The Further Adventures of Louis and Elle
Chapter Twelve — Walking Ellie Home
Louis Wentworth, popular young-adult novelist, and his wife, the hypnotherapist Elle Murphy, were relaxing on the deck. Elle was settled back in a chair with her bare feet stretched out before her on a low wicker table. Her eyes were closed in the luxuriant contentment that sometimes comes at the end of a long, full day of work. The bliss was lessened just because Louis was very carefully rubbing her feet. She was practically purring.
“Elle,” Louis said in a soft voice, “how do you feel?”
“I feel good,” she said. “Glad to be done.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ve been thinking: Out of the hills of Habersham, down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, run the rapid and leap the fall.”
He stopped suddenly, a confused look on his face. “Split at the rock and together again, accept my bed, or narrow or wide,” he said. “And flee from folly on every side with a lover’s pain to attain the plain.” He stopped again, seeming even more puzzled.
Elle’s eyes, shut in pleasure, snapped open. “Louis,” she said suspiciously, “is that ‘Song of the Chattahoochee’ by Sydney Lanier?”*
Her husband’s face flamed red. “May . . . be . . .” he said.
She reached down and slipped on her red 3″ Ferragamo ankle-strap pumps. “Are you really trying to . . . hypnotize ME?”
Louis’s face looked like a fire engine. “May . . . be . . . “
She leapt to her feet, hands on hips. In the heels, with her shoulders thrown back, she seemed to tower over Louis, who was visibly shrinking under her gaze. “Louis Wentworth,” she said, “you are in serious trouble. What do you think you are doing?”
“I . . . “ he stammered. “I . . . was just trying to help.”
“Oh, yes? ‘Help’ like last time?”
Louis’s last foray into hypnosis had ended with him in disgrace—though not before he had sneakily “persuaded” his supposedly dominant wife to join enthusiastically in three intensely sexy role-plays of his choosing.
“No,” he said, “I just mean—well, darling, I don’t know whether you have noticed but—I don’t really know much about your childhood—your high school years—“
“I told you,” she said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Actually,” he said, “you told me you don’t remember.”
Elle stopped short. Had she said that? She thought for a moment. How much did she actually remember?
Louis saw his opportunity. “ If you don’t remember, I thought maybe relaxing a little—you know, maybe just some guided breathing, you know—might help you remember, and enjoy it.”
“And what if I did? You’d get me to tell you all about it while I was under, I suppose?”
“May . . . be . . . . “
“So you can put details into the Hypno-Teen novels?”
“No! Not at all!” he said. “Or, well . . . mostly not—anyway, do you mind?”
Elle was ready to tell him how much she minded when she realized she didn’t mind all that much. Her first reading of a Hypno-Teen novel had been a shock—in fact, she and Louis had broken up over it for a while**—but since they had made up and married, she’d begun to feel secretly a little proud that a character based on her was now the role model of thousands of tween-age girls. (She was also eager to know which Hollywood starlet would play Hypno-Teen in the movie.) Besides that, she was also surprised at how much insight Louis had into her secret thoughts. Would it be so bad if Louis got more insight into that teen-ager she had been—not all that long ago? How could it all seem so far away? What had she forgotten? Wouldn’t she like to remember more about her teen-age years?
And . . . (here a faraway look crossed her face, briefly). . . hadn’t it been—well—fun to be Louis’s hypnotized plaything? She would never admit it to him, but she’d actually enjoyed turning into those fantasy figures. They came straight from his libido; she had learned some useful keys to motivating her husband. And they’d been sexy. First she’d been a bubble-headed European supermodel in the bottom half of a bikini; then a braless hippy chick; then finally a old-fashioned silk-and-lace pinup out of an old 1940s film. Who wouldn’t want to feel like a bombshell every now and then? And it had been not only sexy but relaxing. She hadn’t had to be Elle Murphy at all—hadn’t had to be the sexy dominant powerhouse she was in day-to-day life. She enjoyed being that woman; she was comfortable in her skin. But honestly, everything gets old sooner or later, and even hypnodommes need a vacation.
“You really think you can hypnotize me and bring back those memories?” she said skeptically.
“It worked before,” he pointed out.
“Yes, I guess it did,” she said. She actually couldn’t quite remember how he’d put her under before. “But that’s just because I wasn’t expecting it. You know I have a suspicious nature.”
“You trust me,” he said.
“Yes, darling, I do,” she said, thinking to herself, if I trust anybody.
But she really did trust Louis. He was her friend and her hypno-husband, so responsive to her every wish, and yet at the same time so attractive and interesting and complicated in his own right.
And brave.
“A man can be submissive and still be a hero,” her Uncle Ray had said to her—after he and Louis had journeyed into post-Soviet Ukraine, rescued Elle’s mother from the grip of the Ukrainian intelligence service, and brought Elle’s mother out for a long-awaited reunion with the daughter she hadn’t seen for nearly 20 years. ***
“Oh what the hell,” she said, nodding her head once. “I’ll try it.”
“Really? Great!” he said, a slight tone of disbelief in his voice. “Let’s go down to your office and use the hypno-chair.”
“Nope,” she said with an impish smile. “If you’re good enough to hypnotize me, then you need to be able to do it right here. You get one chance.”
Louis was about to protest—they were sitting outside, there were sounds from the street, and it seemed very far from the deep calm silence he associated with Elle’s office. But then again, he remembered that Elle had hypnotized him for the first time at a noisy cocktail party. Then he remembered (though some of this he didn’t remember) that Elle had hypnotized him in all kinds of environments, sometimes with a few whispered suggestions, sometimes with a single trigger word, sometimes with a wave of her hand. He had hypnotized her once before (he squirmed a bit remembering that event, in equal parts embarrassment and desire) and he ought to be able to do it again. He wasn’t sure whether Elle knew this, but she was actually a very good hypnotic subject—which wasn’t surprising, really, since that capacity probably explained why she was such a good hypnotist, so skilled in understanding what a subject was feeling and in coaxing the subject deeper.
And anyway, he knew the smile on Elle’s face—she wasn’t going to budge on this one, he could tell.
“Fine,” he said, with a confidence he did not entirely feel. “Get settled in and let me know when you’re ready.”
Elle was still standing. Now she stretched her arms above her head, clasped them, and bent her torso back and forth in a yoga-like pose. She raised one leg and pointed a foot in front of her, then repeated the process with the other leg. Her movements were graceful, lithe, and sinuous. He was reminded of his fantasies about Kaa, the hypnotic python from THE JUNGLE BOOK. After a moment of silence, she looked at him quizzically and said, “Well?” He realized he had enjoyed watching her move back and forth so much that he had more or less forgotten what they were doing there. His face flaming crimson again, he pulled himself up and tried to sound authoritative.
“Yes, Elle,” he said. “Just have a seat in the chair. When you are really comfortable, nod your head. That’s fine. Now, listen carefully, Elle, you don’t have to do anything from here on in. You can’t do it right and you can’t do it wrong because there’s no right or wrong and all you need to do is relax. You may want to focus on my voice but you may want to let your mind drift away from it, because it doesn’t matter, your subconscious mind will hear what I say and you will respond to my suggestions, and meanwhile you can listen to other sounds, like the wind in the trees or the faint sound of the cars on the highway or the barking of the dog a long way away because these sounds relax you whether they are loud or soft, familiar or new, they are just music to relax to just as my voice is music to relax to and my voice will guide you as you let go of all your worries and pass into a deep state of relaxation. Nod your head.”
Elle was feeling wonderful. As Louis talked about the sounds around her, the world seemed to get quieter, as he told her not to worry about his voice she felt it filling her mind. She loved Louis’s voice. It was so gentle and yet clearly intelligent—especially when he read aloud from something he’d written. She’d been with him at the Open Pages bookstore a few weeks ago when he read something from one of his new mysteries and he had seen how his voice entranced the audience, relaxing and soothing them and –
She lost her train of thought.
“Three, counting down now,” he was saying. When had he started counting? Had he counted “five” and “six”? She didn’t know what was going on, but it didn’t matter, and then his voice explained, “you know when I get to one you’ll be fast asleep in a deep trance and two, relaxing even further and ONE! You are deep in a trance, feeling wonderful and open to my suggestions.”
The world had gone silent altogether. The light had faded. There was a deep feeling of peace and comfort in all her limbs and that voice outside her thoughts that shaped her thoughts. She knew the voice was Louis but Louis was in her thoughts so everything Louis said was her own thought and she could trust her own thoughts and so she could let go—or was that Louis’s voice saying those things or was he inside her head thinking her thoughts about Louis and perhaps she had no thoughts and should obey his thoughts—obey—
“Nod your head, Elle,” her thoughts said and her head nodded without her volition and her thoughts said, “That’s fine, you are doing so well and you know you can go as deep as you need to go to follow all my suggestions and enjoy being in a trance. Now tell me, how do you feel?”
“I feel good,” she heard herself say to the voice. It seemed to come from a long way off. “You are good with words and good with your voice and your words . . . your voice . . .”
“That’s fine, Elle, now forget all about that and go deeper,” Louis’s voice said, and so she did.
“Excellent, Elle,” her thoughts told her. “Now I want you to cast your mind back—a year, two years, then three . . . then four . . . back . . .” And there it was, her past, inviting and smooth as a quiet country pond, and she was slipping in . . . .
When did it start?
I always thought it started in the tenth grade, when I came back from the summer with breasts all of a sudden. They certainly got me a lot of attention, but now I remember—I remember that’s not when it started.
No? Let yourself remember now. You can just watch it unfold and tell me what you see. When did it start?
It started the year before, ninth grade. That was my first year in . . . normal America, I guess you’d call it. Before that I’d lived with my parents. I was the little ragamuffin who traveled with the theater, sort of a mascot of all the stagehands and actors, but now I was just a regular ninth-grade girl and nobody was very interested in me or my stories about the Amazing Ray. I felt like I had disappeared. Except . . . for Cory.
You can remember Cory now, can’t you?
Cory lived down the block. He was a year older. A year is a long time at that age. He was, you know, an older man, you know? He was kind of. . . well, he was considered kind of a nerd, though if you broke it down he wasn’t bad looking, I guess, but he was really nerdy, he really had a pocket protector, imagine, in tenth grade, and he spent all his spare time in the library working on the computer. But I remember in October of that year I started running into Cory as I walked to school. I was too clueless to realize he’d been waiting for me at the end of the block, I just thought it was fun to have someone to walk with even though I was sort of self-conscious so I didn’t say much most of the time. He didn’t mind, he spent the time talking about Battlestar Galactica—the original one, for heaven’s sake—I told you he was nerdy. Then Cory started waiting around for me after school, too. It occurs to me now that he must have been hoping I’d invite him in to listen to music but like I said, I was clueless so I never did.
Did he give up?
Oh, no, that’s the point. He was there every day all during ninth grade, and finally I began to talk to him and tell him things I wanted to do. Pretty soon he started bringing me little presents—and I realize now he’d listened so hard to everything I told him, so they were always things I really wanted—
Oh? Like what?
Well, I remember a good road map of the entire United States.
Why did you want that?
I wanted to mark all the places I’d been with my parents, and I wanted to do it before I forgot, because my parents were gone and the memory was all I had. And he found a really nice one, it was from National Geographic I think, and I kept it under my bed. At night I would bring it out and try to put together what date we had played Boise and whether it was two or three years ago that we did that revival of “Bye-Bye Birdie” in Tampa. Sometimes I got postcards from Uncle Ray, too, so I mapped his travels. It meant a lot to me. And I never thanked Cory.
No?
No. That’s the point.
Why is it the point?
I’m just getting the point now. I knew it but I never said it to myself before. School ended for the summer and my aunt and uncle sent me off to summer camp. When I came back in the fall, I did have breasts. They had just developed and I felt kind of awkward about them at first and then . . . well, you know.
Tell me.
Boys liked them. They liked them a lot. All of a sudden they could see me. They liked me. Or they were willing to pretend to like me.
You were flattered?
No. I grew up with actors, so I knew the boys were pretending to be nice. They wanted to get their hands under my bra. So I decided that boys who pretended to be nice ought to be allowed to do things for me as part of the act. So I pretended not to notice when they looked down my shirt.
Why are you laughing?
We read Nathaniel Hawthorne in English class that year. I read a story called “Lady Eleanore’s Mantle.” It had a line in it: “When men seek only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily granted and so well deserved.”
You’re still laughing?
I decided to do these boys a favor by taking everything they were offering and worry later if it made them mad.
Did it make them mad?
No. Finally. That IS the point. The worse I treated them the more they liked it.
Really?
Yes. It started with Cory. One day in the fall we were walking to school together. The tables had kind of turned by now. He was shy and I was feeling pretty at ease. I felt like I was older than him somehow, and he was the little kid I was allowing to tag after me. I talked to him about whatever was on my mind, and I took it for granted that he’d pay attention and bring me little presents the next day. And then, this one day, we were about halfway to school when Billy Jensen pulled up in his new Mustang convertible. Billy was the star of the soccer team. All the girls used to watch him walk up and down the hall and sigh. He winked at me and said, “Hey, Ellie, want a ride to school?”
And you said yes?
I turned to Cory, dumped my books in his hands, and said, “Bring them to Mrs. Gunderson’s room before first period.” I jumped in the car without looking back.
You just left him there?
Yes. Holding my books.
Did he ever speak to you again?
Yes. That’s the point. I flirted with Billy Jensen all the way to school, then I hopped out and went to my homeroom without even saying goodbye to him. Honestly, two minutes after I left I couldn’t remember anything he’d said. Later one of my girlfriends told me he had been trying to get up the nerve to ask me to Fall Formal when I jumped out of the car.
Did you want to go to Fall Formal?
That’s not the point.
What is the point?
After I got to homeroom I realized I didn’t have my books. Then I realized I’d been kind of a bitch to Cory and that if he didn’t show up I wouldn’t have my math homework to turn in at second period. But five minutes before the bell, he came through the door, puffing because he’d been hurrying to make sure he got the books to me in time.
He didn’t mind that you’d been mean to him?
Mind? He apologized to me for not getting there sooner. THAT is the point. He loved it. He was turned on by it. With boys that age, you know, you can tell. And when I took the books and didn’t say “thank you,” he liked it even more. Hawthorne was right. A lot of boys—maybe most of them—like it when women treat them like dirt. You take them for granted—you don’t look back, you don’t say please, you don’t say thank you, you just assume that they are there to serve, just assume that their role is to make you happy—they love it. They think it is sexy.
That worked?
Oh, yes. Within six weeks, I was the queen of Jacob Howard High School. Boys couldn’t do enough for me. I could walk up to a boy sitting with his girlfriend and tell him to go buy me a soda and off he’d go.
The girls must have hated you.
Some did. Some of them avoided me. They couldn’t keep their boyfriends away from me, exactly, but they could try. Some other girls, though, enjoyed being around me, it made them feel powerful to be friends with someone so powerful. They took lessons in managing their boyfriends. By Christmas break, my new self felt totally natural. I stopped worrying about who I’d hang out with. I just walked in and sort of snapped my fingers and somebody came and did whatever I told him. Oh, I just remembered—that year I began to think about calling myself “Elle” instead of “Ellie.” But I figured it’s impossible to change your name in high school, nobody will go along with it.
How did you get interested in hypnosis?
I’d always been interested in hypnosis. Remember, I was very close to Uncle Ray. Every now and then he’d put on a show in one of the towns we were visiting. Whenever we hired a new crew member, the others would Ray him up to hypnotizing them for a laugh. Sometimes he made extra money by performing at birthday parties or weddings. Sometimes he took me along as his assistant. Weddings particularly. The bridesmaids thought I was so cute, they forgot to be nervous about being hypnotized and went right under. Bridesmaids are hilarious.
But you never hypnotized anybody?
Not until senior year. I was at a party at Cindy Bruno’s house. I had forgotten all about Cindy Bruno. People were talking about some dumb movie they’d seen with a hypnotist in it, and I said, “The whole thing is ridiculous—hypnosis is nothing like that.” And of course everybody said “How do you know?” So I had to tell them—well, I usually didn’t talk much about traveling with my parents—people thought that was really odd, and it killed a conversation pretty quickly. Usually. On this night though I told them I’d worked at a few shows and I knew how it worked—and so of course a boy said, “I bet you can’t hypnotize ME!” It’s a dead giveaway when someone says that. I am not sure whether he wanted to go under or just wanted me to pay attention to him but it really doesn’t matter.
Did it work?
I had him sit down and everybody else gathered around us—there were about a dozen people. But I just focused on him. I stood over him and looked him in the eyes and talked to him about relaxing, getting sleepy, letting go, and I counted back from five—
He went under?
Well, duh. But that’s not the point.
What is the point, then?
When I realized he was really out, I kind of looked around in triumph. You know, “Ta-da!” And out of about a dozen kids listening, all but one had gone under too, just watching and listening. The one still awake—I remember her, her name was Bianca Garcia—she looked at me and cracked up. I put my finger to my lips and I started doing some of the stunts I remembered from Ray’s shows.
What kind of stunts?
You know—they were hot, then they were cold, they were driving cars, they were playing musical instruments. After each stunt I would put them back to sleep. Bianca was laughing her head off—but then after I had them watch a funny movie and then put them back to sleep, all of a sudden Bianca went out too. Like a light. I’d hypnotized all my friends.
How did that feel?
It felt great. I felt like myself for the first time.
What did you do?
I put them all under and I told them that when they woke up they wouldn’t remember my name was “Ellie.” From now on, they would call me “Elle” and they would do what I told them to do and they would go back into a trance whenever I snapped my fingers and said their name and said, “Sleep.”
How did that work out?
Great. I’ve been Elle ever since.
Yes, you are Elle, you can feel the change, can’t you?
She was feeling the change. She let herself go deeper. The voice wasn’t the voice of her thoughts. Just thoughts themselves. She could hear them drifting through her mind. They reminded her that she must have had a boyfriend. Her thoughts were reminding her that she picked out a boy from that group of subjects. Her thoughts were reminding her about . . . Arnie . . . McNair, was that his name? Basketball player, dumb as a box of hammers but hot. Very hot. And trainable and very eager to please. She and Arnie—they’d had fun. Her thoughts reminded her of that pleasure . . . .
“Oh!” she heard herself saying.
That’s it, her thoughts said. Now twice as strong.
“Oh!”
And double the pleasure again.
“Oh . . . my. . . GOD!”
And then, in a glow of pleasure, the dream was over, she was waking slowly. She was feeling relaxed and comfortable and –
“My God!” she said. “Louis, did you undress me?”
She actually wasn’t entirely undressed, but her shirt was unbuttoned and her bra was unsnapped and her breasts were . . . tingling . . .
“No, darling,” Louis said. “I didn’t touch you. Remember?”
Then the memory flooded back. She remembered writhing in the chair and touching herself as he talked softly to her about pleasure. “Louis, did you tell me that I’d feel grateful and happy when I woke up?”
His cheeks reddened again. “May . . . be . . . “ he said.
“That was very naughty of you,” she said. Then, throwing her arms around his neck, she said “But it worked!” She kissed him and drew her lacquered nails gently across his cheek.
When the clinch ended, she took his hand. “Come with me, darling,” she said softly. He followed willingly, imagining he was about to get a sweet reward from his grateful and happy wife.
Which he was; though not in exactly the form he imagined. When they reached the bedroom she turned, put her arms around him, and whispered in his ear, “Louis, did you enjoy my story?”
“I did, Elle,” he said.
“Did you like hearing about the way I treated those boys?”
“May . . . be . . . “ Why were his cheeks burning?
“How did you feel about Cory?” She cupped his chin in her hand and looked into his eyes. “Look at me, Louis Wentworth. The truth?”
He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t not answer. He couldn’t not say, “I . . . envied him . . . .”
“Why?”
“Because you walked all over him.”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it, Louis?”
“Oh, God.” He shut his eyes, seemingly in equal parts pleasure and agony. “Yes, darling, it is.”
“You’ve always wanted it, Louis. I knew that the moment I met you. I’m going to make your dream come true. Look at me, darling. Look at me. Louis, look deeper! You . . . can’t . . . look . . . away!” She snapped her fingers.
“Louis,” she said, “Listen carefully. Do you remember the magazine I gave you? The one with hundreds of pages of the sexiest pictures in the world, pictures of me?”****
“Yes,” he said.
She held out an empty hand. “Here it is,” she said. “Take it.”
His eyes did not leave hers as he pantomimed taking an invisible magazine from her hand. She put both hands on his chest and pushed him back onto the bed.
“Open the magazine, Louis. The magazine is very special. Each picture is twice as sexy as the one before. You’re not allowed even to think about looking at the picture on page 100. I am not sure what that would do to you. You can’t look at the picture on page 50. Or even page 25. But tonight I am going to let you look at the picture on page 10. And when you see it you won’t be able to stop yourself, you’ll try not to but you’ll start touching yourself, you’ll start stroking yourself. Nod your head!”
He nodded, his eyes blank.
“Good,” she said. “Open to page ten.”
His hands mimed the action of turning pages.
“Look at it. Look at it! Louis, you’re sixteen years old, you’re alone in the dark, you can’t help yourself, you try not to look but you can’t look away, look at it!”
His eyes focused on a non-existent image, he fumbled with his zipper and pulled out his erection.
“That’s right, Louis. Touch yourself. Stroke, Louis, you can’t help yourself.”
His hand moved up and down and he groaned.
“You can’t help yourself! Say my name, Louis!”
“Elle!”
“Again!”
“Elle!”
“Good boy, Louis! You’re about to cum but you can’t cum until I give permission, do you understand?”
“Yes . . . Elle,” he panted.
“Beg me,” she said.
“Elle . . . Elle . . . Elle, please, let me cum, let me cum now . . . “
She looked at him in silence for a moment, then spoke.
“No. Zip yourself up. Now, Louis! On your feet, at attention, now!”
Hastily he zipped and jumped to his feet, shoulders back like a soldier on guard, his eyes helplessly fixed on hers.
“How do you feel, Louis?”
“Frustrated . . . “
“Yes, you are, Louis. You were envious of Cory and so you get to feel like him for a while. Louis, Cory went through every day feeling like this. He was obsessed with me, unable to think of anything but how much he wanted me. At night he thought about me but he didn’t feel worthy even to touch himself. In the morning he woke up thinking about me. I know that because he told me later.”
“When?”
“When he asked me to come to Silicon Valley and help him run his company.”
“His company?”
“It’s called Pasitron.”
“Wait, Elle, are you telling me that Cory was . . . Cory Haugen?”
“Yes.”
“That guy must be worth, what, a billion?”
“A little more than that, actually. He showed me his financials when he proposed. Very romantic.”
“He asked you to marry him? When?”
“A year before I met you. He showed up out of the blue and told me he’d loved me all through high school and ever since. He still loved me. He wanted me to come and help him run the company—and marry him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him no.”
“Why?”
“Louis, darling.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek lightly. “Cory Haugen is a nerd.”
“Really?”
“Yes, my love. And I didn’t know it then, but I was waiting for you.” She smiled like a cat who had just swallowed a very juicy mouse. “You envied Cory, didn’t you? Well, now you feel the way he felt all through high school. I think I will let you feel it for a few days, just as a favor to you. Do you like it?”
He squirmed uncomfortably. Then, with a puzzled look on his face, he said, “Yes.”
“Fine,” she said. “Thank me and you can go.”
“Thank you, Elle,” he said. “But . . . go where?”
“What do I care?” she said, waving her hand. “When I want you, I’ll let you know. And remember—no looking at the magazine, no touching, no stroking, no cumming, until I give permission, understand?”
“Yes, Elle.”
“Off you go!”
She turned her back on him. After a minute she heard the door close.
He hadn’t looked back, and she hadn’t watched him go.
So neither of them could see how broadly the other was smiling.