Strangers

  “I can pay whatever—”

  “Money is not the issue. I don’t need money.” He frowned. “I’m a magician, not a physician.”

  “I’m already seeing a psychiatrist, and I’ve broached the subject with him, but he won’t do it.”

  “He must have his reasons.”

  “He says it’s too soon for hypnotic regression therapy. He admits the technique might help me discover the cause of my attacks, but he says that might be a mistake because I might not yet be ready to face up to the truth. He says premature confrontation with the source of my anxieties might contribute to ... a breakdown.”

  “You see? He knows best. I would be meddling.”

  “He does not know best,” Ginger insisted, angered by the vivid recollection of her recent conversation with the psychiatrist, in which he had been infuriatingly condescending. “Maybe he knows what’s best for most patients, but he doesn’t know what’s best for me. I can’t go on like this. By the time Gudhausen’s willing to resort to hypnosis, maybe in a year, I’ll no longer be sane enough to benefit. I’ve got to get a grip on this problem, take control, do something.”

  “But surely you see that I can’t be responsible—”

  “Wait,” she interrupted, putting her brandy aside. “I anticipated your reluctance.” She opened her purse, withdrew a folded sheet of typing paper, and held it out to him. “Here. Please take this.”

  He took the paper. Though Pablo was half a century older than she, his hands were far steadier than hers. “What is it?”

  “A signed release making it clear that I came here in desperation, exonerating you in advance for anything that goes wrong.”

  He did not bother to read it. “You don’t understand, dear lady. I’m not concerned about being sued. Considering my age and the snail’s pace of the courts, I wouldn’t live to see a judgment placed against me. But the mind is a delicate mechanism, and if something went wrong, if I led you into a breakdown, I would surely roast in Hell.”

  “If you don’t help me, if I’ve got to spend long months in therapy, uncertain of the future, I’ll have a breakdown anyway.” Desperate, Ginger raised her voice, venting her frustration and anger. “If you send me away, leave me to the well-meaning mercy of friends, abandon me to Gudhausen, I’m finished. I swear, that’ll be the end of me. I can’t go on like this! If you refuse to help me, you’ll still be responsible for my breakdown because you could’ve prevented it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Please.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You cold, black bastard,” Ginger said, startled by the epithet even as she spoke it. The hurt expression on his benign and gnomish face stung and shamed her. Now it was her turn to say, “I’m sorry. So sorry.” She brought her hands to her face, bent forward in her chair, and wept.

  He came to her, stooped down in front of her. “Dr. Weiss, please don’t cry. Don’t despair. It’ll be all right.”

  “No. It never will,” she said. “Not ever like it was.”

  He gently pried her hands away from her face. He put one of his hands under her chin, lifted her head until she was looking at him. He smiled, winked, and held a hand before her eyes to show her that it was empty. Then, to her surprise, he plucked a quarter from her right ear.

  “Hush now,” Pablo Jackson said, patting her shoulder. “You’ve made your point. And I certainly don’t have an dme de boue, a soul of mud, an ungenerous spirit. A woman’s tears can move the world. Against my better judgment, I’ll do what I can.”

  Instead of putting an end to her crying, his offer of help renewed her weeping, though these were tears of gratitude.

  “... and now you are in a deep sleep, deep, very deep, utterly relaxed, and you will answer all my questions. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “You cannot refuse to answer. Cannot refuse. Cannot.”

  Pablo had drawn the drapes over the three-bay window and had turned out all the lights except the lamp beside Ginger Weiss’s chair. The amber beams fell over her, giving her hair the appearance of real gold filaments and emphasizing the unnatural paleness of her skin.

  He stood before her, looking down at her face. She had a fragile beauty, an exquisite femininity, yet in her face there was also a great strength almost masculine in quality. Le juste milieu: perfect balance, the golden mean, was nowhere better defined than in her countenance, where character and beauty were given equal weight.

  Her eyes were closed, and they moved very little beneath her lids, an indication that she was in a deep trance.

  Pablo returned to his chair, which stood in shadow, beyond the amber light from the single lamp. He sat, crossed his legs. “Ginger, why were you frightened by the black gloves?”

  “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  “You cannot lie to me. Do you understand? You can withhold nothing from me. Why were you afraid of the black gloves?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why were you afraid of the ophthalmoscope?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why were you afraid of the sink drain?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you know the man on the motorcycle on State Street?”

  “No.”

  “Then why were you frightened of him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Pablo sighed. “Very well. Ginger, we’ll now do something amazing, something that might seem impossible but which I assure you is possible. In fact, it’s easy. We’re going to make time run backward, Ginger. Nothing to it. We’re going to send you slowly but surely back in time. You are going to get younger. It’s already happening. You can’t resist it ... time like a river ... flowing backward ... ever back ... and now it’s no longer December twenty-fourth. It’s December twenty-third, Monday, and still the clock runs backward ... a little faster ... now it is the twenty-second ... now the twentieth ... the eighteenth....” He continued in that manner until he had regressed Ginger to the twelfth of November. “You are in Bernstein’s Delicatessen, waiting for your order to be filled. Can you smell the hot baked goods, the spices?” She nodded, and he said, “Tell me what you smell.”

  She drew a deep breath, and a pleased look overtook her face. Her voice became more animated: “Pastrami, garlic ... honey cookies ... cloves and cinnamon ...” She remained in her chair, with her eyes closed, but she lifted her head and turned left and right, as if surveying the deli. “Chocolate. Just smell that cocoa pound cake!”

  “It’s wonderful,” Pablo said. “Now, you pay for your order, turn from the counter ... head toward the door, preoccupied with your purse.”

  “I can’t get my wallet in,” she said, scowling.

  “You have the bag of groceries in one arm.”

  “Got to clean out this purse.”

  “Bang! You bump into the man in the Russian hat.”

  Ginger gasped and twitched in surprise.

  “He grabs your grocery bag to keep it from falling,” Pablo said.

  “Oh!” she said.

  “He tells you he’s sorry.”

  “My fault,” Ginger said. Pablo knew she was not talking to him but to the doughy-faced man in the Russian hat, who was now as real to her as he had been that Tuesday in the deli. Apologetically, she said, “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “He holds out your groceries, which you take from him.” The aged magician watched her closely. “And you notice ... his gloves.”

  Her transformation was instantaneous and electrifying. She sat straight up; her eyes popped open. “The gloves! Oh, God, the gloves!”

  “Tell me about the gloves, Ginger.”

  “Black,” she said in a small, quavering voice. “Shiny.”

  “What else?”

  “No!” she cried, starting to get up from the chair.

  “Sit down, please,” Pablo said.

  She froze, half out of her seat.

  “Ginger, I am ordering you to sit down and relax.?
??

  She sat rigidly, her small hands fisted. Her radiant blue eyes were open wide, focused not on Pablo but on the gloves in her memory. She looked as if she would bolt again at the slightest provocation.

  “You will relax now, Ginger. You will be calm ... calm ... very calm. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. All right,” she said. Her breath came less rapidly than it had done, and her shoulders slumped a bit, but she was still tense.

  Ordinarily, when he put someone into a trance, he maintained total and instantaneous control of the subject. He was surprised and made uneasy by this woman’s continued distress in spite of his admonitions to relax, but he could not calm her further. Finally he said, “Tell me about the gloves, Ginger.”

  “Oh, my God.” Her face twisted in fear.

  “Relax and tell me about the gloves. Why are you afraid of them?”

  She shook. “D-Don’t let them t-t-touch me.”

  “Why are you afraid of them?” he persisted.

  She hugged herself and shrank back into her chair.

  “Listen to me, Ginger. That moment in time is frozen. The clock is moving neither forward nor back. The gloves cannot touch you. I will never let them touch you. Time is suspended. I have the power to suspend time, and I have stopped it. You are safe. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she said, but as she cringed against the back of her armchair, there was doubt and barely suppressed terror in her voice.

  “You are perfectly safe.” Pablo was distressed to see this sweet girl so oppressed by fear. “Time has been stopped, so you can study those black gloves without being afraid they’ll get hold of you. You will study them and tell me why they frighten you.”

  She was silent, shaking.

  “You must answer me, Ginger. Why are you afraid of the gloves?” She only whimpered, so he thought a moment, then said, “Is it really this pair of gloves that frighten you?”

  “N-No. Not exactly.”

  “The gloves on this man in the deli ... they remind you of a pair of other gloves, perhaps from some incident long ago? Is that it?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes.”

  “When did this other incident take place? Ginger, what other gloves do these remind you of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.” Pablo rose from his chair, moved to the draped windows, and observed her from those shadows. “All right ... the hands of the clock are moving again. Time is moving backward again ... back ... back ... all the way back to the time when you were first frightened by a pair of black gloves. You are drifting back ... back ... and now you are there. You are at the very time, at the very place, at the precise moment and spot where you were first frightened by black gloves.”

  Ginger’s eyes were fixed on a horror in a different time, not in this room or in Bernstein’s Delicatessen, but in some other place.

  Pablo watched her anxiously. “Where are you, Ginger?” When she remained silent, he said, “You must tell me where you are.”

  “The face,” she said in a haunted voice that made Pablo shiver. “The face. The blank face.”

  “Explain yourself, Ginger. What face? Tell me what you see.”

  “The black gloves ... the dark glass face.”

  “Do you mean ... like the motorcyclist?”

  “The gloves ... the visor.” A spasm of fear throbbed through her.

  “Be calm, relax. You’re safe. Safe. Now, wherever you are, do you see a man wearing a helmet and a visor? And black gloves?”

  She began a monotonous chant of stark terror: “Uh, uh, uh, uh ...”

  “Ginger, you must be calm. Be calm, relaxed, and at ease. Nothing can harm you. You’re safe.” Afraid that he was losing control of her and would have to bring her out of the trance soon, Pablo moved quickly to her chair, knelt at her side, put one hand on her arm, and stroked gently as he spoke to her. “Where are you, Ginger? How far back in time have you gone, Ginger? Where are you? When are you?”

  “Uh, uh, uhhhhhhhh. A pathetic cry escaped her, an echo out of time, the tortured response to a long-suppressed terror and despair.

  He became very stem, switching from a soft to a hard voice. “I am in command of you. You are deeply asleep and completely in my control, Ginger. I demand that you answer me, Ginger.”

  A shudder, worse than any previous spasm, passed through her.

  “I demand that you answer. Where are you, Ginger?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Where are you?”

  “No place.” Abruptly, she stopped shaking. She sagged in the chair. The fear melted out of her face, and her features went soft, slack. In a thin and emotionless voice, she said, “Dead.”

  “What do you mean? You’re not dead.”

  “Dead,” she insisted.

  “Ginger, you must tell me where you are and how far back in time you’ve gone, and you must tell me about the black gloves, that first pair of black gloves, the ones you were reminded of when you saw the gloves on that man in the delicatessen. You absolutely must tell me.”

  “Dead.”

  Suddenly, because he was kneeling beside her chair and was close to her, Pablo realized her breathing was extremely shallow. He took her hand and was startled by how cold it was. He pressed two fingers to her wrist, feeling for her pulse. Weak. Very weak. Frantic, he put his fingertips to her throat and located a slow and weak heartbeat.

  To avoid answering his questions, she seemed to be withdrawing into a sleep far deeper than her hypnotic trance, perhaps into a coma, into an oblivion where she could not hear his demanding voice. He had never encountered a reaction like this before, had never even read of such a thing. Was it possible for Ginger to will herself dead merely to escape his questions? Memory blocks erected around traumatic experiences were not uncommon; his reading in psychology journals sometimes turned up accounts of these psychological barricades to recollection, but they were barriers that could be dismantled without killing the subject. Surely no experience could be so horrendous that a person would rather die than remember it. Yet even as Pablo pressed his fingers to her throat, the throbbing of her pulse grew fainter and more irregular.

  “Ginger, listen,” he said urgently. “You don’t have to answer me. No more questions. You can come back. I won’t insist on answers.”

  She seemed suspended on a terrible brink, teetering.

  “Ginger, listen to me! No more questions. I’m finished asking questions. I swear it.” After a long and frightening hesitation, he detected a slight improvement in her pulse rate. “I’m no longer interested in the black gloves or anything else, Ginger. I just want to bring you back to the present and out of your trance. Do you hear me? Please hear me. Please. I’ve finished questioning you.”

  Her pulse stuttered shockingly, but then it throbbed more steadily. Respiration improved, too. As he talked to her in that reassuring manner, she quickly got better. Color returned to her lovely face.

  In less than a minute, he returned her to December 24 and woke her.

  She blinked. “It didn’t work, huh? You couldn’t put me under.”

  “You were under,” he said shakily. “Too far under.”

  She said, “Pablo, you’re trembling. Why’re you trembling? What’s wrong? What happened?”

  This time, she went to the kitchen and poured the brandy.

  Later, at the door of Pablo’s apartment, as Ginger was leaving to meet the taxi that Pablo had summoned for her, she said, “I still can’t think what it could be. Nothing so terrible has ever happened to me, certainly nothing so bad I’d rather die than reveal it.”

  “There’s something very traumatic in your past,” Pablo said. “An incident involving a man wearing black gloves, a man with what you said was a ‘dark glass face.’ Perhaps a motorcyclist like the one that panicked you on State Street. It’s an incident you’ve buried very deep ... and which you seem determined to keep buried at any cost. I really think you should tell Dr. Gudhausen what happened here today and let him proceed from t
here.”

  “Gudhausen is too traditional, too slow. I want your help.”

  “I won’t risk putting you in a trance and questioning you again.”

  “Unless your research turns up a similar case.”

  “Not much chance of that. I’ve done a lot of reading in psychology and hypnosis for fifty years, and I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

  “But you’re going to research it, aren’t you? You promised.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” he said.

  “And if you discover that someone developed a workable technique for getting through a memory block like this, you’ll use it on me.”

  Ginger was mystified, but she was also considerably less distraught than she had been when she first arrived at Pablo Jackson’s apartment. At least they had gotten somewhere, even if they did not yet know where. They had found the problem, some mysterious traumatic experience in the past, and though they had not learned a single detail of it, they knew it was back there, a dark shape waiting to be explored. In time they would find a way to throw a light on it, and when it was revealed, she would know the cause of her fugues.

  “Tell Dr. Gudhausen,” Pablo said again.

  “I’m pinning all my hopes on you.”

  “You’re damn stubborn,” the old magician said, shaking his head.

  “No. Just persistent.”

  “Willful.”

  “Just determined.”

  “Acharnée!”

  “When I get back to Baywatch I’ll look up that word, and if it’s an insult, you’ll be sorry when I come back on Thursday,” she teased.

  “Not Thursday,” he said. “The research is going to take time. I’m not going to hypnotize you again unless I can find a record of a similar case and can follow someone else’s procedures, knowing they succeeded.”

  “Okay, but if you don’t call by Friday or Saturday, I’ll probably come back and bust my way in. Remember, you’re my best hope.”

  “I am your best hope ... only for want of anything better.”

  “You underrate yourself, Pablo Jackson.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  “Au revoir.”

  “Shalom.”

  Outside, as she got into the cab, she remembered one of her father’s favorite aphorisms, and, like a lead weight, it counteracted her new buoyancy: It’s always brightest just before the dark.

  3. Chicago, Illinois

  Winton Tolk—the tall, jovial, black patrolman riding shotgun—got out of the police cruiser to buy three hamburgers and Cokes at a corner sandwich shop, leaving his partner, Paul Armes, behind the wheel, and Father Brendan Cronin in