THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF LOUIS AND ELLE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. DO YOU REMEMBER THE NIGHT WE MET?
It was a fall night in the Tri-County Area, and Louis and Elle were enjoying a quiet evening at their home in the East Hills.
Elle was knitting. Improbably, she managed to make herself look sexy while doing this homely chore—sort of like a cross between Madame Defarge and Cersei Lannister from GAME OF THRONES. “Louis,“ she said. “I read the chapters in your new book. They’re really wonderful, darling.“
“Do you really like them, Elle?“ her husband Louis said in a casual tone that fooled neither himself nor Elle. The truth was that, though he had become a best-selling young-adult and mystery writer with her as his hypnotic muse, Elle was the only reader in the world whose approval he really cared about.
“Yes I do, Louis,” she said. “And I have to say our little Hypno-Teen has really grown up. She is a sophomore now? Louis, where do you get all the wonderful details about life at Charcot, that college you made up for her to attend? I mean things like the souls of professors who are denied tenure being put into gargoyles on the science lab roof, or the fourth-floor smoking lounge where the faculty ghosts appear on Michaelmas, or that locked porno cage where the missing grad student hid from his adviser for ten years? Were those things that students actually talked about when you were in school?”
“No,“ Louis said, and fell silent. After a moment, his wife looked up from her knitting with some concern. It wasn’t like her highly verbal husband simply to answer in a monosyllable.
“Why, Louis,“ she said. “Whatever is wrong?“
“Nothing really,” he said. She was stunned. Remarkably enough, her wonderfully submissive husband, right before her eyes, was trying to . . . keep something from her.
She leaned forward, reached out with a lacquered fingernail, and put it under his chin. She raised his head until he was looking into her eyes. “Look at me, Louis Wentworth,” she said slowly. “What . . . is . . . wrong?”
His eyes widened and his face softened. She smiled. Silly boy! “I’m sorry, Elle. I just had a memory of my own college years. That wasn’t a very happy time for me.“
Elle studied him quizzically. As often happened, she found herself confronted with the fact that there were still many things about her hypno-husband that she still did not fully understand. They had been married for two years, and he, under her hypnotic influence, would tell her anything she asked. But she didn’t necessarily know the right questions to ask.
He had gone to elite Esdaile College in rural New England. She had just assumed those must have been good years. She’d gone to State—21,000 students—and had envied the kids at the top schools. Her college years involved 300-student psychology lectures, work-study jobs in the dining hall, huge dorms like prison cellblocks, and grabby boys from the frats trying to score with freshman chicks by getting them drunk. Esdaile and the other four-year colleges had seemed, by contract like a long romp—frisbee on the quad, seminars with famous poets on the meaning of life, hikes in the New England woods.
But Louis apparently didn’t feel the same way. She continued gazing into his eyes, smiling warmly. “Louis,” she said. “Tell me why the memories are unhappy.”
He was still trying to hold back. “Louis,” she said softly, “I want you to imagine you are high up above the ground, looking down at yourself as you were back then. Can you see young Louis?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Now that young man has unhappy memories, doesn’t he?”
Louis nodded.
“But they can’t touch you, you are high above him. So you can tell me what he’s unhappy about.”
“Maxie,” he said.
“Who’s Maxie?”
“My girlfriend,” he said.
“Tell me about Maxie,” she said.
His face still showed reluctance.
“OK, Louis,” she said. “Just let go, Louis, let go and go to that safe place where you can look at your life like a movie, you know that place, so safe, you’re sitting in a comfortable seat and nothing can harm you, just tell me what’s on the screen.”
His eyes were closed by now, but she could see them moving back and forth behind his eyelids. “M….Maxie….”
“What does she look like?”
“So . . . beautiful . . . the most beautiful girl . . . “
“Describe her,” Elle said, vaguely nettled. She was used to being the most beautiful girl in Louis’s world. Still, she had asked—and even a hypnodomme should not ask questions if she doesn’t want to hear the answer.
“Describe her, Louis.”
“Tall—so tall—blonde—such long legs—she was a model during high school….Slender…big eyes…”
“How did you meet her?”
“We were in the same creative writing seminar freshman year,” he said. “At the first class I got called on to read my poem… I almost threw up I was so nervous and afterwards I wanted to run out, but she followed after me and told me she . . . loved the poem . . . .I … couldn’t believe it, this beautiful girl, I would never have had the nerve to even speak to her but she wanted to talk to me….” He sighed heavily. “I… couldn’t believe I had the nerve to ask her to have coffee…”
“Shhh, Shhh, darling, that’s all right, tell me more, you know you can tell me, I am the official listener . . . “
His face smoothed out. “Yes,” he said, and sighed peacefully.
“Watch the movie,” she said, as his eyes darted back and forth behind his lids. “What happens next?”
“We went out…we went to Bonfire…I … she… I … kissed her…I’d never been so happy in my life, she said she loved . . . me! Nobody nerdy Louis who went to public high school and was editor of the literary magazine…We were in love….” In some weird way his face showed at the same time a blissful smile and a grimace of regret. “And she was the most beautiful girl in the freshman class, she loved me, I thought that meant I was special. I should have known . . .”
“Listen carefully, Louis,” she said. “this is just a movie, you can watch and enjoy because it’s your movie and if you need to you can forget it or …. We can change it . . .Now, tell me the rest of the story . . . .”
“I’d never been in love before . . . No one… no one… had ever LOVED me before…It was the best feeling….but then . . . well, it was summer, she went to New York to do some shoots . . . I got a job digging swimming pools… she said she’d visit but . . . I just stopped hearing from her… and then in the fall, I heard she’d transferred to NYU so she could keep modeling. I went to see her but . . . it was like she didn’t even know me . . .”
He was crying quietly, two silent tears….
“Yes, Louis, it hurt you, didn’t it?”
“Yes. I missed her for the rest of my time at college,” he said. “Well, I went to Spain for my junior year, that was fun—but then when I came back everything was the same. It was always as if she had just left the room before I arrived, and I remembered that I’d felt special and then I’d felt so bad. And . . . and I kept trying to do something that would, you know, win her back. That’s why I wrote those ridiculous avant-garde books, you know, I was hoping she and her snooty friends in New York would be impressed, and she’d write me but she never did.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
“Sort of. She showed up in women’s magazines as a model wearing fancy clothes. She was on LAW & ORDER: SVU as a lying witness, I was watching at home and it just flattened me. I read about her a couple of times in gossip columns showing up at trendy nightclubs with TV stars on her arm.”
“She’s an actress?” This was complicated, since it implied she might be lying in wait for them when they turned on TV or went to the movies.”
“Mostly a model, she did some acting … Then I heard she married some hedge fund guy later ….”
“It’s all right to feel it, Louis, let yourself feel it, it’s safe here, feel it, and then . . . when you’re ready, darling, you can … let go of it … just for now… could you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
He didn’t speak, just sighed deeply. She could see him going deeper into trance, the lines in his face smoothing out, as if he were getting younger in front of her eyes.
Elle tapped her red-nailed forefinger against her teeth, meditatively. Her beloved man was suffering, which made her want to help him. Worse yet, he was suffering over another woman. If Louis was going to suffer over a woman, it should be her—and it should be suffering he would enjoy and ask for more of. And that gave her an idea that might heal Louis and (equally important) work to Elle’s benefit.
“That’s it, Louis,” she said. “Just let go and let’s look at some more memories, shall we? Let’s look at some happy memories. Do you remember when we met?”
He gave a sleepy smile. (It was so open, so almost childlike in its joy, that she found it unbearably sexy; she suppressed that thought—for now.) “Yes, at Juliet’s? You . . . you . . . hypnotized me and glued me to my chair….”
“Yes, that was fun, Louis, but I mean do you remember the first time we met? At Esdaile College?”
His face showed puzzlement. “Wha—when? You weren’t at Esdaile—I thought you went to State…?”
“I graduated from State, sweety. I started at Esdaile, but I ran out of money and had to come home.”
He was still puzzled. “When I was there?”
“Yes, darling—I was a freshman when you were a sophomore.”
“I don’t remember you—how can that be, Elle, you are so stunning I would never forget you, I mean—”
“Shhh, Shhh, darling,” she said with a wintry smile. He was winning his way back into her favor but there was still some distance to go. “There’s a reason you don’t remember. And when I tell you about how we met you will remember at last. Do you understand? Nod your head.”
Still seeming puzzled, he nodded.
“We met in the fall of your sophomore year—I think it was the weekend you came back from New York—you went to the big show in the—what was that place where they had entertainment?”
“You mean Braid Auditorium?”
“Yes, that’s it, Braid Auditorium—you remember, it was the big hypnosis show, you told me later you came because you were trying to forget. And I was new on campus but of course I knew all about hypnosis from Uncle Ray so I went sort of because it reminded me of him. And I saw you there—wait, first, remember the show? You’re sitting in the auditorium, the hypnotist was … Kate the Great, you remember her, right?”*
He nodded. “From Las Vegas? Yes ….”
“No, no, not Las Vegas, she was at Esdaile that night, you can see her and hear her as he comes out and so many students volunteer to be hypnotized—you wanted to go up but you were too shy, weren’t you, darling?—and she had them do all kinds of sexy stunts. Remember the girl sitting next to you went under in her chair without knowing it, and Kate turned her into a sexy dancer and when she woke up she was so confused that her shirt was unbuttoned, remember? And you didn’t go up but by the time Kate finished you were feeling a little woozy, you wished you’d been hypnotized, and I saw you from across the room and—well, I swooped on you. Louis, I knew I could get you interested, remember I was 18 and I was wearing that crocheted top you like and no bra,** you can picture it, can’t you?”
He was smiling broadly and nodding. The top had made a deep impression on him and she was planting the visual back in his memory.
“I struck up a conversation with you, Louis. It wasn’t hard. You kept looking down my top and saying ‘Yeah’ and ‘For sure,’ and you agreed when I told you to buy me some coffee, remember?”
“I think I do,” he said.
“We went to that place where we always went for coffee—you know, that place everyone went for coffee—it was—you know—”
“The Mabuse?”
“Yes, that’s it, the Mabuse. We got lattes and talked for a while. You were feeling sad and I asked why. You told me you were sad about Maxie. And I told you I thought I could help you forget if you came back to my room. It wasn’t hard to convince you, with the crocheted top and all. So I took you home. I sat on the bed with my legs crossed, and I had you sit in the desk chair and we talked about the show and how Kate had hypnotized the subjects and how some people went under in the audience, that they would go under without knowing it, that being awake and being hypnotized weren’t that different, you weren’t sure at that moment if you were in a trance or not, were you, and you would follow my suggestions because they were your thoughts and then I said you were in that chair—you couldn’t stand up—you remember what that felt like—”
He nodded. He remembered, in fact, because Elle had stuck him to a chair when they actually met years later; but again the memory would transplant itself into the past.
“And then I said, ‘Louis, let’s do some work on forgetting that bitch Maxie, shall we?’ You remember what happened next—that crocheted top—I reached up and—one button at a time—I took it off. Remember!”
His entranced breathing quickened slightly, and his eyes were fluttering rapidly. He nodded.
“Then I reached over and opened your pants, Louis, remember how that felt? I unzipped you and pulled out your cock and I began to rub it between my breasts, Louis, remember how I looked then—18 years old, so pretty and young, my breast so round, so firm—you were about to explode—And then…. And then…. And then I stopped and said, ‘Okay, that’s enough for tonight. Zip yourself up, run along home, and call me as soon as you get there—that’s it—off you go!’ and before you knew it you were out in the hall and all you could think about was my voice and my breasts and you stumbled home—it was a beautiful fall night but you couldn’t wait to get there because I had said you could call me—and then you were in your room and you locked the door and pulled out your phone and called me. ‘Hello, big boy,’ I said, and then I told you to touch yourself and I whispered to you until you exploded right there in your dorm room—I told you to say my name and you went ‘Elle! Elle! Elle!’ and then you lost your words and I laughed at you. ‘Good boy, Louis,’ I said. ‘Now clean yourself up and get in bed. You’ll go straight to sleep and you will call me in the morning.” And in about ten seconds you were out like a light. Remember?”
Louis’s eye movements showed he was still seeing the story on the back of his eyelids. He was groaning softly, and she could see that he was hard.
“Then it was morning, wasn’t it, and you jumped out of bed, didn’t you, and you couldn’t wait to call me—but when I answered it I didn’t seem all that excited, did I? I was friendly but a little distracted. I told you I was sure I’d see you soon and hung up. You were so puzzled that all morning during classes I was all you could think of, what had happened, and it was confusing but, Louis—at least you weren’t thinking about Maxie, were you? No, you were thinking about this mysterious new girl you knew somehow that you wanted to be hypnotized, but why was she acting so standoffish, had she lost interest in you? And then when your 11 a.m. class let out you looked down at your phone and there was a text from me: COME HERE RIGHT AWAY I NEED YOU and you practically ran to my dorm, almost fell on the way, didn’t you, and when you got there I was sitting at my computer and I told you to write my freshman composition assignment for me and to hurry up about it! Remember?”
He wanted to remember—it seemed like a fun story—and so he nodded. “Yes, Elle, did I do a good job?”
“Oh, I hardly know, darling,” she said dismissively. “I wouldn’t ever turn in anyone else’s work. I had already written the assignment myself and that’s the one I turned in. But you didn’t know that? You thought I needed your help? You were so thrilled to be doing something—anything—for me—you wanted to do more—you wanted to be important to me—you didn’t want anyone else to do anything for me—and I sent you home and told you I’d call you if I needed you—and I was all you could think about, wasn’t I? Nod, darling.”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“Then that night and told you to take me to a movie—they were showing CASABLANCE in that place—you know—where they showed movies, you know that place—”
“The Lang Memorial Theater?”
“Yes, that’s right, the Lang Memorial, and we went there and I took you back to my room and then—remember, Louis—I went down on you, I took you in my mouth, and you exploded, you couldn’t believe it, it was better than anything you’d ever had before, wasn’t it? And then when I was done I said, ‘Clean yourself up and go home, Louis. I’ll call you if I need you.’
“Well, that was about it, wasn’t it? You were my puppy dog after that, and you went where I said, you did what I said, and we had …. such great sex ….. And for the rest of the year, Louis, you were special on campus, you were the guy who was with that hot freshman with the crocheted top, everybody wondered how you’d landed me, didn’t they? Remember all those fun times—when it snowed and we did—you know, we did that thing that people do at Esdaile when it snows—”
“Snow demons?”
“Yes, that’s right, you built me an awesome snow demon— and that Christmas thing they do—”
“The Bell Concert?”
“Yes! The Bell Concert—we did all those things together and then . . . . Well, okay… then ….well, okay, then, I ran out of money had to leave school at the end of the year, didn’t I? And you were shattered, you didn’t want me to go and remember what I did? Remember? No, of course you don’t, darling, you know why?”
He shook his head no.
“Because on the last night I was there I took you very deep and I told you that I was just a wonderful daydream you’d had, I wasn’t real, and you could slowly forget me and you’d have a wonderful time in Madrid—”
“Córdoba.”
“Right, Córdoba, of course, and then I told you—I promised you—that someday I would send you a message—a psychic message—to come to me—when I was ready for you—and you could know that, you could count on that and just forget and have a wonderful time in Spain, and … well, you did, didn’t you?”
He nodded, smiling at the memories. Elle made a note that she would need to ask some questions about that year in Spain; he seemed suspiciously happy about it.
“Anyway, then you came back from Spain, it was senior year, and you thought about Maxie but then remember when she turned up?”
“What—Maxie? She never came to see me . . . .”
“Yes, darling, remember she showed up and she looked different—too thin, dark circles under her eyes, like she strung out on cocaine, and she told you she was sorry, so sorry, for what she had done, and she knew you’d moved on but she hoped you’d forgive her, and she was—well, she was becoming a nun.”
“A nun? I thought she was a Buddhist?”
“Yes, um, yes, just so, she was becoming a Buddhist nun, and she went off to, um, you know, Mongolia to work with orphans and she’s still there somewhere, but she also took a vow of silence and that was that. You were sad but you could see she needed that new life. Of course, every now and then you may see magazine photos or tv shots of her… first cousin…. Maxine.”
“Maxine was Maxie’s name,” he mumbled sleepily.
“Yes, it was, it was her . . . grandmother’s name—her grandmother was a nuclear scientist, she was such a wonderful person that both of her daughters wanted to name their first daughter after her, and neither one would give way, so they both did—and the two girls had the same name and they were almost the same age, they were like cousins on that old TV show, identical almost, Maxie and Maxine, and Maxie went off to Bur—Mongolia—and Maxine became a model and an actress. And she married some hedge fund guy ….”
She reached out with a lacquered nail and gently drew circles on his forehead. “That’s very good, Louis, now shh, shh, go deeper, you’re going to sleep and replay those memories because now you can remember me, you can remember how Maxie broke your heart but I made you forget and you were special and now you write books to impress me and Louis you DO impress me—” suddenly Elle was feeling utterly sincere—“I think you’re the smartest, most talented person I know and I love to be with you and read what you’ve written and have fun with you and you are so so so special to that girl in the crocheted top, so just sleep now, sleep deeper, deeper, remember ….”
His body melted and his eyes darted back and forth as Elle stole out of the room to pour herself a new glass of wine. She suddenly felt very tired and almost shaky; writing herself into her husband’s past had been hard work in part because she made up a story that would have made her happy too, and to do that she had to remember her own college years which were not really that wonderful either, but now—because a hypnotist can’t induce trance in a subject without going into a trance herself—she too was beginning to remember those hallucinated happy times at the Braid and the Mabuse and the Lang Theater and Snow Angels—she would have done well at Esdaile, and the crocheted top would have wowed them—it wowed them at State, but—well, she needed to deal with her new memories….
And then suddenly she felt herself lifted into the air and gave a little girly squeal of surprise and delight because while she was brooding on her own college years her sexy husband had apparently woken up, stolen behind her into the kitchen, and scooped her up into his arms. She felt suddenly light and carefree, like a doll. It was an unusual feeling but not exactly … unpleasant.
“Louis Wentworth, what do you think you are doing?” she said.
“Elle Murphy, have I told you recently that you are the best thing that ever happened to me? That every man I know envies me? That I feel like a millionaire when I take you out to Greene’s for dinner? That I still daydream about you in that crocheted top?”
“Oh, do you?” He seemed puzzled that she found it funny, but that didn’t stop him from carrying her upstairs to the bedroom, where he gently deposited her on the bed and then carefully peeled her out of her clothes and then hastily tore off his own and climbed on the bed and entered her. She was astounded at his insistence as he moved in and out of her—it was a side of his erotic nature she rarely saw; and then it occurred to her that her hypnosis had summoned up the spirit of her husband as he had been a decade and a half ago, a virile 19-year-old, inexperienced but strong and ardent and so eager to please—and that image, of teen-aged Louis inside teen-aged Elle suddenly pushed her over a waterfall she had not even seen and she screamed “OH MY GOD LOUIS!” as a stunning orgasm hit her. Above her, he was still moving in and out, and she reached a hand up, stroked his cheek, then slapped it lightly but firmly. “Come NOW, little man!” she said and he did immediately, exploding inside her with a muffled shout of “Elle!”
They lay there joined together, almost stunned by what had just happened; then Louis rolled off her and they lay side by side looking at the ceiling. Slowly, Elle’s vision cleared and her heartrate fell to normal. But after this strange visit to the past, she felt reluctant to return to the ordinary world right away. And so, she raised herself up and then threw herself across her dazed husband and whispered, “Louis, remember when I took you to my room and stuck you to the chair? Then I did this—” She moved down him and began to stroke his cock with her breasts, touching the tip first with one nipple, then the other, and then lowering them down to trap it between them. It was a successful move—almost at once, Louis was erect again and she heard him draw in his breath in surprise and pleasure. She moved her breasts up and down his shaft and said, “Louis, what’s my name?”
After a moment he understood her and gasped, “Elle!”
She moved faster. “Again!”
“Elle!”
“WHAT’S MY NAME, BITCH?” After she said that she dipped down and took his full length in her mouth and he exploded again, for all the world like a teenager who could stay hard all night.
“Good boy,” she said as she rolled off him. “Now we’re going to drowse for a while, and as we do you’re going to remember all those wicked things we did long ago at Esdaile in my dorm room, things you had only dared to dream about before you met me, things no other girl—no. other. girl. ever. ….could ever do, only the girl in the crocheted top, so sexy, and when you wake again you’re going to do them again, so let go now, shhh, shhh….”
His eyes fluttered closed, and she felt hers doing the same. But he suspected that soon he would wake again and their strange college reunion would go on well into the small hours of the morning.
Which would be just fine with Elle Murphy, Esdaile College’s newest alumna. She was having fun.
She nestled her head on her husband’s chest and felt sleep stealing over her.
The last thing heard was Louis’s sleepy voice saying, “Elle? You DO still have the crocheted top, right?”
* * *