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some advances in forensic science, the man was proved totally and completely innocent. The testimony from the hypnosis hadn’t been true at all. Sometimes, it seems, the subconscious mind lies.

  My psychiatrist had heard the story before. “If only you knew how many times,” he said. Apparently, hypnosis wasn’t to blame. It was the quack doctor’s fault and nothing of the kind had ever happened to the good Doctor Allen.

  I didn’t put all my eggs in that one basket. Before getting there for that first appointment with my psychiatrist I learned all I could about hypnotism. By talking with his other payments and pretending I was worried, I got the exact step-by-step of the doctor’s hypnotic routine. I developed my own routine, and I practiced that in the mirror every night, for hours at a time.

  As the doctor told me about my descent into deep sleep I unfocused my eyes and relaxed my posture. He asked me questions. I answered in a low monotone. When he finally snapped his fingers to end my trance I jumped a little and looked around the room confused, like I was surprised to see how low the fire in the fireplace had burned.

  Once in a while, I threw in an embarrassing answer for some extra believability. The hardest part was stopping myself from looking up at Allen’s perfectly round, three-inch bald spot every time the he nodded his head. Other than that, faking hypnotism was easy. The doctor didn’t have a clue. I fooled him for years. It got boring.

  Allen did have one interesting habit. I couldn’t decide if I thought it was funny, or if it made me mad. He cheated on his hypnotism. Sometimes he’d “hypnotize” me, but instead of asking questions he’d leave me sitting there while he did paperwork or meditated. I assume he pulls this kind of thing with all his patients.

  I fooled my psychiatrist literally hundreds of times. I suppose I’m not sure what to blame. Maybe it was too easy all those years and I just lost concentration. Maybe I was thinking too hard about saving Cath from that meddler. It could have been Doctor Allen’s change in hypnotic technique. I can’t say for sure because I don’t remember. For the first time, I wasn’t faking. Allen really hypnotized me.

  I woke up to the snap of his fingers with real surprise. When I asked the psychiatrist what I’d said, he fed me obvious lie after obvious lie. I’d watched the good Doctor Allen the same way I watch everyone. I knew what he was hiding from me. The fat little gossip knew all about how the things in my past really happened, and he knew about Cath. My subconscious mind didn’t lie.

  I didn’t lie to myself about the doctor. He would blab to Cath everything he knew about me. But he would need time to work himself up enough to tattle on me. He’d need two weeks at least. Professional Ethics would be the reason he’d give himself for that. The real cause of this delay would be fear of crossing me, after hearing what I’d done from my own hypnotized mouth.

  Two weeks was more than enough time. I only needed one week to make my preparations. Allen was a member of an exclusive club, and he didn’t even know it. The thing the members of this club have in common is that they’re all involved in my life, and they all have the ability to harm me. For everyone in the club, I have a customized plan of disposal ready. My plan for the psychiatrist was one of my favorites. It played on Doctor Allen’s love of the outdoors. A man’s dearest love and his most fragile point are very often one and the same.

  I counted the days until my next appointment with Doctor Allen. There were seven days. In that time I gathered all the tools I needed. The morning of day seven I hid my kit close by the psychiatrist’s office. I made sure that no one saw me leave it. It goes without saying that you never want to raise unnecessary attention or suspicion, in particular on the day of the big event. People don’t forget things like seeing a man go into an alley and hide a clinking, strap-on pregnancy empathy belly behind a trash can.

  If anything, I was more friendly than normal towards Allen when I got to his office. The psychiatrist’s building was bigger than it needed to be, because his business was the only one in it. Through the front door was the marble floor and high ceiling of the waiting room. There was a desk Allen hardly ever used on the right and a fire door that was locked from the outside. On the left there was a winding, stone stairwell that went up to the second level. Behind that was the door to the basement; it was always locked. The doctor’s office was straight ahead through the waiting room. It had carpet, a desk, Allen’s chair, a couch for patients, and a fireplace with a rack of fire tending things like pokers. If no one was in the waiting room, the doors to the office were always open. The bathrooms were on the second floor. The doors slammed themselves shut with spring hinges so that you could hear them downstairs. Also on the second floor were the empty rooms the psychiatrist used to store his filing. He didn’t bother to lock these rooms and in the back of the last room there was a window that looked down on the alley outside.

  I walked in through the front door, smiled at my psychiatrist, and asked to use the bathroom. He nodded and I looked at his perfect circle bald spot. I went up the stairs and pushed open the door to the men’s room open, but I didn’t go inside. I hurried down the hall to the last filing room, opened the door, and cracked the window in back. Then I went back to the men’s room, opened the door, and watched it spring shut. I opened it again, went inside, flushed a toilet, and left to join the doctor downstairs. He didn’t question me but I told him anyway that I’d almost forgotten to flush and asked if it meant anything, psychologically.

  A record of my session with Doctor Allen that day would’ve looked a lot like the records of a hundred other sessions. The mood on the other hand, that was something new. The psychiatrist’s morbid curiosity prodded him to stop hiding what he knew and start asking real questions, but he was afraid of me and that kept him from asking. It was obvious to me because of tiny changes in his tone of voice that every question was a struggle for my good psychiatrist.

  Allen kept on with the normal questions. He was putting off hypnotism. I thought maybe I’d ask him about it. There was no need. My psychiatrist started into his new method of hypnosis. I looked where he told me to look and breathed how he asked me to breath. He said I was drifting into a deep sleep. My eyes unfocused and I slouched back on the couch. The Psychiatrist asked me questions like he always had every time before last week. He asked them one after another and I answered in soft monotone. I could tell that he knew. The good Doctor Allen pretended everything was normal. Maybe he didn’t have the courage to admit it to himself. But he knew all the same. I wasn’t hypnotized. I was faking it. Except for last week, every single one of the hundred times he’d hypnotized me, I’d been faking it. And he knew. Still, the doc kept on with his questions. He didn’t know what else to do, I suppose.

  Allen asked me to tell him about my mother. I didn’t answer, I just lay there totally quiet. He didn’t say anything. The doctor couldn’t stop himself from staring at me. Slowly, deliberately, I refocused me eyes. I tensed my muscles and un-slumped. I sat up and looked my psychiatrist dead in the eye.

  “I’d like you to know that I take doctor-patient confidentiality very seriously,” I said.

  Allen looked down at the ground. He snapped his fingers. I smiled and got up from the couch. I thanked the doctor, shook his limp hand, and walked out of the building. The man was clearly shaken. Because he was shaken, I knew Allen wouldn’t be telling Cath or anyone my secrets on that day. In a week or so he might’ve worked up the courage. But he wouldn’t have seen me again. Before our next appointment I’d have had a voicemail from him, giving some reason why he had to cancel our appointment.

  I had some time to kill. Allen had an appointment with an old woman named Darla, then came his appointment with Cath, and after that would be his appointment with me. I suppose it’d be more correct to say my appointment with him. It wasn’t in his book.

  I went to see a film. I enjoy watching films, and I like watching people watch films. Which I watch depends on the audience and the movie. When I left the theater, it was almost evening. The doctor would be part of the way thro
ugh his session with Cath.

  I got in my car, drove to the spot I’d planned, and parked it. No one saw me walking down the back alleys to Allen’s building. On the way I picked up the pregnancy empathy belly. I made my way behind the building. The lights in the psychiatrist’s office were on. I stopped to listen and look for signs of trouble. There weren’t any. I leaned around the edge of the building to check the small parking lot. The doctor’s car was still there. Usually he kept it parked there overnight on Friday and sometimes even longer. Allen’s car was the only one in the parking lot. Cath’s car was gone and so was she.

  I shuffled the cloth around inside my makeshift bag so there would be no noisy metallic clinking and strapped the empathy belly to my back. Slowly, I wedged the rubber of my right shoe into the mortar-space between two stones of the building’s back wall. I started up. The going was slow. I didn’t want to risk slipping or knocking something loose. Right on the other side of that wall, Allen sat in his office.

  After he saw his last patient every Friday, Allen always took notes and meditated on the week’s events. I knew without a doubt that is what he was doing while I