Minders

CHAPTER 9

His mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Ford walked in the door that night. She was wearing a faded blue sweater, jeans, and a gold locket. Sadie hadn’t seen her dressed and out of bed before, and although she still looked frail, she seemed more substantial. More real.

She marked her place in her word jumble with a pencil, folded her hands over it, and looked at him with a smile. “We had a visit from our Roque Community Health Evaluator today.” Her tone made Sadie think of Jell-O, artificially bright and sweet. “It went very well.”

“Oh, good,” Ford said, matching her artificial cheer. He pulled the two cans of Spaghetti-n-Meatballz he’d bought on his way home from his bag.

“They offered to send someone over to help Lulu feel more comfortable leaving the house again. We just need to set up a time.”

“Can they also bring James back to life? Because I actually think that’s what it would take.” Stop it, Sadie wanted to tell him. Why can’t you just listen to your mother instead of having to remind her constantly that James is gone?

Her brightness dimmed a little. “Why do you always have to be so negative?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are,” Lulu said stepping into the room. She was wearing a pair of purple corduroy pants that were three inches too short and a gray men’s Henley shirt.

“That’s my shirt,” Ford said. “Who said you could borrow it?”

“The fairies that live on the floor of my room, where I found it.”

“Copernicus must have put it there.” Ford looked sternly at him and said, “Bad dog.”

Lulu said, “It’s not his fault you failed Drawers in school.” She stood on her tiptoes to peer into the pot and made a face. “Spaghetti-n-Meatballz again?”

Ford said, “There’s also nothing. We’ve got plenty of that.”

Lulu rolled her eyes. “Why is it spelled with a z?”

“It stands for zee good stuff,” Ford explained solemnly. “It’s Italian.”

For the first time since Sadie had been in Ford’s head, the three of them had dinner together. That meant that Lulu and Ford ate like savages while Mrs. Winter pushed her food around on her plate. “I’d hoped you would be here when the Evaluator came,” she said, arranging her Ballz into a pyramid.

“This new one is nice,” Lulu put in. “She knows fun games.”

“It’s the fifth visit you’ve missed,” his mother went on. “But she’ll be back Tuesday.”

Sadie felt the muscles in Ford’s back tense. He kept his eyes on his plate, concentrating on holding back his rising anger. “I’m sure you kept the Roaches entertained.”

His mother knocked over her pyramid. “Please don’t call them that. They’ve been very helpful to our family.”

“Have they?” Ford looked up, like he was interested, but Sadie knew it was only sarcasm. “As far as I can tell, they come and spy on us—”

“Check on us,” Mrs. Winter corrected.

“—to make sure we’re not doing drugs, just because one member of our family, who’s not even here anymore, did drugs. I’m not sure how much I trust people who think drug addiction is a communicable disease.”

Mrs. Winter sighed. “They come to see if we need support. If there’s anything they can do to make our family life easier.”

“There is,” Ford said, and Sadie felt as though he wasn’t just leaning into a door to keep the anger from coming through, he was bracing an entire wall. “They could leave us alone. Can you point to one thing they’ve actually done?”

His mother looked away. “They paid for James’s funeral.”

Dots of blues and yellows streaked with black coalesced into a churchyard with patches of snow on the ground, a man in a suit speaking, people, more than a hundred of them, crowding close to listen. Finally Lulu in a dress three sizes too big for her, dropping crystal stars on a coffin. Sadie felt whole new registers of anger blossom in Ford as the images faded.

“May I be excused?” Lulu said.

Ford glanced at her plate. “You hardy ate anything.”

“Copernicus doesn’t feel good,” the girl said.

Ford looked at her hard for a moment then said, “Go on. I’ll come in to say goodbye before I leave.”

Lulu nodded and ran down the hall to her room, slamming the door.

His mother said, “You upset your sister.”

“Yeah, it was all me.” Ford got up from the table and began to clear the dishes. Sadie noticed the deliberateness of his movements and sensed how much he’d like to smash every plate against the floor.

His mother lit a cigarette, took a short drag, and said nervously, “You’re going out?”

He leaned against the counter, drying his hands. “Yep.”

Don’t do it, Sadie said, sampling the anticipation he was feeling. It was impure, mixed with a little malice and a lot of pain, and it was designed to do only one job.

He said, “I’m going to meet James’s girlfriend.”

There was a long silence. And then, “You selfish boy.”

His mother’s words set up a relay in Ford’s mind, pinging around his memories like a pinball. His father in a janitor uniform smelling of bleach, the man’s face clear, teeth yellow, eyes furious. “You selfish shit, I work to put food on the table, a roof over your head, and you thank me by running away?” His face in Ford’s face, the image slightly less clear, Ford’s saying, “I wasn’t running away, sir, I was at my friend Buck—” interrupted with a growled “Shut up.” The man’s voice yelling, “Do you know how upset your mother was? Do you know how much pain you caused her?” The dots bigger, images blurrier as though harder to see since the situation made less sense to the child, his mother’s arms covered in bruises. “Look how much you hurt your mother when you don’t obey. Tell him, Vera.” Large dots combining into hypnotic smears making a woman with no face, just a voice that says, “Please, Ford, please, can’t you just behave? Why can’t you stop upsetting your father?”

Sadie was knocked backward by the memories. The scent of bleach was overpowering. Betrayal, Sadie realized. That’s what bleach meant. The deepest, most fundamental form of betrayal.

Poor Ford, she thought. No wonder he and his mother have so little to say to one another. It was incredible to Sadie that they communicated at all, even in their stunted way.

Then the scent of bleach faded, and Ford demanded, “I’m selfish because I think we should know what really happened to James?”

“You don’t care about James,” she said, one arm crossed over her chest, the other balanced on it, smoking in small, nervous puffs. “You’re doing this for yourself. And to hurt me.”

Ford laughed bitterly. “Yeah, can’t imagine why I might want to meet my dead brother’s girlfriend. The person he spent the most time with before he died. The one he was so busy with we never saw him anymore.”

His mother, looking genuinely confused, asked, “Why would you?”

He said, “To know. How did this happen? What happened?”

His mother stabbed out her cigarette. “I know what happened.”

Ford’s stomach dropped. Over the lingering scent of cigarette smoke Sadie thought she caught a whiff of cinnamon. It took her a moment to realize that he was surprised and something else… hopeful? Was that what the cinnamon meant? “You do? What?”

His mother nodded. “It was a terrible accident. And no amount of looking or asking questions will bring him back. We have to move on with our lives.”

Sadie felt Ford’s hope twist into an even tighter knot of anger. “Is that what you call this?” He made a wide gesture with his arm, taking in the apartment but clearly meaning more. “Moving on with your life? Our lives? Lulu is afraid to leave the house, I’m destroying beautiful buildings I’d rather be rescuing, and you sit in your room week after week doing these.” He picked up her word jumble and fanned it open.

He put it down and then, as though just registering something he’d seen, picked it back up and flipped through it.

It was blank. Every page blank. Not a single puzzle had been done.

Ford frowned at his mother. She looked back, defiantly.

“What do you do all those hours if you’re not doing this?” he asked, waving the book toward her.

“None of your business,” she said firmly. Only her hand patting the top of the table indicated she wasn’t completely calm.

Ford’s voice softened. He sat down and reached toward her. “Mom, what is going on?”

She pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table, took one, lit it, and exhaled. Settling back in her seat she said to Ford, “I lost my glasses.” She shrugged. “I can’t see to do my jumble without them.”

“How long?” Ford’s voice was still calm. “How long ago did you lose your glasses, Mom?”

“A month.” Her eyes went left. “Maybe two.”

Ford nodded slowly, taking that in. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You always seem so upset. I didn’t want to give you more to worry about,” she said, still not looking at him. “You already worry too much.”

Ford’s anger rose like a swollen river, blotting out reason. His vision blurred, and his ears rang. He stood with such force that his chair fell backward, sending Copernicus fleeing. “That’s it. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going out.”

“No, Ford. Please don’t,” his mother said. “Not—not when you’re in a mood like this.”

“I assure you,” he told her, picking up the chair, “it’s when I’m in a mood like this that you want me out of the house.”

“You’ll call attention to yourself or do something stupid, and that could cost us everything.”

There was no subtlety in Ford’s fury. “How can I avoid doing something stupid? It’s in my genes.”

Mrs. Winter froze, half in and half out of her seat, staring at him. “You cannot speak to me that way.”

“You’re right,” Ford said in a tired voice. “I owe you an apology. I’ll give it to you later.” He went to the door. “I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

At ten forty he was standing in the parking lot of the defunct Surprise Party Outlet Store, opposite the art deco façade of the Candy Factory, watching the streams of people and cars lining up outside.

He’d spent the previous two hours walking through City Center. It was different than Sadie expected, the densely populated parts alternating with abandoned, almost desolate blocks, making a patchwork of light and dark, noise and overgrown silence.

But for the last half hour Ford had been following the elevated train tracks, and there was no quiet there, just noise, from the train and the traffic and the sounds echoing off the partitions. Sadie wondered if that was what appealed to Ford about walking beneath the tracks: that with all that noise it was literally too loud for him to hear himself think.

Now, as he watched a limo disgorge a party of five girls, all wearing only candy, he felt hungry, thirsty, and spent.

You don’t have to go in, Sadie told him. You can skip this.

He crossed the street, headed up the stairs, and gave his name to the first person he saw. A moment later a petite blonde wearing a Candy Factory apron and boy shorts approached him with a wide smile. “Welcome to the Candy Factory. I’m your VIP host, Morning. Please let me escort you to your party.” She linked her pinkie with his and led him into the club.

“Is this your first visit?” Morning asked, looking up at him through her lashes.

Sadie figured Ford would be intrigued or flirt back, but he had almost no reaction at all. “It is.”

He seemed more interested in the architecture of the club. It was built in an actual old candy factory, and they’d preserved many of the industrial elements, including one of the old sugar melting vats, which was now a DJ booth topped with an oversized candy thermometer.

“You party is in the Hard Candy section,” Morning told him. “We provide a number of services for our VIP guests, should you be interested.” She gave him another through-the-lashes glance.

“Thanks. I’ll, um, see where tonight goes.”

He was nervous, Sadie realized. That’s why he’d suddenly become so subdued. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be uncomfortable around large groups of new people just like she was, or that meeting his older brother’s girlfriend could be intimidating.

Without thinking, he stopped dead in the middle of a busy doorway as they entered the main part of the club, and Sadie could tell he was dazzled by what he was seeing. The space was cavernous, with thirty-foot-high ceilings. A gigantic chandelier was suspended over the dance floor, probably fifteen feet across, in the shape of a crystal candy bowl filled with enormous blown-glass candies. When his eyes landed on it, Ford laughed with pleasure, and Sadie did too.

Morning coaxed him forward, toward the Hard Candy booth. He followed her up a set of stairs that looked like large plastic-wrapped butterscotch candies. As he climbed them, Sadie heard Ford repeating I’m Mr. Irresistible, I’m Mr. Irresistible, I’m Mr. Irresistible in his head, like a mantra.

You have got to be kidding, Sadie thought.

Plum was on a couch but facing away from them, which meant they were seeing just her mass of hair, pretty much exactly the image he had in his mind, only without James.

She turned when he reached the top of the stairs. Beneath the mass of hair were wide-set brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a tiny rosebud mouth. Her olive skin glowed as though it had been polished, and Sadie wondered if that was natural or if she used something to get it to look that way. Their eyes met, and Plum moved her gaze from Ford’s eyes to his lips and back again, causing a flurry of trumpets in Ford’s mind followed by a tightening in his lower abdomen. Plum gave him a small, knowing smile.

Was that a trick that worked on everyone, or was Ford just an easy mark? Sadie was asking herself when she realized the horns in his mind had abruptly stopped playing. In their place was the single thought: Dangerous. Be careful.

You surprise me, Mr. Winter, she told him, impressed.

Plum motioned Ford into the seat next to her, leaning in to kiss him on both cheeks before giving him her hand and saying, “I’m Plum.”

“Ford,” he answered, shaking her hand.

“You could have kissed it,” Plum said.

His voice low, he said, “I don’t kiss until the second date.” Despite his caution, Sadie felt the warm wave of his pleasure when Plum laughed. And presenting… Mr. Irresistible, Sadie thought.

Plum sat back against gold satin pillows to study him, although what she was really doing, Sadie was certain, was giving Ford a chance to study her.

Ford looked from her face to her ankles to her hands to her breasts. His mind was noisy as he took Plum in, but Sadie had trouble gleaning the specifics of his thoughts, partially because the club was so loud and partially because much of it was happening in registers she still hadn’t completely deciphered.

She was intrigued to find that the rhythm of his thoughts had begun to mirror the rhythm of the music playing. Maybe that’s why people like going to clubs. Because when their thoughts are aligned by the music, they get a sense of intense connection, of thinking alike.

That seemed potentially hazardous to Sadie, especially when she noticed that the new rhythm made the voice in his head that labeled Plum “dangerous” hard to hear.

Plum leaned over to pour Ford a cocktail from a silver pitcher on the table beside her. She gave him his glass, took her own, and clicked them. “To long Winter nights,” she said.

Sadie heard the words forming in his mind a second before he said them. Seriously? You are better than—

“And warm juicy Plums,” Ford answered.

Sadie groaned. Plum froze, not looking completely nauseated by the terrible line the way she should have, but surprised. As though she’d seen a ghost. “James said the same thing,” she told Ford. “The second time we met.”

“I guess I rubbed off on him.” Ford downed his entire cocktail in two gulps. Sadie couldn’t taste it, but she felt its warmth crawling through his body, dulling the ache that the mention of James’s name had evoked.

Plum refilled his glass, leaned toward him, and rested her hand on his knee. “Are you like him in other ways?”

“What do you mean?” Ford asked in his deep, Mr. Irresistible voice. His eyes strayed back to her ankles, and Sadie heard him thinking appreciatively that she was curvy in all the right places.

And dangerous, Sadie reminded Ford. Curvy but dangerous.

Plum said, “Well, you sound like him. You smell like him. You smile like him. Do you screw like him?”

As I was saying.

“I don’t know. We never shared a girl.” He downed his new drink in one gulp, and Sadie was aware of the same sticky sensation she’d experienced her first day in his mind.

Plum put her hands on her cheeks in a classic expression of surprise. “Then I may be your only chance to right that wrong.”

Ford brought his glass to his mouth, apparently forgetting he’d finished his drink. Black, brown, blue, green dots whisked together into a surprisingly detailed image of Plum lying on a bed, clearly naked but half covered by a tousled blue spread with a pair of red and blue patterned shorts tangled in it. Sadie was sure it wasn’t any bed at his house. She wondered if it was what he imagined Plum’s bed would look like.

In the next image Plum’s face was replaced by Cali’s, and Ford said, “Unfortunately, I have a girlfriend.”

Sadie would have preferred it without the “unfortunately,” but it was nice that he remembered.

“The more the merrier,” Plum offered, refilling his drink.

Ford took a gulp. “She wouldn’t feel the same way.”

Plum sighed. “There goes our bold experiment.” She picked up a candy tray from the side table and held it toward him. “They make these special for me. They all have a bit of an extra kick, if you know what I mean.”

Ford had been reaching for one, but he pulled his hands back. “Thanks, I’m—I don’t use drugs.” He took another gulp of his third drink, and Sadie could tell he was starting to get a little fuzzy.

Plum ran her tongue around the edge of a green lozenge and eyed him speculatively. “I was told I should steer clear of you, that you’re a bad boy, but I see I was misinformed. Your mother must so proud.”

The mention of his mother sent things clanging around Ford’s mind. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Plum looked at him with wide, searching eyes. “Problems with your mother? You know, I’m studying to be an early childhood psychologist.”

You are? Sadie asked incredulously, a second before Ford said, “You are?”

“Yeah, when I have time for classes. Recently it’s been tough.”

“Because of your job?”

Plum laughed. “No, puppy, I don’t have a job. I’ve just been busy.”

“Oh,” he said.

“But you can tell me about your mommy problems.”

“I just feel like I always let her down,” Ford told her.

No no no, Sadie urged. This is a very bad idea. Someday, somehow, you are going to regret this. If you stop and laugh and pretend you were kidding, you might be able—

Plum nodded sagely. “In general, when parents make you feel that way, it’s a form of projection because they feel helpless. You should try telling her how much you value what she does. It might help turn things around.”

Sadie was flabbergasted. That actually sounded like good advice.

Ford’s thoughts said the same thing. “Thanks.”

Plum gave him a wide, radiant, and very real-looking smile. “I’m not just a pretty face.” She leaned close to him. “I also have nice jugs.”

He laughed, and Sadie heard him think that she and James must have been really compatible.

Plum moved her shoulders to the music, swaying back and forth next to Ford, and Ford swayed with her. He was picturing her and James together, making up fictitious picnics and outings for them, imagining James telling her about fights they’d had at home over the remote control, about funny things Lulu had said, about their mom. In all of them Plum looked at James with adoration bordering on worship.

They were like his regular memories, suspended dots of color dancing into others, except the colors of these manufactured images were a little brighter, the edges a little more perfect. Ideals. Fantasy untarnished by reality, Sadie thought.

He imagined Plum asking James when she’d get to meet his family and James saying later, soon, next month. James wanting to keep her to himself because—

Why? How had it all gone so wrong, Sadie heard Ford ask himself. Talking loud, to be heard over the music, he said to Plum, “Why did you give my brother drugs?”

Sadie inhaled sharply. I don’t think not calling attention to yourself means what you think it means.

Plum kept swaying next to him. “I didn’t. He didn’t want them. He wouldn’t even try them.”

It was like someone played every note of a pipe organ at once in Ford’s mind. James didn’t do drugs, he repeated to himself. James didn’t do drugs, and he had proof! Plum said it as though there were no question, no dispute. “Why didn’t you go to the police and tell them that?” he said loudly over the music.

Plum tilted her head to look at him. “What happened to your brother had nothing to do with me.”

“But—”

She put a finger on his lips. “This is my club. I make the rules. And I say we’ve talked about James enough. No more. Okay?”

Nothing was making sense to Ford now. Sadie felt his mind reeling around, grasping at random snippets as he tried to find something substantial he could count on for support. “If you don’t have a job, how do you have a club?” he asked.

Plum laughed with real amusement, wafting it over the sound of the music. “I have rich friends.”

“Like a sugar daddy?” Ford’s mind got even more noisy, the technicalities of James dating a girl who was kept by another man boomeranging around.

Plum stopped him with a flick of her wrist. “I do not have a sugar daddy. I have a patron.” She gave him a coquettish look over a one-shoulder shrug. “A very generous patron.”

“What do you have to do for his patronage?” Ford asked.

She tapped him on the nose. “Nothing that would affect you, puppy.”

Ford said, “He really doesn’t care what you do?”

“There’s a vast difference between caring about me and caring what I do.” She walked her fingers up Ford’s chest on the last three words playfully, but something hard had come into her eyes, and Sadie had the impression Ford had struck a nerve.

Be careful, Sadie warned. Don’t provoke her.

“Why doesn’t he want you all to himself? Doesn’t he love you?”

Or you could provoke her.

Plum’s gaze became steely. “You really are just like your brother. You don’t do drugs, you get drunk on three drinks, and you think that the ultimate compliment for any girl is that a guy wants her to belong to him.” Plum shifted, moving away from Ford. “Your brother was going to rescue me from this,” she sneered, her hand making a wide gesture that took in the club, the chandelier, the beautifully groomed crowd, ending with the thick gold bangle on her wrist. “He was going to let me be his full-time girlfriend, pick me for his one and only, free me. As though he was doing me a favor.”

Ford’s mind was a windstorm of confused thoughts. He said, “When was the last time you saw James?”

“Before he died.” Plum snapped her fingers, and two women in leather pants, tank tops, and shoulder holsters took up stations behind her. “Mr. Winter isn’t feeling up to par tonight,” she said. “Please show him out the back.”

“I’m not done,” Ford protested.

Plum patted his face. “But I am, puppy.”

She slid down the couch toward her other guests and the two women flanked Ford. As they walked him down the stairs he stopped and turned back.

“Did you love him? At all?” he called, but Plum, busy nuzzling the neck of a girl with a purple pixie cut, didn’t seem to hear.

The question was so raw, so sincere, it caught at Sadie and made her heart ache a little. How do you keep doing that, Ford Winter? she wanted to ask. Have me swallowing back a lump in my throat one minute…