Free Mind Games by Carolyn Crane

high-tech bazaar.
    We walk around and I quiz her about other disillusionists, like Jordan, the woman she’d mentioned that first night. “Very unpleasant, Jordan the Therapist,” Shelby says, inspecting a decorative fan. “Steer clear, you know? Her mania is”—she wrinkles her nose—“aggressive. And then there is the Monk, most dangerous disillusionist. Destroys people’s faith. None of us have met him. Sometimes Packard must contact Monk through wilderness guides.”
    I forgot how fun it was to shop with a girlfriend. We try on dozens of pairs of shoes. I buy a Chinese dress just like hers. Afterward, we go for a late dinner of spicy noodles at a Thai restaurant back in the Delites neighborhood. We talk and laugh and discover we like similar books and music.
    Over mango shakes, I learn that Shelby came to Midcity as a mail-order bride at the age of fifteen, leftthe guy at eighteen, and went to work as a maid at a hotel on the edge of downtown, just below the river. I know it. It’s near Cubby’s condo.
    “I would save my pay to drink and eat alone at Mongolian Delites, and that is how I met Packard,” she tells me. “I still love kebabs. Packard and other disillusionists hate them, of course.”
    “If they hate them so much, why do they always eat them? And if Packard’s so damn sensitive about the restaurant, why not change it, or sell it?”
    “Nobody has told you?”
    “Told me what?”
    “About Packard and restaurant.”
    I look at her blankly.
    Shelby parts her pretty lips in surprise and leans close, all dusky intensity, as if this tidbit demands an extra flourish. “Packard is prisoner there. He is prisoner at Mongolian Delites. He has not been outside restaurant for eight years.”
    “What? Are you talking about some sort of house arrest?”
    “No, Justine, he is prisoner of another highcap. I cannot believe nobody told you this. Packard, it is hard for him to speak of it. Nemesis imprisoned him there for life.”
    I blink at her, dumbfounded.
    “Have you seen Packard out of restaurant? No. He can go into kitchen, bathrooms, dining areas and broom closet only. He is thirty-three, I think. So he has been inside since age of twenty-five.”
    “That’s insane. It’s impossible!”
    “It is not impossible. There are highcaps with such powers.”
    “So he can never leave? Ever?” And suddenly I see it. I see the caged animal in him. “Oh my God. That is horrible. He has to get free.”
    Shelby shakes her head. “He cannot. Packard’s nemesis is highcap with power of force fields. It is as if he can speak to building, interface with building. He can make force fields, even change shape of walls. Nemesis spoke to Mongolian Delites building. He said, ‘You must never let Packard leave.’” She describes how an invisible wall traps Packard, even if the door is open. The sadness of it steals my breath.
    “Packard cannot change menu; that is why we must eat same things. He cannot change hours or layout of space to make private place in back. Always he lives in public. Even silly decor, if he smashes knickknack or burns a wall hanging, tomorrow it is back. Force field creates, what do you say? Continuity. You should look on Internet. There is something on Internet of this high-cap mutation. You have studied highcaps on Internet, right?”
    “Yeah,” I say distractedly. I looked up Packard’s mutation, of course. Seeing psychological structure. There was hardly anything on his type. “How could I not know this?”
    “He loathes to speak of it.” The waitress brings the bill, and Shelby snaps her credit card over it. I can tell she’s tired—it’s after midnight—but I ask her more questions. I need to know everything.
    She tells me how Packard purchased the restaurant from the owners after his imprisonment, and about his unsuccessful attempts to escape, to remodel. “We believe Packard sleeps on little bedroll that he lays out next to booth. He is cut off from world. From friends