Minders (10 page)

Ford put his finger to his lips. In one swift motion he dropped into a push-up position and peered under the bed.

“Still no monsters,” he reported, standing back up. “No way they could have hidden that fast. You’re safe.”

Lulu held up two dolls that appeared to be from the dollhouse and said, “Kiss Bless and Noshe good night.”

Ford grabbed one of them and pretended to start making out with her, causing Lulu to squeal with laughter, then dropped the dolls and reached for her, and she squealed even more. Sadie tried to imagine what it would be like to have someone who made your mind relax the way Lulu made Ford’s.

He gave his sister a soppy kiss on the forehead and was at the door when she spoke.

“How come when Cali says ‘I love you’ you don’t say it back?”

He stopped on the threshold and turned to face her, his mind staying even and unaffected. “I do.”

“No you don’t,” Lulu told him. “You say ‘you too’ or ‘me too’ or ‘uh-huh.’”

Ford laughed and turned back toward the door. “Agree to disagree.”

Lulu narrowed her eyes. “That’s my line. You can’t just take it.”

He pantomimed catching something in his fist midair, grinned, said, “Too late,” and shut the door.

• • •

Cali’s bare legs over the top of the couch, one ankle crossed over the other, were the first thing he noticed walking down the hall toward the living room, and the reaction in his body was immediate. Sadie felt his lower abdomen tighten and heard something that sounded almost like music in his head.

“I hope you don’t mind, I made myself comfortable,” Cali said.

He slid onto the couch next to her, his arm coming around to rest conveniently on her breast, his crotch against her leg. “You look like you might still be a little uncomfortable. Maybe you should get out of your shorts.”

Cali laughed. “I was thinking, on Friday you could wear the blue checked shirt. You know, the one you were wearing the first time we met.”

“Mmmm?”
His lips roamed over the smooth skin along the base of Cali’s neck, and tiny clusters of sound and color broke loose in various parts of his mind, like dandelion seeds being blown free in a breeze, a momentary
poof
and then gone.

During training Sadie had resolved to use any intimate time her Subject had to review her findings and take down new data, but now she found herself unable to break away. She felt the tension building inside of him as though it were inside of her, each trill and riff adding another layer. It was like having butterfly wings tease over her skin, making it tingle and prickle in the most exquisite and exquisitely distracting way. She let herself slip into it, willingly, even gratefully, breathless to find out what happened next—

From very far away a voice said, “You know, the one you wore on our first date.”

It had happened again, she realized—a world of experience in the space of a heartbeat. The music in his head stopped, the tickling evaporated, and Ford blinked his eyes open, saying, “Friday? What’s happening Friday?”

Dinner with her friends
, Sadie volunteered.
Remember when you were too stubborn to ask what she was talking about? I guess we know who is the best now.

Cali laughed and shimmied up him, setting off a momentary tinkling of bells. “Silly. Going out with Georgia and Clinton. We have a reservation at Trattoria Olivio.”

The tightness in Ford’s lower abdomen shifted from pleasure to something more like pressure. “Sorry, babe, I have another commitment.” Sadie didn’t need the feeling of the lights suddenly dimming to know he was lying.
Why do that? Why not just say “I don’t want to go”?

Cali’s perfectly arced brows came together in a frown. “You told me you were free all weekend. You just said Friday was just fine.”

“To see you,” Ford answered. “You didn’t tell me about Trattoria Olivio. You know I don’t like going to those frou-frou places.” His mind filled with pointillist images of bread sticks, a carafe of wine wrapped in straw, salad—

“How would you know you don’t like it if you’ve never been?” Cali asked.

Ford said, “It just seems stupid.”

It didn’t seem stupid when you were picturing it just now
, Sadie observed.
Why would you say something so intentionally antagonistic?

Cali pulled as far from him on the couch as she could. “Do you care about me? Love me? Because if you want to end this, you should do it now. It’s not fair to drag it out.”

Ford sat up, the noise in his head spiking with surprise. “Whoa, where is this coming from? Because I don’t want to pay forty dollars for some crappy Italian food?”

Cali took a deep breath and, like someone jumping off the high dive, said, “I got a new job.”

Ford sat up even straighter. “A new job? You mean a promotion?”

“No. A whole new job.” Another deep breath for courage. “I started interviewing in April, and I found out I got it on Friday.”

“April?” Ford repeated incredulously. “You kept this from me for two months?” Sadie caught a whiff of the same bleachy scent she’d noticed at the Castle. Only she’d been wrong; there hadn’t been a cleaning crew, it was
inside
Ford’s head.

“I was afraid of how you’d take it,” Cali said.

“How should I take it?” Ford demanded. “I thought we were a couple. Now you tell me you’ve been looking for new jobs behind my back.” The smell of bleach got stronger. “What else have you been lying about?”

“I didn’t lie.” Cali reached for him, but he pulled away from her hand, turning his back. From behind him she said, “The job is with CitCent Neighborhood Bank. I’ll be an executive assistant to one of the bankers. It’s a great opportunity, Ford. More money, more responsibility, chances for promotion. It’s a career, the way I always said I wanted. We’ll be able to get a place together, like Georgia and Clinton.”

Say congratulations
, Sadie urged.
Tell her that’s great news and you’re excited for her.

Ford’s mind flashed back to the imagined dinner scene with Georgia and Clinton, the dots forming pictures of dessert, tiny cups of coffee, the final bill. His wallet with the two dollars in it. It brought with it a rush of the same sticky, dirty sensation Sadie had noticed at the Castle.

He turned to face Cali and said, “You know what they call executive assistants? Work mistresses. They’ll screw you but they won’t promote you.”

Or you could say that.

Cali’s lower lip was trembling. “Ford, don’t act this way.”

“I’m just telling you the truth. Would you rather I lied to you and said you were off to a great start, your future looks bright?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not comfortable lying to the people I love.”

Seriously, Mr. Ice? You’re not comfortable lying? Careful you don’t slip and lose your tenuous hold on the moral high ground.

“I’d hoped you could be happy for me and not need to lie.” Cali sighed. “But I guess I already knew that’s not how it would go.”

Ford blinked, and dots of brown, yellow, magenta, blue, and beige formed a very faint elevator carrying Cali dressed like Kansas had been that day, surrounded by men in business suits with bulging wallets eyeing her cleavage. “I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment.”

He’s deliberately provoking her
, Sadie realized. As if he wanted to fight, wanted to make it escalate.

“You’re twisting everything around,” Cali whimpered.

“I’m just listening to you. Isn’t that what you want? And you know what, babe? You’re right. You deserve better than me.”

That’s a neat magic trick
, Sadie thought.
Turning from the person in the wrong into the person who was wronged. What’s next? Pulling a rabbit out of a hat?

“I don’t want better, I want you,” Cali said, falling for the trick. “I just want you to be happy. You used to be, but now—it seems like you never are.”

“I’m sorry I’m not happy, Cali,” he said. “It’s just that my brother is dead and my girlfriend is a liar.”

Cali’s mouth made an
O
, and she froze like she’d been stabbed in the stomach.
Oh, I see. Your next trick is cutting the woman in half.

The tears started down Cali’s cheeks, streaking her mascara, and she didn’t even lift a hand to smooth them away. “I’m gonna go.”

Followed by making her disappear.

At the door, Cali faced him. “Is this—are we—?”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said, half closing his eyes. “Soon.”

I’ll be in touch.
Sadie heard the echo of Pete’s words the night before, and worked to push it away. The point of this fellowship was to experience someone else’s life, not her own.

Besides, Pete had called and apologized that morning—god, was it only that morning?—saying he was sorry, it was just that he was going to miss her so much. Everything between them was fine now.

But everything was
not
fine between her and Ford. Sadie wanted to shake him and ask what kind of person acted the way he did. Couldn’t he see how much Cali cared about him? Why would he try to tear her down rather than be happy for her? Keep their fight going instead of ending it? Worse, there was something cool and calculated about it, as though he was pushing Cali away so she’d have to work even harder to stay with him.

Humiliation
, Sadie realized.
That was what the sticky sensation was.
He’d felt humiliated that he couldn’t pay for dinner, but instead of admitting it, he’d tried to humiliate Cali by making her new job sound tawdry. Like something she should be ashamed of.
How immat
—

Stay objective
, Sadie reminded herself.
Record, don’t judge.
She added
humiliation
—
sticky, unpleasant, dirty
—after
anger
—
heavy, dark, suffocating, restless
—in her mental notebook, and then in a separate section wrote
bleach—?
.

So far, Ford Winter’s mind was living up to the darkness she’d seen in his eyes.

• • •

Sadie expected he’d go to his bedroom now—she imagined something decorated in dirty gym socks—but instead he went to the trunk that acted as a coffee table, pulled out a pillow and a blanket that had been shoved in there, and tossed them on the couch. He did it without triggering any change in his mind, making Sadie think this was where he regularly spent the night.

So what’s behind the other door off the hallway?
As though he’d heard her question, he went to it, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.

The air in the room was so thick with smoke that the bedside light made a golden halo. It was Spartan, more like a cell than a room, with only a dresser, a mirror, a night table, a light, and a bed.

A frail woman lay on the bed, above the covers. She wore a faded red housecoat that looked garish against her pale skin. There was a word jumble book on the bedspread next to her, an overflowing ashtray on the night table beside the lamp, and a picture in a silver frame resting in the hollow of her chest. A beige uniform dress with a white collar and a nametag that said VERA WINTER—WELCOME TO WAFFLE CITY lay draped haphazardly along the foot of the bed.

His mother,
Sadie thought.

Ford stood looking at her for a moment before approaching. His mind was full of a busy emptiness, as though all his thoughts, emotions, and memories had hidden themselves like animals sheltering from a predator in tall grass.

“James?” the woman whispered. Her arm hung off the bed, and a burnt-down cigarette dangled from between her first two fingers. They were red and blistered, and there were dark burn spots on the rug beneath her hand.

Ford took the cigarette from her and balanced it on top of the pile in the ashtray. “No, Mom. It’s Ford.”

“Where’s James?”

Sadie expected a flood of heavy anger, but Ford’s voice was calm. He lifted the photo off her chest and put it on the nightstand without glancing at it. “James isn’t here.”

“When will he be back?” the woman asked.

Ford said, “He won’t. He’s gone.”

His mother’s eyes came open. “I thought maybe that was a dream. That he was alive and you”—she paused—“were him.”

The Ford Sadie had seen with Cali would have been ready with a scathing retort. Instead she had the sensation of someone leaning into a door, using their weight to keep it closed.

Sadie realized this had been going on in the background of Ford’s mind all night, even when he was with Cali, the effort increasing incrementally until she only now became aware of it. As though whatever was behind the door was always hovering beneath the surface, trying to get out. Ford said evenly, “That would be nice.”

His mother slid out of bed, went to the dresser, and began arranging the few objects on it—brush, comb, box, lipstick—moving them around one another nervously. “I tried to go to work today, but—” Her voice trailed off. Ford settled on the edge of her bed, but she remained standing, keeping her back to him as she said, “I was thinking tomorrow you could go see your father.”

In Ford’s mind very faint blue and green and gray dots sifted themselves into a dozen grainy pictures of a man, one superimposed upon another, creating a monstrous tableau. They were all different, but they were all sneering, and as Sadie watched, a fist punched through all of them, scattering the images into a red spray of blood.

Sadie felt the door in his mind jostle, and Ford leaning harder into it. “Why? Do you want me to end up in jail?”

His mother ignored that. “He hasn’t sent a check in a few months, and with me missing work we need the money.”

“I’ve been covering it,” Ford told her. “You said you were going to talk to the Roaches about Dad.”

“Don’t call them that. It’s disrespectful.”

“Fine. You said you were going to tell the Roque Community Health Evaluator about Dad not paying.”

She lined up the box with the brush and comb. “I didn’t want to bother her.”

Sadie felt the door starting to open and Ford struggling to push it back. “Mom, that’s what she’s for.”