Strangers

two armchairs that faced each other across a small table near a long, bay window. She declined coffee and said, "Mr. Jackson, I'm afraid I'm here under false pretenses."
        "What an interesting beginning", he said, smiling, crossing his legs, resting his long-fingered black hands on the arms of his chair.
        "No, really, I'm not a reporter."
        "Not from People?" He studied her speculatively. "Well, that's all right. I knew you weren't a reporter when I let you in. These days, reporters have an oily smoothness about them, and they're an arrogant lot. Soon as I saw you standing at the door, I said to myself, 'Pablo, this bitty girl is no reporter. She's a real person." " :'I need some help that only you can provide."
        'A damsel in distress?" he said, amused. He seemed not at all angry or uneasy, which she had expected he would be.
        She said, "I was afraid you wouldn't see me if I told you my real reasons for wanting to meet you. You see, I'm a doctor, a surgical resident at Memorial, and when I read the article about you in the Globe, I thought you might be able to help."
        "I'd be delighted to see you even if you were selling magazines. An eighty-one-year-old man can't afford to turn anyone away… unless he prefers to spend his days talking to the walls."
        Ginger appreciated his efforts to put her at ease, though she suspected that his social life was more interesting than her own.
        He said, "Besides, not even a burnt-out old fossil like me would turn away such a lovely girl as you. But now tell me what this help is that only I can give you."
        Ginger leaned forward in her chair. "First, I've got to know if the article in the newspaper was accurate."
        He shrugged. "As accurate as newspaper articles ever are. My mother and father were expatriate Americans living in France, just as the newspaper said. She was a popular chanteuse, a cafe singer in Paris, before and after World War I. My father was a musician, as the Globe said. And it's true that my parents knew Picasso and recognized his genius early on. I was named after him. They bought two score of Picasso's pieces when his work was cheap, and he gave them several paintings as gifts. They had bon goűt. They didn't own a hundred works, as the paper said, but fifty. Still, that collection was an embarrassment of riches. Sold gradually over the years, it cushioned their retirement and gave me something to fall back on as well."
        "You were an accomplished stage magician?"
        "For over fifty years," he said, raising both hands in a graceful and elegant expression of amazement at his own longevity. That gesture was marked by the rhythm and fluidity of prestidigitation, and Ginger half-expected him to pluck living white doves from thin air. "And I was famous, too. Sans pareil, even if I say so myself. Not famous over here so much, you understand, but all over Europe and in England."
        "And your act involved hypnotizing a few members of the audience?"
        He nodded. "That was the centerpiece. It always wowed them."
        "And now you're helping the police by hypnotizing witnesses to crimes, so they can recall details they've forgotten."
        "Well, it's not a full-time job," he said, waving one slender hand as if to dismiss any such thoughts she might have had. The gesture seemed likely to end with the magical appearance of a bouquet of flowers or deck of cards. "In fact, they've only come to me four times in the past two years. I'm usually their last resort."
        "But what you've done has worked for them?"
        "Oh, yes. Just as the newspaper said. For instance, a by stander might see a murder take place and get a glimpse of the car in which the killer escaped, but not be able to recall the license number. Now, if he glanced at the license even for a split second, that number is buried in his subconscious mind, 'cause we never really forget anything we see. Never. So if a hypnotist puts the witness in a trance, regresses him in time - that is, takes him back in his memories to the shooting - and tells him to look at the car, then the license number can be obtained."
        "Always?"
        "Not always. But we win more than we lose."
        "Why turn to you? Aren't the police department's psychiatrists capable of using hypnosis?"
        "Certainly. But they're psychiatrists not hypnotists. Hypnosis is not what they specialized in. I've made it a