Richard Montanari (20 page)

    'I
know.'

    In
contrast to her own, his voice was soft and assured. Lucy had the feeling that
he had never shouted in his life.

    He
took her hand in his but didn't shake it, not like an ordinary handshake.
Instead, he just held it for a moment, not taking his eyes from hers. For a
moment the rest of the room dissolved away, like something glimpsed through a
shower curtain. His lack of physical size belied this powerful touch.

    He
let go of her hand, eased his own hands back down to his sides.

    'What
should I call you?' Lucy asked as everything now shimmered back into focus.

    The
man smiled a thin smile, a light that didn't fully reach his eyes. 'My name is
Adrian Costa,' he said. 'You may call me Adrian or Mr. Costa, whichever makes
you more comfortable.'

    He
gestured to the large upholstered avocado chair. Lucy saw the dust on the arms.
She wanted to vacuum it.

    'I'm
of a mind to call you
Mr. Costa
for now,' she said. 'If that's okay.'

    'As
you wish.'

    Lucy
sat down. The chair was a lot more comfortable than it looked. It looked a
little spring-busted, if the truth were to be told. Lucy had grown up with
third-hand furniture, living in drafty rental houses and second-floor
apartments situated above everything from bowling alleys to taverns to Chinese
restaurants, places where none of the furniture matched, where nothing ever sat
level on the floor. Lucy never knew whether it was the floors that were out of
whack or that the tables and chairs were short-legged, but she recalled always
having to put a matchbook or two under the table legs so her pencils didn't
roll off when she was doing her homework. She also remembered many nights when
she and her mother would walk the streets of her hometown on the night before
trash day, looking for usable items with which her mother could furnish their
house, or try to turn around and sell or trade for drugs. They used to call it
shopping at Lawn Mart.

    'What
do you know about hypnotism?' Mr. Costa asked.

    Lucy
didn't have to think too long about this one. She didn't know much, just the things
she'd seen in spooky movies, or the comedies where people got hypnotized and
walked around like chickens. Lucy truly hoped she wasn't going to walk around
like a chicken. She told Mr. Costa just that.

    'Don't
worry,' Mr. Costa said. He steepled his fingers. Lucy noticed that there were
indentations on six of his fingers, as though he had recently taken off six
rings. 'What I do is give you the skills you need to achieve your goal,' he
added. 'Do you have a goal, Lucy Doucette? A purpose in coming to see me?'

    
If
you only knew, mister.
She tried to answer with a calm, measured response.
'Oh yes.'

    'Good.
Here we focus on subconscious behaviors and see how they influence your
conscious life. The methods I use are tried and true. They go back to Victorian
times.'

    'So,
the acting-like-a-chicken business is definitely out?'

    Mr.
Costa nodded. 'The stage hypnotist wants to give the impression that the
subject is out of control,' he said. 'What I do is just the opposite. I want to
give you
back
control. Control of your life. The way I do that is to
help you to relax as deeply as possible so you can enter a suggestible state, a
state where your memories - things you may have forgotten - can be recalled
with ease, and therefore be understood and dealt with.'

    'Okay,'
Lucy said. She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. 'But there is
something I need to know before we go any further. If that's okay.'

    'Of
course.'

    'How
much is all this going to cost?'

    There.
She'd just blurted it out. By the time she was five or six years old she had
already learned to shop at the grocery store and drug store, to talk to the
people from the phone and electric companies, usually wielding her little-girl
charms to forestall a shut-off of services.

    Mr.
Costa smiled his nick of a smile again. 'You won't owe me anything for now.
Let's see where the road takes us. Then we'll talk about the toll.'

    Lucy
was more than a little surprised. 'Well, Mr. Costa, I appreciate this, I truly do.
But I'm a girl who doesn't like surprises. Never have. I'd hate to get to the
end of all this and find that I owe you thousands and thousands of dollars or
something. It wouldn't be fair to either of us. I couldn't pay you and you'd be
really mad.'

    Another
pause. 'Firstly, I never get angry. I've never found it to be productive. Have
you?'

    The
truth was, she never
had
found it to be productive. Of course, that had
never stopped her. 'No. I suppose not.'

    'Secondly,
when we have completed our third and last session, if you find then that you
are satisfied with my services, that you have received true value, I want you
to pay me whatever you feel is right.' He gestured to the room around them. 'As
you can see, I live a modest existence.'

    Lucy
looked closely at the walls for the first time, at the cobwebs near the
ceiling, at the thin layer of dust everywhere, at the crosshatched lines in the
plaster. Once again, her desire to start cleaning was nearly physical. Then she
looked closely at the photographs mounted haphazardly on the walls, dozens and
dozens of them, many in chipped enamel frames, some staggered behind cracked
and spider-webbed glass. They all seemed to be snapshots of similar subjects -
travel-type pictures of pavilions and gazebos and gingerbread exhibition halls,
places that appeared to be small-town centers, ringed by vendors with brightly
colored carts, public benches sporting ads for local concerns. One frame
featured a band shell in the shape of a large pumpkin. Another showed what
might have been a Civil War re-enactment in progress. A number of the
photographs were pictures of a younger Mr. Costa, holding a violin.

    'Have
you been to all these places?' Lucy asked.

    'I
have indeed.'

    Mr.
Costa crossed the room to the far wall, the wall opposite the window. There was
a velvet curtain there that took up most of the width of the room. He reached
behind the right side of the curtain, took hold of a frayed golden rope and
pulled it gently.

    Behind
the curtain was a large booth, perhaps six feet wide and just as tall. It had
no window, like a typical booth you might see at a carnival or in front of a
theater, but rather a single door crudely cut into the front, a door with a red
crystal doorknob. Above the door was a carved scroll, painted to resemble a
dark purple sky with billowy clouds. Peering out from behind one of the clouds
was a silvery autumn moon, with just the hint of glitter. Down each side of the
booth, next to the doorway, were the words
The Dreamweaver.
Across the
door, over what looked to be a round portal which showed only darkness, was
another legend, this one in a gilded script:

    
What
do you dream?

    'That's
pretty cool,' Lucy said. And it was true. Lucy Doucette was a small-town girl,
one who'd grown up terribly poor. Her entertainment, when her mother was sober
enough to take her places, and many times when she was not, had been small-town
entertainment - county fairs, local home days, carnivals, parades, festivals,
sometimes even wakes if they were held in the park. If there was no cover
charge, and it was bright, loud, and festive, Lucy's mother would park her
daughter on a bench, returning every so often a little drunker, or a little
more stoned, with a corn dog, elephant ear, or funnel cake in her hand. Many
times these treats were cold, half-eaten, and it wasn't until years later that
Lucy figured out that these were probably items of discarded food. Somehow that
knowledge did not make them taste bad, even in retrospect. When you're four
years old, cotton candy, even someone else's cotton candy, was the best thing
in the world.

    Mr.
Costa closed the curtain, crossed the room, sat down across from Lucy. 'Shall
we begin?'

    'Sure,'
Lucy said. She took a deep breath, tried to relax her shoulders. It wasn't
easy. There was a tension that had settled upon her when she was small and,
although there were days when she felt it was easing, it had never gone away
completely. She looked up at the Dreamweaver, at his bright little-dog eyes.
'Let's begin.'

    'Today,
in our first session, we are going to go back to a specific time in your life.
The time you can't seem to remember. Okay?'

    Lucy
felt her hands begin to shake. She knit them together in her lap. 'Okay.'

    'But
you are not going to re-experience this event. There is no need to be concerned
with that. Instead, it will be more like you are observing it.'

    'Observing?
Like, watching it?'

    'Yes,'
Mr. Costa said. 'Exactly. Like watching it from above.'

    'Like
I'm flying?'

    'Like
you're flying.'

    
'Very
cool,' she said. 'What do I do?'

    'You
needn't do anything except close your eyes and listen to the sound of my
voice.'

    'What
is that?'

    'I
don't really think I'm the kind of person who can be hypnotized.'

    'Why
do you say that?'

    Lucy
shrugged. 'I don't know. I think I'm too intense, you know? I hardly ever
sleep, I'm always nervous. Do other people ever say that?'

    'Of
course.'

    'I'm
sure that there are some people who just can't seem to—'

    Mr.
Costa held up a finger, stopping her. The finger had a ring on it. In fact, all
of his rings seemed to be back. All six of them.

    
When
had he done that
?

    'I
hate to interrupt you, but I'm afraid our session is complete for today.'

    Lucy
wasn't sure she understood. 'What are you saying? Are you saying—'

    'Yes.'

    Lucy
took a few moments, letting the news sink in. She had actually been hypnotized
for a while.

    She
stood up, grabbed her purse, walked toward the door, feeling a little dizzy.
She held onto the doorjamb to steady herself. Suddenly Mr. Costa was next to
her again. He was light on his feet.

    'Are
you all right?' he asked.

    'Yes,'
Lucy said. 'Kinda.'

    Mr.
Costa nodded. 'Shall we say tomorrow, then? Just at midday?'

    'Sure,'
Lucy said, suddenly realizing she felt pretty good after all. As in
really
good. Like she'd taken a brief nap.

    'I believe
you made some progress today,' Mr. Costa said.

    
Pipe
smoke
.

    
'I
did?'

    'Yes,'
he replied. He took off his bifocals, slipped them into an inside pocket of his
suit coat. 'I don't believe it was anything like a breakthrough - that may
never happen, I'm afraid - but you may have opened a door. Just the slightest
bit.'

    
Pipe
smoke and apples
.

    'A
door?' Lucy asked.

    'A
door to your subconscious. A portal to what happened to you nine years ago.'

    Had she
told him it was nine years? She didn't remember doing that.

    Mr.
Costa put his hand on the doorknob. 'One last thing for today,' he said. 'Does
the hotel in which you work have notepads in the rooms?'

    'Notepads?'

    'Notepads
with the hotel logo. For the guests.'

    'Yes,'
Lucy said. She'd only placed a million of these pads - two inches from the left
edge of the desk, pen at a forty-five-degree angle across the center.

    'Excellent.
Please bring one of these pads with you next time,' Mr. Costa said. 'Can you do
that?'

    'Sure,'
Lucy said. 'I'll bring one.'

    Mr.
Costa opened the door. 'Until tomorrow, my dear Lucinda.'

    On
the way through the door Lucy glanced at the small picture on the wall next to
the casing, just above the grimy light switch. She only saw it for a fleeting
moment but that was long enough to see that it was a photograph of another
gazebo, this one a rather dilapidated pergola overgrown with ivy. It was only
after she'd stepped through the doorway and the door had closed behind her that
she realized she knew the house in the background of that photograph, the wreck
of a bungalow with its slanted porch and rusted gutters and broken brick walk.