She yawned again. “Can you come back later? I haven’t slept in forever. I was up all night studying Jung’s theories on ego and personalities, and right now all I really want to do is get back to studying the unconscious mind in my bed.”
“I need to do this now.”
“Right now? Right this very second?”
“Please?”
She opened the door a few more inches and yawned again. She wore a Guns N’ Roses tee-shirt and pink panties. “I’m gonna need sustenance and three minutes to make myself presentable for semi-public consumption. There’s a vending machine at the end of the hall.”
“What do you want—”
Before I could get the sentence out, the door closed.
I found the vending machines and bought two Kit Kat bars, a Snickers, and two cups of coffee. Carefully balancing everything, I returned to her room. The door was ajar. I nudged it open with my foot and stepped inside. Kaylie was sitting on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands. She had brushed her hair and put on a pair of running shorts.
Without looking up, she said, “What happened the other night…I was really drunk, I mean, really drunk. I don’t normally just invite random guys back up to my room like that. That’s not me. I don’t want you to think I’m like that.”
“I didn’t, I mean I don’t. It’s okay, really.”
She reached out a hand and took one of the coffees. “Hand me the sugar? It’s behind you.”
The dorm room wasn’t very large, only about ten feet square. Two single beds lined the walls on either side, a small dresser near the door, and another folding table with a makeshift kitchen under a window covered with a towel to help keep the light out.
I set everything down on the table beside the microwave, and a bowl containing about a thousand packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise pilfered from area fast-food restaurants. Sugar was in a large Tupperware container. I handed it to her. Kaylie drank about a third of the black coffee, then filled the cup back up with sugar, stirred it with her finger, and drank again. “The coffee from the machine is tar-water, but I think the school pipes in extra caffeine. They know what momma needs. I can feel the lights in the factory starting to come on.”
There was a white down ski parka bunched up in the corner of the room. I nodded at it. “Yours?”
“My roommate’s.”
“Where is she?”
“Dunno. Sheisinto random guys. Why am I hypnotizing you?”
Her eyes had come to life. She watched me now. “And why do you smell like a sewer pipe? You look like you crawled here through the mud. This is no way to impress a lady.”
I should have showered first, but I hadn’t had time. I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Frat stuff, hazing. I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
“Which one?”
“Does it matter?”
“Naw, not really. They’re all the same. Are those for me, too?”
I handed her one of the Kit Kat bars and ate the second, the first thing I’d eaten since yesterday. We split the Snickers.
“You still haven’t told me why I’m hypnotizing you.”
I spent half the drive back trying to figure out what I was going to tell her. I didn’t want to involve someone else. The less she knew, the better. I told her my parents were both killed in a car accident when I was four. I told her parts of that day had come back to me in dreams, but not all.
“And you want to remember the rest?”
I nodded.
“I think I can work with that. Have you ever been hypnotized?”
“No.”
She finished her coffee and reached for mine. I gave her what was left and watched her fill about an inch of the cup with more sugar before drinking it down. “Hypnosis is not like in the movies. You can count backwards, snap your fingers, and all that, but for the most part, that’s all show. Do you know where the term ‘fall asleep’ comes from?”
