Strangers

wept.
        He came to her, stooped down in front of her. "Dr. Weiss, please don't cry. Don't despair. It'll be all right."
        "No. It never will," she said. "Not ever like it was."
        He gently pried her hands away from her face. He put one of his hands under her chin, lifted her head until she was looking at him. He smiled, winked, and held a hand before her eyes to show her that it was empty. Then, to her surprise, he plucked a quarter from her right ear.
        "Hush now," Pablo Jackson said, patting her shoulder. "You've made your point. And I certainly don't have an âme de boue, a soul of mud, an ungenerous spirit. A woman's tears can move the world. Against my better judgment, I'll do what I can."
        Instead of putting an end to her crying, his offer of help renewed her weeping, though these were tears of gratitude.
        

    ***
        
        "… and now you are in a deep sleep, deep, very deep, utterly relaxed, and you will answer all my questions. Is that understood?"
        'Yes." :,You cannot refuse to answer. Cannot refuse. Cannot."
        Pablo had drawn the drapes over the three-bay window and had turned out all the lights except the lamp beside Ginger Weiss's chair. The amber beams fell over her, giving her hair the appearance of real gold filaments and emphasizing the unnatural paleness of her skin.
        He stood before her, looking down at her face. She had a fragile beauty, an exquisite femininity, yet in her face there was also a great strength almost masculine in quality. Le juste milieu: perfect balance, the golden mean, was nowhere better defined than in her countenance, where character and beauty were given equal weight.
        Her eyes were closed, and they moved very little beneath her lids, an indication that she was in a deep trance.
        Pablo returned to his chair, which stood in shadow, beyond the amber light from the single lamp. He sat, crossed his legs. "Ginger, why were you frightened by the black gloves?"
        "I don't know," she said softly.
        "You cannot lie to me. Do you understand? You can withhold nothing from me. Why were you afraid of the black gloves?"
        "I don't know."
        "Why were you afraid of the ophthalmoscope?"
        "I don't know."
        "Why were you afraid of the sink drain?"
        "I don't know."
        "Did you know the man on the motorcycle on State Street?"
        "No."
        "Then why were you frightened of him?"
        "I don't know."
        Pablo sighed. "Very well. Ginger, we'll now do something amazing, something that might seem impossible but which I assure you is possible. In fact, it's easy. We're going to make time run backward, Ginger. Nothing to it. We're going to send you slowly but surely back in time. You are going to get younger. It's already happening. You can't resist it… time like a river… flowing backward… ever back… and now it's no longer December twenty-fourth. It's December twenty-third, Monday, and still the clock runs backward… a little faster… now it is the twenty-second… now the twentieth… the eighteenth…" He continued in that manner until he had regressed Ginger to the twelfth of November. "You are in Bernstein's Delicatessen, waiting for your order to be filled. Can you smell the hot baked goods, the spices?" She nodded, and he said, "Tell me what you smell."
        She drew a deep breath, and a pleased look overtook her face. Her voice became more animated: "Pastrami, garlic… honey cookies… cloves and cinnamon…" She remained in her chair, with her eyes closed, but she lifted her head and turned left and right, as if surveying the deli. "Chocolate. Just smell that cocoa pound cake!"
        "It's wonderful," Pablo said. "Now, you pay for your order, turn from the counter… head toward the door, preoccupied with your purse."
        "I can't get my wallet in," she said, scowling.
        "You have the bag of groceries in one arm."
        "Got to clean out this purse."
        "Bang! You bump into the man in the Russian hat."
        Ginger gasped and twitched in surprise.
        "He grabs your grocery bag to keep it from falling," Pablo said.
        "Oh!" she said.
        "He tells you he's sorry."
        "My fault," Ginger said. Pablo knew she was not talking to him but to the doughy-faced man in the Russian hat, who was now as real to her as he had been that Tuesday in the deli. Apologetically, she said, "I wasn't