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“No audio, no film, roger that.” There was also no medical equipment of any kind, no way to record the brainwaves of his subjects or REM sleep. It was crazy but the check hadn’t bounced so I was okay with it. I saw no excitement on his face, could detect no nervousness. Just that serenity. He was going to change the world. He was five-by-five on that.

Althea Gibson showed up fifteen minutes early. She was one of the two who had sent Elgin a headshot, probably taken by a professional photographer who had used a ringlight to make her look a bit younger. She was about forty and on the portly side. I met her at her car and introduced myself as Mr. Elgin’s assistant.

“I’m a little scared,” she said while we walked to the house. “I hope I’ll be all right. Will I be all right, Mr. Davis?”

“Sure,” I said. “Easy as falling off a log.”

They say truth is stranger than fiction, don’t they. Here was a woman at the end of a country road that dead-ended at a private beach, talking to a man she had never met before, and had she met Elgin or only talked to him on the phone? She didn’t think anything bad would happen to her even though she had been told she would be taking a drug described as a “light hypnotic.” She didn’t think that because bad things happened to other people, on the TV news. Was it lack of imagination that she had never thought about rape or a shallow grave or only the close horizon of her perception? That raises questions about what imagination and perception even are. Maybe I was thinking a certain way because I had seen certain things on the other side of the world, where bad things happened to people all the time, sometimes even to hairdressers.

“For eight hundred dollars, how could I refuse?” She lowered her voice and said, “Am I going to get high?”

“I really don’t know. You’re our first…” What? “Our first customer.”

“You’re not going to take advantage of me, are you?” Said in a joking way that meant she hoped she really was joking. “Or him?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Elgin said, coming down the hall to greet her on the stoop. He had a little flat case like a recon officer’s mapcase on a strap over one shoulder. “I’m safe as can be and so is Bill.” He held out both of his hands and took both of hers and gave them a brief squeeze. “You are going to enjoy this. It’s a promise.”

I gave her the release form, which was probably about as legal as a three-dollar bill. She gave it a cursory skim, filled in the blanks at the top, signed at the bottom. She was living her life and did not believe it would end or even change. Blindness to possibility is either a blessing or a curse. You choose. He led her to the couch in the former dining room and took a beaker of clear liquid from his case. He pulled the rubber stopper and gave it to her. She took it gingerly, as if it might be hot.

“What is it?”

“A light hypnotic, as I told you. It will put you in a serene state, and from there it may lull you to sleep. There will be no side effects and no hangover. It’s quite harmless.”

She looked at the beaker, then made a toasting gesture at me and said “Over the teeth, over the gums, look out tummy, here it comes.” She tossed it off easy as that, truth being stranger than fiction, then looked to Elgin. “I expected a kick but there wasn’t one. Are you sure it wasn’t just water?”

“Mostly water,” he said with a smile. “You’ll be back in your car and headed home to… where is it you live? Refresh me.”

“North Windham.”

“Back in your car and headed back to North Windham by four o’clock with a check for eight hundred dollars in your purse. In the meantime, relax and I’ll tell you what I want you to do. It’s quite simple.” He took the beaker and returned the stopper and put it back in his little case where there was a loop to hold it. He took out the only other thing in the case. It was a picture of a small house in the woods. The house was painted red. It had a green door atop two stone steps and a brick chimney. He handed it to her.

“I’m going to play some music. Very soft and very calm. I want you to listen to it and look at this picture.”

“Ooo, I’m feeling it now.” She smiled. “It’s like from smoking a doob. Mellow!”

“Look at the picture, Mrs. Gibson, and tell yourself you want to see what’s inside that house.”

I was writing all this down, G for Gibson and E for Elgin. Pothooks racing across the page of a virgin steno book. Doing what I was being paid to do.

“What is inside it?”

“That’s up to you. Perhaps you will dream of going inside, then you can see for yourself. Will you try to do that?”

“If I don’t dream of the inside of the house, do I still get to keep the eight hundred dollars?”

“Absolutely. Even if you just have a pleasant little nap.”

“If I do go to sleep, will you wake me up by four?” She was starting to drift. “My neighbor is picking up my daughter at school, but I have to be back by six to make her… make her…”

“Make her supper?”

“Yes, her supper. Look at that green door! I would never paint a green door for a red house. Too Christmassy.”

“Look at the picture.”

“I am.”

“Dream of the house. Try to go inside.” A hypnotist’s chant.