Head Rush

by Carolyn Crane

  “That’s the billion dollar question, isn’t it?” he says.

  “I will kill him,” Shelby says from the front seat. “As soon as he releases force fields, I will kill him, and ground will run red.”

  “Shelby, no.” I catch my old friend’s brown eyes in the rearview mirror. “No.”

  “I know I will regret it, Justine. Yet I very much want to. And I think that I will.”

  “I’ll stop you,” I say. “We’ll get justice for Avery, but not the kind that destroys you in the process.”

  She looks back at the road. “And you will also stop Packard?”

  I furrow my brow. “Packard’s not the one—” I’m about to say, the one who vowed to kill Otto, but then I look down at the blue chain circling his wrist. It’s such a part of him, I never think about it, but I certainly remember the day he put it on. It belonged to his best friend, Diesel, who’d died in one of Otto’s makeshift prisons—an abandoned gas station. He’d died, trapped in there without food or water, for the crime of being Packard’s best friend. When Packard learned about it, he put on Diesel’s bracelet and vowed not to take it off until he strangled Otto with his bare hands.

  “Strangulation doesn’t make the ground run red,” he says. “It means more to me on, Justine.”

  I touch the chain, his wrist. Remembering how he’d once told me the bracelet serves as a reminder to be vigilant.

  “Neither of you are turning into killers,” I say.

  “Maybe you will kill him,” Shelby says.

  I don’t answer. I don’t like all this casual conversation about killing a man, even Otto.

  “Keep driving past Delites. I’ll wait at Maria’s Deli,” Packard says. Maria’s is the place down the street from the restaurant.

  That’s why he seemed tense—we’re nearing Mongolian Delites.

  “Come on,” I say. “Mongolian Delites is the safest place on the planet. Shelby will bring the book, and you all can have privacy in the back to study it and make a plan.”

  “Keep going to Maria’s,” Packard says.

  “Ling will be at Delites,” I say to him. Ling is the restaurant manager, and a good friend to us all. “They’re not even open for dinner yet. And afterwards you can have her close off the back booth section and get a nap. When was the last time you slept?”

  “I’ll sleep when this is over.”

  “Nothing’s open at night. All your normal places are being searched. What are you going to do the whole time? You’ll have no place to be safe or to sleep. You’ll be delirious when we need you most.”

  “We have to find those glasses tonight,” Packard says. “Shelby will bring them to you tonight when you get back with your dad, and you’ll zing Otto. We’ll start breaking him down so he frees our people. That’s the plan.”

  “It may not be so simple,” Shelby says. “Avery would not make these things simple to find. We may need to work tonight and tomorrow both. When things are open. With no curfew.”

  “We have to get them tonight. Justine—” He looks at me wildly. I know what he’s thinking. I can’t spend the night with Otto.

  “You know how superstitious I am, Packard.” I curl my hand around his. “It’s bad luck for the bride and groom to spend the night before the wedding together. And especially to see each other the next morning. I’m planning on making a reservation at the Midcity Arms. If you don’t get the glasses to me, that’s where I’ll be tonight.”

  He looks only marginally relieved.

  Shelby stops half a block down from Delites. Even from here, you can see the double doors are plain now. They once had Otto’s face on them—his signature—Otto with long hair and a beard. That signature image automatically appears near every force field he creates, whether he wants it or not. Now that the restaurant force fields are gone, the door is blank.

  “Come on,” I say, yanking him out of the car with me. He allows this, allows me to drag him down the sidewalk to the restaurant, but he points down the street toward Maria’s.

  “No,” I say, pulling his winter cap lower over his ears so less of his bright hair is visible. The sidewalk is empty, and nobody is around except Shelby, halfway down the block in the car, but still, best to be safe. “We’ll go in together,” I say, “and you’ll see you can walk out again. Otto’s wrong—you can rise above your conditioning.”

  “Sometimes you can’t.”

  “You can do every insane thing, but not go in here? And if this thing doesn’t end in a few hours, you’ll need somewhere safe to sleep when curfew falls.” I take his hand and pull him toward the door.

  He stays still as a statue. “I can, but I won’t.”

  I try something new— “I need to know you’ll be in there. For when I sneak out of the hotel to come to meet you.”

  “Don’t promise that,” he says with ferocious urgency.

  “Well, I am promising. If this thing’s not over, I’ll come meet you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  He takes a pained breath. “Justine—”

  “What?”

  He looks helplessly at the sky. “It’s what you promised that day. That last day.”

  The day I lost.

  “I promised to meet you?”

  He looks down to me, eyes steady as steel. “We were going to go away together. To Mexico. I was on my way out of town when you came and found me, and we talked about everything.” He studies my face, like he’s seeing it anew.

  “Everything?”

  “We don’t have time for this,” he says.

  “I don’t care,” I tell him. “Tell me.”

  “You knew about what happened all those years ago at the old school. Nobody else ever knew, and you…it was the first time…before that, nobody knew what I’d done except Otto, and he‘s seen me as a monster ever since—”

  “It wasn’t your fault, what you did. Nobody would ever blame you for saving yourself!”

  “That’s what you said. That day. And it was huge to me. And we talked about what I’d done to you. To all of you. I was so sorry. Am sorry.”

  "We talked about all that?”

  “That’s not even the half.”

  “Tell me,” I demand.

  “I can’t just tell you. It’s the kind of thing that needs to recur. When a person is revised, they’re no longer the person who had the experience, they’re—”

  “Christ, just tell me!” I shake him. “Tell me!”

  He takes a breath. “You said you loved me.” He drops his hands to my belt, takes hold, pulls me closer. “And I told you that I loved you. So fucking much—those were my words. So fucking much, and it’s true. I would tell you a million times more.”

  My heart bangs in my chest.

  He continues, “And you…we…”

  “We had sex?”

  His gaze changes slightly. A yes.

  “We had sex and I don’t remember?”

  “It was…”

  “And I don’t remember?”

  “I remember enough for both of us,” he says. “We came together in every way. I didn’t know it was possible…that this…” He’s at a loss for words.

  I’m in a whirl of emotions—excitement, joy…outrage that I don’t remember. Anxiousness that Max is waiting, the clock’s ticking. But mostly happiness.

  He looks serious suddenly. “In some parts of the world, they don’t have a word for snow, because they don’t know what it is. I never had a word for this. Love’s too trite. It’s more than that—just more. And I can’t lose you again. But here we are. You’re going to him and promising to meet me. I can’t do this again.”

  I put my hand to his cheek, feel the grit of new whiskers.

  He brings his hand up to mine, wraps his fingers around my fingers. “You left to pack,” he says. “We were going to meet. I waited for you.”

  “Oh.” Did he wait into the night? Of course. I can picture his face, eyes searching the street. “It doesn’t mean it’ll end th
e same,” I say. “Just before, you said a person can’t change a prognostication—except when something alters the currents of fate. I think the currents of fate are that we’ll be together.” I’m saying this for him, but I’m saying it a little bit for me. “Think about it—I was revised to believe I saw you kill our friend. And guess what? Even that couldn’t wreck things. And today you walked into the line of fire of the Brick Slinger, protected by nothing but crazy weirdness, and you survived. God!” I shake him and he winces. I pull back my hand when I realize I touched his arm wound. “Sorry. But, do you know what it was like, loving you like I do, and watching you walk out there like that?”

  He looks down at me, gaze keen. “Say it again.”

  “About the Brick Slinger?”

  He tilts his head, all sly annoyance.

  “You know it’s true,” I say. “You’ve exploited the fact often enough.”

  “Say it.”

  When I smile into his eyes, everything is uncomplicated. “I love you.” I say it free and clear, like a song in my heart. So this is what it feels like, I think, when you say it and mean it. “And I can’t believe we had sex and I don’t remember!”

  “It was…” He’s concealing a smile, “…so hot.”

  Just then, something falls into place—“Gumby!”

  He tilts his head.

  Time is running out. I speak quickly: “When I found my car, Gumby was in the happy mode. Arms up, chest puffed out. I was like, who did this?”

  “You never put Gumby in the happy mode before.”

  “I know! But, I must have…after. I probably drove my car right after I saw you. And Gumby was happy that day. Happiest possible Gumby.”

  He smiles. “Goddamn, I love you,” he says.

  “Trust in it, then.” I pull us gently toward the door. “You’ll go in, and it’s only for a little while this time. Trust that this is right. You’ll study Avery’s book with the gang and find clues and make plans; and you’ll leave this place with them, and hunt for the glasses, and if they don’t turn up right away, you’ll come here to rest during curfew.”

  He shakes his head.

  “And I’ll come to you tonight.”

  “You can’t promise it.”

  “I can. As much as I can promise anything. Will you not be here when I come?”

  A silence. He looks very young, suddenly. He wants to believe. He looks at the door, then at me. “You’ll come to me,” he says.

  “Yes.” I yank one side of the door open, hold it for him. You can see through to the dim inside. Only half the lights are on, since it’s not yet open. Wait people rolling silverware at the bar.

  He takes his hand from mine, sizing up the entrance. I see it the moment he makes his decision. A minute shift in his posture. And then casually, like it’s nothing whatsoever, he walks over the threshold.

  I follow, letting the door close quietly behind me.

  Inside he turns to face me. “You’ll come to me.”

  “At three or so. When everyone’s sleeping.”

  He takes a deep breath. He won’t look around, like if he doesn’t acknowledge his surroundings, he won’t really be here, but the memories must be assaulting him all the same. The old spicy-sweet curry smells hang thick in the air, and they’re playing one of the usual Bollywood soundtracks. The same old Asian and Indian artifacts decorate the walls—masks, swords, ornate mirrors imported from import stores—that used to be our joke. We used to laugh about how nothing was really Mongolian.

  “I’m so…” I don’t have a word. It seems like anything’s possible now. “You’ve just busted eight long years of conditioning.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he whispers.

  I take his hand. I want to take a leap of faith too. I want to face down my own demons—not by zinging, but for real.

  “We don’t open until five.” A blonde hostess in a polished ponytail has appeared at the hostess stand. “You’ll have to come back in twenty minutes.”

  “Far-back booth,” Packard says, as if in a trance.

  “We’re not open.”

  I spot Ling, beelining across from the kitchen. I wave. “Friends,” she says. “I got it.”

  “You’d better show up,” he whispers.

  I smile. “I’ll move the moon if I have to.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It’s a Midcity miracle that it takes me just under an hour to sneak into Shelby’s apartment with her, shower the Tanglelands tea off myself, get my long hair half dry and teased and into barrettes so that it looks fussed over, change back into my yellow dress, and speed across town behind Max to show up, breathlessly, in the penthouse foyer.

  Otto comes out, kingly as ever in his black dinner jacket. Kingly and impatient. “Where were you?”

  “Shelby’s,” I say. Do I sound too insistent? Too defensive? I look into his eyes, trying to keep my face and mind relaxed.

  “All this time on your hair?” He doesn’t look convinced, and really, my hair looks like crap. As any woman knows, it’s not unusual for hair to look worse after several hours of fussing than when you just flop it up into a binder, but Otto doesn’t know that.

  “Day o’ failed hairdo experiments,” I say.

  “Are you ready now? Are we ready to go?”

  I hold my hands open, a gesture that says, Yeah, can’t you tell?

  He stabs the elevator button. Where were you? Why ask that? He knew I was at Shelby’s. What if Max went up to Shelby’s while we were gone?”

  As we step into the elevator, he exchanges glances with Norman the mercenary elevator operator. Okay, something’s wrong—I have this intuition that they’ve had a conversation about me. Norman turns the key. Is this amount of silence weird? It seems so.

  “Needless to say,” I blather, “I think I won’t be using Shelby as my stylist tomorrow after all.” I go on to prattle about hairdos.

  By the time we’re stepping into the lobby, I’m running mental clips of every mafia undercover movie I’ve ever seen, all those tense scenes where the cop goes around with the murderous mafiosos, sometimes wearing a wire, never entirely sure if they’re onto him.

  Otto takes my hand and speeds his pace. Why is he in such a hurry? Is he acting weird? “I think you’ll be quite surprised by what you find in there,” Otto says.

  My heart jolts, like an electric shock went through it. What will I find in there? We approach the door. The limo waits just outside.

  With a lurch I picture Packard’s severed head on the seat. It couldn’t be—I just saw him. The world turns fuzzy, and I’m not sure how I’m still walking—my legs feel like concrete.

  “What is it that I’ll find?” I ask.

  “A surprise,” Otto says. “If I tell you the surprise, that ruins it, doesn’t it?”

  Sammy the doorman holds the door for us.

  “Hold on.” I stop and look in the lobby mirror, pretending to do something to my hair with one hand while Otto pulls gently on the other. “Can’t that wait? We’re late.”

  Definitely impatient.

  Heart pounding, I yank my hand out of his and stuff some hair into the barrette, glancing through the double doors and out to the sidewalk where Otto’s driver, Smitty, waits next to the limo. He holds a bunch of white cloth. I imagine it clamped against my nose and mouth.

  But he could have been wiping the windows. Except the cloth wouldn’t look so pristinely white. But why chloroform me out here? Why not wait until I’m inside? That’s not the most comforting thought, either. My mind goes again to Packard’s severed head. My panic torques and rises.

  “Justine,” Otto places his fingers on the small of my back. “We’re late, for God’s sake. Your hair is fine.” Gently he pushes.

  I take a step. Another. I have to commit, or run. I decide to commit. “Okay,” I mumble. I accompany Otto through the door, as if in a dream. I’m on the sidewalk with him. I can still run. I get a closer look at what Smitty’s holding—it looks like a bunch of white-cloth shower ca
ps. It could be chloroformed stuff, but it doesn’t seem likely.

  But what’s the surprise? I close my eyes, try shaking myself out of it. There is no actual sign you’ve been busted! I tell myself. But I feel Otto’s eyes on me.

  I steel myself as Smitty pulls open the door.

  And then I almost fall over. Everything inside the limo, or at least the back passenger area, is blindingly white. My mind pretzels up with stress and confusion. “You’ve redecorated the limo?”

  Otto laughs. “In a manner of speaking. Come here.” He holds out his arms like he wants to pick me up.

  “What? You want to carry me over the threshold?”

  “Come on.”

  Warily I go to him. He lifts my arm and places it around his neck, and then he hoists me up. Smitty puts white shower caps over my shoes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Give him your purse,” Otto says. “It’s a known fact that women’s shoes are every bit as filthy as the bottoms of their purses.

  I hand it over and Smitty encloses it in a white thing and gives it back to me.

  “What is this?”

  “Don’t let your feet touch the ground.” Otto sets me down on the limo seat and I and I scoot over. He sits on the side of the seat and puts bonnets over his own shoes before sliding in. Smitty shuts the door.

  “Oh my God.” I run a finger over the plastic-covered walls, the new white upholstery. Even the floor mats are white. And there’s a new vent in the back. “HEPA filter,” I whisper.

  “That’s right,” he says.

  I widen my eyes, so relieved. Stunned. “You’ve made this entire back area into a clean room,” I say. “This is a mobile clean room.”

  “That’s right.” He runs his hand along the white seat between us. “Bacteria-resistant upholstery imported from Japan. I know your dad’s reluctant to travel, that it’s a big deal for him, and I want him to feel comfortable. Do you think he’ll like it?”

  I’m speechless. His agitation, his pressuring me, all I could think all this time was vicious killer. But he just didn’t want to show up late. Otto is a man—a groom—desperate to impress his future father-in-law.

  I swallow a lump, feeling so horribly sad. This is the old Otto. It would be so much easier if he’d stayed scary.