The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  “Upon occassion,” Weller said dryly.

  Lazio laughed again, and then began walking away from the bar as he spoke, indicating that for the moment Weller was invited to join his little entourage. “Maria is quite a little star collector, would-be star collector, right? Every few months she throws one of these things and invites everyone from Charlton Heston to Jackie Kennedy, and what she gets is what you see—a few TV producers, high-priced hair dressers, the old girls from Palm Springs, the bottom end of the freebie lists, tired old agents and PR men, and like that. Plus all the Transformationalist heavies in town.” He shook his head ruefully. “Some people never learn. Hope springs eternal, right?”

  “I’ve met the type,” Weller said, as they reached breathing space in the middle of the room. He was somewhat surprised that Lazio would betray such open disdain for Steinhardt’s wife to someone like him, but he was pleased to go along with it.

  “Have you met Maria?” Lazio asked.

  Weller shook his head.

  “Well then, come on, let me do the honors, such as they are,” Lazio said, grabbing Weller’s elbow and tugging him toward the courtyard. “I’m sure the old buzzard wants to meet you.”

  “Huh? I’m sure she doesn’t even know my name.”

  Lazio laughed. “Who said she knew your name? You underestimate yourself, kid. Or you overestimate Maria. You’ve actually directed network TV, and that’s more than you can say for ninety-nine percent of the people here. As far as Maria’s concerned, there’s no business like show business. Why do you think she invited everyone from Changes Productions in the first place?”

  “I don’t know—why did she invite everyone from Changes Productions in the first place?”

  Lazio grimaced wryly. “Because Changes is owned by Transformationalism, and Transformationalism is owned by John, and she’s John’s wife, and that’s the closest sniffing distance she can get to show-biz people. And you’re something special right, because you’ve actually worked in the major leagues.”

  “Huh?” Weller grunted dubiously, with a certain queasy feeling developing in his stomach.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lazio said, dragging him out into the courtyard. “Maria will make it perfectly clear, like the man says. Now lessee. …”

  By now the courtyard was quite crowded; the benches were mostly filled and a couple of dozen people were milling around with drinks in their hands and platters of food. Lazio scouted around; finally a look of recognition dawned on his face, and he led Weller and the silent girl toward a small group of people gathered around a woman seated alone in queenly state on a marble bench just in front of the gurgling fountain.

  The woman on the bench was in her middle forties or so, with a smooth, once-stunning face that was just starting to sag slightly, and big dark eyes that still flashed fire and brimstone. Her dark brown hair was lightly streaked with gray, and she wore a reasonably tight green silk pants suit. The total effect said that she knew her age, and also knew that she still looked good enough not to have to hide it.

  The court gathered around her included a gray-haired woman in a flowing caftan festooned with astrological signs, two older men in dark suits, a hard-looking tough who seemed to be a bodyguard, a good-looking younger woman in a midnight-blue dress, and a balding old weirdie in a white yoga suit. They fell back as Lazio approached as if they knew that they were extras.

  “Hello, Harry,” Maria Steinhardt said, in a deep throaty voice that seemed edged with habitual sardonicism. She looked at Weller appraisingly, without meeting his eyes. “Who’s your friend?”

  Lazio brought forth the blond on his arm. “This is Bridget,” he said, also with a sarcastic twist.

  “Not her, him” Maria Steinhardt snapped.

  Lazio laughed, and it really seemed to bug her. “This is Jack Weller,” he said. “One of our directors at Changes.”

  “Really?” Maria said, looking at Weller again, but this time staring straight into his eyes for a long moment. “And what were you before Harry scooped you up into his clutches, Mr. Weller?”

  “Jack’s one of my prize acquisitions,” Lazio said. “About the only director we’ve got with network TV credits.”

  “Don’t be so rude, Harry, I was talking to Jack,” Maria said. She smiled at Weller, cocking her head to one side and leaning it on her hand. “Do you like being a prize acquisition?” she asked.

  “Depends on who’s doing the acquiring,” Weller said instantly. The vibes she was putting out toward him seemed rather obvious; indeed, they seemed intended to be obvious. Well, if that were the game, he might as well go along with it for a bit.

  Maria laughed, mugging at him with an exaggerated lecherous smirk. “The obvious question,” she said, “is what’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like that?” Sycophant laughter gurgled briefly in the background.

  “Serving the movement,” Weller said uncertainly, realizing immediately how fatuous that sounded as Maria made a moue of distaste.

  “How tiresome,” she said.

  “We all serve John in our own ways, don’t we?” Weller said, putting an edge on his voice. He nodded briefly over his shoulder. “And we all reap our own rewards.”

  There was a subliminal ooh, and Lazio did not look especially pleased. Maria Steinhardt glared at him with what seemed like a sudden flash of anger. Weller glared back—not the old Transformationalist Stare, but a challenging dose of masculine libido. Maria’s intensity didn’t fade, but it seemed to transform itself from anger to something else.

  “Touche,” she said toothily. “Very interesting. Perhaps we can have a little chat later on, when things mellow out a bit.” She turned to regard her entourage, a gesture of dismissal.

  “Perhaps.” Weller said bitchily, determined to have the last word. Then Lazio eased him out of the little group and took him to one side.

  “Beginning to get the idea, kid?” he said.

  “It seems fairly obvious,” Weller said. “A bit too obvious. I mean, Johns wife. …”

  Lazio laughed. “There once was a woman from Thames, who was found of unusual games,” he recited enigmatically. “Don’t worry about the Great Man, kid. Maria has carte blanche, and John is too smart to try screwing around with her. Whereas Maria. …”

  He laughed again. “Whereas Maria does little else,” he said. “Well, I’ve gotta go see a man about a dog.” And he moved off with the blond on his arm, leaving Weller wondering what the hell was going on between him and Maria, between Maria and Steinhardt, wondering what kind of game he was getting involved in, and what the percentages might be.

  Weller drifted aimlessly around the party for another hour or so. Lazio seemed to have disappeared, and by now the house was choked with guests, to the point where there were dozens of people balancing plates of food and looking fruitlessly for a place to sit down, to the point where the noise level began to make extended conversation almost impossible, to the point where Weller was beginning to consider getting the hell out of this boring mob scene. He had made his obligatory appearance, he had met Maria Steinhardt, and surely no one would notice anyone’s early departure in this mess.

  But an idea taking from in the back of his mind kept him from leaving. Maria Steinhardt. Had she just been flirting, playing a little game that she would play with a dozen young men tonight, or was there something more to it? If she really does have the hots for me, Weller thought, I should play it for all it’s worth. Because it could be worth a lot. Maria was John’s wife, and as such, she was a pipeline directly to the heart of Transformationalism. If she wanted to—if he could make her want to—she could easily find out where Annie was, and maybe even more. From what he had seen, from what he sensed, there was little that Maria could not have her way within the world of Transformationalism. Only Steinhardt himself could say no to her, and he had a feeling that even Steinhardt couldn’t exactly defy her will with impunity. Screwing around with John Steinhardt’s wife was about the most dangerous game he could conceive o
f, but the potential rewards—

  “Jack! There you are!”

  Sara English had appeared at his side, flanked by Shano Moore and Georgie Prinz. She was wearing a stunning low-cut red dress, but the way the three of them were huddling together, like white faces in a ghetto (or black faces at a country club), made her seem quite pathetic to Weller, a sad contrast to the powerful and charismatic Maria.

  “Quite a show, isn’t it?” Georgie said, looking around like a little kid allowed to attend an adult party.

  “Yeah,” Weller grunted. “A real mob scene.” He felt himself being swept up into their little group for want of anything else to do, but he immediately wanted to ditch them. They weren’t where this was at, and he certainly wasn’t where they were at.

  “See anyone you know?” Sara asked, meaning, no doubt, anyone from the great world of Hollywood out there, a connection that he could make for them.

  “Just Harry Lazio,” Weller said, irked both at her, and at the fraudulent show-biz aura that the three of them were trying to suck up. At the same time it amused him to think that Maria Steinhardt was essentially coming from the same silly place.

  “Shall we move around and see what’s happening?” Shano suggested.

  So the four of them wandered around the house for what seemed to Weller like forever. It was painfully obvious to him that he was expected to point out the non-existent luminaries, as if he were one of those characters standing on Sunset Boulevard hawking maps to the Homes of the Stars.

  Instead Sara, Shano, and Georgie ended up somewhat forlornly pointing out some of the Transformationalist heavies to Weller. Benson Allen’s second-in-command. Allen himself. Hie head of the San Francisco Transformation Center. Someone or other from Narcon. Executives from various Transformationalist companies. Apparently anyone who was anyone in the local chapters of the movement was constrained to appear at Maria Steinhardt’s parties. Except for the insight it gave him into just how powerful Maria really was within the movement, Weller found the whole thing stupifyingly boring and somewhat pathetic. All this, and Maria still couldn’t corral even a minor name off a theater marquee; the whole thing must be an exercise in total frustration for her.

  They were drifting out into the courtyard for the fourth or fifth time when Weller’s eye was caught by a man sitting alone on one of the benches, sipping a drink, and leering quite unpleasantly at the passing throngs. He was wearing a black suit with a black turtleneck; his slick black hair was cut short in an almost military style, his swarthy face was hard and rather brutal-looking, but his dark eyes gleamed with an intense, sardonic intelligence. Although many people were obviously looking for a place to sit down, no one approached the bench where this isolated figure sat. The whole effect was quite sinister and disquieting.

  “Who the hell is that?” Weller asked, nodding his head toward the man in black as they passed close by his bench.

  Sara, Georgie, and Shano all seemed quite disturbed by his question, and they hustled Weller far out of earshot before anyone answered. Even then, Sara spoke in a surreptitious half whisper.

  “That’s Fred Torrez.”

  “The Director of the Monitors,” Georgie added.

  Weller laughed. “I thought he was some kind of Mafia hit man,” he said.

  “That’s not funny, man,” Shano said, looking uneasily over his shoulder. “Shit, the way he looks at people. …”

  “What’s the matter?” Weller insinuated. “Does he scare you?”

  “He’s just not a dude you want to have notice you …”

  “Ah, there you are!” Maria Steinhardt suddenly appeared from around a bend in the path and grabbed Weller ever so lightly by the elbow.

  “Come, let’s have our little talk,” she said, looking deep into his eyes and touching the rim of her upper teeth casually with the tip of her tongue. “If you’ll excuse us,” she said to Sara, Georgie, and Shano in a negligently commanding tone. And she whisked Weller off to a relatively secluded corner of the courtyard where a small tree cordoned off a little private alcove.

  Still holding onto Weller’s elbow, Maria leaned up against the bole of the tree, arching her breasts against the green silk of her suit, as if daring him to notice by stepping back. Or by moving forward.

  She nodded toward the crowd but kept her eyes fixed on his. “Well, do you like what you see?” She said.

  Weller half laughed. “Some of it,” he said. “Do you like what you see?”

  Maria slowly and deliberately lowered her gaze to stare forthrightly at Weller’s crotch. “Some of it,” she said. “I could like some of it. To tell you the truth, I find most of the people I invite to these parties pretty boring myself. Lord, Transformationalism and Transformationalists bore my ass off!”

  “Then why do you throw these parties?”

  Maria slowly swayed upright, away from the tree trunk, so that her body was now only inches from Weller’s, so that he could all but feel the heat of her. She looked up into his eyes.

  “For some of it,” she said. “Sometimes I do meet someone who interests me.” She shifted her weight bade and forth from foot to foot, left, right, left, right, moving her pelvis subtly closer to his. “You, for instance,” she said. “You don’t seem like one of John’s usual little patsies.” She smiled. “Yes, I do believe I would really like some of it.”

  Still looking directly into Weller’s eyes, she suddenly readied out her hand and unexpectedly grabbed his cock. Electricity shot through Weller’s body, and he twitched involuntarily backward. She looked at him as if nothing were happening and began to knead his loins with her palm and fingers. Weller suppressed a groan, and then arched his pelvis toward her, moving into it, offering himself.

  “You can have as much as you can take,” he said.

  “You’d be surprised what this old lady can take,” Maria said, removing her hand and grinding her pelvis slowly against the front of his pants, once, twice, thrice. Weller groaned, reached out his arms toward her—

  And she glided away nimbly to the side. “Now that we understand each other,” she said conversationally, “I must be getting back to my guests.”

  Weller stood there, his flesh inflamed, feeling like a perfect ass.

  Maria laughed. “Don’t pout,” she said. “In a couple of hours people will start leaving, and then we can continue our little chat in private. Upstairs. See you later.” And then she danced away from him, back toward the crowd.

  Weller stood there for long moments, trying to collect himself. I’m going to fuck Maria Steinhardt tonight, he thought. It’s what I wanted, isn’t it? But what he hadn’t expected was that he really did want it. It was supposed to be just his way to Annie, but that old lady had really turned him on. He felt his body throbbing for her. And that was something he hadn’t counted on at all. There was something treasonous about it. Somehow he had counted on more control. God, it’s been such a long time… .

  He sighed, readjusted his pants, and headed back in the general direction of where he had left Sara, Shano, and Georgie.

  But he hadn’t taken half a dozen steps before Fred Torrez crossed his trajectory. Without stopping or pausing, Torrez stared at him for a long hard moment, pinning him like a rabbit with those bright reptilian eyes. Then he was gone, leaving Weller quivering with a flash of unreasoning, paranoid dread, as if the Director of the Monitors really were omniscient, as if Torrez had heard and seen all and was even now plotting something sinister and unfathomable.

  The party dragged on and on. Georgie, Shano, and particularly Sara grilled Weller incessantly about his little scene with Maria Steinhardt, and Weller found himself making up a long intermittent cock-and-bull story, the gist of which was that Maria had been hungry for some show-biz patter and he had simply supplied her with same. As they wandered through the now-diminishing crowds, talking to no one but each other and getting more and more bored, Weller found himself making up imaginary details of the show-biz rap he had supposedly fed Maria—every silly story th
at had floated around Hollywood for the past two years.

  At least it succeeded in deflecting their attention from the subject of Maria Steinhardt. Already, before anything had even really happened, Weller felt the need to draw a veil of secrecy over any connection between Maria and himself. From time to time Fred Torrez moved across his line of vision, sometimes chancing to look his way, sometimes not. But the mere sight of Torrez was enough to flash him into total paranoia about what he was going to do. According to Sara, Torrez had to be involved in issuing the life directive ordering him to live at the Transformation Center; therefore he was definitely not beneath the man’s notice. If the Monitors found out that he had balled Maria Steinhardt… .

  What? Did Maria really have carte blanche to ball anyone she wanted to, as Lazio had intimated, or would the long arm of John B. Steinhardt reach out through the Monitors and… and what? How far would they go? All the way?

  Soon the party began to wane, people started to leave, the rooms became less crowded, and the detritus—the empty glasses, the overflowing ashtrays, the dirty plates, the bits of food scattered on the floor—began to move into the visual foreground. The pseudogala atmosphere swiftly evaporated as the place began to look like the morning after the night before. Once the exodus had begun, it proceeded rapidly, as if by signal or command, and within the hour there were only a couple of dozen people left in the whole house, standing around in isolated little groups, saying their good-byes and making their departures.

  “Well, I think were going to take off now,” Sara said as they ambled into the room nearest the main entrance. “You want to come along, Jack? Maybe we can get some coffee or something?”

  “Or something?” Weller said archly, giving her a little deliberate significant eye contact, more out of pique than any expectation of a positive response.

  “Maybe a hamburger,” Sara said sullenly, pointedly looking away.