia and Clinton’s town house.”

Sadie watched Ford rooting around his mind, hunting for patches, anything he could use to fix this like he fixed the tree house, only the materials were much more sparse. He considered a memory of an old porch swing they’d sat in on an abandoned porch and watched the sunset, but settled instead on “We agreed that place was hideous. All that fake plastic molding and wallpaper that looked like tile.”

Wrong choice
, Sadie thought.

Cali shook her head. “
You
said it was hideous. I—I liked it.” She looked down, knitting her fingers together. “Actually, I loved it.”

“But the windows were aluminum. They’ll be freezing all winter. And the front door wasn’t even real wood. Everything was fake. A lie.”
Stop!
Sadie called out to him.
You’re completely missing the point
.