Minders

by Michele Jaffe

  The Range Rover. Jogging up the front steps of the club, he pulled out his phone and dialed the Highway Patrol.

  “My car has just been stolen,” he told the operator. Sound more hysterical, Sadie urged. “It’s a black Range Rover. Recent. No, I don’t remember what year. The license?” Sadie felt Ford’s mind contract.

  It’s 145T90, Sadie said.

  “It’s my wife’s car,” he explained. “I’m not sure if she has it written down anywhere.”

  It’s 145T90, Sadie repeated.

  “Is there any way you can locate the car without the exact—

  145T90! 145T90! 145T90! Sadie shouted.

  “It’s 145T90,” Ford said.

  There was absolute silence.

  “Hello? Sir?” the operator on the other end of Ford’s phone asked. “Sir, are you there?”

  “Yes,” Ford said. “I have to go.”

  He ended the call but didn’t move. “Who are you?” he said aloud.

  Sadie was petrified.

  “Who the hell are you?” he growled, causing a group of women to turn and stare at him.

  Anger rushed to fill his mind. He walked into the club, grabbed the first person in a Candy Factory apron he saw, and asked for the nearest bathroom. When he got there he announced it was closed for cleaning, kicked everyone out, and locked the door.

  A seven-foot-tall gilt-framed mirror leaned against one wall. He went and stood in front of it, staring at his eyes.

  “Are you in there?” he asked.

  Sadie ducked, lowering her eyes. This wasn’t a good idea. Nothing about this was—

  “Goddamn it, I know you’re there, look at me.”

  Fine, Sadie thought. She raised her eyes and met his.

  A thrill reverberated through her but was almost immediately skewed and made jagged and painful by the force of his hate.

  “I feel you in there,” he said, grabbing his head between his hands. “I can feel you, and I want you out.” He banged his head against the glass mirror, hard, making a long, V-shaped crack.

  “Ford, no!” Sadie shouted.

  He was staring wildly in the mirror again, and she realized he’d heard her. “I’ll keep doing it. I’ll keep doing this until you’re gone.” He banged his head twice.

  Stop, please, she sobbed. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I love you. Ford, I—

  “Shut up!” he screamed. Stepping back he ran at the mirror and smashed the crown of his head into it. The entire surface of the glass shattered, sliding like a silver avalanche over him, onto the floor.

  He turned to the row of five small mirrors over the sinks. “I’m not done,” he said, shattering the first one with the side of his head.

  No! Sadie shrieked. She felt like she was trapped, being flung side to side with his rage. Please stop.

  “What did you say? More?” His eyes were wild, glowing, pouring his hate into her. “This is for you, since you like watching people get hurt,” he said and drove his head crown first into the second mirror. A crack appeared but it didn’t completely shatter so he shook his head. “Not good enough, no, not good enough” and banged his forehead against it over and over, four, five, six times, until it shattered into powder and glass. “Look what you’ve done. Look at all the pain you’ve caused,” he said in an eerie echo of his memories of his father.

  Ford, please don’t do this, she begged, crying.

  “Are you happy now? Is this what you like? Driving someone out of their mind?”

  No, she sobbed. I love you. I want you to be happy. I never meant any harm. I never… There was no room for the hugeness of her grief. Sadie felt like she’d swallowed all the glass he’d broken, all the fire, all the poison, and it was burning her from the inside.

  I never wanted to cause you pain, she wept. I’m so sorry.

  “SORRY? YOU’RE SORRY? GET THE HELL OUT OF MY MIND,” he roared, bashing his head into the third, fourth, and fifth mirrors, backward and forward, over and over until they were nothing more than frames with the occasional piece of glass still clinging in the corner.

  He picked up one of those now and held it in front of his eyes. “I will keep doing this until you leave. I will destroy myself every way possible unless you get out.”

  The door to the bathroom crashed to the ground, and two muscular women with guns, one a brunette with a crew cut, one bald, burst in. They stared at Ford, and Sadie pictured what they were seeing, wild eyes, blood, broken glass everywhere, a shard of mirror gripped in his hand. They both took aim.

  “Drop the mirror and put your hands behind your head,” the bald woman said.

  Sadie couldn’t cry anymore, couldn’t do anything. She was numb beyond numb, sore beyond sore, hurt and angry and rejected. And now two amazons were pointing automatic weapons at the man she loved, and it was all her fault.

  She watched Ford’s mind hiccup into awareness of how everything must look, saw his fury that he was in this situation directed at her, at Syncopy, at the world.

  He put the mirror down and his hands over his head. He tried a smile, which, judging by the reaction of the two women, did not work. “You caught me at a bad time. I was just in here yelling at myself. It—helps to motivate me. I’m meeting a girl? And I got a little carried away.”

  Wow, that’s bad. And there’s no way I am responsible for that, Sadie thought. She was careful not to make a sound since he only seemed to hear her when she actually spoke, but she had no idea how their connection worked, so she was relieved when he didn’t react.

  The woman with the crew cut pulled a set of cuffs off her belt and said, “Please put your hands out.”

  Ford kept his hands on his head. “Is that really necessary? I was arrested by Serenity Services a week ago, and they didn’t even cuff me.”

  The argument that you don’t need cuffs because you were arrested without them a week ago is a winner, Sadie thought.

  “We’re a bit more professional here than Serenity Services,” the brunette said, gesturing to his hands. “We take the safety of our guests very seriously.”

  He held out his wrists. “You know, if you want I can save you all the trouble and just leave,” Ford offered as she snapped the cuffs on. “Obviously I’ll pay for the mirrors, but there’s no need for paperwork or anything.”

  Could this really be the same person who guessed the poker hands of an entire table blindfolded? It seemed as if he had gone tone deaf.

  The bald woman gave him a very pretty smile and said, “We appreciate your concern, but for your safety as well as the safety of our guests, we want to make sure you get looked at before you go. You may have lacerations or other underlying conditions that should be treated.”

  Please do not tell them that you already have lacerations from getting beaten up last week, Sadie thought.

  “Do you have identification, Mr.—”

  At least be bright enough to use an—

  “Winter,” he said.

  —easy-to-remember name, Sadie finished the thought. I hope you were smarter when I fell in love with you. Otherwise I have no excuse.

  The bald one radioed that in. “First name?”

  “Mason.” Sadie wondered if that was wish fulfillment, denial, or some strange act of friendship.

  “Come on.” The woman with the crew cut prodded him with her gun.

  “Where am I going?”

  “To our facility first,” the bald woman told him. “And then, I’d imagine, to jail.”

  Sadie saw Ford looking at the exits, thinking of making a run for it, when a voice said, “Oh, my. It looks like someone has been a very naughty puppy.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Plum stepped past the officers and looked around the bathroom. She shook her head sadly and said to Ford, “Another one of your little fits, Benji?”

  “He said his name was Mason,” the officer with the crew cut told her.

  “That’s a new one. Usually uses deodorant names. Come on, dear.” Speaking loudly, as if to someo
ne who was a bit slow, she presented Ford’s wrists to the bald officer, who reluctantly removed the cuffs.

  Plum smiled. “He’s a cousin of mine. The more challenged side of the family.” She looked at the bathroom and said, “Get a cleaner in.”

  “We should really make a report, ma’am.”

  “Of course.” Plum nodded. “Silly of me. It’s only that it’s very embarrassing for the family. We try to keep it as quiet as possible. If you make a report, one of those gossip reporters will be on it instantly, and then Benji will never be able to get the help he needs.”

  The woman with the crew cut wasn’t fooled, but she was a good employee. “Of course, ma’am.”

  Plum kept her arm tightly through Ford’s as they walked. She glanced at him sideways and with an affectionate smile said, “So much work just to get my attention.”

  “That’s not—” Ford tried to pull away.

  Plum had dialed her phone as she spoke and now said, “Maribelle, it’s me. Could you have someone drop my jacket and those folders by my place? I had to leave abruptly, and I don’t want to go all the way back to the office.”

  She hung up and smiled at him. “Well, you wanted me, now you got me.”

  “I didn’t come here for you,” Ford growled.

  “When a woman saves you from jail, doesn’t insist you replace her thirty-thousand-dollar Venetian mirror, and is going to make you dinner, you could try a little flattery.”

  “I came here by accident.” The interior of his mind was bleak, a landscape twisted by anger then denuded by despair. He wanted to be somewhere, anywhere other than this conversation. Anywhere other than inside himself.

  Sadie ached for the part she’d played in making him feel that way.

  “You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you marched in here and destroyed my club for no reason.”

  Ford’s eyes focused past her on the run-down building across the alley from the club where Linc had threatened him weeks earlier. There was a thick braid of cables running to it now, Sadie saw, but Ford didn’t seem to notice. “There’s a reason, just not one involving you,” he snapped.

  Plum gave him a look that was part amusement, part warning. “If you prick her she will bleed.”

  “Yeah, I’m the same way.” Ford’s mind flipped from Linc to the guy with the shiny black boots telling him to stay away from Plum. “Which reminds me, goodbye.”

  Plum was truly shocked. “You can’t just leave, puppy.”

  A grenade of anger flashed through Ford. He grabbed her and turned her toward him, his eyes blazing. “I’m not your puppy, and I can do whatever I damn well please.”

  Plum’s eyes blazed too, but with a different catalyst. Her gaze caressed his lips, her palm moved down his chest. “I like this. You’re much more fun to fight with than James.”

  Sadie felt his pulse quicken, his jaw tense so the words were bitten out. “I am so tired of being compared with my brother.”

  Plum wasn’t put off. “Okay, no talking about brothers tonight, how does that sound?” Her gaze followed her palm across his chest. “No talking about anything.”

  “That suits me, because I’m leaving.” Ford stepped away from her. “I don’t want another visit from your thugs.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ford shed enough self-absorption to notice she was genuinely confused. “The guys with the shiny boots? Who beat me up on the Fourth of July and told me to stay away from you? I’ve been unconscious for the last week.”

  Plum’s expression assumed a new seriousness. “Tell me what they said, exactly.”

  “‘Stay away from Plum. Don’t go near Plum.’ Along those lines. There were two of them.”

  Plum’s eyes narrowed, and Sadie thought she was truly angry, although she suspected it wasn’t entirely on Ford’s behalf. “Excuse me,” she said, turning away and pulling out her phone. After a moment she started talking in clipped staccato tones, clearly leaving a message. “It’s me, and I’m furious with you. This isn’t high school, you can’t just beat people up to get them to stay away from me. If you have a problem with my behavior, take it up with me, don’t be a pussy and pick on my friends. And don’t bother coming by tomorrow. I won’t see you.”

  She hung up and stared at her phone for the space of three of Ford’s heartbeats. “I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened,” she said, reaching for his arm again. “Let me make you dinner to apologize.” When he didn’t answer she said, “It won’t happen again, I promise.” There was a layer of steel beneath her words that gave Sadie goose bumps.

  Ford, locked in his own echo chamber of anger, didn’t register it. He registered hunger, not wanting to go home looking like this, and wanting to get out of the damn parking lot. “Fine,” he agreed, possibly the least gracious acceptance of an invitation to dinner ever. It was the last thing he said until they had nearly reached Plum’s, when he announced abruptly, “I’m not saying my name is Romeo.”

  Plum laughed. “That’s okay. We’re going in through the garage, so the doormen won’t even see you.”

  That did nothing to diminish Ford’s self-loathing or his sense that he was just a plaything to her. Sadie watched its destructive force as they rode up in the elevator and entered Plum’s apartment, watched it crashing through Ford’s memories as he stood in the kitchen, half listening to Plum rattling on about her day, watched it sharpening phrases—“piece of crap,” “protect you,” “move on,” “guilty conscience,” “like your brother”—into blades that sliced his interior landscape to ribbons.

  Sadie felt like her heart was breaking. Stop, please stop hurting yourself, she called without meaning to and instantly regretted it.

  Ford’s mind stilled and became hypersensitive, like a security probe suddenly wheeling around in search of an intruder. It was the first time she’d actually spoken since the blowup in the bathroom, Sadie realized.

  He was standing across the kitchen island from Plum and she stopped, a bottle of chilled white wine hovering over a glass, to look at him. “What just spooked you?”

  “What are you talking about?” he barked.

  “It happens to animals. They just freeze. You did that now. You’re spooked.”

  “I’ve just had a long…” What? Sadie heard him wonder. A long day? Month? Life? “Week,” he settled on.

  “Why don’t you take a shower?” Plum suggested. “You look like you broke six mirrors with your head. The towels in the bathroom are clean.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Ford answered, his mind still prodding for foreign bodies. He went into the bathroom, locked the door, stripped off his clothes, and turned on the water. Then he looked in the mirror.

  The bruises on his legs were shades of yellow with purple on them, but his ribs still looked painfully purple, blue, and green. Even with them, his body was magnificent. She’d never seen Ford completely naked before. At his house the bathroom mirror really only gave a shoulder-high view.

  “Look at me,” he ordered, a low, primitive rumble that demanded obedience.

  Her heart raced, and her mouth was dry. She felt vulnerable and naked and terrified of his contempt. His hate. She took a deep breath, poured as much love as she could into her gaze, and met his eyes.

  The connection sparked, sending firecrackers of sensation through Sadie’s whole body. His reaction was as strong as hers, making his body rock backward and his hands grip the counter in front of him.

  His knuckles were white, and he practically spit the words out. “I don’t want to hear you. I don’t want to feel you. I don’t want anything that reminds me you are there at all. I hate the thought of it. I hate you for doing it. I hate what you did to my friends. The less I have to think about it, the better. Got that?”

  Sadie was trembling. She swallowed hard and tasted tears.

  “You’re pathetic,” he sneered. “Watching someone else live their life instead of living your own.”

  It would have been easier to shrug
off his withering contempt if there hadn’t been some truth to it.

  “Enjoy your perverted little show,” he sneered over his shoulder as he got into the shower.

  Sadie spent the rest of the evening curled up in a corner of Ford’s mind, watching and registering his thoughts and experiences but doing her best not to interfere. As long as she kept her thoughts to herself, he didn’t seem able to hear them.

  This was better, she told herself. It would force her to be objective, behave like a regular Guest. Minder. Whatever she was. The phrase was “I think, therefore I am,” not “I feel,” she reminded herself. Some distance between his voice and hers, between his thoughts and hers, was healthy.

  It felt anything but right.

  While he was in the shower, Plum had set the table at the counter with blue and yellow and aquamarine majolica china that a really good friend had sent her from Sicily. Dinner was butternut squash tortellini with pesto and a salad with blue cheese, hazelnuts, and orange and ruby beets. Sadie heard Ford wishing that Lulu could try food like this. See this place. Her eyes would be huge.

  He called and texted Mason before dinner, then in the middle, then as they finished. Nothing. He’s probably asleep, Sadie heard him tell himself. Or at a fund-raiser. Or dead.

  Not dead, his mind shouted. I am not letting go again.

  “Are you done texting your girlfriend?” Plum asked, coming around the island. She reached for his phone like she was going to read what he’d written, and he snatched it away.

  “It’s not my girlfriend,” he snapped. “It’s—”

  She stood in front of him, running her pointer finger down the side of his neck. “I don’t really care.” Her eyes met his. “Take your shirt off.”

  I don’t really care hung in the air in Ford’s mind. For a few seconds Sadie saw his pure desire warring with his loneliness, aware that satisfying one side of that thirst meant leaving the other parched.