Minders

by Michele Jaffe

  CHAPTER 24

  WEEK 5

  Ford had been out for almost six days, when Sadie went into his subconscious in search of James. If anything could help rouse Ford it would be roiling him from inside, she thought, and there was clearly something to roil with his brother.

  The great hall was quiet when she went through, all the images moving slowly and everyone talking in low voices, if at all. She felt like they were in suspended animation, lacking the will or force to spur them to action. She elicited a tiny bit of curiosity from a handful looking for news, but most were absorbed in themselves. She said hello to Plum as she went by but only got an “Oh, brother” in response.

  James was by the shore of the pine-fringed lake, looking out at the icehouse, when she found him.

  “You again,” he said. “I’m not sure I should talk to you.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s been strange down here since you came last time. Look around. Things are dying.”

  Sadie shivered. “Since when? Because of me?”

  “You can’t just come in and poke at things and go. It’s an ecosystem. You kill what you touch.” His tone was reproachful.

  “That’s not true. You’re just saying that to make me feel bad. You want me to go away.”

  He looked away from her, his mouth petulant. “Maybe.”

  She stayed quiet for a moment, listening to him sigh. Finally she said, “What happened that day on the lake? At the icehouse?”

  He rolled his eyes, tossing his blond hair back. “God, you ask the worst questions.”

  “What was it?” she pushed.

  “Ask him,” he sneered, pointing upward.

  “I can’t. He’s sick.”

  He nodded to himself. “That explains the Geronimo.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a piece of the mind that drops off when there’s been trauma. Like a flyer bailing out of a bomber. Takes the important documents with him and parachutes out before the crash. We had one the other day.”

  Sadie looked around. “Where is he?”

  “Think I saw him hanging around the weighting room on the plain. Most things start there before getting settled in. Lucky for you he didn’t land in the lake. Lots of times that’s where Geronimos end up. Sink deep, don’t see some of them again for years.”

  “Ah.”

  “Weighting room’s over there,” he said, pointing behind him.

  “Okay.”

  He looked angry. “Why aren’t you going?”

  “Tell me about the icehouse.”

  “You have to ask him, I told you that,” he whined. “But I’ll give you this: He knows what he did and what he didn’t do, he’s just lying about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Talk to the boss,” he said, pointing up.

  “Could you at least tell me about the beer cans? They look like they’re all identical.”

  “Multiples,” he corrected. “This place is lousy with them. Repeated patterns, same object showing up in different places, sometimes as a distraction, sometimes to stand in for something else. Like say you have—”

  “Pine trees.” Sadie pointed toward the lakeshore.

  “Sure. Could be a reminder of a great day you spent at the lake with your brother when you learned to skip rocks, or a symbol of winter, or the feeling of pining for someone. Keeps it efficient, one thing, lots of associations. Shortcut for the imagination.” He yawned. “Never touch them myself.”

  “Multiples?”

  “No, the beer cans.”

  She’d bent to look at them closer, and when she stood up, James had disappeared. She walked toward the plain he’d indicated, where there was a structure with a wide arch entrance and clusters of wood benches inside. It looked like photos she’d seen of the waiting room at Central Station before it was abandoned. A couple of figures she didn’t recognize huddled together like refugees on one bench.

  She spotted Ford on the other side of the space. He sat alone, shoulders curled in, repeating, “Howdy?” His eyes were wide and looked panicked.

  “Howdy,” Sadie answered.

  He looked at her like she was nuts. “Howdy fine?”

  “Howdy, I’m fine too,” Sadie answered.

  He turned his face away from her, holding the toes of his bare feet and murmuring to himself. Sadie bent closer to hear but just kept getting, “Howdy fine,” “Howdy fine.”

  “What are you trying to say?” she asked, desperate to know the important piece of information his brain sent to safekeeping before losing consciousness. “Say it again,” she implored. Howdy fine, how define, how—

  CHAPTER 25

  How’d they find me?”

  Ford woke with those words like a swimmer breaking the surface of a lake, wide-eyed, gasping, and thirsty. He’d been unconscious for five and a half days.

  It was two thirty in the morning, although time had ceased to have any meaning in the Winter house. One day slipped into the next, someone always sitting in the chair next to the couch in case something—anything—happened.

  “Who?” Lulu asked. She was the one on watch when his eyes opened. When he showed a sign of actual consciousness, not another false alarm, she called over her shoulder, “Mom, he’s awake,” and turned back to him to say, “Don’t look in the mirror when you go to the bathroom, you’ll be scared.”

  Ford took a deep breath, and Sadie felt him wince at the pain it triggered in almost every part of his body. “Good to know,” he said. He looked down at his arms and hands, which were criss-crossed with cuts and abrasions. There were bandages with smiling suns on both forearms, and one with Snoopy taped over his right knuckles.

  Sadie had never been as grateful for anything in her life as she was for Ford waking up. She was overwhelmed by her love for him, by her relief, and by the vacuum left by worry and fear, but she pushed all of that aside to concentrate on Ford. Whatever you feel doesn’t matter, she told herself. You’re here to be with him.

  To observe him, she corrected.

  The first thing she observed was that the pain, which had registered as a fairly unobtrusive set of noises while he was passed out, was now like a noisy cityscape. Every time he moved, some kind of discomfort zigzagged through him, setting off different noises depending on its type and calibrated in volume to its intensity. Sharp pain sounded like a truck horn, throbbing pain resembled an extended bleating, stinging was the piercing jangle of bells.

  Lulu gave him a tour of his primary injuries. “You have a bruise on your stomach that according to the Internet means at least two of your ribs are broken. The only thing to do is put ice on it, which we have been, and take aspirin, which you did about three hours ago, although you were a baby about it.”

  Ford smiled, setting off shrill bells. He reached up to touch his cheek and discovered another bandage. “Thank you for taking such good care of me,” he said.

  His mother came in then, looking even more exhausted than usual. She was carrying a bowl, which she set on the trunk in front of him.

  “Good, you’re up.” Her tone was completely flat, her face expressionless. “You should eat this. You’ll need something in your stomach.”

  Ford’s heart started to pound fast, and Sadie knew he was nervous. He was desperate for his mother to understand this hadn’t been his fault, he hadn’t picked this fight. “Thank you,” he said, trying to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Mom, I want you to know how—”

  “Eat your soup.” Her flat gaze moved to Lulu. “I’m going to lie down. Make sure your brother finishes that. And no gabbing, he needs to sleep.”

  His head turned to watch his mother leave the room, and a sharp thrust of pain overwhelmed him, filling his mind with blaring truck horns. Sadie saw his vision go misty and wished she could steady him.

  His eyes refocused a moment later, on Lulu, who was watching him with unconcealed worry. Show her everything’s fine, Sadie heard him think and wanted to kiss him. He licked his dry, craggy
lips and said, “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.” Lulu scooched her chair toward him and whispered conspiratorially, “Mom found you on the couch Thursday morning and you’ve barely moved since then. And neither has she. She sat right next to you the whole time. I think she might have prayed. She even started to draw again.”

  Ford moved his eyes to the bowl of soup, and Sadie felt a lump in his throat and tears prick at his eyes.

  “Are you crying?” Lulu said.

  “Yeah, no, it’s just—” He swallowed back the lump. “The pain.” But it wasn’t, Sadie knew. He reached for the soup and made a show of eating it. Holding the spoon caused a bus-sized horn blast, so he raised the bowl to his mouth and slurped.

  “I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth,” Lulu said, very serious. “Did James’s monster do this?”

  “What monster?” Sadie and Ford asked in unison. Hands shaking, he set the bowl down.

  Lulu took a big breath. “He said I couldn’t tell you. Not”—she rushed to assure him—“because he didn’t love you as much as me. Or almost as much. It was because there were circumstances. But now this has happened, and I wonder if I had told—” She glanced away but not before Sadie saw the pain in her eyes.

  She thinks she’s responsible, Sadie realized, her heart aching.

  “Tell me about this monster of James’s,” Ford prompted.

  Lulu frowned, trying to figure out where to begin. “He said there was a monster in our city, taking control of people and making them zombies. They looked okay on the outside, but they were dead inside, and they fed off sadness. James said Serenity Services was powerless to stop it from happening, and you couldn’t trust anyone except little kids like me, but he was going to fix it.” She picked up speed as she talked, the story bubbling out of her. “He had a magic power that made him invisible, and he was going to find the monster and slay it, and then everyone would be free.”

  “How was he going to find the monster?” Ford asked, his mind spinning over the words magic power.

  “The monster had a treasure hidden in a stone fortress. James was going to use his invisibility power to hide there, and when the monster went to count the treasure, he’d slay it. And then everyone, you and me and Mom and Copernicus, would all live happily ever after. But he was worried if he failed you’d go hunt the monster even though you don’t have his magic power. I asked him why he couldn’t just give it to you, but he said it didn’t work that way, you either had it or you didn’t.”

  Ford was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Tell her she’s not responsible for what happened to you, Sadie urged. You can pass out after, just tell her that.

  “But you went looking for the monster anyway,” Lulu pressed on. “Because you’re a hero, like James.”

  “No.” Ford shook his head. Her face was an indistinct series of shadows, and his voice sounded like it was coming from far away. “I’m not like James. And what happened to me had nothing to do with the monster.”

  “You’re sure?” Lulu asked. “Swear?”

  “Swear,” he said and plunged back into unconsciousness.

  • • •

  The next time he woke, thirty-six hours later, Mason was in the chair next to the couch.

  Ford frowned. “What are you doing here?”

  Mason glanced at his watch. “My shift. I have another hour. So don’t think of doing anything rash until three thirty. That’s when Mrs. Entwistle comes on, and your mom can’t yell at me.”

  “Mrs. Entwistle?”

  “Neighbor across the hall.”

  “I’m sorry they made you do this,” Ford said.

  “I volunteered,” Mason told him. “What else am I going to do while my overpriced scout is out of commission?”

  Ford sat up and frowned at the yellow envelope on the coffee table. “What’s that?”

  “I found it outside the door when I came this morning.” Mason said. “It was hand delivered. Mysterious.”

  Ford’s fingers weren’t entirely steady as he ripped it open, and Sadie knew it was because he was excited. He’d recognized the writing on the envelope.

  The card inside was a birthday card. It was unsigned, but “SAFE KEEPING” was written in big letters on one side, and the $5 Bigfoot bill was secured on the other.

  Ford clutched the envelope and said, “Come on.”

  Mason looked up from his word jumble. “Where are we going?”

  “To see Bucky,” Ford told him, making to stand up.

  He fell on his face.

  “I don’t think we’re going anywhere,” Mason said gently.

  Ford glared at him. “We are.” Pushing Mason’s hand aside, he gritted his teeth and stood. He stayed leaning on the couch for a minute until his nausea and dizziness cleared, gave Mason a triumphant glance, and staggered to the shower.

  At first the water stung on the cuts and abrasions, but once that passed he closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the hot water pouring over him, and so did Sadie.

  She reveled in the way soap smelled on him, the way his fingertips felt on his scalp. She lost herself in the prickly sensation of face wash being rubbed through his beard, of his work-worn hands soaping his chest, his fingers cleaning his ears.

  And she loved it when he smiled in the mirror.

  On the way out of the bathroom, he stopped to put the toilet seat down. You’re going to break my heart, Ford Winter, she thought.

  • • •

  Four hours after waking up, he was sitting in the passenger seat of Mason’s car across the street from a low-slung cinder-block building. It had a sign that read U DRINK EM PACKAGE–LIQUOR–LUCKY LOTTO on the front and a thick chain and foreclosure notice on the door. It was still light, the evening sun turning the windshields of the used cars on the lot next door gold.

  “The nurse told you to stay in bed for two weeks,” Mason said casually.

  “And I told you if you were going to be bossy I didn’t want a ride. Guess we both suck at listening,” Ford answered.

  Mason grinned. He watched Ford compare the address on the yellow envelope to the one on the building for the fourth time. “I doubt it’s changed.”

  “This just isn’t what it’s supposed to look like,” Ford said. He was trying to reconcile the short, squat liquor store with the room big enough to hold fifty miniature-golf holes, not to mention an entire outdoor theater. Next door to the liquor store in one direction was the used car place, and the other side was an empty lot.

  “You didn’t see the exterior.”

  “True.” Ford nodded and kept nodding as he said, “I don’t think you should come in.”

  “That doesn’t work for me,” Mason said, nodding with him.

  Ford stopped nodding. “I’m serious.”

  He’s serious, Sadie seconded.

  “We said no rescuing.” Ford sounded almost desperate now. “This might be a trap.”

  Mason twisted behind the wheel to face him. “Let’s put it this way. I’m not letting you out of the car without me. And if anything happens to me, up to or including death, I won’t hold you responsible.”

  “That’s not comforting.”

  Mason looked surprised. “Funny, it is to me. Come on.” They got out of the car and approached the liquor store. “Don’t forget, this is an MRP address.”

  “I’m not likely to forget that.”

  Sadie didn’t know which one of them was more excited, her or Ford, and she couldn’t tell whose heart was the one racing. Being out of commission for six days had left Ford both restless and weak, but the card from Bucky had been like a shot of adrenaline.

  The front door was locked, for real, but the one on the side gave easily. It looked like a standard solid metal aluminum door on the outside, nothing camouflaged about it. It opened into…

  . . . an abandoned liquor store. Just like the sign said. Sadie looked through Ford’s eyes, watching the play of images fly by as he catalogued and filed what he was seeing.
There were three doors—the front door, the door they’d come through, and the door to the bathroom. The linoleum floor showed the outline of shelves, but they were long gone. What was left: the counter—too big to move and not valuable; a three-year-old poster of a Korean pop sensation eating a lollipop; a toilet, ripped out of the wall and turned into a mini-shrine with candles and some plastic flowers in the middle of the floor.

  Ford rubbed a hand through his hair, accidentally scraping a cut on his scalp, and winced. If this was the right place then one of these things had to mark the entrance to Bucky’s lair, Sadie heard him think. He and Mason spent an hour knocking on walls listening for hollow sounds, testing the door, verifying every set of hinges.

  As they prodded the counter a second time, Mason announced, “Toilets and radiators. That’s going to be the name of my community theater company.”

  Ford looked up. “Because you never want anyone to come see your shows? I thought you said you were trying to impress some girl, not depress her.”

  Sadie laughed.

  Mason made a broad gesture. “They’re everywhere. Every demo and salvage site we go to. They are the icons of this moment.”

  I noticed that too, Sadie said.

  “Or the toilets have no resale value, and the radiators are too heavy to move,” Ford pointed out.

  “Still like the name.”

  “Good thing you can afford to lose some—” Sadie watched the points of color in Ford’s mind do acrobatics, picturing where the toilet should have been. He crossed to the bathroom, pushed the door open all the way so the knob came to rest against the rubber stopper, and leaned into it until he heard a click. Then he stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. The false wall came with it, revealing the passageway concealed behind it.

  The passage led to a descending flight of stairs that went to another passage that ended in a flight of stairs going up. As Ford and Mason climbed the second staircase something skittered across the ceiling. Sadie felt the hairs on the back of Ford’s neck bristle. “What was that?”

  “Best case? Rats,” Mason answered.

  Ford had been mentally compiling a map as they went, so when they reached the top of the stairs he knew they were in the big room where the miniature-golf statues had been, but it was unrecognizable. The fake grass had been ripped up, and piles of smashed fiberglass formed eerie colored mounds, an eye winking out here, a claw there.