Trust Me (18 page)

Onstage, Art gleefully conducted his absurd orchestra. Suddenly he commanded, “Stop!” and the band snapped off. The six in their chairs trailed off in their group pantomime and resumed their sleeping postures.

“Okay, when I count to five we’re going to wake up feeling great, only this time we’re embarrassed to find that we’re not wearing any clothes; one . . . two . . .”

When the women awoke they immediately crossed their legs and folded their arms across their chests. The men clasped their hands together and covered their genital areas. All six looked out at the audience and then at each other with a mixture of embarrassment and suspicion. Art walked up to the bearded man and offered to shake his hand. The man fidgeted and brought one hand up; Art touched his forehead and said, “Sleep,” and the man was gone.

In the next hour, Art put the volunteers to sleep, suggested a scenario, and woke them at least a dozen times. They tap danced, bowed, dribbled and shot invisible basketballs, and ate non-existent food. They flexed muscles in a bodybuilding contest and snapped their fingers in a Flamenco dance. All the while Art kept his patter going, looking out to the audience with a sympathetic grin and the occasional shrug, as if to say even he wasn’t quite sure what was really going on.

The show ended with a particularly absurd mock striptease by a large Hispanic man. He strutted all over the stage while the band played “Stripper,” flinging his jacket out to the audience and unbuttoning his shirt before Art called for applause and sent him back to his chair. Art thanked all six of the volunteers and put them back to sleep, telling two of them they would be stuck to their seats when the others returned to their tables. Then he whispered something in Ted’s ear and told the lot of them to wake up and go back and join their companions in the audience.

Ted climbed off the stage grinning, and returned to his seat between Holly and Cynthia. Three of the others also returned to their tables, but the Hispanic man and the blond remained onstage, trying without success to stand up. They looked down helplessly at their chairs, as if the secret to their problem was to be found there, and then stared up at Art. The blond shrugged her shoulders and said, “I can’t do it.” Art snapped his fingers and told them to get up, then urged the audience to applaud.

The band struck up its opening theme as the remaining two volunteers left the stage. The audience clapped and Art returned the mike to its stand and clapped along with them.

“I want to thank you all for coming and a special thanks to Maria, Ted . . .” As Art named off the people who had participated onstage, Ted grinned and said to Holly, “Wow. Was that wild, or what?” He was still grinning and shaking his head, clapping along with the others, when Art said, “And when I’m at the top of that ski slope and give that final push over the edge, I always like to say, ‘Geronimo’,” and the band segued into an Indian war dance. A strange faraway look came to Ted’s face and he jumped up and started whooping, patting his hand to his lips as he hopped around on one foot between the tables.

CHAPTER 39

⍫

Art’s mood was upbeat as they drove back to Holly’s place.
There was no trace of the irritability he had displayed earlier. Now he was positively expansive, carrying on about spiritual growth and the nurturing of the wounded inner child, exorcising the demons of one’s childhood, and the incredible potential of hypnosis as a tool. It was at this point that he reached in his pocket and pulled out an envelope, from which he removed two of the little triangular pills.

“Tonight, my dear, is breakthrough night.” Art passed the pills to Holly as he drove back down Doheny, conjuring from the console next to his seat a can of diet soda. “Time to pierce the veil of mystery and get to the heart of the matter, to uncover and discover so that we may discard, finally and for good, the dark secrets that cast their shadow on your spirit.”

After what she had just witnessed onstage at Tulips, she had no intention of submitting to hypnosis tonight, if ever again. It was too creepy. And yet, it seemed like she stood at a threshold, just a step away from a kind of freedom she could barely imagine—it was just a feeling, really. Or hope, or grasping at a deadly straw.

She shuddered at a sudden, unformed premonition and decided to play for time.

She turned on the Jag’s overhead light and examined the pills. They were identical to the ones she had taken before except that they were yellow.

“What are these, anyway, and why are they a different color than last time?” she asked.

Art popped the top from the soda can and handed it to her.

“They’re called Halcion. We’re adjusting the dosage slightly upward. A wonderful tool, as valuable in therapy as a scalpel in surgery.”

The comparison was rather grim, but she didn’t comment. Instead, she turned off the light, took the soda from Art, and put her right hand—the one with the pills—to her mouth. She opened her mouth and tilted her head back, taking a large swallow of the soda. Her right hand fell to her side and she deposited the pills in her jacket pocket.

⍫

When they got to her place, Art led her to the sofa and suggested she close her eyes and relax. He then went to the kitchen to dial his cell—ostensibly to retrieve messages, but in fact, she presumed, to allow enough time for the pills to take effect.

Leaning back against the cushions and closing her eyes, she pondered her situation. She could simply tell Art she didn’t feel well, that he should go, that they could resume some other time. Or, she could pretend to sleep; that would be the way of least resistance. But what she wanted most was to know what he was really after, and tonight she had an opportunity, such as it was, to spy on him. To be fully present while she allowed him to think he was effecting the displacement of her volitional self.

Why, she wondered, did she need so badly to do this, to set him up? The answer came as she heard her refrigerator open and then shut: because if she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could trust him, only then could she allow him to lead her to the freedom he promised. It was a bit like spying on your own funeral to see who your friends were.

She heard footsteps and kept her eyes closed as Art settled into the chair on the other side of the coffee table.

“When I tell you to sleep, you will fall into a state where there is nothing at all. No feeling, no sight, not even darkness, just the sound of my voice. Now, keeping your eyes closed, rise up out of your body, leaving it here in this room. There is a hole in the ceiling, and as you pass through it into the night sky, you look down and see us sitting here and we become smaller as you drift upward.” His voice had a calm, compelling quality. She followed it with her imagination, she could see the house receding below her, but still she remained firmly conscious of herself seated in the sofa, of Art’s presence across the table, of the trace of his scent even from this distance, of the memory of the people on stage and their absurd willingness to follow his every direction.

“Now you have left everything behind and, as a fog obscures the sky, even the stars disappear, and you are warm and comfortable and it is time to sleep.”

She allowed her head to fall slightly to the right and let her face go slack, mouth slightly opened. She thought of the moments in Art’s performance where Ted, seemingly fully awake, insisted that two and two added up to five. Where was Ted when his body was laughingly demonstrating on his fingers that two plus two obviously made five? If even such a small piece of his critical thinking ability was gone, could Ted really have been present? Could he have made the same decisions, felt the same feelings, come to the same conclusions as in his normal state?

“When you wake . . .” She pictured Art seated in the deep easy chair, his feet up on the ottoman, hands lightly folded at his stomach. She wanted to open her eyes. “When you wake, you will be very glad to see me—you want so badly to talk, to tell your secrets. Every secret is like a heavy stone in the sack that you carry, and as you pull each stone from the sack and hand it to me it disappears and your spirit grows lighter, more free. When I touch you and say ‘sleep,’ you will return to sleep. Now, awaken . . .”

She opened her eyes and sat up, looking around her and then at Art as she had seen the volunteers on stage do.

He sat just as she had pictured him, elegant in his outfit, a hint of a smile on his lips, his head cast slightly downward as he peered, unblinking, upward though his brows. “We have much to talk about, wouldn’t you say?”

She wasn’t sure of the appropriate response. Was she expected to suddenly begin spouting repressed memories?

“I don’t know . . . I guess so,” was the best she could come up with.

Art pressed on. “The bruise above your eye. Who did it?”

“Tony. He hit me.” That was no secret; Art knew that Tony had tried to strangle her last week.

“He struck you on other occasions, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And he isn’t the first boyfriend who has done this to you. Am I right?”

It was something she had tried to deny even to herself—she certainly didn’t feel like talking about it but, short of dropping the charade, there was no avoiding it.

“Yes. It happened before.”

“Holly, what did Uncle Dave do?”

Suddenly, as if looking at a long-lost photograph, or turning a corner and seeing a part of the city she had forgotten she had visited before, the memory was clear as day.

“He penetrated me.” The words just came out. She was sure she wasn’t hypnotized, yet there it was, the thing remembered, the thing said.

“How often?”

“Whenever he stayed with us. When my parents went out. A lot.” She held this new realization in a dazed wonderment. A sob welled up, unbidden. The previous revelation about her uncle had left her furious, sometimes depressed, sometimes manic with a desire to call him, or fly up to Seattle and confront him. But this, this left her with a cold, focused fury. She thought of the little girl she had been.

“Did you tell anyone?” Art stared at her thoughtfully, patient, uncritical.

“Yes.” Another revelation.

“Who?”

“My mother.” How could she have forgotten all this?

“And?”

“She told me I was lying.”

“It must have made it difficult for you to trust anyone after that.”

What’s to trust, she thought. People do what they’re going to do.

“Do you trust me?” Art inquired.

She faltered. Was this a setup? He seemed to be asking all the right questions. They were engaged in a process, and he was staying true to it, wasn’t he?

“Yes,” she replied. Firmly.

Art stood and walked over to where she sat.

“That’s good. I’m so very glad.” He reached out and touched her forehead gently. “Now sleep.”

She closed her eyes and sagged back into the sofa. A feeling of dread came over her as she heard the sound of a zipper, the rustle of fabric—but no, there was no sound, nor movement, just the strange sense of Art poised over her. Expecting her to be asleep. Why had she heard that sound so distinctly?

“When you wake up, Holly, you will be so glad to see me—nothing else matters anymore. Together we have overcome the enemy, banished the demons. And you have missed me, missed having our bodies together”—oh boy, here it was, big time—“missed having me inside you.”

To her relief, Art moved away from her, back to the other side of the table. She had the feeling that comes when slamming the brakes brings you right up on the tail of the car in front of you. Like something had just been shot into her veins.

“When you hear me knocking at the door”—his voice was coming from over by the stereo—“you’ll wake up, and you’ll be so happy I’m home, you’ll want to put on our favorite song—I’m leaving it right here. And then you’re going to come to the front door and lead me back here to the sofa and we’ll undress each other.” She heard him set something on the shelf by the stereo receiver and then walk around the room. He was turning out lights, first the two big lamps on the end tables flanking the sofa, then over to the kitchen.

When his footsteps receded in the hallway, she opened her eyes. The only light came from the little bronze cat with the imitation candle-flame bulb on the dining room table.

Christ, what a raging asshole! She had no idea what she was going to do. She listened to see if Art would close the door—the easiest thing would be to just lock the man out, deal with it later. But there was no click, no door shutting ahead of the three firm knocks that rang back down the hallway, her signal to wake up and play out his sick script.

She went to the baker’s rack where the stereo was. The CD well in the player was open; right on top of it was the Miles Davis CD.

Three more knocks, slightly louder than before. “I’ll be right there,” she called out, and then spotted Tony’s CD, sitting on the glass shelf next to the amplifier. She popped it in the deck and pushed “play” and “pause,” turned the volume way up, and went to the door.

It was open, Art standing there with a big smile on his face.
And I’m so happy to see you,
she thought bitterly. She smiled and held out her hand, guiding him back to the living room. As they passed the baker’s rack, she reached out and tapped the “pause” button and Tony’s band shattered the silence, his voice singing, “You cheated, you lied, you made me cry, so fuck you,” in an insolent, hoarse bluesy shout. A piercing guitar made something vibrate in the kitchen; the bass was palpable through the floor.

She turned to watch Art, dropping his hand and folding her arms as he slapped at the CD player and stopped the blaring music.

“Isn’t that our favorite song?” She was having fun now; his game was over and she felt a defiant elation, a new freedom in her anger.

Art stood there, his hand still on the CD player. “I have only your best interests at heart.” Straight-faced, like nothing was different.

“You manipulative son of a bitch.” She realized that a switch had gone off in her mind, that Art was in fact irredeemably repulsive, standing there in his ridiculous outfit, and that she couldn’t imagine what she had ever found attractive about him.

“Holly . . .” Art took a step toward her.

She held his gaze for a moment, then reached into her pocket and handed him the pills.

“You make Uncle Dave look like a boy scout. Now get out of here.”

Art stared at her, silent. A muscle twitched in his jaw. His mouth opened as if he were about to speak—a small whitish gob stretched at the corner of his lips—then he shook his head and turned, walking down the hallway and out the door without a word.