Killer of a Mind

by Valerie Albemarle

  Ryan was wrong about one thing: the reason for that look of feeblemindedness on Mario’s face. Mario had been elevated instead of humbled. After their surreal conversation over coffee he did return to his room to take a nap; he was dislocated from reality and placed too far outside of it to do anything else. His mind, bruised and numb with confusion, took refuge in the kingdom on nonsense that is sleep. When he woke up, he knew without a doubt that he’d been lied to, but instead of resentment and rage he felt a quiet triumph. He’d been speaking to a man he’d tried to kill the previous night, and that man had denied the whole thing. Ryan had practically asked him to admit that he’d gone mad, and he’d agreed to that. The spiked tequila had been his suggestion, not Ryan’s, and he’d thrown it out there to assure Ryan that his act had succeeded. Ryan had managed to make a fool of him, but a fool who’s received a priceless gift in exchange for sanity: a verdict of innocence. And he meant to take his innocence and apply it to a night in the future for which that other night had been a practice run. Mario didn’t know when that would be or how he meant to go about it, nor did he want to think about that now. Ryan could rest on his laurels for now; he well deserved to. His work had the mark of genius, something for which no word exists because like a shooting star seen for the first and last time, it doesn’t appear often enough to be described. But the problem with a work of genius is that it comes with unintended consequences. The blow meant to destroy Mario by pushing him down the spiral staircase of madness had instead raised him to innocence in perpetuity.

  The look Ryan had seen on Mario’s face was the ecstasy of a competent and patient cat basking in the sun as it watches its prey, nattering in silent anticipatory rapture.

  TWO

  Samantha hated her stupid, stupid weakness. She usually made decisions quickly and regretted them rarely. But being with Ryan had done a number on her. He’d pretty much jilted her, and that on the eve of crossing the border into Baja, the land of her dreams! So how could she be so forgiving and soft? How could the memory of living with him feel just as good, or bad, as life without him? Her short visit to LA hadn’t taken her mind off anything. All her energy went into keeping herself from messaging Ryan, depriving herself of this soothing daily ritual. She even found herself worrying about Ryan, wondering where he’d gone after they parted on the outskirts of Palmdale, wondering if he was safe and staying out of trouble. Realizing that any trip to an exotic and beautiful place would be ruined by pining for their life together, Samantha returned to the home where Ryan was no longer waiting for her. No other man she’d been with presented such a perfect balance of reasons for and against him. His childish arrogance and stubbornness were maddening! And yet she loved him. For his resolve, his honest unforgivingness of people who would waste his time, his refusal to be scolded and blamed and to scatter himself into a thousand little pieces over a thousand little grievances she all too often brought to him. She knew that the qualities she loved in him were those she sorely lacked herself, and she wondered if she’d mistaken envy for love, if she wanted to be with him for the sake of learning. But what did it matter? She missed him terribly, for whatever reason. She missed him so badly that her friend Delia decided it was time for an intervention.

  “You can’t go on like this, girl. Put an end to it already.”

  “I haven’t called or emailed him,” Samantha said like a dutiful schoolgirl. “I won’t.”

  “That’s a start. But that’s not what I meant by putting an end to it. What I meant is you need to make a decision about your feelings. You need to decide that missing Ryan is a feeling you don’t want anymore. I know it sounds cold, but it’s what you need to do. It’s the only way you’re going to get out of this hell you’re in.”

  Samantha pleaded, “I know I need to, but I just can’t!”

  You can’t, or you don’t want to? Delia changed her strategy. “You know he won’t do right by you. He hasn’t wanted to marry you before, and he still won’t if you get back with him. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know, Dee. ”

  “And what are you doing about it?” Delia asked impatiently. Samantha replied nothing, so Delia went on. “If you can’t put an end it, someone else will have to help you. You need to be intercepted.”

  “‘Intercepted’? Ha ha!” Samantha was eager to be distracted from her misery.

  “By a man who will treat you right. You need to open your eyes, Samantha! There are men out there who’d be happy to be with you, and you need to give yourself a chance.”

  “There’s nothing worse than being with a deserving man you don’t love, persuading yourself that you’ll grow to love him. It’s the most desolate feeling,” Samantha lamented. “Hell, I can’t even think of other men now, and I don’t want to.”

  “But for your own good, you should start thinking of other men. Even if it’s only the idea of other men. The idea that another man can love you and make you happy like you deserve to be. It’s very unhealthy, what you’re doing.”Brooding on a man who’s got you addicted. Because what you feel is not love, it’s addiction.Of course Delia didn’t say this out loud to her best friend; it would’ve been cruel and unnecessary.

  They walked to Samantha’s car and on parting Delia gave her a warm but cautious hug. “Fragile. Handle with care.” Samantha thought of these words that she’d first seen printed on cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked in their new home in her distant sun-bathed childhood. Now she was thirty-three, and to her best friend she’d become an invalid to be handled with care, afflicted with a disease that made her unfit to enjoy the fulness of life.

  Once home, Samantha made a pot of strong tea; she had to start somewhere. How had she managed to drive herself into this blind alley and grind to a standstill, unable to go backwards or forwards? And an alley—why an alley? She realized she’d been picturing the scene from that silly but ohso funny movie where Austin Powers wedges a golf cart between the walls of a narrow corridor, then bops its nose and ass against the walls in a futile attempt to get free. She pictured the look on his face, the puzzled and sheepish look of a person not used to being fucked over by the universe. All at once she was bellowing with laughter. And as she laughed, the steely grip of pathos and tragedy let go of her soul. She was still a long distance from happy, but already sadness was behind her; this new place was a limbo of lightness. She closed her eyes, preparing for images more graceful and ladylike than the one that had delivered her from misery. Presently she saw herself as a bird poised between staying and taking flight, then as a leaf about to fall off the tree—or not to fall. She realized with immense relief that falling away from Ryan or staying with him was beyond her control, and none of her concern. A certainty took shape in her mind: she would rise from her maudlin ashes and inspire a man to love her. Maybe that man was Ryan, maybe another. It unbelievably and truly did not matter who he was. The part of her that still pined for Ryan started whimpering something about loyalty and a true heart, but she simply acknowledged this as a bad habit that would need to outlive itself. She drifted into a light slumber. Maybe Delia’s words had sprouted roots, or maybe Samantha was so exhausted by her own misery that her soul passed out and slept together with her body. When she opened her eyes she felt like she had slept for a long time, but it had only been ten minutes or so. And now that her soul had got back its strength, it felt strange and wonderfully dizzying to open herself to the possibility of love from another man. The tea was so strong it was bitter, and Samantha sipped it with the quiet glee of a sorceress plotting magic. The hot bitter tea would be her magic potion, it would tell her what to do, how to draw love to herself, how to protect her heart. She bobbed in her rocking chair with the warm beaker in her hands, and she smiled, grateful for her new beginning she knew was there but whose shape she couldn’t make out in the fog infused with sunlight.

  She was roused by the ringing of her cell phone. It was Ryan, calling ten minutes too late.

  Stanley Park in May is a paradise of blossoming cherry
trees and the fragrant spume of hyacinths, the strawberry-jam scent of cedars warm from the spring sun, the perpetual shadow and chill of the deep forest that will soon be a respite from the summer heat. A walk through the park had never before failed to gladden Ryan. He touched the screen of his cell phone: eleven fifty. Almost time to meet Mario at the Cactus Club cafe. At high noon, ha ha. Last night’s phone call had been brief, and ordinary to the point of being surreal. Mario had called to say he was in Vancouver on business and asked if Ryan would like to get together and “catch up on stuff.” Ryan had let out a hysterical laugh but contained himself and replied that yes, it would be nice to catch up. Of course he had no choice as curiosity would have smothered him if he hadn’t agreed to meet. Besides, Mario had asked to meet in such a populous place that he couldn’t possibly be planning anything sinister, could he? If he wanted to, he could easily find out where Ryan lived, and if he meant to kill Ryan, he wouldn’t be calling and asking to meet, would he? For the first time since leaving Tulum Ryan was alarmed. Until now he’d somehow managed to silence the voice that kept telling him he should worry. It was like putting a raving madman in a padded cell where he could carry on all he wanted without bothering his guard. But maybe the guard had been the madman all along, living in a padded cell of his own making and ignoring what might be outside its walls. So be it, Ryan decided. He was ignoring the outside world for a good reason, a reason of the heart.

  As soon as Tulum was behind him Ryan’s entire being felt like like a hand or a foot seized by cold, numb from what had happened on that night out on the sea. As he thawed out from this frozen state, the pain that pierced him was one of aloneness, separation from Sam. Once he was back in the outskirts of LA and reunited with the Dolphin, he fired up the laptop and cell phone, anxious for a message from her. There were no emails; as for the cell phone, he was reminded that it was good only for emergency calls. Either Sam was sulking, or she was waiting for him to make the first move; maybe both. He refused to think about the possibility that she didn’t want to be contacted. When he called her, she sounded well-adjusted and almost cheerful, in obvious need of nothing, indifferently agreeable to Ryan’s suggestion of getting together and talking things over. When they met, she surprised him by making a calm if a bit clumsy statement of what she wanted and didn’t want. “I want a relationship that leads to marriage, Ryan. I want to be taken seriously enough for a man to marry me. If you can’t see yourself going in that direction, then...” He said he would try to see himself going in that direction; if that was what it took to be with her, he would try. Of course this sounded dreadfully and unnecessarily honest, but that was Ryan for you. Samantha received this with a shrug. She concluded their meeting by saying, “I’m not seeing anyone now, and if we get back together I won’t see anyone else. But at this moment you don’t have exclusive rights to me.” In the three months since that strange reunion they’d been living a benevolent life of two friends with benefits but with separate apartments, and Ryan allowed himself to believe that she’d changed her mind about marriage, that she was happy in this new suspended state of existence. In a strange reversal of roles he’d become the one who reacted to circumstances rather than setting them, and since Samantha seemed content, he believed she truly was. But a week ago, on a pleasant evening following dinner, Samantha said in her calm voice which was her new habit, “Ryan, from here we either take the next step or we end it.” He was completely blindsighted by this cheerful discontent. She hadn’t changed after all, and had been waiting all this time for him to make a move. But he didn’t have much choice: he decided he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, live without Samantha, so the next step it would be. If that was what she wanted, he would ask her to marry him.

  And now Mario! Why now? It had been six months since Tulum. Did he still believe that that night on the water had never happened? Had he ever believed it? Ryan didn’t get much sleep after their conversation which lasted all of forty seconds.

  Mario was already waiting for him at a table, waving and smiling a pleasant social smile. He wore the familiar fedora, but for some reason he’d shaved his head. Ryan thought that maybe he’d started to go bald and his vanity couldn’t take it.

  Mario didn’t spend any time on small talk. “I wanted us to meet so I could thank you.”

  “Thank me for..?”

  “For saving my life.”

  “Whoa. Whoa! You’re going to have to explain that one, Mario.”

  “Something big happened to me, Ryan. Not just one but two big things, one after the other. My friends know that much, but only you can appreciate the full story.” Mario took off his fedora and Ryan saw a scar across his shaven head. “I had surgery to remove a tumour. By tumour I mean the big C. A big C small enough that they got it all! Do you know how often that happens, for a brain tumour to be removed completely? Of course you know, you’re in the field.” He knew Ryan was in the field only as a foot soldier, but he needed to address him as a keeper of sacred knowledge into which he too had been initiated.

  “Almost never,” Ryan heard himself say. He was in total confusion and understood only that Mario didn’t mean to kill him, at least not right away.

  “That’s right! Because by the time it’s found, it’s usually too big to remove completely, or to operate at all. Mine was found early because they went looking for it, in that exact place. And they went looking for it right there because you gave me the idea that I might be going crazy.”

  Mario looked and sounded like he was about to pin a medal on Ryan. It was a medal on a very long and very sharp pin about the size of a dagger. Ryan felt an unusual lightness ascend through his being. It was as if he’d become a hot air balloon pulling and swaying on its ropes, trying to break with the earth and take off. He realized that his knees were shaking, and he was thankful that Mario couldn’t see this under the table.

  “What did the tumour have to do with—with what I did?” he mumbled.

  “It started with the headaches,” Mario was pleased to explain. “Nasty headaches. They started during those first few days in Tulum, before that night on the water, and they were not from hangovers. They started in Tulum because I was on holiday!”

  “Because you were on holiday? That doesn’t make much sense.” It didn’t, but hearing himself say so brought Ryan a bit closer to the ground of reality. His knees were no longer shaking.

  “Not according to conventional wisdom,” Mario agreed. “But have you noticed how seldom people fall ill when there’s a war going on? The body knows when it can and can’t afford to get soft on itself. If the headaches had started at home in Seattle I’d have just put them down to stress and taken aspirin. But they started in Tulum precisely because I was allowed to relax and leave my worries behind. My body was trying to get my attention before I got caught up in the rat race again. So I paid attention, because I knew that stress couldn’t be the reason for the headaches. And then you told me your story—my dad’s story—and that was the beginning ofthat. I was mobilized again, my mind was working frantically to process what you’d told me.”

  Ryan didn’t like the eagerness he saw on Mario’s face, the gusto with which he recalled this prelude to vengeance. “I still don’t understand what I had to do with the discovery of your cancer,” he said in an attempt to change the path of Mario’s thoughts.

  “You planted the seeds of doubt in me. What you did that morning—I can’t find a word for it, so I’ll call it “what you did”—it made me wonder if the headaches might be connected with the vision I’d had according to you. Even though I didn’t believe I’d imagined it all, it became an option to consider. Strange how that is. You know how some people who have no heart or stomach for religion still like to talk about the existence of God and why it might be a good idea?”

  “Like Pascal’s wager,” Ryan said without thinking.

  “Yes, exactly like that!” Mario was delighted to be understood. “It’s like they’re talking about buying an insurance policy. It was how I felt
about this hallucination I was supposed to have had. I had no real faith that it had been a hallucination, but I liked the idea. Because it gave me a very attractive option.”

  “Option?”

  “I played a game of pretend with myself. I asked myself, What if? What if Ryan was right? What if it really was a hallucination? What if I really am going mad? There was nothing humiliating about the possibility. Actually it felt quite thrilling to split myself up like that. The sane me looked at the crazy me and thought he could put that crazy dude to good use. Hallucination was such aconvenient box to put the headaches! So I put them there and I took them to the doctor. I told the doctor I had killer headaches, which was true, and that I’d had a hallucination, which was true according to you.”