When She Was Bad: A Thriller by Jonathan Nasaw Page B

Lyssy called it.
    “Comfy?” asked Dr. Al, taking a shiny silver dollar out of his pocket, holding it over Lyssy’s head, and deftly walking it from knuckle to knuckle to distract Lyssy’s attention while he leaned in close and whispered the trigger phrase into Lyssy’s ear: “Lyssy is a goooood boy; Lyssy is a goooood boy.”
    That was all it took: Lyssy’s breathing slowed, then his eyes fluttered closed. To test him, Corder suggested to Lyssy that his right arm was growing lighter and lighter, so weightless it was floating off the chair—and it did.
    The rest of the session occupied only a few minutes, which Corder used to implant the following suggestion in his eminently suggestible patient: that when he, Lyssy, grew frightened thinking about the future, about leaving the Institute, about his trial, about jail or whatever, instead of giving in to panic he would tell himself: Whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.
    “Okay, let me hear you say it.”
    “Whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.”
    “Again.”
    “Whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.”
    As always, extracting Lyssy from his trance state took longer than getting him into it. Corder had to explain the exit strategy—when I snap my fingers twice, you will awaken refreshed and calm—as well as reinforce the trigger phrase for the next session. But when they were done, and Lyssy was sitting on the edge of the couch, his little feet, one real, one prosthetic, swinging just short of the carpet, Corder was well pleased with his afternoon’s work.
    And when he asked Lyssy at the end of the session, casually, almost as an afterthought, how he was feeling now, the boy—no, the man!, Corder had to remind himself; with Lyssy it was easy to forget—flashed him a wink and a thousand-watt grin. “I dunno, Dr. Al, but somehow I feel like, whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.”
    “That’s my boy,” said Corder.
    7

    Just after Irene had finished showering and drying her hair with a pistol-grip blower supplied by the hotel—she’d spent the afternoon browsing at Portland’s famed Powell’s bookstore—she heard a rap on the door between the adjoining rooms, then the verbal equivalent:
    “Knock knock,” called Pender.
    “Who’s there?” Irene said suspiciously.
    “Love me.”
    Even more suspiciously: “Love me who?”
    “Love me Pender, love me true, never let me go,” he sang—the tune, of course, was Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender.”
    Irene groaned as she opened the door. His outfit was sedate, for him: brown slacks, short-sleeved white pongee sport shirt, green socks, tan Hush Puppies; he had two glasses in one hand, an ice bucket in the other, and a bottle of Jim Beam under his arm. “Did you have a good day?”
    “Not bad. How’d the interview go?”
    “Not bad either, thanks to a trick I learned in the media workshop the publishers sent me to before my book tour.”
    “What’s that?”
    “If you don’t want to answer the question the interviewers actually ask, just answer the question they should have asked.” He handed Irene a glass of mostly ice, with a splash of Kentucky’s finest. “Did you ever get hold of Lily?”
    “Her room didn’t answer all day.” Irene took a sip, grimaced, smacked her lips gamely. “I left a couple messages for her with the switchboard.”
    “They’re probably keeping her pretty busy,” Pender suggested. “I’m sure if anything was really wrong, she’d have called you.”
    “I don’t know—I just don’t know.” Irene sat down heavily on the edge of her bed—or as heavily as her hundred-and-twenty-pound frame could manage. “I can’t help thinking it’s a terrible mistake, leaving her there.”
    “It wasn’t your decision,” Pender reminded her. He was standing by the window, looking out over the city; the sky was steely gray, but it didn’t look like rain.