Book Two: Magical Thinking
Part One
Every neighborhood has that one house, the one cloaked in mutters and furtive glances, the one you get dared to go inside. It's too clean, too cluttered, has a few too many eaves—something that makes it stick out. The adults don't talk about it unless their kids get caught near it, and the kids barely need to listen; they're the ones smart enough to realize that bright plumage means something is poisonous.
I get what the kids are saying, but unfortunately I'm paid not to listen.
It's hot, and I made the mistake of wearing a jacket; for added fun I had to pick up extra groceries today, and the plastic bags are gnawing through the crooks of my fingers. I'm wandering through the tangled suburbs on the ass end of Mountain View, through streets so winding there could be a tank around the next corner and I wouldn't know it. I soldier on inside my button-down oven, and take a left when I feel a hundred people holding their breath.
The complex is two stories, semi-authentic shale siding that aims for nostalgic and winds up ugly. It's not helped by the weight of anguish the years have massaged into the place. My face goes sour as soon as I see it, and doesn't improve when I hit the mailroom. The building feels like the prelude to a shoot-out: flashes of faces when I brush against the walls, a quarter-shriek of panic here and there in the wainscoting. I take the stairs nice and slow.
Someone's playing music, one of those classical pieces I feel stupid for not recognizing. I walk on past it, and knock at Apartment 22. A tap shuts off; there's a subdued laugh that makes me remember people are occasionally happier than this.
The woman who answers is sixty going on dust, face held together with scars. I feel her thoughts dig into mine as we lock eyes; my gorge rises as I just let it happen. She nods, after a geologic second of searching, and goes back to whatever stink she was raising in the kitchen. She stops midway through chopping at whatever passes for dinner, and seems put out when she realizes I'm still here.
"How's she doin'?" I ask, looking past her at the heap of cabbage.
She gives me a practiced shrug. "Well. Slow." She and the thesaurus never did get along.
"Still on course?"
"Slow," she drawls again, and throws herself back into cabbage mutilation.
"Thanks Allie." I don't bother waiting for a response.
They haven't cleaned in a while: brochures and flyers all over the counter, bills on top of the TV. I'm pretty sure the table used to be brown. I creep through the living room into the claustrophobic excuse for a hall, and poke my head into the door at the back of the apartment.
She's got her back to me, hunched over the computer. I don't need to exert myself to know she's not really reading.
"Knock knock?"
Carmel spins around, and gives me a smile devoid of subtlety. She's got pink where there used to be burn, white where there used to be cut; but below the healing is the shape of her jaw, the nascent curve of her breast. She's a poem after a minute in the fire, a sculpture at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Fuck the building; I'm smiling.
"Hey Randy," she chuckles, arms tucked behind her back.
"Hey cutie." I hold up the bags. "Brought you some chocolate."
"For me?" The only affect I get is a tingle from somewhere around her waist. Damn teenagers.
"If you're good," I say back; shame flows in as the smarm makes its exit. "Things are good? Not letting Allie talk your ear off?"
It's not funny anymore, but she favors me with a snicker. "Allie's still great," she says, pregnant with subtext. "How are things with you?"
My hand folds up of its own accord. One finger, two fingers...
"You know," I say, with my own extra meanings. "A job's a job." Her eyes get big, and the aspirations well up; I very quickly shift gears. "You ready for the lesson?"
"Always," she pipes. She drags her chair over to the bed, and folds her hands into her lap.
"Great." I dig into the other bag, and pull out the chessboard. "You good to play Black today?"
She balks at that; I see her imagine an empty board, the Black King holed up in the corner, but even with that she still nods. Bravery's not something the girl's short on.
I get the board set up, start her off with a nice simple e4; and while the grid of possible moves spills through her head I do my best to dig into her thoughts, and give her suggestions on how to keep me out.
It's a living.
"So how's the girl?"
One finger, two fing—"Huh?"
Paul snickers over the edge of his glass. "That good, huh?"
The house floods back in on me, the stacks of newspaper, the purr of the suburbs. It takes a minute to figure out what chair I'm in.
"So," he asks, "you going to talk about the girl, or sit here like the acid just kicked in?"
My middle finger takes charge while I relocate the power of language. "She's fine," I say, clearing my throat. "Developing massively slow though, I'm worried about what Allie's going to do with her."
"Allie will keep her as long as the angle men keep payin' her rent." Paul pops a cigarette in his mouth. "What's eatin' you?"
I hunch. "Just worried, dude," I mutter. "That's all."
"Worried?" Paul clucks.
I look away from him, feign interest in a book. It doesn't stop him circling my brain.
"You are Grade A distracted," Paul chuckles. "What's got you all twisted up inside?"
"Nothing I want I feel like sharing," I say.
Twenty years of practice have given Paul the perfect eyebrow curl. "Something that's making you masturbate your hands?"
Lightning strikes me as I look down. I was massaging my fingers again.
"Nervous habit," I say. I can actually hear the bullies from high school laugh at me. I drop my hands into my lap and do the subtlest job I can of clamming up.
"Nervous habit," he echoes. His face is blank; cobwebs flutter across my mind.
"Carmel's my responsibility," I say, that little bit of food to distract the dogs. "If she's developing slowly Dr. Barg's going to worry, and with reason, I mean, Kincaid could have damaged her—"
"And so we'd have one less liability," Paul says. Bait not taken. Prepare for the counterstrike. "What's really eating you, lover boy?"
I let that one roll over me, look up at the stairs. My brain's humming the theme from DuckTales, anything but the nothing in my hands.
"Oh, wait..." Paul snaps his fingers. "Performance review."
My nerves splinter. Paul's shot hit a target he couldn't see.
"Is that what you're worried about?" he asks me, fast and loose. "Your usefulness to the group? That stuff the crip said about putting you on ice?"
Despite the panic in my sternum, I roll my eyes. "'On ice' would mean I was dead, Paul. Dr. Barg was talking about firing me. And..." I make a fist. "You know, I'm just fucking worried, that's all."
"Fucking worried," Paul drawls. "Yeah, your language makes it sound real casual."
He leans back, lets his body go limp. The better to focus your energy on my defenses, my dear. I do my best to blank my face.
"Dude, fuck you. I've got a lot on my mind."
"What?" He cocks his head as he lights the cigarette. "What the heck is troubling that upper-crust, college-engorged brain of yours? Chess problems that hard for you?"
"Only when I'm distracted by thoughts of your mom." Paul claps a hand to his abdomen. "To the quick, Dr. Chatham." He lines his face in thought. "So, by 'my mom', I assume you mean 'a fifteen-year-old'?"
"I helped take down the guy who nearly fed you to the Church," I fire back.
"With help from another underage girl." He puts a finger to his chin in mock thought. "I'm noticing a pattern here..."
"The pattern wherein you needle me until either I snap or you get bored? That pattern?"
"Yeah." Here comes the thrust. "'That pattern'." His impression of my voice is torture, but it doesn't dull his mojo.
"Paul." I sigh. I look him in the eye, let him see the pain in my face. "Paul, I've got a lot on my mind, alright, the whole Kincaid thing was nasty for me and I just...and I..."
My thoughts clench; someone lights off firecrackers inside my heart. I can't finish that sentence. The things that come next can't be talked about at home. But as fast as I throw up a block, that doesn't stop Paul from hearing them; my guts turn to pig iron as he leans in with a smile.
"You just what?" He cocks his head again, knowing grin all over his face.
Sweat glands go, adrenal gland go. "Fuck you, Paul." I put a hand on my cheek, and wince when only three fingers feel it.
"You're worried about somethin'," Paul says, with just the right hint of coo.
"Shut up." All my organs clench.
"Somethin' to do with Barg firing you." He leans in, less curious than lupine. "What is it, Randy?"
We've got panic sign. "Shut up." My face is very, very hot.
"Worried about..." He presses a finger to his temple, screws up his face. "About Dr. Barg knowing something?"
I press my hands over my face; all my words are broken glass. "Paul, you are seriously treading on..."
"Ohhh," he drawls. "I get it."
I glare out from between my hands, and get a world-class simper in exchange.
"I get it." He chuffs to himself. "I get it. You're worried he'll read your thoughts, yeah?"
"Paul..." I'm begging. I'm not sure I've ever begged before. It doesn't sound pretty.
"Worried you'll get fired."
"Paul." I'm made of heat.
He points at my feet. "All your worrying about his legs?"
My jaw comes unhinged. Anger flushes straight down my spine, gone in a rush of cool air.
"I gotta admit," Paul carps, "it is kinda worrisome." He rubs a hand on his thigh for emphasis. "I mean, all that numbness, the weird ways his leg responds...and it keeps getting worse, he keeps having trouble responding." Paul cocks his head. "You ever worry that'll happen to you?"
I smirk at him as all thoughts of my hands are enveloped in a cloud of conjecture.
"Paul, you brilliant son of a..."
"Shut up," he says, with a wave of his hand. "They're home."
Car doors whumph out on the street, little snippets of conversation telling me Dr. Barg and Arabella have returned. Paul looks down at me, and arranges his face into something like very serious.
"Paul—" I'm mystified. "How long have you—"
"He knows you worry, man," Paul rushes to say, as their footsteps scuff up to the door. "Don't bother trying to hide it."
I shake my head at him as the door opens, and spin the chair to face Arabella, her arms loaded with groceries and a funeral dirge on her face. Dr. Barg comes in behind her, and I think hard about his poor, damaged legs.
"Good to see you too," I say to Arabella's back.
She dumps the groceries on the table, gives me a sneer in response. "Dr. Barg wound up playing mind-tag on the drive home. We nearly rear-ended an SUV."
"People still screamin' about Kincaid?" Paul asks, chewing on his cigarette.
Dr. Barg barely glances at Paul as he hobbles over to the table. "Put that out."
Paul complies, but not without making a face at Dr. Barg's back. I look to Arabella for an answer, and get an alarmed shrug; I'm only halfway through spinning toward Barg when he answers.
"I got a call from one of our counterparts," he sighs. He's leaning against the table, canes hanging from his wrists. "Mendocino County division."
God turns down the thermostat. Arabella's grim, shoulders up around her ears; whatever he's about to tell us she already knows, and the drawn smile tells me it's nothing I can joke about. I decide to get it over with.
"Distress call?" I ask.
Dr. Barg nods. "I need you to...take a vacation."
"Vacation?" Paul asks.
"To Mendocino," Arabella says, all her irritation aimed at Barg. "And it's not a vacation."
My mental compass spins. I look at Arabella, then over at Dr. Barg when she doesn't think anything helpful. Dr. Barg squinches up, a death-grip on the canes. He looks at each of us in turn, his thoughts a dose of sympathy; but he's just lining up his reticles before he drops the bomb.
"A peacekeeper is missing."
