Holland Suggestions Read Free Page A

little gesture, I told myself as I hung up, was a stroke of genius. I felt confident again, and I decided to work the Vivian thing out in my mind now, as long as I had a free morning. But then Sharon came in, dropped some drawings on my desk, and went out without a word. I made a mental note to get her replaced, absolutely and irrevocably; to have her shifted into someone else’s office, even if I had to answer the goddamn phones myself. With that decided, my mind wandered and settled, strangely, on Robert Holland.
    Actually, some of the things I had learned long ago from Robert might be of help in my little family crisis. Hypnosis had always scared the hell out of me, and now, considering it half seriously, I felt like a kid about to make a wild dash through a cemetery at night. I had not done it in fifteen years, yet there was not the slightest doubt in my mind that it would be as easy now as it had been then. I fought with it for another minute, then got up and turned off the lights. My fingers tingled with the excitement of it, and I sank back in the comfort of my chair, still too nervous to try anything. Gradually I relaxed, staring at the opaque window, and I went into a light trance immediately the first time I tried. I went deeper. The room darkened around me, and the window became a point of light in the darkness. I deepened the trance again, and Vivian’s face came into focus. Or Judy’s. At first I couldn’t be sure. Then I saw the tiny black mole and knew it was Vivian. I heard her voice, though I could not yet make out the words. I had almost forgotten the soft quality of her voice. Such effective camouflage for deadly poison. One level deeper and I would have her. I would see her and hear her, and if I wanted to I could reach out and touch her. Robert Holland had said that you can relive any experience in all five senses under hypnosis, and I knew the truth of it. I’d done it.
    In the outer office I heard a filing cabinet drawer slam shut and Sharon swore, but the image of Vivian did not fade. My mind wrestled with both worlds at once and handled them with ease. I went deeper and the image sharpened; now I could see the little red lines above her green eyes, and the holes in her earlobes where the earrings went through. Behind her, the apartment where we had lived then, with the battered red sofa and the picture on the wall never hanging quite straight. She said Hello, Jim; it was letter perfect, precise, like a video-tape replay fifteen years later. I wanted to go closer, to step into the apartment with her, but instead I backed away from it. That cold, unreasonable fear forced me back, the apartment faded to an obscure black and white, and Vivian melted and became part of the blur. I came out of it very fast. The window focused in my eyes, and I saw that in the few minutes I had been under, it had started to rain. I sat there for a long time, just listening to the rain falling on the pavement outside. My mind was all a mixture of Robert and Judy and Vivian. Sharon pushed her way in by slamming another filing cabinet and saying “goddammit” just loud enough for me to hear.
    All right. Enough.
    I barked into the intercom: “Sharon.”
    “Yes.”
    “Get the hell in here.”
    I was surprised at the toughguy sound of my own voice, but the scene itself was carried through without emotion, as I knew it would be. We had come to a point where we could no longer communicate, and I wanted another secretary as soon as possible. She could handle it any way she liked: with a request to Al Harper for a transfer or with a resignation. I didn’t care what she did. She took it without a word and left me alone. Finished, and it felt like scratching a sore that had itched for a long time. Done. After simmering for a year, the matter of Sharon Welles was settled and disposed of in thirty seconds. Vivian might be as easy, once the preliminaries were out of the way. My eyes fell on the mountain photograph, and in a quick