Hypnotizing Maria

bowed also, bewildered.
    The roar filled the hall, astonished wonder.
    In the midst of it, Lonnie brushed her tears, and even from row S, Jamie Forbes read her distress: What did you do to me?
    Blacksmyth answered a few words only she could hear, turned, and mouthed thank-you to the applause, his expression: Don’t underestimate the force of your own belief.

    Jamie Forbes was lost in the strange demonstration for days after, turned it this way and that in his mind till it washed away without answer, fading before his lifelong obsession with flying.
    He buried that mystery till a long time later, till well after first light of a day in North Platte, Nebraska.



CHAPTER SIX
    E ight-thirty in the morning, the airport café was crowded. He found a place for himself, opened a menu.
    “Mind if I share your table?”
    Jamie Forbes looked up at her, one of those folks you like the minute you meet. “Share away,” he said.
    She set a backpack alongside. “Is this where I learn how to fly?”
    “Nope,” he said, pointed out the window at the sky. “You learn to fly up there.”
    She looked, and nodded. “Always said some day I’d get to it. Learn to fly. I promised myself; didn’t quite make it come true.”
    “It’s never too late,” he said.
    “Oh ...” she said, a wistful smile. “I think it is for me.” She extended her hand. “Dee Hallock.”
    “Jamie Forbes.”
    They looked at the menu. Something light, just a bit, he thought. Orange juice and toast would be healthy.
    “You’re traveling,” he said.
    “Yes. Hitchhiking.” She put the menu down, and when the waitress arrived, she said, “Tea and toast, please. Mint and wheat.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” said the waitress, memorizing an easy one, and turned to him.
    “Hot chocolate and rye toast, if I could.” Hitchhiking?
    “You’re flying today,” said the waitress. “All these light orders, this morning.”
    “Light is good,” he said. She smiled and left to another table, their orders in her mind.
    “Are you hitchhiking cars,” he asked, “or airplanes?”
    “I hadn’t thought of airplanes,” said Dee. “Can one do that?”
    “Never hurts to ask. You want to be careful, though.”
    “Oh?”
    “This is high country. Some airplanes don’t fly as well as others, up high, with passengers.” Early forties, he thought. Businesswoman. What’s she doing hitchhiking?
    “To answer your question,” she said, “I’m testing an hypothesis.” Dark brown hair, brown eyes, that magnetic beauty that curiosity and intelligence bring to a woman's face.
    “My question?”
    ‘“How come she’s hitchhiking?”’
    He blinked. “You’re right. I was thinking something like that. What’s your hypothesis?”
    “There’s no coincidence.”
    Interesting, he thought. “What kind of coincidence, there isn’t?”
    “I’m an equal-opportunity explorer,” she said. “What kind doesn’t matter. You and I, for instance; I wouldn’t be surprised if both of us knew some important mutual friend. Wouldn’t be surprised there’s a reason we’re meeting. Not at all.” She looked at him as though she knew there was.
    “Of course there’s no way to tell,” he said.
    She smiled. “Except by coincidence.”
    “Which there’s no such thing as.”
    “That’s what I’m finding out.”
    Nice quest, he thought. “And you’re finding more coincidences per mile on the road than you do in your office?”
    She nodded.
    “You don’t find it dangerous, hitchhiking? An attractive woman asking to be picked up by anybody on the road?”
    A that’s-impossible laugh. “I don’t attract danger.” I’ll bet, he thought. Are you so sure of yourself, or are you just naïve? “How’s your hypothesis holding up?”
    “I’m not ready to call it a law, but I think it’ll be my theory, at least, before long.”
    She had smiled about attracting danger—he wouldn’t understand that yet.
    “Am I a coincidence?” he asked.
    “Is Jamie a coincidence?” She said it as though she were asking someone he couldn’t see. “Of course not. I’ll tell you later on.”
    “I think you’re a coincidence,” he told her. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. I wish you well on your journey.”
    “There’s been no word across this table of any meaning to you,” she asked, “nothing that’s changed you so far?”
    ‘“So far’ is the operative term,” he said. “Tell me something that shocks me, ma’am, something life-changing I can't