The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

"Do you have some tricky clients?" Patrick rolled over on his side and rested his head in the palm of his hand. "Ones who are hard to hypnotize?"

  "Nearly everyone can be hypnotized to some degree," said Ellen. "But some people have more of a talent for it, I guess, because they're imaginative and they've got the ability to really focus and visualize."

  "Huh," said Patrick. "I wonder if I've got the talent for it."

  "I'll give you a suggestibility test," said Ellen. She got up on her knees, mildly exhilarated; she would never have done anything like this with Jon.

  Patrick looked up at her. "Like a gullibility test?"

  "No, no, it's just a little exercise to show the power of your imagination. Relax! It's nothing strange. You've probably done it before at a sales conference or something."

  "OK." Patrick got up on his knees, facing her, with a brave set to his shoulders. The smell of his aftershave was already familiar to her but still new enough to arouse. "Do I close my eyes?"

  "No. Just hold your hands like this."

  She interlaced her hands as if in prayer and then lifted her index fingers so they were aligned but not touching. Patrick did the same and looked her straight in the eyes. There was something very sexy about this.

  "Now imagine a powerful magnetic force is pulling those two fingertips together. You're fighting it but you can't resist. Watch them. It's getting stronger. Even stronger. It's too strong--there."

  Patrick's fingertips closed.

  "See! Your subconscious believed the magnets were real."

  Patrick looked at his fingertips still pressed together. "Well. Yes. I mean, I don't know. I guess it felt real, but that's just because I was going along with what you were saying."

  Ellen smiled. "Exactly. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. It's not magic."

  "Do something else."

  "All right. Close your eyes this time, and stretch your arms out in front of you."

  He did so, and she paused for a moment, observing the planes and hollows of his face in the moonlight.

  "Hello?" he said.

  "Sorry. OK. Imagine that I'm tying a huge helium balloon to your right wrist. It's tugging it upward. Feel it tug. Now in your left hand I'm giving you a bucket. It's very heavy because it's filled with heavy wet sand from the beach."

  Patrick's right arm floated straight up and his left hand dropped down. Either he was doing this to please her or he was, in fact, an excellent subject for hypnosis.

  "Open your eyes," she said.

  Patrick opened his eyes and looked at his arms.

  "Huh," he said. He dropped his arms and put them around her waist. He lowered his head as if to kiss her and then he stopped and suddenly spun around to look behind him.

  "What is it?" said Ellen, startled.

  "I'm sorry," said Patrick. "I thought I heard something. I thought it was her."

  There was already no question as to who "her" was. Ellen looked around at the shadowy areas under the bridge for a lurking woman. She noted that she was experiencing a slight buzz: a pleasant burst of adrenaline at the thought of Patrick's stalker secretly observing them.

  "You haven't seen her tonight, have you?" asked Ellen. The other night they'd been to the movies and dinner and Patrick hadn't even mentioned he'd noticed Saskia until they got back to the car and found a letter from her sitting on the windscreen.

  Patrick glanced around, his eyes narrowed. Then he sat back down again.

  "No, I haven't seen her at all. I think she's giving us the night off." He put his arm around her. "I'm sorry. It makes me twitchy sometimes."

  "I can imagine," said Ellen sympathetically. Was there something moving over by that pylon? No. Trick of the light, damn it.

  "So your business is all about the power of the mind," said Patrick.

  "That's right," said Ellen. "The power of the subconscious mind."

  "I believe in it, don't get me wrong," began Patrick.

  Here we go. Ellen's stomach muscles clenched.

  "But there's a limit to it, isn't there?"

  "What do you mean?" said Ellen. He's not Jon, she told herself. He's just stating an opinion. Calm down.

  "I just mean, it can't cure everything. When Colleen--that was my wife--when she got sick, people kept telling her to think positively. As if she could just think the cancer away. After she died I saw a woman on TV saying: 'I refused to let the cancer beat me. I had two young children, you see. I had to live.' It infuriated me. As if it was Colleen's fault that she died. As if she should have tried harder."

  Go carefully, thought Ellen. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.

  Patrick put his hand on her knee. "By the way, I don't want you thinking you've got to walk on eggshells whenever anything comes up about my wife. I'm fine about it. I'm not going to go all weird on you, I promise."

  Hmm, thought Ellen. "My mother is a GP," she said. "So--" So what? So I have some sort of medical credibility because of her? My mother doesn't really believe in what I do either. "I have looked after clients with terminal illnesses for pain management or stress relief, but I would never, ever promise I could cure them."

  "I didn't mean to imply that," said Patrick. His hand tightened on her knee.

  "I know you didn't." Ellen put her hand over his, and wondered if he was seeing his wife's face right now.

  She didn't tell him that she did believe that the mind had miraculous untapped powers.

  Show me the empirical evidence, said Jon in her head.

  They didn't speak. The sound of a ferry horn floated across to them from the other side of the harbor. There were footsteps behind them. They both turned to watch a woman wearing a dark business suit and white sneakers walking down the path toward them.

  "That's not--" said Ellen.

  "No," said Patrick, his face clearing as the woman was illuminated by a streetlight.

  They were silent. Ellen thought about how she'd closed off such a huge part of her identity during her years with Jon. If this relationship was going to work, she needed to throw open those doors! Let in the light! The air! The-- OK, Ellen, enough with the house metaphor.

  "I really love what I do," she said to Patrick. That defensive tone was still there. She made a conscious effort to let it go, to just be. "I'm quite good at it too."

  Patrick gave her an amused sidelong look. "Are you the queen of hypnotherapists?"

  "I am."

  "What a coincidence. I am the king of surveyors."

  "Really?"

  Patrick sighed. "No, not really. I'm more like the yesterday man of surveyors."

  "Why?"

  "I'm not fond of all the new technology. I still prefer to do all my drafting by hand. So that makes me slower. Not as efficient. It's a competitive disadvantage, as my younger brother likes to remind me."

  "Is he a surveyor too?"

  "No, he's a graphic designer, but he's very techy. Are you techy?"

  "Not really, but I do like to Google. I think I Google every single day. Google is my oracle."

  "What did you Google today?"

  Today she'd Googled "dating a widower: avoiding the pitfalls" and "stepchildren--disaster?" followed by "cures for broken capillaries around the nose."

  "Oh, I can't think." She waved her hand vaguely. "Something trivial." She changed the subject back. "Why did you decide to become a surveyor?"

  "Maps," said Patrick immediately. "I've always loved the idea of a map, of knowing exactly where I am in relation to everything else. I had an uncle who was a surveyor and when I was a kid he said to me, 'Patrick, you've got good where-ability, you'd make a good surveyor.' I asked him what a surveyor did and he explained it like this: He said a surveyor determines the location of things on the earth's surface in relation to every other thing above or below that surface. Those were his exact words. It stuck in my head. And for some reason that just clicked with me. I thought, Yep, that's what I'll do."

  "I think I must have terrible where-ability," commented Ellen. "I do
n't have any sense of where I am in relation to anything. Like, right now--I couldn't point in the direction of home."

  Patrick pointed over her shoulder. "North. That way."

  "If you say so."

  "Have you got any paper?" said Patrick. "I'll draw you a map."

  Ellen always made a point of having a beautiful hardbound notebook and pen in her bag so she could write down thoughts as they struck her, ideas for her work and so on. She carefully ripped out a page for him. She didn't want him reading any of her random scribbles; most of them were the very essence of uncool.

  Patrick pulled a slim gold fountain pen from his pocket. "My grandfather's Parker pen. I'd run back into a burning house for it."

  He rested the sheet of paper on top of her notebook, leaned it on his knee and drew an old-fashioned compass in the corner. Then he began to quickly sketch the inlets and curves of the harbor. He added a ferry and yachts, the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. It was like watching an ancient treasure map appear before her eyes.

  "Here's where we had dinner." He drew a little illustration of the restaurant. "Here's where we saw that terrible play. And now we head over to the northern beaches." He sketched a beach and a two-story house. "Here's your house." He wrote: Ellen's Hypnotic House. "And now we head back over to the leafy North Shore and here's my house." He wrote: Patrick and Jack's Messy Men's Hovel. He had beautiful handwriting; it evoked another more elegant era.

  She hadn't been to his place yet. She wondered if it was a hovel.

  "And this is where we met for the first time." He continued drawing.

  "And I think that's about everything--oh, except for this."

  He drew a tiny cross next to the harbor and wrote: We are here.

  "That's the most beautiful map I've ever seen," said Ellen truthfully. She had never had any interest in maps before, but she already knew she would keep this forever.

  A faint shadow crossed Patrick's face. It came and went so fast she couldn't tell if it was sadness or anger, or maybe embarrassment, or if she'd imagined it.

  Then he smiled at her. "No charge this time, darlin'."

  Her heart was melting all over the place.

  I've got this box.

  Sometimes I think if I just threw away the box, I might be able to stop. Once, I got as far as carrying it out to the rubbish bin. I opened the lid of the bin and smelled rotting food and heard the buzz of flies, and I thought, This isn't rubbish, this is my life.

  I lost them tonight. They were going somewhere near Milsons Point or Kirribilli. I was hungry, so I didn't bother driving around looking for his car. I came home and ate sardines on toast while I watched Cold Case with the box on the floor next to me.

  Every commercial break I dipped my hand into the box and pulled something out at random. Then I would examine it as if it was a clue or a solution, as if I was one of the detectives on Cold Case trying to unravel the secrets of the past.

  A birthday card, the cardboard still stiff and shiny. Not faded at all. It could have been given to me yesterday:

  Dear Saskia,

  Happy Birthday from your boys.

  We love you,

  Patrick and Jack xx

  A photo of me and Jack with one of our Play-Doh cities. We spent hours making those cities. I'd spread out cardboard across the dining room table and we'd put in roads and roundabouts and traffic lights. Shops and houses. We'd spend days working on the one city: Jacksville, Jackland, JackTown. I loved building those cities as much as he did. It was like being a town planner without the politics or paperwork.

  A boarding pass for Queenstown, New Zealand. Patrick and I went snowboarding for a week. His mum looked after Jack. I remember Patrick stopping to kiss me when we walked back inside for a hot chocolate. Warm lips; cold snowflakes falling around us as soft as caresses.

  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."

  Chapter 4

  In this Act, "stalking" includes the following of a person about or the watching or frequenting of the vicinity of, or an approach to, a person's place of residence, business or work or any place that a person frequents for the purposes of any social or leisure activity.

  --Section 8 of the Crimes

  (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act

  So 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 a
ppreciated 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--"