Mind Games

by Cecilia Tan

  It would do. She poured a little into a glass and set it next to the chocolate.

  What else? She sat at the table, her hands on the butcher block, and took a deep breath. Nothing else came to mind.

  Well, here goes nothing, she thought. She swallowed the port and then took a bite of the chocolate, letting it melt on her tongue. Her eyes drifted closed. It was good chocolate.

  She wasn’t aware of her mind having gone quiet until she started to think again. It was a bit like falling asleep, and not realizing you had until you jerked awake. Only in her case it was as if she started to dream.

  Going down a set of stairs, like into a bar or nightclub. The too-sweet scent of disinfectant, hiding a rawer smell. Following a man with long red hair, starkly copper-colored against the black leather of his jacket.

  Hands already bound behind her back. A rising sense of fear as she followed him. Down a narrow hallway, the light dim. Someone else following behind, making sure she followed.

  Then, rough hands pushing her, through a door, into darkness, the hands forcing her to her knees, and then the salty bulk in her mouth...

  Wren jerked, sending the glass flying. It shattered against the tile floor and she was startled to see the shards glittering in the afternoon sunlight. It felt as if for those moments she was seeing the vision, she’d actually been somewhere else, somewhere it was night. She could almost still smell the cleaning products in the air.

  She rested her forehead on her hand. She’d never had a vision like that before. Was that something that had already happened? Or was going to? Were those Abby’s eyes she had seen through?

  She eased her way out of the kitchen to get the vacuum cleaner, but found herself at her desk with her phone in her hand. Whether what she had seen was the past or the future, Abby was in trouble. The police would never take something like this seriously, though. She opened her laptop and did a search for private investigators instead.

  For whatever reason, the listing for Derek Chapman caught her eye. Perhaps it was that the first thing next to his name said "Missing Persons" and not "Cheating Spouses"—although she didn’t really register that until she was already calling his number.

  She got his answering machine. “Uh, hi, yes, Mr. Chapman. My name is Wren Delacourt and I think my sister is missing and wondered if you could help. I last heard from her four months ago. Um, I don’t know what else to say?” She left her number and hung up.

  A TRAFFIC JAM OUTSIDE the big church on Springfield Avenue slowed her progress. She’d forgotten it was Sunday, forgotten to go around the other way. The policeman directing traffic in and out of the church parking lot seemed to eye her suspiciously as she inched past instead of turning in. Probably her imagination, Wren thought, since after all, she might be driving to a different church, right? What did he know? She was even dressed nicely.

  But although she felt she was doing the right thing going to meet with Mr. Chapman instead of calling the police, her head kept telling her it didn’t make sense.

  She pulled into the parking lot behind the post office and made her way to the building. It was locked on a Sunday, but she pressed the doorbell and the door buzzed. She pulled on it and took the elevator to the second floor as he’d told her to on the phone.

  He’d sounded very nice. Very kind. Not as gruff or tough as she’d imagined he would, but then her ideas of what a private investigator would be like came from movies and TV shows. She clutched her purse in both hands as she read the signs on the offices. An accountant, tax preparation... aromatherapy? That door was more colorfully decorated than the others.

  The open door at the end of the hall had to be his. He probably had spoken so kindly to her because he was humoring her, she thought suddenly. Well, except that she hadn’t told him the weird part yet.

  Wren urged herself through the door and found herself face to face with a dark-haired young man. He was neatly dressed in a turtleneck and a windbreaker and she wondered for a second whether Mr. Chapman had a personal assistant. “I’m here to meet Mr. Chapman?”

  He laughed, and his smile was warm. “I’m Chapman. You can call me Derek, if you like, Miss Delacourt.”

  “Wren,” she said, holding out her hand to be shaken.

  His palm was warm even if the touch was brief. He gestured toward an empty chair and then, to her surprise, sat next to her instead of going around the other side of the desk. The office wasn’t large, but there also didn’t seem to be much in it. One file cabinet, behind the desk. A small table with old newspapers on it. “Wren like the bird?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes exactly.” She was feeling more and more comfortable with him by the second. She sat with her purse on her lap, her suit skirt too short for her to properly cross her legs, but she had worn it to try to make a good impression. “Most people think I’m trying to shorten Renee, or something. Um, thanks for agreeing to meet me on a Sunday.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t exactly work regular hours. So you said on the phone you’re looking for your sister?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. Where to start? Wren picked something concrete. “She hasn’t returned my phone calls for about four months. Maybe two months ago, her voice mailbox got full. Now when I call, I get a message that sounds like she hasn’t paid her bill. And her email bounces.”

  He nodded. “And have you talked to other family members about her?”

  Wren deflated. “The only person she keeps in touch with besides me is our Aunt Brenda, and by keep in touch I mean Aunt Brenda sends her a Christmas card every year, and Abby—that’s my sister—shows up to her house on Christmas Day. I didn’t want to call Brenda... it seemed like tattling on her. Well, unless she’s really in trouble. Or... I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay,” Derek said, and his voice was soft. “I’m going to start taking some notes, if that’s all right with you?”

  An hour later, Wren had told him all about Abby’s tendencies to flit from one thing to another, one job to another, one relationship to another. Wren hadn’t even been sure what her last address was since she’d mentioned moving back in April but had never given her the new one. And she told him about the fights they'd had, their parents, all of it. He listened and he listened well and oh it felt so good to just tell someone about it and not be trying to pick and choose which parts to hide.

  But now she’d come to it. The part about why she’d called him, when he finally asked if she’d notified the police.

  She was looking at her hands, her neatly trimmed nails lined up on the top of her purse like birds on a wire, and not at him when she said, "My intuition said not to. I kept thinking I should, but... I did a silly thing.”

  He said nothing, but waited for her to explain.

  “I decided to see if I could find out for myself what happened to her. So I tried to do it like when we were kids—we had a kind of magic spell or ritual we’d do, with chocolate and breaking into the liquor cabinet. I don’t know if that was important or if it was just an excuse to be naughty.” She could feel herself blushing, but she went on. “Anyway, I had a little port, and some chocolate... and then... I had a vision.” Her voice was so soft by the end of her sentence she wondered if he could even hear it. “Maybe it was just, I dunno, a sick fantasy or something. But it was like I dreamed I was her. And these men were taking me somewhere dark, and my hands were tied behind my back, and...”

  Wren put her hand over her mouth, remembering the smell of the air and the taste of the flesh that had probed her mouth. She kept her eyes open, though, as if the sight of Derek’s bare bones office might dispel the vision.

  “Would you like a glass of water?” he asked, looking concerned but not freaked out. “You've been talking a long time.”

  Wren swallowed, trying to stop hyperventilating. “Yes, yes that would be very nice.” But when he moved to stand up, she put her hand on his arm, holding him there. “No, wait. Please just stay here with me.”

  “All right.” He settled in his chair a
gain.

  She took a deeper breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know if what I saw was the past, the future, or what. I... broke it off before I learned anything more. But... it just makes me more worried for her.”

  He nodded. “Understandably so.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  He put his hand over hers, making her realize that she’d never pulled her own away. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. Could it be your imagination conjuring up something to worry about? Maybe. Could your subconscious have put together clues from something she said to you or things you gathered without realizing? Sure. Could you really be psychic? Could be. None of those things matter. If you’re hiring me to find your sister, I'll use any information I can.”

  His eyes seemed very large and round as he said this to her, and Wren found herself feeling calmer again. Much calmer, although her heart seemed to still want to beat out of her chest. She slipped her hand back, then, and said simply, "Thank you. And yes, you’re hired.”

  WREN INVITED LAWRENCE over to watch a DVD that night, and they ordered a pizza and watched Moonstruck, which Lawrence professed was one of his favorite films. “For a gay man, you sure do seem to go for these het romantic comedies,” she said as he slipped the disc into the player. Wren found herself watching it in a daze, though, thinking about Derek Chapman and the way his hand had felt touching hers. People in the movies always seemed to have such Big Love that Wren felt like if it were real it would eat her alive like a giant turtle. She didn’t even like to fantasize about it. Lawrence, on the other hand, had an endless appetite for romances, whether in the news, in the movies, or in his imagination. He’d had about as many successful dates as Wren, which was to say not many, but he dreamed of meeting The Right One.

  She hoped he would, even if he’d probably forget all about her when he got swept away by it.

  They called it an early night since both of them had work in the morning, and Wren got into bed and lay there looking at the stripe of light on the ceiling from the street lamp outside. She was restless and went to the window, looking out on the neighborhood. Most of the houses were dark, everyone sleeping, and under the street lamp the red minivan at the curb looked brown, the color leached from it. If she’d had a diary, she might have written about him in it. But what would she have said? Dear Diary. Met a man today. He’s got very kind eyes.

  She hadn’t said a word to Lawrence about him.

  Sleep claimed her eventually and in the morning, when her dreams were always the most vivid, she found herself moving through a dark passageway. Her hands were behind her back, but her mind had blurred the details. It was like the vision and yet it wasn’t, and she was herself in the dream, she was sure of that. The man behind her herded her into a small room and closed the door. They were alone there, the ceiling low as if it were a basement room, and she went gratefully to her knees as if the weight of the building above her had been pressing down on her.

  She couldn’t see him. He was behind her. But she could feel his hands on her shoulders, petting them soothingly. “Wren,” he whispered. “Do you know what sex is?”

  She felt her lip tremble as she mustered her answer. “Do you mean, like did I have sex ed in school? Or is that know in the Biblical sense?”

  “I know you’re not a virgin, but you may as well be,” came the soft, warm voice, thick and sweet as honey. “I meant philosophically. Metaphorically and literally, sex is entry.”

  Had she been naked this whole time? Perhaps she had. She shivered as his finger traced a line from her chin down her throat, over one nipple, and between her legs. He circled her clit, counting each movement as if tallying up what she owed. “One, two, three, four, five.”

  He stopped at ten and then slid lower. She could feel the roughness of his clothes against her back, his breath against her neck. His other hand was flat against her belly, while his index finger sought her wetness.

  He slid his finger in the slickness there, sawing back and forth over her sensitive nub, but never quite putting his finger into her. “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

  She trembled.

  “Entry,” he said again, a whisper in her ear. “Penetration. It doesn’t matter what part of me enters what part of you. Once I’m inside, I’m inside.”

  She tried to speak, to say something, but she couldn’t very well argue with that recitation of facts, could she? It was true.

  “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Does that feel good, Wren?”

  She nodded. She had never been a good liar, especially not in dreams. “Why... why are my hands tied?” she finally asked.

  “Shackled by your repression,” came the reply, with a chuckle, as one slim finger began to press inward.

  “Then be our tenth caller and you could win an all expense paid vacation to Jamaica!” Her body jerked at the harsh, loud voice. Oh God, the radio. Her alarm.

  As she turned her head toward the clock radio, Wren found her neck damp with sweat and her hand in her panties. She pulled it out quickly, turning off the radio and hurrying into the shower.

  Such a strange dream. A mystery man, whose face she never saw, whose voice she could barely hear most of the time, touching her that way... It should have disturbed her more than it did, except all she could think of was washing the smell and sweat away. She held the shower sprayer between her legs and nearly collapsed in the tub as she came.

  She dried off sitting on the toilet lid, her legs still shaking, and then it began to seem more disturbing. Was it a coincidence that the dream came the night after she’d met an attractive man? Was it a warning? It hadn’t felt like a warning, and it hadn’t felt like Derek in the dream, either.

  She shook her head. Sometimes a dream was just a dream, after all.

  Wren looked up suddenly. How long had she been in the shower and then sitting there woolgathering? She was going to be late for the Monday morning meeting. She pulled on clothes quickly and nearly ran out the door, happy not for the first time that her super-short hair-do needed no prep time at all. She combed it at a red light on her way to work.

  She didn’t even realize that she’d left her cell phone sitting by the computer, or that its message light was blinking.

  TWO

  WREN STOPPED AT THE market on her way home to get a pre-cooked chicken, so it was after six o'clock when she pulled her car into her space behind the condo. She wasn’t sure where the time went in the market; no matter how few things she bought it always seemed to take an hour to get out of there.

  Carrying the bag in her arms, she caught the aroma of the roast chicken wafting up as she made her way to the back door. Wren fumbled with her keys a bit, but got the door open, and was climbing the stairs up to her unit when she realized she could hear her own doorbell ringing. Looking behind her to the front door, she could see the outline of someone’s head, there in the frosted glass window shaped like the upper half of a wagon wheel.

  When she pulled open the door, she saw Derek there, and an "oh!” was startled right out of her.

  “Miss... Wren. Sorry to drop in on you like this, but you haven’t been answering your phone.” His face and voice were serious, but not horribly grim, she thought, but she steeled herself for bad news.

  “What happened?”

  He glanced from side to side. “May I come in? I’m sorry if it’s not convenient, but I was driving by here anyway on my way home and thought I’d check if you were free to talk. Lots of people lose their cell phones or their batteries die...”

  She blushed. “I hardly use mine. I’m not used to getting calls. It’s probably dead in the bottom of my purse.” She realized she’d never turned the ringer back on after switching it to silent mode after the stray "personal ad" call. She backed up a step. He couldn’t be there to tell her Abby was dead. He wouldn’t be so calm. Would he? "Come on in. Have you eaten? I’ve got a whole chicken in here.”

  He didn’t answer the question but he did follow her into her kitchen and didn’t protest
when she set out plates and glasses for both of them.

  She clucked her tongue. “Here it is.” Her phone was sitting in plain sight on the desk, a little green light on it blinking impatiently. “Water? Tea? Orange juice? I’ve got fizzy water.”

  “Fizzy water would be great,” he said. “And you can delete the messages from me. I’ve got more to tell you now anyway.”

  She slipped the phone into her pocket and poured seltzer for both of them, pulling vegetables out of the fridge when she put the bottle back. “Should I be sitting down while you talk, or can I make a salad?”

  He stood. “Why don’t you sit, and I'll make the salad? I don’t want you to cut yourself if the news is startling.”

  Wren blinked. “And here I was telling myself you couldn’t be so calm if... if it was something really bad.”

  He steered her to a stool at the tall eating table for two, and moved her own seltzer closer to her as if to suggest she have a drink. Or maybe just to remind her it was there. “Just listen and then you tell me if you think it’s bad, okay?” He brought the carrots and red onion and cherry tomatoes over on the cutting board and set to cutting them up as he talked. “The first thing I did after you left yesterday was look up some information about your sister on the Internet. There wasn’t much there. Her old phone listings. Her name on an online newsletter she helped out with a couple of years ago, that sort of thing.”