“Shift change,” James announced. “End of a dream.” As he said it they watched the crowd part hastily, and an ambulance with the word HARMACY stenciled on it came barreling through, driven by a tiger in a cowboy hat. The doors opened, and twin versions of Cali wearing ER scrubs climbed out.
James said, “It’s time. He’s ready for the message. You have to get it to him.”
“What message?” Sadie asked.
“Something’s wrong with the rooster,” he said, like he was talking to himself.
Sadie looked for a rooster but didn’t see one. She turned back to ask James where it was, but he’d vanished. Instead, she found she was standing near Plum again, still on the couch with her candies, hand out, chanting the same refrain, “Show Momma you love her just like your brother.”
Sadie had been so focused on the “like your brother” part of the chant that she hadn’t really paid attention to the first half. But looking at Plum with her hand out, as though waiting to be kissed, Sadie had an idea. What if the advice Plum had given Ford about his mother, to tell her that she was valuable to him, was actually just what Plum wanted? Maybe all it would take to get her to tell Serenity Services that James never did drugs was to play her game. Kiss her hand.
She had to take Plum with her into Ford’s conscious mind and make him realize this. Ford wanted James’s case reopened, and Plum—the girlfriend wanted for questioning—was the best hope. If he was sweet to Plum, she’d be sweet to him.
Sadie said to her, “Can you come with me?”
Before she could get an answer, there was a rumble like an earthquake. Ford’s subconscious bucked once and vanished as he opened his eyes. Sadie found herself in a slightly hazy version of Ford’s mind, staring up through his lashes at the living room ceiling.
Had she caused that? Did something in her conversation with Plum wake him?
His mind came into clearer focus. He grunted and stretched to reach his phone. The screen said six A.M., half an hour before his alarm.
Dropping his phone on his chest, he closed his eyes and sank back into the cushions.
And then sat up abruptly. Sugar momma, Sadie heard him think. If I’m sweet to Plum, she’ll be sweet to me. Serenity Services will have to listen to her.
Sadie’s head whirled with astonishment and excitement. Had her conversation with Plum moved from his subconscious to conscious mind? Or had she just been channeling a conclusion he had already reached? She felt like every part of her was tingling.
Apparently the discovery excited him too because his hand strayed down his stomach and slid beneath the waistband of his boxers. Sadie’s breath caught as with a clash of cymbals, a jazz band reached for its instruments and began grinding to life in his head. They started off separate, each instrument playing its own wave of sensation, tickling Sadie in different, unfamiliar places, then picking up speed as they began to knit together into a powerful, pulsing sound.
Ribbons of color streaked across his mind, shimmering and dissolving as others took their place. This is nothing like shallow stasis, Sadie thought, her pulse quickening faster than his, her mind trilling with the vibrations of a French horn leading the other instruments as it twisted its joyful throaty sound upward through a virtuoso series of chords. This was—oh god!—not like anything—open your eyes, Ford—she’d ever—please, I want to see, I want—experienced or even—
She moaned aloud and over the noise of the band heard his stifled grunt in her ear as his body pitched and hers convulsed, sending golden shock waves of sensation bouncing from her to him then back again—
—dreamed.
Ford lay on his back breathing hard, and now he did look down, but all Sadie saw was the wet place on the front of his shorts. She was dizzy from the spinning in his head and the thoughts in hers, wanting it never to end, wanting to do it again, wondering how long he’d have to wait until he was ready—
Absolutely not, she told herself. There would be no repeat. Are you out of your mind?
Yes, in fact, I am, she answered, stifling a laugh at her own bad joke.
There was nothing funny about it, she knew. Her behavior had been unscientific, unobjective, inappropriate. Given what she’d just done, the Committee had been right to doubt her suitability as a Minder. What had she been thinking, letting herself go that way? Acting so—
Passionate, she thought. I, Sadie Ames, was passionate.
“Wow,” Ford said aloud.
Sadie tried, but she couldn’t contain the bubble of laughter that burst from her then. It rubbed against her self-reproach, taking the edge off, making her recognize that she’d made a mistake, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Her objectivity had only been momentarily compromised.
Still, she felt shy facing him in the mirror that morning as he brushed his teeth.
It won’t happen again, she resolved. She could control herself. Would control herself.
But now she knew what everyone else felt. And she’d felt it too.
Thank you, Ford, she whispered, completely forgetting to be annoyed when he left the toilet seat up.
CHAPTER 17
Tiny prickles of impatience teased Ford all day at work.
He’d texted Plum that morning—“I CAN’T GET YOU OFF MY MIND. I’M SORRY I WAS A DISAPPOINTMENT. WILL YOU GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE?”—and had been checking his phone all day for a reply that didn’t materialize, but Sadie knew his anticipation was really due to his excitement about his date with Cali that night.
He stopped at the tree house on his way home from work, and as he put out candles and set the table he hummed to himself, his mind almost as playful as it was when he was with Lulu. He hung a mirror he’d found at a job site on one wall, and grinned when he unwrapped a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream he’d skipped lunch for three days to afford because it was Cali’s favorite.
Watching him go through the preparations, Sadie was envious of Cali. Not because of Ford, of course. Because of the hours he’d spent planning to make the night a success. He’d built a whole tree house just for her.
He rushed home to get dressed, and he’d been tucking in a surprisingly unwrinkled dress shirt when his mother came out of her room and said, “We need to talk, Ford.”
“No we don’t,” he told her, his mind filling with matte dots, as though ready to repel anything that might try to penetrate it.
“We do.”
“Well, I can’t right now.”
“Soon,” she insisted.
He shrugged, already pushing the conversation to the farthest corner of his mind, determined not to let anything spoil the night. “Fine, tomorrow after work.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding to herself. “Okay.” Disappearing back into the gloom of her bedroom.
He rode his bike the two miles to Cali’s house, a yellow one-story with its own yard and a front porch. Leaving the picnic basket on the porch, he rang the bell then walked through the unlocked screen door.
A man in a tank top and work pants sat on the couch, his face lit by the television.
“Hello, Mr. Moss,” Ford said.
“Hello, Ford,” Cali’s father answered without taking his eyes from the television. “Have a seat.”
Ford sat and watched a show about making fondue for ten minutes while his mind buzzed impatiently with different imagined versions of Cali saying, “Ford, no way!” for each surprise she discovered in the tree house. Cali came out wearing a tight dress and high heels with her hair pinned up.