Strangers

looking where I was going.
        "He holds out your groceries, which you take from him." The aged magician watched her closely. "And you notice… his gloves."
        Her transformation was instantaneous and electrifying. She sat straight up; her eyes popped open. "The gloves! Oh, God, the gloves!"
        "Tell me about the gloves, Ginger."
        "Black," she said in a small, quavering voice. "Shiny."
        "What else?"
        "No!" she cried, starting to get up from the chair.
        "Sit down, please," Pablo said.
        She froze, half out of her seat.
        "Ginger, I am ordering you to sit down and relax."
        She sat rigidly, her small hands fisted. Her radiant blue eyes were open wide, focused not on Pablo but on the gloves in her memory. She looked as if she would bolt again at the slightest provocation.
        "You will relax now, Ginger. You will be calm… calm… very calm. Do you understand?"
        "Yes. All right," she said. Her breath came less rapidly than it had done, and her shoulders slumped a bit, but she was still tense.
        Ordinarily, when he put someone into a trance, he maintained total and instantaneous control of the subject. He was surprised and made uneasy by this woman's continued distress in spite of his admonitions to relax, but he could not calm her further. Finally he said, "Tell me about the gloves, Ginger."
        "Oh, my God." Her face twisted in fear.
        " Relax and tell me about the gloves. Why are you afraid of them?"
        She shook. "D-Don't let them t-t-touch me."
        "Why are you afraid of them?" he persisted.
        She hugged herself and shrank back into her chair.
        "Listen to me, Ginger. That moment in time is frozen. The clock is moving neither forward nor back. The gloves cannot touch you. I will never let them touch you. Time is suspended. I have the power to suspend time, and I have stopped it. You are safe. Do you hear me?"
        " Yes," she said, but as she cringed against the back of her armchair, there was doubt and barely suppressed terror in her voice.
        "You are perfectly safe." Pablo was distressed to see this sweet girl so oppressed by fear. "Time has been stopped, so you can study those black gloves without being afraid they'll get hold of you. You will study them and tell me why they frighten you."
        She was silent, shaking.
        "You must answer me, Ginger. Why are you afraid of the gloves?" She only whimpered, so he thought a moment, then said, "Is it really this pair of gloves that frighten you?"
        "N-No. Not exactly."
        "The gloves on this man in the deli… they remind you of a pair of other gloves, perhaps from some incident long ago? Is that it?" :'Oh, yes. Yes."
        'When did this other incident take place? Ginger, what other gloves do these remind you of?"
        "I don't know."
        "Yes, you do." Pablo rose from his chair, moved to the draped windows, and observed her from those shadows. "All right… the hands of the clock are moving again. Time is moving backward again… back… back… all the way back to the time when you were first frightened by a pair of black gloves. You are drifting back… back… and now you are there. You are at the very time, at the very place, at the precise moment and spot where you were first frightened by black gloves."
        Ginger ' s eyes were fixed on a horror in a different time, not in this room or in Bernstein's Delicatessen, but in some other place.
        Pablo watched her anxiously. "Where are you, Ginger?" When she remained silent, he said, "You must tell me where you are."
        "The face," she said in a haunted voice that made Pablo shiver. "The face. The blank face."
        "Explain yourself, Ginger. What face? Tell me what you see."
        "The black gloves… the dark glass face."
        "Do you mean… like the motorcyclist?"
        "The gloves… the visor." A spasm of fear throbbed through her.
        "Be calm, relax. You're safe. Safe. Now, wherever you are, do you see a man wearing a helmet and a visor? And black gloves?"
        She began a monotonous chant of stark terror: "Uh, uh, uh, uh…"
        "Ginger, you must be calm. Be calm, relaxed, and at ease. Nothing can harm you. You're safe." Afraid that he was losing control of her and would have to bring her out of the trance soon, Pablo moved quickly to her chair, knelt at her side, put one hand on her arm, and stroked