By the time he gets to the front door of the overgrown house wedged into a tight hillside curve on Beverly Glen, Ben's hands are shaking. It has nothing to do with the U-turn he made across traffic or the fact that he's parked in a narrow patch of cement that passes for a driveway with cars zipping by inches from his fender. If he's wired, it's the moment. This is Jordan Powell's house.
At his back all Los Angeles is going by; only Ben is fixed as traffic streams past like a movie process shot, background on an endless loop. Sylvan, weirdly beautiful Beverly Glen is always busy--no break in the flow, there never is because savvy drivers take it instead of the congested 405. The up-and-down road with its hairpin curves is filled with cars from Brentwood and Belair. Triumphant drivers zoom along convinced they've found the Northwest Passage, which is, rather, a northeast passage over the hills that separate the coastal areas of the city from the San Fernando valley and the Inland Empire, California sprawling east. Phoning and faxing from every possible LA status car--Range Rover, Beemer, Jag, Lexus--studio execs merge with the rest of the population in their Jeeps and Geos and anonymous klunkers, everybody mounting the hill single-file to crest Mulholland and begin the descent into the valley, while oncoming cars flow out of the valley and over the hills single file, coasting down toward Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica and Olympic, running on hope.
They are sped along by the joy of the chase.
Life in Los Angeles is a game and the one part of the game people believe they can actually master is pathfinding. Everybody knows a better way. Getting there is half the fun; it may be the only fun. Questing, drivers try this route, that one, consult the hundred-plus page Thomas Guide and squabble with passengers over maps versus pathfinding by instinct, making diabolically intricate maneuvers in the endless pursuit of better, faster ways to get where they think they are going.
Except for Jordan Powell, who never leaves this house.
Will she answer the door? Standing in front of the beautiful little stucco with its peaked tiled roof and a handcrafted oak front door overhung with morning glory vines, Ben is humming like a high tension wire. Doesn't she hear the bell? Everything in him has been rushing toward this moment. He's done his reading. He wants to begin. He presses his face to the diamond-shaped speakeasy window in the stained oak. The nubbly red glass doesn't give much away; he can't see Jordan Powell standing in the hallway, deciding whether to let him in.
Odd. Ross gave him the address as conferring a medal. The citation read, "She's expecting you."
Jordan Powell may be expecting him but she isn't answering the door. Ben calls. "Ms. Powell, it's me. Ben Messinger?" I know you're in there. Should he pound? Who is he coming to see here, really?--Influential family, Ross told him,--You know the rest, but he doesn't. He is taut and shaky as a first-time lover. "It's Ben Messinger, from the Creative Institute? Ross Gideon sent me."
Standing with his knees locked, he drifts into that meditative state that comes when a busy mind slides into daydream or double-shifts into the deep, creative concentration that obliterates time. First, concentration, the books tell him. Then trance.
"Come in."
The front hall is empty. She has fled to the front room. Panic rips her velvety voice. "Close it, fast!"
He swings it shut.
"I'm sorry," his subject says from the living room. She is standing in shadow. "I didn't mean to freak. It isn't you. I just. Agh. Ross probably told you. Outside is a big problem for me. I even have problems going to the door."
"That's why I'm here." Ben waits for his eyes to adjust so he can get a good look at her. When he does, he can't see anything else. He wants to take this woman's hands and promise her to make everything all right for her. "Oh, wow."
"It's only me." Jordan Powell grins. She doesn't look like the captive princess. She looks like one of his friends: jeans, loose black sweater, bare feet, stormy fall of dark hair; only the ten carat tennis bracelet reminds him what she has in common with the other patients at the Institute; there is money here. The alcove in the bay window is bracketed by books. It holds a sofa, computer table with three terminals, live conversation scrolling up one, ack, I hope she isn't going to end up stalked on the internet; music center, TV, VCR, she has everything she wants right in this room. Now that they are both safely inside with busy Beverly Glen shut away for the moment, she can smile. "I'm Jordan."
"I know. I'm Ben." Ben is magnetized. "I'm here to help."
"Be cool. I'm supposed to help you. Ross knows I get starved for company and he sends people. I've been hypnotized so many times that I drop into trance like a stone in a well."
"I know I'm not the first, but I'm not your ordinary trainee. Phobia. I've been there. I can help."
"No way, I'm incurable, it's not your problem, so chill. I love the company. You guys keep me from going crazy in here. No, wait. I really am crazy in here."
"So you really don't go out."
"Can't." She shrugs. "In a way, I can. Computer stuff. The trance, which is why I love working with you guys. When I'm in trance I can go anywhere, it's just ... In conscious life, where I go stops at the front door."
"That's terrible."
"It is but it isn't. In trance, I'm free. But come on," she reaches for his hands. Her touch is lovely, fated. She draws him to the French doors at the far end of the living room; beyond is the outdoor area, open to the sky but enclosed by stucco walls. Above the fourth wall of the little courtyard, Ben sees the rock face of the hill. A part of his mind scurries ahead. She could get away if she climbed up there. But Jordan Powell has no intention of getting away. She sits easily in the cage she has made for himself. Closing the French doors, she shuts off the house as if arming the perimeter. Then she pulls Ben to chairs positioned so that they are facing. There is nothing sexual about it; they are like children together. "We usually work here."
Somebody has put out iced tea, little cookies on a plate. They sit down. Coming here, Ben couldn't hold a picture of Jordan Powell in his head, in spite or because of the tape. Now that he sees her, he can't see anything else. "The. Uh. problem. Want to talk about it?"
"I don't." She adds in an undertone, "Or can't."
Noted. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be, it's the way I am." The smile is wide open. "But you can always hypnotize me, I'm easy, unless you want to talk."
"Whatever you want." And without knowing when they made the transition Ben hits a new, low tone, sliding easily into the cadences he discovers with a start that he already knows; it's metabolic. "You trance easily and you always sit here when you go into trance?"
"Yes," Jordan's light, level tone matches his, "It's easy. Ross and I just start talking the way you and I are talking..."
"The way you and I are talking..." Alert to her rhythms, he echoes, "talking the way we're talking, and you talk about..."
"About anything, everything."
Cleverly, he tries, "About the problem?"
"Forget the problem." She establishes her ground rules for the induction, "Never try to solve the problem, that's all..."
"So we forget the problem..."
"Yes," she says, and her face lightens, "forget the problem."
Carefully, he continues, "and just keep talking the way we're talking."
"Yes, the way we're talking..."
"...and you're there."
"...and then I'm there." Her hands!
The hands lift! Is Jordan Powell that easy, that she slips into a light trance state just because they're sitting here? They are knee to knee; Ben is trying to look into her, but she is seeing something else. "You go into trance and you..."
"Travel out. I can go anywhere from here."
"That's wonderful," he says, "and where are some of the places you can go?"
"Oh, I've been all over the world this way. In trance. In trance, I can still go anywhere."
Bingo. "Anywhere, that's wonderful. You can still go to," he names the scariest place he can think of. "New York?"
"Of course New York, Paris, Mars."
"But not real New York or Paris or real Mars," he says. Stealthy as a burglar afraid of waking the householder, Ben takes a glass of tea. He is puzzling over this. Why can she go anywhere in trance when in conscious life her freedom stops at the door? The ice rattles and Jordan raises her head; smiling, she shifts and collects herself like a sleeper about to wake. As instructed, he is testing--is she really in trance? The trick is to make sure his subject is in a deep trance state and then wander out with her until she trusts him enough to follow him instead. He wants to get her to follow him out that front door and onto Beverly Glen.
She says, "Real everywhere."
Working from instinct, a body artist playing by ear, he begins, "Everywhere. Can I go too?"
"Oh," she says, "Oh, yes, I can take you anywhere."
)
