Strangers

gently as he spoke to her. "Where are you, Ginger? How far back in time have you gone, Ginger? Where are you? When are you?"
        "'Uh, uh, uhhhhhhhh." A pathetic cry escaped her, an echo out of time, the tortured response to a long-suppressed terror and despair.
        He became very stern, switching from a soft to a hard voice. "I am in command of you. You are deeply asleep and completely in my control, Ginger. I demand that you answer me, Ginger."
        A shudder, worse than any previous spasm, passed through her.
        "I demand that you answer. Where are you, Ginger?"
        "Nowhere."
        "Where are you?"
        "No place." Abruptly, she stopped shaking. She sagged in the chair. The fear melted out of her face, and her features went soft, slack. In a thin and emotionless voice, she said, "Dead."
        "What do you mean? You're not dead."
        "Dead," she insisted.
        "Ginger, you must tell me where you are and how far back in time you've gone, and you must tell me about the black gloves, that first pair of black gloves, the ones you were reminded of when you saw the gloves on that man in the delicatessen. You absolutely must tell me."
        "Dead."
        Suddenly, because he was kneeling beside her chair and was close to her, Pablo realized her breathing was extremely shallow. He took her hand and was startled by how cold it was. He pressed two fingers to her wrist, feeling for her pulse. Weak. Very weak. Frantic, he put his fingertips to her throat and located a slow and weak heartbeat.
        To avoid answering his questions, she seemed to be withdrawing into a sleep far deeper than her hypnotic trance, perhaps into a coma, into an oblivion where she could not hear his demanding voice. He had never encountered a reaction like this before, had never even read of such a thing. Was it possible for Ginger to will herself dead merely to escape his questions? Memory blocks erected around traumatic experiences were not uncommon; his reading in psychology journals sometimes turned up accounts of these psychological barricades to recollection, but they were barriers that could be dismantled without killing the subject. Surely no experience could be so horrendous that a person would rather die than remember it. Yet even as Pablo pressed his fingers to her throat, the throbbing of her pulse grew fainter and more irregular.
        "Ginger, listen," he said urgently. "You don't have to answer me. No more questions. You can come back. I won't insist on answers."
        She seemed suspended on a terrible brink, teetering.
        "Ginger, listen to me! No more questions. I'm finished asking questions. I swear it." After a long and frightening hesitation, he detected a slight improvement in her pulse rate. "I'm no longer interested in the black gloves or anything else, Ginger. I just want to bring you back to the present and out of your trance. Do you hear me? Please hear me. Please. I've finished questioning you."
        Her pulse stuttered shockingly, but then it throbbed more steadily. Respiration improved, too. As he talked to her in that reassuring manner, she quickly got better. Color returned to her lovely face.
        In less than a minute, he returned her to December 24 and woke her.
        She blinked. "It didn't work, huh? You couldn't put me under."
        "You were under," he said shakily. "Too far under."
        She said, "Pablo, you're trembling. Why're you trembling? What's wrong? What happened?"
        This time, she went to the kitchen and poured the brandy.
        

    ***
        
        Later, at the door of Pablo's apartment, as Ginger was leaving to meet the taxi that Pablo had summoned for her, she said, "I still can't think what it could be. Nothing so terrible has ever happened to me, certainly nothing so bad I'd rather die than reveal it."
        "There's something very traumatic in your past," Pablo said. "An incident involving a man wearing black gloves, a man with what you said was a 'dark glass face." Perhaps a motorcyclist like the one that panicked you on State Street. It's an incident you've buried very deep… and which you seem determined to keep buried at any cost. I really think you should tell Dr. Gudhausen what happened here today and let him proceed from there."
        "Gudhausen is too traditional, too slow. I want your help."
        "I won't risk putting you in a trance and questioning you again."
        "Unless