Head Rush

by Carolyn Crane

  Otto dips a finger into a bubble hill, comes out with a bearded finger, then blows off the suds.

  No, I think. He would keep them alive and hidden as insurance; he knows Packard and my fellow disillusionists would never kill him as long as he’s holding our people. But Sophia?

  Another horrifying thought comes to me: I’m Otto’s inner circle too. Or am I? Does a fiancée qualify as inner circle? Is a significant other the circle, or more at the center of the circle?

  “Will she be back in time for the wedding?” I ask.

  “Don’t tell me you want to add her as a bridesmaid,” Otto jokes.

  “No, no but she is your close associate. She accompanies you to all the functions—”

  “Not anymore,” Otto says. “Now that you’ll be first lady.”

  “But, you know, it seems like she should at least be there. You don’t have family, but your people should be there. I would think Sophia should be there.” Am I pressing too hard?

  “Why the change of heart? You’ve always had a problem with her, with what she does.”

  I swish my foot in the water. Is it weird I’m pursuing it? Otto’s looking at me strangely. “I still have a problem with what she does. She steals the experiences a person had, things they can never get back. She steals what they have become. Still,” I add, “it’s not that different from what we disillusionists did. We forced transformation. We robbed people too.” I’d never thought of it this way, but it seems right. “Sophia takes what a person went through; we take what a person should’ve or would’ve gone through.

  “Oh, Justine.” He touches my hair, smoothing it, then pulls his hand back and looks at his fingers. They’re a greenish-gray. Tanglelands tea. “Look at this.” He stands and gets the shampoo.

  “No, Otto, I can do it.”

  “Let me,” he says.

  I bite my tongue. Usually I love it when he shampoos my hair, and he loves when I do his; touching each other’s heads is this special trust thing we have, an act of intimacy between fellow hypochondriacs who freak out about vein star. It’s the last thing I want right now. Well, not quite the last thing.

  Handle it, I tell myself, dunking my head in the bubbly water. He moves to the stool behind me. I hear him squirt out the shampoo and rub it between his palms—swick, swick, swick. I try not to cringe as his hands cup my head. He begins to massage—slow, languorous motions that don’t relax me whatsoever.

  Does he sense my nervousness? Is he testing me?

  “You shouldn’t feel bad about disillusionment,” he says. “You don’t steal potential experience. You shouldn’t think that way.”

  “I can’t help it,” I say.

  “If you give a man a pack of matches, are you interfering with his experience of discovering fire?”

  “That doesn’t seem the same,” I say, relieved for this abstract, thinky turn in our conversation. “What we did as disillusionists was more like messing with their evolution—their personal evolution,” I add. “Like in outer space shows where space travelers aren’t supposed to give primitive planets advanced technologies.”

  “Shady Ben Foley was a despicable man, and your gang disillusioned him about his old ways, helped him turn over a new leaf much faster than he would’ve on his own. What’s wrong with that?”

  “We robbed him of the chance to do it on his own. Maybe he needed to bottom out first. Maybe he was never going to change. Maybe he needed the experience of being hated and alone.”

  “Even better then, that he was disillusioned.” He rubs the back of my head.

  “It’s wrong,” I say, “because nothing can replace coming to something on your own, to take a hard, important journey, to reach deep into yourself and trust your heart. Isn’t that what it’s all about?” I’m thinking of seeing Packard in the Tanglelands, and knowing and trusting what was real. I think about listening to my heart tonight with Otto. I’ve never been one to reach deep down and trust myself—I get too buffeted around by ideas and opinions and shoulds. But I want to be that person who reaches down and knows things. Deep down, I don’t trust myself and I desperately want that to change. Maybe it is changing. “Stealing the chance to realize something for yourself, or the chance to evolve on your own, that is a horrible crime.”

  He presses his fingertips to the sides of my head, making little circles. “By that reasoning, we should outlaw school.”

  “No, because good teachers don’t just inject knowledge into your brain.” I dunk my head partly under the water to wash off the shampoo.

  Otto’s got the conditioner. One more round.

  I focus back on our conversation. I’m doing really well, letting him touch my head. Thank goodness I had a zing earlier, though considering the night’s events, no doubt I’ve achieved a world record in building back my fear. “Jordan once asked me, when is good not good? I think it’s when a person is forced to be good.”

  “Nobody exists in a vacuum. We’re all knocking against each other, changing each other’s paths,” he says. “All human interaction is a kind of interference, Justine.”

  I think about his brand of interference: killing a man. Having me revised. Making me distrust Packard. Hell, I agreed to marry him as a result of all that interference. And all the strings he pulled to get me into nursing school—is it supportiveness…or a convenient way to keep me in a constant state of fear, a constant state of needing him, just like he needs me?

  Need. Fear. It’s as if all the falsehoods are falling away. I look up into his eyes as he massages my head. Otto, so big and strong and flamboyant. In love with power. Does he resent needing me?

  It seems like he’s using a little too much pressure—or is that my imagination?

  “If there’s one wish I have for you,” he says, “it’s that you don’t feel guilty. It’s not a productive feeling. As a member of the force, I’ve shot people, arrested them, had them revised. I’ve fought the good fight to keep the city safe. We both have, Justine. The good fight can be bloody and messy and unpleasant. You can’t fight it, and then feel bad about it afterwards. And it’s not one-sided. The life Shady Ben chose led him to cross paths with disillusionists. What you did to him, that was the path he created for himself. He was creating his own reality.”

  “He was asking for it?”

  “Yes. He was ruining lives at a time and place when the disillusionists were operating. He brought you disillusionists to him.”

  “Did all of Sophia’s victims bring a revision on themselves?”

  He stops rubbing, seems to think about this. Then he says, “Everybody she ever revised attracted that to themselves in some way. Created their own reality.” He resumes the scalp massage.

  “Asked for it?”

  A beat. Then, “In a sense.”

  My anger grows as he rubs my neck. It’s the most unrelaxing massage ever. “Everything that happens to a person, they asked for it?”

  “Mostly. Though maybe they didn’t consciously ask for it. But they created it.”

  “Mmm.” It’s all I can say through my clenched jaw. My mind roils over his words, the injustice of it. Avery asked to be killed? I asked to be revised? All crime victims ask for it? I sit in my warm bath, but all I can feel is this cold, cold rage. And it’s here I realize: I can’t go. Otto has to be stopped.

  I have to stop him.

  He says, “Standing up for a vision of something better is never easy.”

  “Too true,” I whisper, moving forward, out of his hands, effectively ending the massage. I sit up and look him in the eye. “This water is getting really gross and soapy. I’m going to shower all this off, and then I’m going to crash.” Meaning, get out of the bathroom and don’t expect to have sex.

  He stands, cheeks rosy from the steam, one lock of hair curling fetchingly over one eye. I’ve never hated him more. “Do you want any more cookies?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  Hell no.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning, I keep
my eyes shut and my breathing steady as Otto climbs out of bed. I listen to his wash-up routine—the killer, casually brushing his teeth, spitting out his spearmint toothpaste. Tap-tap-tap—hitting his toothbrush against the sink edge. The water goes on again: washing his face—the face I’ve kissed over and over. I wonder if he’ll scrub in his ears as he sometimes does. Water on, water off. On, off. I shudder. Otto’s morning wash-up routine used to seem so simple and domestic. Now it seems vile. Insidious.

  Silence.

  My heart beats like crazy as I hear him come back over to the bed. Silence. Is he standing there? Does he know I’m faking? Then I hear him head on out into the hall and I open my eyes. I follow his footsteps across the apartment. Office door. Going to check his e-mail. Clanks from the kitchen. Kenzo, probably, starting breakfast.

  Yesterday, I woke up in this bed happy with Otto and excited for my bridesmaids’ dinner. Today, I’m in the same bed, but it’s enemy territory. And my knee is screaming. As a test, I bend it. Bad, but not broken. My head bump is almost gone.

  I plot my moves. I’ll throw on clothes, and then what?

  I hop up and dig my phone out of my robe pocket. No calls. I pull on my most comfortable brown cords and a big, old, red sweater, and then I wash up and make my way to the kitchen.

  Kenzo and Otto are in there, and Otto’s chewing something, which gives me an excuse to forego a kiss on the lips and just give him a peck on the cheek. I grab a cup of coffee and settle across from him at the breakfast nook, trying to seem normal, which is surprisingly hard. How do I usually act in the morning?

  Kenzo smiles at me. “Illegal excursions and a Butcher attack, but her hair looks fabulous.”

  “Thanks,” I say, surprised at how high my voice sounds. “I slept on it wet. It always turns out when I’m not trying.”

  “Mine, too,” Kenzo says, smiling. Why is he smiling at me? Oh, a joke—he has a shaved head. I chuckle, and then prattle on about sleeping with wet hair, how it’s a gamble. One side can end up flat, and there’s no coming back from that, unless you wet it again and pin it up, but that’s its own problem. I go on and on until I realize I’m talking too much about something insignificant, which is what guilty perps do, Otto once told me.

  I turn to find his cool, steady eyes fixed on mine.

  My stomach leaps into my throat. I pick up the creamer and dash a bit of cream into my coffee, quickly, because I think that my hand might shake. Cow brown.

  But hell, why shouldn’t I be acting weird? I was attacked last night, and I have a wedding tomorrow. I stir my coffee, watching the surface swirl that drags behind the spoon, as if this is the most sensitive operation in the world.

  I have to see Packard and Shelby today. They need to know that I’m with them, that I’m the double agent on the inside. The disillusionists are back as a gang and we need to coordinate, now. And beyond that, I just plain old want to see Packard.

  I love him.

  I don’t care that he doesn’t love me back. Or that he’s duped me over and over. Used me. It doesn’t change the fact that I plain old love him. Maybe it’s pathetic. No, it is pathetic. I put down my spoon with a clatter that seems garishly loud.

  “Lemon scones,” Otto says, eyeing me.

  My heart pounds. He’s in a dark, silk-brocade robe that I usually find dashing, but now it seems like a dangerous artifice, like one of the bug-eating flowers in his night garden, all lush, exotic petals and a sweet scent, drawing the flies and bees in close, only to be trapped and eaten alive. “Your favorite,” he says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Lemon scones.”

  “Sometimes.” I take one and break it apart, thinking about a squirming bug I once watched in the gluey center of one of the flowers; the more it struggled, the more caught it got. I wanted to rescue it, but its little wings were too damaged by the time I had the impulse to do it.

  I take a bite. “Yum.” There’s this weird silence until I think to ask him how he slept—a question we ask each other a lot, code for “how’s your head,” without directly asking. If there are no head issues, then it’s just a sleeping question.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Rather well, considering the active and dramatic night. You? I take it the knee’s okay? And so forth…”

  “Okay enough.” I reach across the table and grab the copy of the Midcity Eagle that’s folded next to him. Henry Felix is pictured on the front page, lifting a copy of the Midcity Charter above his head, peering victoriously through his little, round, silver glasses at the crowd around him. It’s another one of his Rights Rallies where he outlines all the ways Otto is robbing citizens of their rights.

  “Forty people,” I observe.

  Otto shrugs, but I can’t imagine he’s that indifferent. The crowds around Henry Felix are growing, and most of all, Henry Felix has a point.

  “At least they’re not running a photo of me from last night.”

  “And they won’t,” he says.

  Of course. It was only police involved, and the police are keenly loyal to Otto. Not the most comforting thought at the moment.

  “Have they caught the copycat yet?” I know they haven’t, but I need to get the spotlight off me.

  “Not yet,” Otto says. “But we will.”

  “I’m more than happy to identify him in a lineup, you know, if…”

  “We’ll see.” He spreads butter on his scone. The knife flashes and shines.

  Of course, the man won’t make it to a lineup. He won’t make it into the system at all. “Just what you need,” I say. “Another prisoner.”

  Otto grunts. His noncommittal but significant mmph. What is he not saying? Does the Butcher copycat have importance I’m not aware of?

  I get a new, disturbing thought as I watch him eat: if Otto was so willing to kill Avery, why not just kill all his highcap prisoners? That would certainly release pressure on his head. I make the choices nobody else has the guts to make, he said the other day. Is it possible he’s become judge and executioner?

  Carter and the others would be valuable alive, as life insurance, in case his personal force fields fail—if Otto dies, everybody he’s imprisoned is trapped forever. But somebody like the Butcher or the Butcher copycat wouldn’t be anything but a drain. I think about Fawna’s prediction of danger. Would that spur him to kill his prisoners?

  Otto turns to me. “You seem so preoccupied.”

  “I was just going to say that to you!” I smile. “Jinx.”

  “I suppose so.” He stands up, touches my chin, and takes his leave—he has to handle a few e-mails in his office before he goes into work. I’m relieved, though needless to say, I would’ve preferred that he head directly off to the government building.

  Kenzo grins. “You climbed down the fire escape?” He tsks. Like he thinks it’s amusing.

  “The bride was feeling a bit wild last night,” I say. “A bit off the chain.”

  Kenzo bustles around and I sip my coffee. I’m the spy now. The double agent. I’m the dangerous flower, goddammit.

  Back when I was a disillusionist, my agenda was simple: infiltrate somebody’s existence, and zing them enough times to leave them destabilized for the next disillusionist. My agenda now is less specific—I have to find a way to free my comrades, not an easy task considering we don’t even know where they are. And considering that Packard, a brilliant mastermind, was imprisoned for eight years before he got free. And we knew where he was.

  And then there’s item number two on my agenda: destroy Otto. A man with an impenetrable personal force field.

  Both tasks require information; his office would be the place to start if he weren’t in it. My mind goes to my car. Otto didn’t want me searching my car. Simon and Shelby did.

  “I have to go down and get something from my car,” I say to Kenzo.

  He smiles and continues on with his work.

  I ride the elevator down with Norman and find my bodyguard Max in the lobby. “Just getting something out of my car,”
I say to him.

  “Okay.” He turns a page of his newspaper.

  My excitement rises as I enter the cool, dim garage—will I find clues to my lost hours? Do I even want to? Why was Packard so reluctant to tell me what happened that day? It’s not something I can just tell, he’d said. Why not?

  I approach, keys in hand, feeling this sense of dread. It’s like another self put things in there. As I draw nearer, my heart sinks. A section of the back of the car shines, as though it’s been washed. The car was covered in grime when I picked it up. Who would come and wash part of it? Then I realize: fingerprint dust. Otto’s people have been here, and they dusted for fingerprints, and then wiped up their mess. I shove my key in the trunk and open it up and my heart sinks. The trunk is nearly empty. In fact, it seems emptier than before, like some of the junk I had in there is gone—I’m pretty sure a couple of old plant pots were in here. And it’s cleaner. I run my hand over the carpet that lines the trunk. Vacuumed recently.

  I go around and unlock the passenger door and slip in. The dashboard is clean too. Dusted. Inside the glove compartment there’s nothing but the old change, papers, and my emergency Chap Stick.

  I feel so angry! Something in here might have connected me to what I lost that day. Maybe other awful things happened that day. Maybe I’m better off not knowing—obviously Packard thought so—but still, something more of mine that was taken away and it makes me mad. I twist Gumby around, bend his arms to his hips, putting him in the maddest possible Gumby position.

  What did I lose? On science fiction shows, when you change one feature of a timeline, everything after it is altered. That would go for memory too—you change one memory and everything reconstructs wrong. Tears begin to cloud my vision. My memory was violated, cleaned. And now my car.