The Hypnotist's Love Story (6 page)

A map that Patrick drew for me when he was giving me directions to a developer’s office near the airport.

I remember I said to him, “That’s the most beautiful map I’ve ever seen.”

S
o she follows you? Everywhere? How is that even possible?”

“Well, not everywhere. The last time we were at the movies.”

“Maybe she just happened to be there.”

“Maybe, but she tried to get into the same restaurant, and then she left a letter on his car windscreen, which he didn’t read. Apparently she waits around the corner from Patrick’s house and follows his car. He said if he’s going somewhere different, he’ll often lose her, but if it’s a regular place, like the movies at Cremorne, it’s easy for her to work out.”

“Good Lord.”

“I know.”

“This must be awful for you. It’s ruining that wonderful time at the start of your relationship. You should be gazing moonily into each other’s eyes, not keeping a lookout for his crazy ex.”

“I don’t mind. Actually, I find it sort of interesting.”

“You freak.”

Ellen laughed at Julia’s decisive tone and stretched luxuriously. It was a Saturday morning and they’d just been swimming at their local pool. Now they were lying on white towels in the billowing heat of the sauna. Ellen’s legs and shoulders ached from the swim. Julia always made her swim harder and faster than she would if she was on her own. She could feel beads of sweat sliding all over her body: down her back, into her cleavage. She let her hands rest lightly on her thighs, and felt sleek and slippery and sensual. There was no problem practicing mindfulness when you were at the start of a relationship. It happened automatically. All that sex. All those chemicals zipping through your body.

And all that
appreciation
. That was what was so wonderful about falling in love. Patrick appeared to highly approve of every new thing he learned about her body, her past, her personality. It made Ellen not just sexier but funnier, smarter, nicer, kinder, all round lovelier. She was invincible! Her life seemed to flow and ripple in exquisite harmony, as if she’d achieved enlightenment. Her clients were sweet and grateful, her friends adorable, her mother not at all frustrating. (“So when am I going to meet him?” she said on the phone, her tone warm and pleased, sounding just like a normal mother presumably would.) Whatever grocery items Ellen wanted were always right on the shelf in front of her; traffic lights turned green as she approached; her car keys, sunglasses and purse sat obediently and conveniently on the hall table. This morning she’d had just one hour to go to the bank, the motor registry and the dry cleaners and she’d done it with time to spare, and every person she’d dealt with, even at the motor registry, had been charming. She’d had quite an emotional conversation with the bank teller about the weather. (The teller was from the UK, and thought that Australian winters were “divine,” and Ellen had felt tearily proud, as if she, in her invincible state, was solely responsible for the Australian climate.)

If only she could bottle this feeling and make it last forever. It couldn’t last forever, her rational mind knew that, but her heart, her foolish heart,
was chirping, “Oh, yes, it can! Why not? This is who you are now! This is your life from now on!”

“I would never humiliate myself like that,” said Julia.

What? Oh. The stalking thing.

“
Well, I guess she just can’t let go,” said Ellen. Right now, she was filled with gentle compassion for all of humanity.

Julia snorted. She was lying on the bench opposite Ellen, a towel wrapped like a turban about her head. She had a long, lean, athletic body and crazy blond curly hair and she hovered right on the edge of being extremely beautiful. Whenever Ellen walked along a street with her, she saw men’s eyes involuntarily flicking back to Julia for a second appraising look. Unfortunately, Julia’s beauty seemed to attract a certain type of man, the sort who appreciated quality and was prepared to pay extra for it. The problem was these men constantly upgraded their computers, their cars and their women. That was their nature. They were dedicated consumers, excellent for the economy. After nearly five years of marriage, Julia’s husband, William, had decided it was high time he upgraded to the latest brand of woman: a twenty-three-year-old brunette.

(Ellen always liked to think that the sort of man she herself attracted was automatically superior to those who chose Julia because they didn’t let the billboards determine what was beautiful. They weren’t superficial; they were
individuals
. Sadly, she couldn’t really back this theory up when her relationship history was just as disastrous as Julia’s.)

(Really, when she dug deep, she saw that her whole theory was just her way of making herself feel better because the majority of men didn’t feel the need to give her that second flick of the eyes.)

(Although William had been a dreadful prat.)

(To be honest, she had been quite fond of him in the beginning.)

“Where’s the woman’s self-respect?” snapped Julia. “Just move on, for God’s sake. She’s making all of us look bad.”

There was a real edge to her voice, as if she was personally offended.

“You mean she’s making women look bad?” said Ellen. “It’s normally
men who do the stalking. It’s good. She’s showing women can stalk just as effectively as men.”

Julia made a
pfff
sound. She sat up, leaned down with one long arm and picked up the ladle lying next to a bucket of water. She threw it on the hot rocks. There was a boiling hiss and the sauna filled with more steam.

“Julia,” gasped Ellen. “I’m suffocating.”

“Toughen up,” said Julia. She lay back down and asked, “What’s this girl’s name?”

“Saskia,” said Ellen, breathing shallow breaths of the hot, heavy air. She felt shy saying it out loud, as if it was a celebrity’s name.

“Have you actually seen her yet? Or have you seen photos?”

“No. He never tells me he’s seen her until after she’s left. I’m desperate to see what she looks like.”

“Maybe she’s a figment of his imagination, and
he’s
the crazy one.”

“I don’t think so.”

Patrick wasn’t crazy. He was lovely.

“So I assume he ended the relationship.”

“He just said that it ran its course.”

“So he broke her heart,” said Julia sternly.

“Well, I don’t—”

“Still, it’s no excuse. It happens to all of us. Patrick should take a restraining order against her. Has he done that?”

Julia believed there were solutions to everything.

“He says he’s been to the police,” began Ellen, but then she stopped and didn’t bother to go into further detail. She wasn’t entirely convinced that Patrick had told her the whole story about why he hadn’t gone ahead with the restraining order.

“Anyway, the silly woman just needs to pull herself together,” said Julia, as if it was up to Ellen to pass on this instruction.

“Yes.”

They lay there in silence for a few moments. Ellen was planning what she’d
cook Patrick for dinner that night. He’d already cooked once for her, on a night when Jack was staying at a friend’s place. It had been a very nice plain roast dinner, nothing too fancy, which was good, because she’d been out with men who fancied themselves gourmet cooks. It seemed like such an asset in the beginning, but then they were always so vain about it, hovering around the kitchen criticizing the way she chopped the garlic.

Maybe she should do something with pork, seeing as he’d ordered the pork belly. Some nice tender pork medallions.

“Do you remember Eddie Masters?” said Julia.

“The butcher’s apprentice,” said Ellen, remembering a skinny, long-haired boy in a blue-and-white-striped butcher’s apron. Julia had gone out with him when they were in their teens. Yes, pork. She would stop by at that expensive butcher in the arcade on the way home from the pool.

“He went out with Cheryl from the chemist after me,” said Julia.

“The scary-looking girl. Actually, I think I just thought she was scary because she had her ears pierced twice.”

“Yes. Well, after Eddie dumped me I used to ring her house all the time. If she answered I’d just sit there, not saying anything, until she hung up. She’d scream all this abuse at me, and I’d just sit there, breathing. Not heavy breathing. Just breathing, so she knew I was there.”

“Julia Margaret Robertson!” Ellen sat up quickly, half pretending and half genuinely shocked. She looked at her friend, who was still lying with her hands clasped on her front. Julia had been school captain of the snooty private girls’ school they’d both attended. She’d been slumming it with the butcher.

Julia didn’t open her eyes. She smiled devilishly.

“I was thinking about your stalker and I remembered it,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about it for ages.”

“But it’s so unlike you!”

“I know, but I was shattered when he dumped me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about why he chose her over me. I felt as if I didn’t exist anymore. Ringing her up somehow made me exist. It was like an
addiction. I hated myself afterward, and I’d think, I’m never doing that again, but then next thing I’d find myself dialing her number.”

“How did you stop?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just got over him.”

Julia paused and said, “You know what? Eddie the butcher was a
beautiful
kisser.”

“Didn’t he have a goatee?” said Ellen. “A really wispy one? Like a bit of fairy floss hanging off his chin?”

“Yes, and do you remember how he kept his packet of cigarettes stuffed into the sleeve of his T-shirt?”

“It looked like a growth on his arm.”

“I thought it was unbearably sexy.”

They didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then they both dissolved into the sort of helpless, wheezing laughter unique to women who had spent their school days together.

“You should look Eddie up on Facebook,” said Ellen when they’d stopped laughing. “He probably has his own butcher shop by now.”

“Oh, God, I’m not that desperate,” said Julia. “Anyway, I am perfectly happy being single.”

You’re lying, my dear friend
, thought Ellen, covertly observing Julia’s body language: clenched hands, compressed lips. It had been two years since Julia’s ex-husband had upgraded to the brunette.

Julia lifted her head suddenly. “You didn’t just make up that whole story about the stalker, did you? Is it a fable you’ve made up and the subliminal message is that I’m like the crazy stalker and I need to move on and start dating?”

“What are you talking about?” But Ellen knew exactly what she was talking about.

“I remember you told me once about that famous hypnotist, your hero or whatever, the guy who wore the purple cape.”

“Milton Erickson,” sighed Ellen. “Gosh, you’ve got a good memory.”

People were always underestimating Julia. It was because she was so
beautiful, and also because she had the sense of humor of a fourteen-year-old boy.

“You said he used to treat patients by telling stories,” continued Julia.

“He used therapeutic metaphors,” murmured Ellen.

“Well, I’ve noticed that ever since William left me you’ve been casually telling me these little motivational stories about people overcoming obstacles, finding happiness after heartbreak.”

“I have
not,
” said Ellen. She had.

“Mmmm,” said Julia.

She lifted her chin and smiled at Ellen; Ellen grinned sheepishly back at her.

“So Patrick’s stalker isn’t a therapeutic metaphor?”

“She is not,” said Ellen.

They lay in silence for a few seconds.

“So this Patrick has a crazy ex-girlfriend and a dead ex-wife,” said Julia. “Sounds like a real catch. No complications whatsoever.”

“It doesn’t feel complicated,” said Ellen.

“Yet,” said Julia.

“Thanks for your enthusiastic support,” said Ellen.

“Just saying.”

Julia sat up and took her towel off her head and dabbed it against her pink, shiny cheeks.

“I bet you love the fact that he’s a widower, don’t you?” she said. “It makes him seem like a romantic tragic figure. It’s just like Miles.”

“Miles?”

“Miles. That one-legged boy you fell in love with in high school.”

“
Giles
,” said Ellen. “And we all fell in love with the one-legged boy. He was gorgeous.”

This was the problem with being friends with someone who knew you when you were a teenager. They never quite take you seriously because they always see you as your stupid teenage self.

It was true that she wasn’t unhappy about Patrick being a widower. She
quite liked the fact that it made things more complicated. It made her feel like she was part of the rich tapestry of life (and death). Also, it gave her a chance to demonstrate her professional skills. She imagined people saying to her, “Do you worry about his feelings for his wife?” and she’d say serenely, “No, actually, I don’t.” She would understand completely if he still had feelings for his wife. She would know instinctively when to draw back, when to let him grieve for her.

“
I
never fell in love with the one-legged boy,” said Julia.

“No, you were too busy breathing down the phone line to your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.”

“Aha! Touché!” Julia expertly flourished an imaginary sword. She’d been the school’s fencing champion. She twisted the towel back around her head and lay down on the bench again.

“Anyway, I’ve got an excuse for my stalkerish behavior,” she said. “I was seventeen. Teenagers don’t have properly formed brains. It’s a medical fact. How old is your stalker?”

“She’s Patrick’s stalker, not mine. She’s in her early forties, I think.” It was like pulling teeth getting the basic facts out of Patrick about Saskia. Ellen noticed that he avoided using her name wherever possible. He called her “that woman,” or “bunny-boiler.”